Heart of Dixie - Tami Hoag (1) (2 page)

She took a step back from him and drew in a deep breath of cool air in another attempt to clear her head. Swinging a hand in the direction of the Porsche, she said, "Can we pop the hood on this little sweetheart? It's gonna be gettin' dark."

Jake stepped in front of the car, insinuating himself between the woman and his beloved Porsche, trying to shield it as a father would his child. "Let's not be hasty," he said with a tight smile. "Maybe she just needs a little rest."

Dixie gave him a look. "Honey, it's a car, not a Thoroughbred."

"That's your opinion."

She rolled her eyes and propped her hands on her hips. "You may not believe this, but next to Eldon I'm probably the most mechanical person in Mare's Nest. Now try to look past the fact that I'm wearing a bra and tell me what the car was doing before it quit."

Jake thought it was nearly impossible to overlook the fact that she wore a bra. He doubted anyone else at Eldon's Gas and Go filled their shirt out quite the way she did. His heart gave a jolt as his gaze settled on her ample bosom. He decided to explain his car problems if for no reason other than to distract himself from imagining just what kind of bra it was she had on under that sweater.

"Well...there was this hammering noise and then it did this kind of chukka-chukka thing and a big white cloud came out from under the hood."

This news was met with a pained expression. "How far did you drive it after that?"

"Not far. A couple of miles." She grimaced and he recanted. "No, wait, maybe it was only a mile or a few hundred yards. It probably just seemed farther. And I was coasting most of the way. I'm sure it just got a little hot. It's probably fine."

"You're not real handy with cars, are you." It was more a statement than a question.

Jake's male pride bristled. He squared his wide shoulders and set his jaw at a truculent angle, but the only argument he could come back with was a juvenile- sounding, "So?"

His inability with machines had been apparent from an early age. He had landed himself in the emergency room the very day he'd been given his first--and last--Erector Set. People who knew him generally avoided being anywhere in the vicinity when he was working with anything that remotely resembled a power tool. He considered his lack of mechanical talent a terrible flaw in his character, one he had cursed and puzzled over his whole life. He might have declared up and down that he wasn't a chauvinist, but the fact of the matter was, he had the idea engraved on his brain that men were supposed to be good with machines and he was not. He was a man's man, an athlete's athlete, and he was having to surrender his Porsche to a curvy brunette. It rankled big time and all he could do was scowl.

Shaking her head, his lady rescuer shooed him aside, not intimidated in the least. She released the catch and lifted the hood on the Porsche. Jake watched her poke around at the engine, checking belts and hoses, making the kind of significant humming sounds doctors make when they really want to worry a person sick.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" he asked, his hands itching to pull her away from his baby.

"Hmmm...ummm..." She bent over into the guts of the car, sticking her heart-shaped fanny up as she tried to scoot down closer to a malevolent-looking appendage with wires sticking out of it.

Jake's attention momentarily drifted from the car to the derriere. Her sweater had ridden up around her waist, revealing age-thinned denim that hugged a delightfully rounded rear. He was traditionally a leg man, but this angle was giving him a whole new perspective on the female form. He would have enjoyed the view a whole lot more if the woman hadn't been clanging a wrench around inside his pride and joy, however. He winced and groaned as if she were twisting his own body parts. Then she straightened, dug a small oily rag out of her front pocket and carefully opened the car's radiator cap.

"Hmmm..."

His heartbeat quickened. He pushed the image of her fanny from his mind and leaned beside her over the engine. "What? That sounded more ominous than the other `hmms.' What is it?"

"Hmmm..."

Dixie turned her head. He was right there. Close enough for her to catch the scent of mint on his breath. Close enough to see three different shades of gold in his hair and the faint shadow of his beard on the hard planes of his cheeks. Close enough to lean over and kiss if she were to completely lose all common sense.

"There's nothing in your radiator," she whispered breathlessly, desire grabbing her by the throat.

He blinked at her, looking a little mesmerized, then he shook his head and cleared his throat. "That's bad," he mumbled, his gaze straying to her lips. "Even I know that's bad. What do we do?"

Trying to shake off the spell of his closeness, Dixie replaced the radiator cap, motioned him back and closed the hood. "Nothing to do but haul her in and have a better look. Could be the water pump, could be a hose down underneath, could be a puncture in the radiator." She looked up at him with a grave, earnest expression. "You might have blown the engine."

A pitiful sound of dread and suffering caught in his throat. He paled visibly beneath his tan. Dixie patted his arm consolingly. Poor thing. Poor cute thing. She wanted to give him a hug, but thought better of it. Instead, she went to the tow truck to prepare to load the car.

Jake wobbled on his feet at the thought of a blown engine. Lord, what would Andre say when he got back to L.A.? The mechanic treated all of his client's cars as if they were children. He was an import auto pediatrician, recommended from car owner to car owner by reverent word of mouth. He had purred over Jake's new Porsche. A blown engine. It would probably reduce the Frenchman to tears. Jake shuddered at the thought.

The sound of hydraulic wheezing broke in on his thoughts and he bolted toward the back of his car. Long iron spear- like things were emerging from the tow truck, the kind of things he'd seen run through junkers in order to lift them onto the scrap heap. His imagination raced ahead to picture the rods impaling his Porsche. Control snapping, he flung himself spread-eagle on the car. "No! Please! Anything but that!"

Dixie shook her head and sighed, working the levers, lowering the bars that would slide under the car's rear wheels and lift the vehicle off the ground. "You'll have to move, now, honey, else you'll be squashed. You're welcome to sit up in the cab of the truck if it's too painful for you to watch."

Embarrassed beyond words, Jake stormed up to the wrecker and climbed in on the passenger's side. What was the matter with him? Where was his pride? He'd managed to make a perfect ass of himself. The woman obviously knew what she was doing. He of all people knew mechanical ability had nothing to do with gender. It was just that she looked so...soft. He wouldn't have expected a female wrecker driver to be quite so...female.

"Jeez, Gannon, what would you expect? Arnold Schwarzenegger with breasts?" he growled, shaking his head in self-reproach, and turned his thoughts to other matters.

It looked as if he was going to begin his search for Devon Stafford in Mare's Nest. An obscure tidbit of news he had unearthed had mentioned she had once spent a summer on the Carolina coast as a girl. It seemed to him the romantic lure of a childhood memory would appeal to an actress. Mare's Nest may not be the most logical choice to begin with, but he didn't really have any options now.

A blown engine. His heart sank and a hard lump lodged like a rock in his throat. His beautiful Porsche.

His rescuer pulled the cab door open and hauled herself up into the driver's seat. "She's all loaded up, honey, and none the worse for wear. You can relax."

Jake sent her a sheepish smile. "I'm sorry I was such a jerk. It's just that, it's my first Porsche and--"

She held up a small hand to stem the apology. "You don't have to explain. I know all about men and their cars. Knew a fella once who had a Testarossa that threw a rod on the Ventura Freeway at rush hour. He flung himself flat on the hood and cried like a baby. It was a pitiful thing to see."

"I can imagine."

Jake studied her features a little more closely now that the initial crisis had passed. She really had a very pretty mouth, and the faint scent of a soft sweet perfume cut through the aroma of oil and stale cigar smoke that hung in the cab. Lilies of the valley. The scent drifted into the orderly storehouse of his memory to be filed away for future reference. Dixie stared at him, unnerved by the stirring of attraction warming her tummy. Of course, he was an attractive man, big and blond and brawny. It was kind of startling to feel so drawn to him because she hadn't really thought about men in that way for a while; she hadn't had the time or the energy. She had been too busy finding herself, healing and becoming whole. This one had the most gorgeous smile-- winning, dazzling. There was nothing quite like a great smile on a big handsome guy. His teeth were white and straight--perfect, like everything else about him.

Perfect. That was all the reason she needed to steer clear of him. She'd had her fill of the quest for perfection.

"You've been to California?" he asked, just to break the silence and the silky strand of sexual tension that had suddenly spun between them. He didn't have time for that kind of thing now. He had a job to do. Besides, she really wasn't his type, he reminded himself yet again. He tended to lean toward tall, slender blondes as a rule, not perky, curvy brunettes.

She dropped her head, giving all her attention to a dirty, curling log sheet on a battered clipboard. Her hair fell around the sides of her face like a veil. "Oh, sure. I've been around. I'll need your name and address for our records."

"Jake Gannon, 6868 Grafton, Santa Mara, California," he recited dutifully, watching her. "And you are?"

Her head came up, eyes round beneath the tangled fringe of her bangs.

"Dixie. Dixie La Fontaine," she said, feeling oddly trapped in the beam of his blue eyes. Her breath caught in her throat when he reached up a hand and brushed the end of her nose.

"Grease," he murmured, his gaze still holding hers as the magnetism between them soared. "You had grease on your nose."

"Oh."

She dropped her head again to stare at the log sheet, chiding herself for being a ninny. What was the matter with her, reacting to a strange man this way? A strange man from California, no less!

No, no, no, Dixie darling. If and when you go looking for a fella, he's gonna be a nice Southern good ol' boy who likes chicken-fried steak and chocolate pecan pie and dances at the American Legion hall with girls who have a little meat on them.

All she had to do was look at Jake Gannon to know he probably belonged to a health club and ate muesli for breakfast and cringed at the mere mention of the word "fat" in any context. He just had that look about him, that California image. She had more important things to focus on in her life than having an image.

"Are you staying some place around here?" she asked, forcing her mind back to business. "We'll need a local phone where you can be reached."

"That's my next problem." He grinned engagingly, flashing two deep dimples. "I hadn't made plans to stay here. Is there a motel or something in Mare's Nest?"

A wry smile quirked up the right side of Dixie's mouth as she set the clipboard aside and started the tow truck. "Or something."

"Do you think I'll have any trouble getting in without a reservation?"

"Naw, don't worry about it," she drawled, resigning herself to the fact that Jake Gannon was not going to be out of sight or out of mind for a while. "I know the manager pretty good." TWO

LA FONTAINE. JAKE turned the name over in his mind, feeling genuine excitement. Devon Stafford's mother's maiden name was La Fontaine. Maybe Dixie was a distant cousin. He glanced at her, looking for a resemblance.

"What?" she asked sharply. She pulled one hand off the steering wheel to rub her cheek.

"Have I got more grease on me?"

"No, no, nothing. I was just admiring the way you handle this truck."

"Oh. Thanks."

He stretched a little, subtly altering his position so he could study her better. Everything about Devon Stafford was sharply stunning, from her cool blond tresses to the delicate bone structure of her face with its prominent cheekbones and full, pouty lips. Dixie had a much softer look. The slight fullness to her face made him think of women of a bygone era. She would have been considered a great beauty back in the days of Lillian Gish, but she was no Devon Stafford.

His gaze strayed to her mouth again, to the perfect archer's bow curve of the upper lip. It wasn't as full or blatantly sensual as Devon Stafford's, but there was a slight similarity. He leaned a little closer. She shot a suspicious look his way and Jake treated her to a charming smile, leaning ahead to catch the true slope of her nose and the angle of her chin.

Dixie's gaze darted nervously from the road to Jake Gannon, back and forth. She didn't much care for the way he was looking at her, kind of strange and familiar-like. Slowly she inched her right hand across the seat and stuck it in her purse. Swallowing down the knot of tension in her throat, she said, "If you're some kind of pervert, I'm just gonna tell you straight out--I've got a gun and I know how to use it."

Jake sat back with a surprised bark of laughter. Leaning against the door of the truck in a deceptively lazy pose, he fixed his gaze on the business end of a snub-nosed .38 pointed at his chest. "I'm not a pervert," he declared, stunned that he'd let her get the drop on him. He stared at her in disgruntled amazement, trying to think how he might best disarm her. There were a number of methods at his disposal, but if the gun went off in the process in the close confines of the truck, someone could get hurt or the tow truck could go off the road and his Porsche could be totaled. He didn't like that thought much better than the thought of getting shot himself.

Dixie slowed the truck to a stop. They just sat there, Dixie looking at him long and hard in the gathering gloom, with Bonnie Raitt singing in the background about finding love in the nick of time. It was difficult to picture Jake Gannon as a slavering fiend. He looked completely clean-cut, well turned out in a chambray shirt and stylish pleated tan trousers. Still, she knew as well as anyone that looks could be deceiving. He regarded her with a steady gaze, and while he appeared to be completely relaxed she had the sensation of leashed power lurking under that handsome surface.