Fender Bender Blues (2 page)

“I know it. They should put warning labels on those things. Anyway, it was his fault.” Instantly, guilt ate at her for the lie—damn conscience, anyway—and she admitted, “That’s not true. I wasn’t looking”

“I’m sorry, Sweetie,” Leah sympathized and Rach could hear the frown in her voice. “Listen, I want you to meet him now.”

“The Greek god?” Rach teased, amused at the nickname Leah had given her new crush. “What’s going on with that, anyway?”

She could imagine Leah shrugging on the other end. “We’ve been texting.”

Rach grinned and turned at the stop light. “Have you gone on a date with him yet?”

“No. We haven’t seen each other since he showed me the apartment last week. Just talking, you know. Anyway, tonight he’s showing his brother a house just a few blocks from your place, actually. I want you to go with me. I’m a little nervous since this is only the second time we’ve seen each other. But he’s the one, Rach.”

Rach rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay. You know I don’t believe in that crap. But I’m there. Text me the address.”

“You’re the best! I’ll see you after I get off of work. Guess he’s showing his brother the place about 5:30, so don’t be late, okay?” Rach almost hung up, but Leah said, “And you don’t believe in it now, but you will.”

Rach smiled. “Yeah, yeah, true love and all that mumbo jumbo. I’ll see you tonight. Love ya.”

Rach hung up and turned into the empty parking lot of the first business on her list and hit a pothole. She parked in front of the squat, light blue building with glass windows lining the front side. She killed the engine and grabbed her briefcase off the seat next to her, packed full of freshly printed résumés. After climbing out of the car, she smoothed her pants and adjusted her blouse, knowing she looked killer in the pants suit she’d only worn once before quitting her last job.

Two steps toward the entrance to Copy Masters, “We Master You Faster,” she stopped dead in her tracks. The front fender was beyond repair, smashed in at least five inches over the wheel-well with a silver emblem crimped into the metal. An ominous hissing sound came from under the hood, which she hadn’t noticed on the drive over.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” She fished inside her purse for her car keys and used a key to jimmy the emblem loose. With a disgusted grunt she tossed the sad looking piece of metal inside the purse.

Taking a deep breath, she pasted on a smile.

“Here we go, Bennett. This one’s all yours,” she cheered herself on, and went inside.

Chapter Two

Craig Larsen’s secretary raised curious brows as he stormed past her desk.

“Can you hold my calls?” He yanked open the door to his office. “I need to phone in a car accident.”

She
tsk-tsked
with a wag of her finger. “It’s only a car. You have a million of them to choose from. You own a car dealership,” she said with a wave of her hand. “At least you aren’t hurt. Thank the good Lord for that, young man.”

Craig sighed. He was already exhausted and the day had just begun. “You’re right. Bad morning, that’s all. Turned off on the wrong street and a redhead drove out in front of me. Now my car is totaled. I shouldn’t have let my brother talk me into driving by another house. This is house number six. I’m beginning to reconsider being a homeowner.”

Kathy waggled her eyebrows and grinned. “Redhead, you say?”

Despite his sour mood, Craig leaned against the doorjamb of his office and smiled at his gray-haired secretary. “Yes, and a sarcastic brat. She didn’t even apologize.”

“If you looked at her with that face you walked in here with, I wouldn’t have apologized either,” she admonished with a double tap of her pen on a message tablet. “You can be a bear sometimes, you know.”

Craig closed his eyes and squeezed his thumb and forefinger into the bridge of his nose. “I think I was a little hard on her. It’s all this stress with the damn lawsuit and Maggie’s been calling me to ‘talk’ every day, and then my car…I only had it for
three damn days.”
He opened his eyes on a sigh. “I might have taken it out on the woman.”

“Might have?”

Guilt nibbled at the back of his mind. He ignored Kathy’s accusatory stare and turned into his office. “Just hold my calls.”

It took less time to report the accident to his insurance company than it had taken him to pry the insurance card from the woman’s fingers.
And she took off with my insurance card.
He shook his head. His insurance agent had promised to mail a replacement card right away.

After Craig hung up the phone, he sat back into the oversized executive chair and closed his eyes, settling his head against the plush black leather. He willed the tension to leave his body with a roll of his shoulders and enjoyed the feeling for a few seconds.

Until the image of the gorgeous, fiery-haired woman invaded his mind.

The name on the insurance card caught his attention. Rachel Bennett.
Menace of the Road,
he fumed, folding the card between his fingers.

He swiveled around to look out the floor-to-ceiling windows to the car lot below. American Dream Autos was his pride and joy. After returning from business school seven years ago with a Masters degree in hand, Craig had been more than ready to take over the family business. His dad had gone into retirement knowing the dealership would be in Craig’s capable hands. And it was. At the age of thirty-six, through stringent management, Craig had made himself a very rich man. Cars had always been his one true love. He bought them like some collected rocks or movie memorabilia, and he knew how to sell. As far as he was concerned, he’d been born to run this company and he made certain the sales numbers reflected his sentiment. The only other dealership in the state larger than this one was also his and opening it had been his first business decision after his dad’s retirement.

So far the current economic crisis hadn’t affected sales here in Lincoln, or at the new location in Omaha, and he was grateful, but he wasn’t a fool. If the economy didn’t make a turn for the better he knew eventually his own business would suffer. With the implementation of strategic in-house financing options, he hoped to continue moving units on both lots. Right now, business was good.

The only major annoyance in his life—besides the wrecked car—was a lawsuit against American Dream Autos. The man suing him claimed he’d hit a tree due to faulty brakes on a used vehicle. Despite the fact the man had blown a point-one-O on a breathalyzer at the scene of the accident, there was a still a question of contributory negligence. It had been Craig’s intention to keep the lawsuit quiet, but a few weeks ago he’d scowled as the anchorwoman on the ten p.m. news mentioned American Dream Autos’ involvement in a messy lawsuit. He remembered all too well crumpling the soda can in his hand and throwing it at—not in—the trash.

He set the insurance card on his desk and clicked on his e-mail.

“You can’t go in there. Mr. Larsen is busy,” Kathy argued from the reception area.

“I’m pretty sure he won’t mind my visit,” came Maggie’s lilting voice, more sweet than the woman herself. He would know. He’d made the mistake of dating her for six miserable months.

“Craig asked me to hold his calls,” Kathy tossed back, dropping formality in the face of irritation. She made no attempt at cloaking her disapproval with the other woman. Kathy considered Maggie the bane of the dealership.

Maggie didn’t skip a beat. “His calls,
not me
.”

“You just can’t—” Kathy began, but Maggie shoved open his office door and stepped inside. He caught a glimpse of Kathy’s outraged expression just before Maggie closed the door on her.

A second later his intercom buzzed. Eyes on his ex as she strutted toward him, he picked up the phone. “Yes, I see.”

“Good,” Kathy said loftily, loud enough so Maggie could hear through the door. “Then you know it’s not my fault—the woman has no manners.”

Craig’s dad called Kathy cantankerous, but Craig liked her no-nonsense ways. He’d updated everything in the business with the exception of Kathy. She was meticulous and loyal and she ran his office with an iron fist. Railroading Maggie was one of her dearest pleasures.

Maggie settled into a chair in front of his desk and crossed her long, shapely legs. She preened for a few moments, then said, “She’s rude. You should get rid of her.”

Craig ignored the comment and wondered again how he’d gotten involved with the woman sitting across from him. At first he’d respected what was an admirable trait of knowing what she wanted and going after it, tooth and nail. But he’d grown wary when she began applying that to their relationship. After six months she’d begun pushing marriage and commitment, wanting to move in and demanding a key to his apartment.

She’d continued to press the matter and he’d ended their relationship. When her tears hadn’t worked, she’d called him a heartless bastard and accused him of using her for sex. Maggie then turned to an ex’s bed for comfort, solidifying Craig’s conviction that she wasn’t the woman for him. Maggie still denied it, but his source was golden. He really didn’t give a damn either way.

Her main interest in him was money. He’d spotted it early on, should have gotten rid of her sooner, and still wasn’t sure why he’d taken so long to break up with her. He only wished he’d been smart enough to not get involved with an employee—not only was she a pain in his ass, but she’d also become a liability.

“I take it you haven’t heard the latest?” She looked far too pleased for someone bearing bad news.

“Apparently not, but there are five messages on my voicemail I haven’t had time to listen to.” He sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. She really was beautiful with her delicate features and cerulean blue eyes, but it was the woman behind all that beauty who made him uneasy. Three months after their break-up, she still wouldn’t take no for an answer.

She shrugged flaxen blonde hair over thin shoulders, ignorant to the fact he wasn’t thrilled by her playing messenger. “It seems there’s been another media leak and now they’re talking about the settlement amount on the news.”

“Fuck.” He sighed and looked up at the white paneled ceiling in frustration.

How the hell had a number gotten out? Craig’s attorneys had only just received a settlement demand letter from the plaintiff’s attorney three days before.
Damn it!
If he ever got his hands on the person talking to the media…

He fisted his hands at the back of his head before dropping them onto his desk.

“How did you find out?” He narrowed his eyes, suddenly suspicious. He doubted the media would contact her, an employee—
an ex
-
girlfriend—
for comments. Or that Phil, his lead attorney, had felt the need to call Maggie with the news.

Leaning forward, as if to share an intriguing secret, she grinned. “I came in this morning before Kathy was in, thinking you’d be here, and there was a written message on her desk that I happened to read. Phil must have left it there last night. I’m sure he thought no one would see it, but it was right there in the middle of Kathy’s desk. Silly him.”

“Silly him,” Craig agreed dryly. “Thanks for the information. I’ve got some things to take care of so I’ll talk to you later.”

The smile vanished from her lips at the short dismissal, but only for a second. She recovered quickly and stood, smoothing the dark blue skirt that hugged her hips and small buttocks like a second skin. She flashed another dazzling smile. “Right. Of course. Would you like me to bring you lunch today since you’re so busy?”

“No, I have a business lunch,” he lied. “Thank you, though.”

He wasn’t heartless. The crushed look on her face left a guilty knot in his stomach. Why couldn’t she get the picture and move on?

“Maybe tomorrow, Maggie. Thanks.”

He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. He wanted to call her back and tell her it wasn’t appropriate for her to drop in the way she did, but confrontation with her made him uneasy. She was another lawsuit waiting to happen and without a misstep on her part she’d be at the dealership for a very long time.

Kathy knocked on his door then stepped inside with a cup of coffee in one hand and a stack of mail in the other.

“If you’d just tell her straight out that you’d rather be hit by a truck than deal with her again, she’d go away,” she scolded and he laughed.

“You know I’m too nice to do that.”

She harrumphed and set the coffee mug on the coaster beside his desk calendar. “Nice, my butt. If you had stuck to your guns and been firm, she’d be looking for another job by now. Did you get your insurance claim called in?”

“Yeah. I was assured it’d be taken care of promptly.”

“Well, you are a lucky man, Mr. Larsen,” she answered in a tone that made him wonder if she meant it. She plopped the mail on his desk and said, “Not everything in life is about cars and work, young man. You look tired. You need a vacation. Have you eaten breakfast?”

Kathy treated him like a son, sometimes fretting over the littlest things. In a move that often annoyed him, she would call his mom and they would worry over how little time he spent having fun. They both accused him of being a workaholic. They were right, of course.

He was used to the way she fired questions at him as statements and he absorbed them as he took a drink of the coffee—strong and black and exactly what he needed.