He’ll rev her up and drive her to the edge…
Rusty West swore she was done with men. Instead, she channeled her passion into West Restoration, the car shop she runs with her best friend and sister. But Rusty’s aloof composure fades when the owner of the competition comes striding into her shop, over six feet of sexy, rough-edged confidence…hot enough to send Rusty’s motor into overdrive.
Reid Parker worked his ass off to get what he wants—and what he wants is West Restoration and its crew. He never expected to find a shop of all-female mechanics…or the stunning redhead who ignites a lust that threatens his cool. But Reid plays carefully. He never, ever gets involved with a woman beyond one night.
And no matter how hot the sparks, Rusty will never compromise her business for a man…
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Discover the Axle Alley Vipers series…
Crashed
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Heart and Sole
The Greek Tycoon’s Tarnished Bride
Rules of Negotiation
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Sherilee Gray. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
2614 South Timberline Road
Suite 109
Fort Collins, CO 80525
Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
Indulgence is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
Edited by Karen Grove
Cover design by Liz Pelletier
Cover art from iStock
ISBN 978-1-63375-343-3
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition October 2015
For Vaughan, long suffering husband, car expert, and all-around great guy. Thanks for patiently answering all my questions. Love you!
Chapter One
“What the fuck?” Slamming out of his office, Reid Parker strode onto R.I.P. Classic’s parking lot in time to watch the Ford Mustang—the same damn one he’d put in a quote to do bodywork on two weeks ago—peel out onto the road, sun glinting off its newly chromed rear bumper. A bumper they sure as hell hadn’t worked on.
Law, his friend and manager, turned to him, rubbing the back of his neck. “Did you see that shit? Said he decided to take the car somewhere else.”
“Where?” Someone had stolen another job out from under them, and Reid intended to find out who the hell was doing the stealing.
“Not a clue. Just said he was taking his business elsewhere from now on.” Law crossed his arms over his black leather cut. “That Mustang was gonna bring in some serious bank, but losing the other jobs he was bringing our way?” He shook his head. “That’s not just about losing money. It’s about hurting our rep.”
This was true. R.I.P. had a stellar reputation. They weren’t the biggest car restoration business in Miami by chance. They knew their shit, did excellent work. Losing business to someone else was not cool, especially when that customer had been coming to them for fucking years. Worse? This was not the first. Someone had been steadily taking work from them for the last couple of months. “How did it look?”
“Mint. The body work was slick, and whoever rebuilt the engine was a goddamn magician. That bitch purred, brother.”
“Leave it with me.” Reid strode to his office. No way would he sit by and risk damage to his good name. He didn’t appreciate someone encroaching on his turf, stealing his customers. It didn’t matter how much money, how many shops he had. It made no damn difference, not to him. Every job lost was a hit.
Through sheer pigheaded determination, he’d turned his love of cars—and when he was a kid, his escape from the reality of his shitty life—into ten thriving shops across the country.
The reason he had what he did, was that he did not let shit slide. Ever. Dragging yourself out of the gutter, having to fight tooth and nail for every damn thing you wanted tended to have that effect on a person.
There were only a handful of quality electroplaters in Miami. One of them had re-chromed the Mustang, and he intended to find out who’d booked the job.
Thirty minutes and several phone calls later, he was in his car and headed to the other side of the city. Axle Alley, for shit’s sake. The road had held that name for as long as he could remember—lined with businesses that catered to anything with an engine. But these were not high-end businesses. This was where your average Joe came with his average paycheck to get average work done.
At least that’s what he’d always thought.
He’d never heard of West Restoration. But from what he’d managed to find out, the small garage had been doing the occasional restoration job for years, though its main focus had always been your usual, run-of-the-mill mechanical work. Now with a new name, and new ownership, it seemed that focus had changed.
He’d expected it to be one of the short-lived garages that popped up in South Beach from time to time, only to close within the first two years. Building a steady and—as he’d found out recently—loyal customer base wasn’t easy.
How they were drawing people over to this side of the city, the fucking asshole of Miami as far as he was concerned, was a goddamned mystery.
West Restoration wasn’t hard to find. Bizarrely, it was right next to a cottage that looked like the Big Bad Wolf might pay it a visit, the only residential property on this stretch of road as far as he could see. The garage had a newly painted sign that stood out against its faded neighbors like a freakin’ beacon, all shiny and new and—purple.
He shook his head in disgust and drove past the parking area in front of the main workshop, and down the side of the building, making sure to park his black ’61 Plymouth Suburban—a hearse in its previous life—out of eye-shot of the roller doors. R.I.P. Classics was emblazoned on the side, and he didn’t want them tagging him right off the bat. This mission was all about stealth, at least until he’d had a chance to check the place out.