What was the saying? Better to under promise and over deliver.
Besides, I still needed to see if Beau was available.
I decided to swing by his auto shop the next day and take him out to lunch.
I think his employees recognized me when I walked in the garage because they didn’t even question who I was or what I was doing there. Even if they hadn’t known me, the resemblance between the Mitchell brothers—especially the three oldest—was obvious. We all had dark brown hair and blue eyes. Derrick looked the most like our mom with his lighter hair and hazel eyes.
“Is he around?” I called to Rob, the guy who’d worked there since Beau opened the shop ten years ago, with Maverick’s backing, of course.
Rob gestured to a pair of legs sticking out from under a blue Ram truck.
I nodded my thanks, walked to where my brother lay, and squatted down so he could hear me.
“Hey, you had lunch yet?”
Beau slid out on the wheeled creeper and looked up at me with a bright smile and a smudge of grease across his forehead.
“Hey! What are you doing here? Is Freddie running okay?”
My gearhead brother named his many cars, along with the rest of the family’s vehicles. He had dubbed my black truck, Freddie the Ford F150.
“He’s running like a champ. I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d see what you were doing for lunch.”
Beau’s brows drew together as he sat up, still holding a wrench in his hand.
“You were in the neighborhood? Doing what?”
Of course the asshole would call me out about something so trivial. I hated being caught in a lie, even if it was just a fib.
“Do you want me to take you to lunch or not?”
He put the wrench in the tool chest, pulled a rag from his back pocket, and slowly wiped his hands as he spoke.
“I dunno. It sounds like you want something.”
“What if I do? Are you going to tell me no?”
His nose wrinkled in a snarl as he begrudgingly grumbled, “No, probably not.”
I couldn’t help but grin in return.
“Good. Let’s grab something to eat, and I’ll fill you in.” I nodded toward his face. “And wipe your forehead.”
~~
“So, let me get this straight. You’renotdating her, but you’re installing her cabinets…for free?”
“No, not free,” I said as I dressed my cheeseburger with the condiments on the table. “She’s going to tutor Brayden in exchange. His grades have started to slip, and I’m worried he’s going to be ineligible.”
My brother removed the bun on his burger and waited for me to pass the ketchup.
“Is Becky worried about his grades?”
I frowned at his question.
“I don’t know.”
“Then his grades aren’t that bad. If they were, she’d be on your ass and find a way to make it your fault.”
