CLAIRE DAVON

Excerpt

The loud rumble could be heard halfway down the street.

Lori listened to the growl of a neglected engine, then resumed her task. The old Camaro whose hood she was under was almost done, and her job was to restore it to life.

She was good at fixing things.

The growl grew closer until she couldn’t hear the music Rico was blasting in the next bay.

The noise cut off, the car hard idling before that too fell silent.

She fixed her attention to the front of the driveway. A 1948 Ford Deluxe convertible that had seen better days met her gaze. The frame where a windshield had once been was bent, the glass, or perhaps plexi, missing. The rounded back was dented and its decaying whitewall tires had been pumped up with air to get it to her place. Its white paint was faded but silver lightning bolts still remained visible on the sides. If she was right about the model—and Lori was sure she was—the dashboard would be chrome. The cracked and worn leather seats were custom. Someone had spent time on this car, until it got shut away in a garage or shed, and neglected.

Her manager, an older man named Ernie, was standing at the front counter, a customer with him. The owner, she presumed, of the faded hot rod.

Many didn’t respond well when they found out that the “Lou” in “Lou’s Automotive” was not a guy like Ernie, but a twenty-three-year-old woman. She may have inherited the shop from her dad and kept the name, but she was good at her job. She’d learned from her father since she was old enough to handle a dipstick. That didn’t stop the comments. She’d lost more than one account when people discovered who wrote the checks—and fixed their babies.

Her wistful gaze went from the Ford to the stranger behind the counter. Her father had told her about the days when all of Main Street was decorated with cars on Saturday nights. She wondered if this was one of those. Those days were gone, and the grandparents who had been badasses were now worrying about retirement and gout, and not fixing up seventy-five-year-old cars. Those guys didn’t tolerate a woman for a mechanic.

Whoever was behind the wheel of this potential beauty, he would be the same way. The car was compensating for something and she doubted it would be the size of his…she cut that thought off. She had no time to be thinking about dicks right now, figurative or literal. She had a Camaro to fix.