I had introduced Boyce as my best friend. “He’s generously volunteered to be my DD for the night and get me home safe, so none of y’all are stuck with that job,” I added. Everyone chuckled and a few people said Thanks, man. “First round of margaritas are on me! And your iced tea too, Mr. Wynn,” I said, nudging his solid arm with my shoulder.

As soon as the drinks, baskets of chips, and bowls of salsa arrived, someone posed the inescapable question: “So Boyce, what do you do?” Kyle wasn’t a total jackhole, but he could be an intellectual elitist. He was still learning not to make discriminatory remarks about the locals around me.

“I’m a mechanic,” Boyce answered. His right hand lay fisted on his thigh. Otherwise, he looked wholly unruffled.

“Ah,” Kyle said, flicking a glance my way. “Cool.” His tone didn’t imply cool so much as a sense of superiority. Boyce didn’t give two figs about that and never had.

“Where do you work?” Shanice asked, blinking big dark eyes at him while curling a springy coil of hair around her finger, a thing I’d assumed studious doctoral students were incapable of doing. Wrong. “I’m sure my hand-me-down Pontiac will need some work over the next few years. I’d love to know someone who could keep it running.”

“Yeah, me too!” Milla said, her blue eyes skipping over Boyce’s torso and arms.

His dark green T-shirt was just snug enough to show off the muscularity of his broad chest and defined arms. I prayed the low growl in my throat would remain there, unheard. There was no good reason for me to be territorial. Oh, yeah? my brain snarled, flashing images of Boyce hovering over me in the darkness, that chest and those arms bare under my appreciative hands. Dammit.

Gustavo slid an arm over the back of Milla’s chair with a perturbed scowl. They’d been an item for about two weeks, and the rest of us had wagers going on how that would end. Prediction: messy.

Battling the desire to stake a claim on the beautiful man next to me in all manner of unacceptable ways, I sympathized with Gustavo. I had nothing against Shanice or Milla… but I wanted to knock their brilliant heads together at the moment.

“I’m at Wynn’s Garage,” Boyce answered.

“But your surname is Wynn—correct?” Kaameh asked. “You are the owner, then?”

I rarely saw Kaameh because she was working on her dissertation. She was also the research assistant for Dr. Kent—the professor whose grant-funded research focused on oil spills and their effects on the biodiverse marine habitats of the Gulf Coast. I hoped to take her place when I returned from Austin.

Boyce’s jaw twitched, but he produced a thin smile. “Actually, my mother is the owner.”

Her eyebrows arched high and she returned the smile. “Your mother is a mechanic too?”

He shifted in his seat, and I wished my colleagues would stop giving him the third degree. “No. My father died recently and ownership passed to her. I do all the repairs and run the day-to-day operations.”

“Oh—I’m so sorry for your loss. Please excuse my prying. Your mother is fortunate to have a responsible son looking after her business.”

He nodded but said nothing.

“So you’ve known Pearl her whole life?” Mahlik asked him from my opposite side.

Boyce gave me a lazy smile. “Close to.”

“Yo, man—has she always been clumsy?” he asked. Everyone laughed and I hid my face in my hands—knocking over my half-full margarita in the process.

“Pearl, clumsy?” Boyce chuckled, quickly mopping up the spill with his napkin before it left the tabletop and dribbled all over my lap. “Naw, man. Not at all.”

• • • • • • • • • •

I felt the bed beneath my back, but the room was spinning around it. Boyce removed my boots and sat next to me in the dark, brushing the hair from my face. “Stay,” I whined, reaching for him, clenching and unclenching my hands like a toddler begging to be held. “I’m not sleepy.”

He chuckled softly. “Pretty sure you’re gonna be asleep any second, sweetheart. You’re pretty well hammered.”

“You calling me a cheap drunk, Boyce Wynn?”

“No ma’am. I’d never call you a cheap anything.”

I puckered my lips and tried to look sexy, and he bit down on his lower lip, which he did when he wanted to laugh and was trying not to. I loved that full lower lip and wanted to lick it.

“That’s nice,” I said. “You’re nice. No, better than nice. You’re sweet.”

By the moonlight streaming through my big, open window, I could make out the shape of his generous mouth—the white of his teeth and slight upturn of his lips. The chuckle he’d tried to stifle escaped. “Sweet? Me? Now I know you’re trashed.” He leaned over me, hands on either side of my shoulders, imprisoning me between them.

“No, no, no, you are! You are. You’re so, so sweet. That’s why I love you.”

• • • • • • • • • •

My head throbbed like a rowdy neighbor resided on the opposite side of my headboard, bass thumping through the wall. Unlikely, as the room next door was an unused guest room. That pulsing beat was all internal. Ugh.

I was grateful someone had pulled the drapes closed because my retinas couldn’t tolerate the bright light of a summer day just yet. They would burst into flames. Turning toward the wall, I eased onto my side in slow motion, but half of me was slower to follow—limbs rubbery and brain loose inside my skull, sloshing side-to-side before settling into the new position.

I remembered now. Boyce had shut the drapes before he left. He’d taken care of me as promised—drove me home. Carried me upstairs. Put me to bed. He was so, so sweet.

My aching eyes flew open. Oh no. Oh no. Breathing slowly, I shut my eyes and concentrated hard enough to hurt, fighting to remember.

That’s why I love you.

Chapter Twenty-three

Boyce

Earlier in the week, I’d changed Wynn’s hours of operation on the door and the website. No more official Saturday hours, though there I was at nine a.m. the very next Saturday, replacing an engine. One of my regular customers had assumed his compact sedan could make it through some water on a low road that turned out to be two or three feet deeper than he’d assumed.

When he had it towed into the shop on Tuesday, I put it up on the lift so Sam could get a look at the damage a little bit of water could do when it got sucked through the air intake.