skeptical.
“I’ve pulled him over almost a dozen times and almost arrested him once. Why on earth would he like me?”
“She needs a mirror,” Laura Jo announced. “And an intervention.”
Katie nodded energetically. “You should totally take him for a test drive.”
Since Katie and Gia both had their own resident SEALs, Mercy figured they were either biased—or knew a good thing when they saw it. The idea of test-driving Joey Carter was certainly appealing on some levels. He was hot, and she was lonely. More importantly, he was nice and he liked to laugh. She was also dead certain that he’d never laugh at her. “Have any of you dated him?”
Everyone looked at each other and there was a round of head shaking.
“You’re good to go,” Laura Jo announced. “He’s a virgin date.”
There was more laughter as the Smoking Hot Knitters wrapped up for the evening, but Mercy couldn’t stop thinking about Joey. And test-driving. Had he meant it when he’d asked her out on a date?
3
S tupid, used, piece-of-shit car. The sad truth was that she didn’t earn enough to send her mother a small check each month and pay a car loan. So she’d picked the more important of the two and sent the money to her mama , a decision she had no problem with except for nights like this when her beater car conked out on her. Nights like this, she wished her mother were a mechanic. Or that Mercy had taken shop in high school instead of the college prep classes she hadn’t been able to use.
She turned the key, but the car stayed dead. Luckily, she’d been able to coast to the shoulder when the motor had started acting up a quarter mile ago. Unfortunately, her cell phone was dead, and there were no call boxes on this stretch of road—an oversight she’d planned on remedying. If she’d known her car would die on the way home from the vet, she’d have bumped the item up her to-do list.
“How do you feel about hiking?” She looked down at her feline companion. The cat carrier alone weighed five pounds, plus it contained an additional fifteen pounds of His Royal Highness. Her arms would fall off. Or her legs. She was reasonably fit—part of her job description—but it had already been a long day, and Strong was uphill.
Clearly, she’d pissed off Karma at some point.
HRH chirped encouragement, ready to trade in his cat carrier for home and a can of Fancy Feast. She reached a finger in and scratched him underneath his chin.
“Working on it, buddy.” Part Siamese, part Maine Coon, Bob was an oddball. Her big blue-eyed boy had a white belly and matching socks, but he’d inherited dark ears from his Siamese daddy. He also came with lots of brown fur that routinely covered her furniture and her clothes. He was a talker, loyal to the death, and he slept with her without fail, which was more than she could say for the men she’d invited into her life. Better taste in cats than men. That was her.
“I don’t suppose you know how to fix a car?”
Bob chirped. Definitely a negative.
She got out of the car, popped the hood, and stared inside, but it was like randomly picking lottery numbers and hoping for a payout. She felt a headache coming on and added car repair to the list of books she needed to check out from the library. She could learn to do this too.
When headlights flashed over the trees, signaling an incoming car, she swallowed her pride and waved. Not frantically. Just nice and fast and deliberately. Asking for help sucked, but walking back to Strong with Bob sucked more. The pickup was a big, black solid number with a metal tool container bolted onto the back. Thank God. It might be sexist, but she’d take a guy with tools over a mom with a minivan full of groceries right now. Although she wouldn’t say no to a Pop-Tart. Or Cheetos. Both, if Karma was in the mood to make up for the breakdown.
The pickup pulled in. Thank God. She eyed the windshield, trying to make out who the driver was. Nope. Karma was still
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