“Don’t let Margaret bully you into answering now,” Terry said. Margaret blinked innocently and sipped her ice water. “We’ll talk over the details tomorrow. There’s no rush for you to decide.”
“I’ll definitely think about it,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Chloe shift in her seat, preparing to deliver another blow.
This time I dodged.
It washilarious watching Chloe boss the hell out of everyone without them seeming to know she was doing it. With dinner over and everyone too full for dessert, she divvied up the chores—clearing the table, putting leftovers away, doing dishes—among her brothers, organized a game of UNO for her parents, Margaret, and Amy, and then reminded me of a promise I sure as shit had never made to put the snow tires on her car.
“Now?” I asked. “You happen to have your snow tires with you?”
She gave a bright, tinkly little laugh. “I keep them here. Usually Terry takes care of it for me, but since you offered…” Her voice trailed off and she arched an eyebrow.
“But it’s dark out,” I protested.And cold, being mid-September in the mountains.
Her head tilted. “Are you scared of the dark, Steven? Don’t worry. I’ll bring a flashlight.”
There was a gleam of challenge in her meadow-green irises. It was hypnotic. I couldn’t think of a single reasonable argument with those eyes pinned on me.
“All right,” I muttered, shrugging into my coat. “Let’s go.”
Terry barely glanced up from the cards he was dealing. “Tires are in the shed out back. Tools, too.”
Chloe grabbed her coat and a flashlight from the hall closet. The second the front door closed behind us, she whirled on me, shining the light right in my fucking eyes.
“What the hell is going on here, Steven?” she demanded.
“Chloe—shit—” I squeezed my eyes shut and batted her arm down, but I could still see the afterimage of her face on my eyelids. “This isn’t some nefarious plot to weasel my way into your life. It’s a coincidence, like you finding me when my battery died. I started working with your dad six months ago. He’s well respected in the community and has taken on interns before. It’s not my fault he didn’t tell you about it.”
“Well,” Chloe hedged. “Hedidtell me about it. He just never mentioned your name.”
“You have different last names,” I went on. “I don’t really know anything about you. Why would it even occur to me that you were related? But about two months ago, I saw a photo of you on his fridge.” I rubbed my eyes and cleared away the floating Chloe. Unfortunately, the real one was still right here, and she was not happy.
She rolled her lips together. “Two months ago? Is that why you’ve been so nice to me?”
“Nice?” That caught me off guard. What did she know? “When was I nice?” I asked cautiously.
“That day at Jo’s when you bought me coffee. That was nice. Or how about all those funny animal videos you send me at three a.m.?” She jabbed the flashlight at me like a pointer, the light down this time. “You were trying to butter me up!”
I wasn’t really into social media, but I followed a handful of farriers I respected to bounce ideas off of. It wasn’t a huge stretch for the algorithm to guide me from diseased hoofs to cute animals, but until Chloe told me it helped with her anxiety, I had scrolled right past without watching. Now my whole feed was full of those fucking videos.
“No, Chloe, I was not trying to butter you up. It never occurred to me that youcouldbe…buttered.” Goddammit, my mind was in the gutter again. I rubbed the back of my neck. “I saw those videos and thought of you, that’s all.”
She reeled back half a step, her bottom lip falling open. “You saw those videos and thought of me?” Her eyes searched my face. “And you don’t think that’s nice?”
“I was up. You were up. That’s not nice, Chloe. That’s…what did you call it?Basic human decency.” I leaned in, and my voice deepened when I murmured, “When I’m being nice, you’ll know it.”
Her eyes dilated until they looked almost black in the dim light as she stared back at me. Her cheeks were flushed pink, which might have been from the cold, but I knew it wasn’t. When her gaze dipped to my lips, it took all my self-control not to do something very un-nice, like kiss her. If it were anyone else looking at me like that, I would have done it. But this was Chloe. She hated me. Her body might want me, but her brain sure as fuck didn’t.
“It’s fucking cold out here,” I muttered. “Let’s get your tires done.”
“Right.” She swallowed hard. “Right.”
We didn’t say a word as we rolled the tires from the shed to the driveway. Fortunately, Terry had an electric car jack kit, so doing all four tires would probably only take thirty minutes, tops.
“Thanks for doing this,” Chloe said. She leaned against the car, aiming the flashlight at the first tire. “I’d do it myself, but I promised my mom.”
I grunted as I shoved the jack in place. “You promised your mom you’d trick her dinner guest into freezing his ass off doing manual labor in the dark?”
She laughed and it was all worth it. I would have changed a thousand tires in sub-thirty temperatures to hear that sound. “No. I promised her I would never change my own tires. She’s weird about it, but I understand. That’s how my dad died,” she added quietly. “He was helping a friend repair his tractor wheel, and his friend didn’t secure that tractor properly. It rolled over on him and crushed him. He died instantly.”
