A few passersby stop, staring at us. Great. With the way this is going, soon we’ll have a big audience watching us.
Watching me, with three guys arguing over my head. If that doesn’t get those wicked tongues wagging, I don’t know what will. Not that there’s much else happening in this sleepy town, while the heat rises off the asphalt and the mosquitoes buzz.
I take a step back, wondering if I can make my escape while they are still arguing, but Jasper turns to me.
Crap.
“You started this?” he accuses.
“I didn’t start anything.” Like every time, unfairness is a red flag waved in my face. I straighten to my full five-feet-two and stare him dead in the eye. “I only came to ask for a job.”
“Told you when you asked two weeks ago: I ain’t got no job for a chick. So go away. Shoo.”
Anger and embarrassment burn through my blood, flushing my cheeks. My ears burn. “Jack Martinez said you might have a position for me.”
“And what position might that be?” he asks mildly.
Ross grins.
I open my mouth, not sure what to say to that, too angry to think straight, when Matthew again steps between me and them, interposing his impressive frame between me and the jackass of Jasper.
“Enough,” he says quietly.
My mouth remains open.
“That so?” Jasper asks darkly. “Maybe you want to be looking for a job along with her, huh?”
“Told you,” Ross says smugly. “This chick is trouble.”
Jasper is glaring knives at us.
“You’re lucky we’re short on good mechanics,” he spits at Matt. “Go back to work, boy, and let me handle this.”
Boy?
Even in this mess I’m in, I can’t help but steal another look at Matt’s face with the shaggy beard and the dark eyes peering through a tangle of messy hair, then let my gaze wander down his tall, muscular body. He’s no boy, he’s a grown man.
Grown in a stable, or a cave, most probably, but grown nevertheless, unlike Ross.
I suddenly wonder just how old Matt is. A single dad, arriving at a town in the middle of nowhere.
“And you,” Jasper turns to me, his gaze icy-cold. “Come to my office.”
I half expected Matt not to step aside, to ignore Jasper. But he obeys and heads back into the shop without a backward glance, leaving me strangely disappointed.
Why? No clue. I mean, his brief stint as my knight in shiny armor was more than I’d have expected of him. Maybe he wasn’t feeling like himself for a moment there.
As his broad-shouldered form disappears in the gloom and Jasper lifts a brow at me, I brace myself.
“Coming?” Jasper asks.
I follow him inside the car bay, Ross a dark presence at my back, sending an itch between my shoulder blades.
Jasper’s office is a tiny room, the shutters of the window open to the car bay. He leans back against his cluttered desk and nods at me.
“So what did dear Jack say?”
“That you need a secretary,” I reply, flinching when Ross brushes by me to go stand beside his dad, crowding the already cramped space.