“That’s why I wear the sunglasses,” Tawk gritted out, putting them back over his eyes.
“You a shifter?”
Tawk ignored the question. “How much do I owe you?”
“One seventy-nine ninety-nine.”
He held out his credit card and waited for Cliff to compose himself enough to reach for it and start processing his payment. “I never seen a red-eyed shifter.”
“Yeah, me either until recently.”
“You having problems with your animal?”
“Does everyone in this damn town just ask whatever is on your mind?”
Cliff made a tick sound behind his teeth and gestured to whoever was coming in the front door. “I just know a shifter is all. Pardon the hell out of me.”
Tawk tasted her power before he even turned around, and rolled his eyes closed, praying for patience.
Jess.
He clenched his fists at his sides and turned to look at her. “What are you doing here?”
“Working,” Jess muttered, blowing right past him to go behind the counter. She had an armload of boxes.
“You work at an auto parts store?” he asked as Cliff handed his card back.
“Yep.”
Okay, now he was completely baffled. “Never once in all the years we lived as neighbors did you ever show an interest in us working on cars,” Tawk said.
Jess gave an empty smile and shrugged. “I’ve changed.”
Tawk agreed. Her little mind-control trick the other night said she’d changed for the worse.
She began scanning the boxes she’d just brought in on the second computer, and called out, “Byron, I have the intake you’re waiting on.”
The Byron in question called, “I’ll be there in a minute!” The big window behind Jess and Clint exposed Byron, who was working under a car at the moment.
“Since you two are buddies, can you go pull his order?” Clint asked, handing Jess a slip of paper.
“We aren’t friends,” she clipped out, but took the paper, and disappeared into the garage on the other side of the window, boxes in tow.
“She’s quick,” Clint said, returning to his work on the computer. “You can look around a few minutes while you wait.”
Jess reappeared before he’d even had a chance to meander down a single aisle of grill guards. She came in through the open door staring at the box in her hands, a deep frown etched into her features. She looked up at him with question in her glowing eyes. “Are these for Tammy’s 4Runner?”
“That’s not any of your business,” he said, approaching. He took the box with the pair of headlights and strode for the door.
“It feels like my business. I know Tammy.”
“Do you now?” He shook his head and shoved the door open, and escaped into the fresh air.
“I thought you were already gone,” she called after him.
Did no one in this town get the hint that he wasn’t interested in talking?
“I’m leaving after I take care of one last thing.”
