When the Stars Come Out--A Cottonbloom Novel Read online

  Willa’s hand tightened on the Styrofoam cup. It was like watching one of Jackson’s fleeting grins, although Ms. Hazel lacked dimples. “They had a meeting Friday. Ford is threatening to sell his stake.”

  “To whom?”

  Willa worried she tread too close to gossip and thumbed over her shoulder. “I should get back. I already signed in.”

  “I trump Mack’s time sheet.” Hazel reminded Willa of her whip-smart, intimidating seventh-grade English teacher. “To whom?”

  Willa stood up a little straighter. “Ford hasn’t said, but the boys are worried.”

  “Does Mack have a plan?”

  “You’ll have to ask him, ma’am.” She expected Hazel to march inside to turn her powers onto Mack, but instead she tucked her purse under her arm and continued to study Willa.

  As a teenager her sole mission in life had been to upend everyone’s expectations in the most attention-getting ways possible. That had changed. Now, her modus operandi was to imitate wallpaper. There doing its job, but no one really noticing. She never spoke up or caused a ruckus. To do so brought too much attention to her.

  “You’ve been here a while, haven’t you, Willa?”

  She nodded slowly. “Couple of years now.”

  “What do you think about Ford?”

  She tried to bite her tongue. Since she was leaving soon, she might as well start dropping some truth bombs on the way out. “I wouldn’t trust him to work on my car.” Considering the state of her car, the insult was a low blow.

  Hazel’s eyebrows bounced above the wire frame of her glasses.

  “If you’ll excuse me, ma’am, I really do need to be getting to work.” Willa opened the door for Hazel and followed her inside.

  Seeing his aunt, Mack called Willa over to take his place at Wyatt’s side. Classic rock wove through the clang and occasional murmur as the four of them settled into their typical routines.

  Except a new sort of tension hung over the garage. An expectation of change.

  Wyatt was bent over, one hand somewhere around the air intake, the other reaching toward her making a grabby motion. “Socket wrench.”

  She placed it in his palm like a surgeon’s scalpel.

  “Heard Jackson gave you a raise.” Wyatt twisted around to send a grin in her direction. “’Bout time, I say. How much?”

  Although he and Jackson weren’t identical twins—Wyatt’s black hair and gray eyes marked him as an anomaly among his brown-haired, hazel-eyed brothers—no one could mistake them for anything but kin. It was something about the way they held themselves, straight and strong and confident.

  Their personalities, though, seemed almost the inverse of each other. Wyatt was the boyish, charming version of Jackson. Lighthearted. Easy to laugh, easy to anger. No broody silences. Yet he’d never fascinated her like Jackson.

  “Twenty percent.”

  Wyatt made a scoffing sound and turned back to his work. “You should have asked for more. Jackson is desperate to keep you by his side.”

  His words jolted her even as her brain spun logic. Wyatt surely meant desperate to keep her at work in the garage, not literally by his side. Friday night had been the longest noncar-related conversation she and Jackson had ever had. And it had still mostly been about the garage. But he had called her cute. Without being able to stop herself, she glanced in his direction.

  As if sensing her, his head tilted, his gaze snaring hers. She swallowed and kept staring. Weird. She’d spent the last two years studying him. Staring at him unawares. He’d never noticed her. Instead of old fruit-bowl-covered wallpaper, she felt like a centerpiece on display.

  Breaking the odd connection, she forced herself to concentrate on the air hoses snaking through the engine compartment, checking their connections and marking the minutes by the music. Two songs played. She risked another glance in his direction. This time when their eyes met, she immediately whipped her gaze back on her work. What was going on? It was like she’d lost her invisibility cape.

  The day passed in fits and starts and crossed glances with Jackson that lasted too long for comfort. Somehow work managed to get done. By the time the afternoon rolled by, Mack and Jackson had buttoned up Mr. Thatcher’s car and moved it from the bay to the parking lot, and she and Wyatt had finished connecting and testing the hoses. The Cutlass was almost finished.

  Jackson joined her to look down at the finished engine. “Everything looks good.”

  He certainly did. His gray T-shirt and black work pants did amazing things for his butt. But her gaze got stuck on his strong forearms. Hair a few shades darker than the rich brown on his head dotted his naturally tanned skin.

  “Yep. Real good.” The words came out suggestively. Okay, yes, maybe in her head she’d been referring to his ridiculously attractive, muscled forearms. She’d admired them countless times before but had managed to keep her opinion to herself.

  Her heart beat too fast and heat crept up her neck. Having been paid, she’d eaten well over the weekend and no weakness overcame her, but it was a good excuse to take a break in the AC, away from Jackson’s sharp eyes.

  “You want a Coke or anything?” She wiped her hands on a shop towel.

  “Nah, I’m good.” His stare was almost a physical touch.

  She stopped inside the door of the break room to enjoy the slide of cool air along her neck and the sense of privacy. A counter along the back wall held a coffee maker and a bowl of snacks for waiting customers. She grabbed a Coke from the refrigerator tucked into the corner and grabbed a seat at the oval table in the middle of the room. Extra chairs lined the far wall, but they rarely had more than one or two customers waiting at a time.

  Her weekend of interrupted sleep was catching up with her. Old nightmares had been interspersed with dreams of Jackson. As expected, some had been intensely erotic, but most of them had been of the leaving variety. She’d woken with tears wetting her pillow.

  She leaned her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes. Air moved around her. She popped her eyes open to find a little girl staring at her from the seat catty-corner. The shock startled a yelp out of her.

  The girl grinned, her two front teeth comically big for her delicate features. Her Afro was parted in the center and braided into two pigtails, ribbons trailing prettily. “Sorry ’bout that. Tried not to bother you, but Daddy told me to wait in here so I wouldn’t mess up my dress.”

  “I shouldn’t have closed my eyes. Thanks for the wake-up. You look very pretty.”

  The little girl made a face. “It was picture day at school. I do not normally dress like this.”

  “How do you normally dress?”

  “Like a boy.” The way she said it, so defiantly, piqued Willa’s curiosity. The girl waved a finger from Willa’s hat to her coveralls. “I like what you have on.”

  “Thanks, I guess.” Willa muffled a laugh, not wanting to hurt the little girl’s feelings. “Why do you dress like a boy?”

  “’Cause I want to be president. Nash, the boy from my closet, said I could be anything I wanted.” The girl folded her arms on the table.

  Who was she to disagree with a little girl’s imaginary friend? Maybe if Willa had had more imaginary friends telling her she could do great things instead of real friends getting her in trouble, things would have turned out differently. No, that wasn’t fair. She only had herself to blame. She was the one who’d dated a drug-dealing jerk.

  “You’ll have my vote. What’s your name?”

  “Margaret, but everyone calls me Birdie. What’s yours?” The girl offered a hand.

  “Willa.” Their shake was very adultlike.

  “I’ll have to use my real name when I decide to run, but Daddy says he’ll call me Birdie even in the Oval Office.” The slight exasperation in her voice was tempered by lots of affection.

  “No matter how big you get, you’ll always be his little girl.” The past zoomed too close, and Willa’s eyes turned watery. Her own father had said something like it
to her every night before bed when she was young.

  She couldn’t remember exactly when he’d stopped tucking her in or kissing the top of her head or singing her to sleep. Maybe when he’d remarried. Or maybe their relationship had already fractured, allowing her stepmother to crowbar them even further apart. She fingered the fraying emblem of her ball cap.

  The door to the break room opened and Mr. Thatcher stuck his head inside. “Let’s go, Birdie.”

  The little girl hopped up. “Nice meeting you.”

  “You too.”

  Birdie was gone with a smile and a flash of her red skirt.

  Would Willa ever see her father again? Would he remember that she was still his little girl?

  * * *

  “What is wrong with you, bro?” Mack’s question pulled Jackson’s attention away from the break-room door and back to the job. They were in the pit disassembling the exhaust of a car that had been towed to the shop that morning. “Is it Ford?”

  The impending threat of Ford selling out wasn’t Jackson’s top worry. He glanced toward the break-room door in time to see his top worry slip out, adjust her ball cap, and join Wyatt at the Cutlass.

  She wore the same ball cap every day. It dwarfed her delicate features. A man’s cap. Now that he’d become attuned to her every move, he noticed the way she stroked the fraying threads of the emblem on the front. Absently. Habitually. The hat was her talisman.

  But who had it belonged to? The ex she was hiding from or did some other man hold her affections?

  “What’s going on between you and Willa?” Humor and concern were in Mack’s voice.

  “Nothing’s going on. Why do you think something’s going on?” Jackson cursed the way the words shot out. Too telling for his brother to ignore after Jackson’s morning confession of giving Willa a whopping twenty percent raise.

  Mack straightened and dropped the tools in his hand into the proper drawers of the red metal toolbox one at a time, never taking his gaze off Jackson. The clang of each echoed in the pit.

  “I only meant she seems even more skittish than usual this morning, and you can’t seem to stop looking at her. Thought you got her settled back down by offering her a raise.” Mack curled his hands around the frame of the car and tilted his head. “But now you’ve got me curious.”

  “Nothing like what your dirty mind can conjure up is going on.” Jackson glanced toward the Cutlass to find Willa’s gaze skimming them—him? She spun away and disappeared around the side. Was she hiding from him? “She put the address of the Driveway Motel on her application two years ago. Is that where she’s been staying all this time?”

  “Naw, she moved. Renting a trailer over in Country Aire last she told me.”

  She’d told Mack more than she’d ever told him. His hand tightened on the grip of the wrench. Dammit. That thought didn’t settle well.

  Mack continued. “She made mention of her trailer being damaged during the tornado a while back. Had to replace a bunch of furniture apparently. And all her clothes.”

  “Why didn’t she tell me that? Ask for help?”

  Mack’s eyebrows rose. “Willa Brown is the most independent woman—person—I’ve ever met. She would never dream of asking for help. She’s a lot like you in that respect. Likes to keep to herself. I’ve always expected to come in one day to find her disappeared. Poof. No trace of her left.”

  Mack had put Jackson’s fear into words. His stomach danced a jig. “I don’t want her to go poof.”

  The sound of the air wrench as Jackson went to work put a pause on the conversation. Mack picked up where he’d left off as the noise faded. “Raise should keep her put. It was long overdue. Should have done it myself. I think she could use the money.”

  “Me too.” More loud work ruled the next few minutes. “I asked for her Social by January so we could put her on the books.”

  Mack wiped his hands on a blue shop towel. “What’d she say?”

  “Said okay, but she’ll leave before she tells me. Us.” Jackson lowered his voice even though through the music and ambient noise, no one could overhear them. “I searched for her online. Nothing.”

  “That’s a good thing, right?”

  “I mean, nothing as in, our Willa Brown doesn’t seem to exist.”

  “I’m going to start calling you Sherlock.” Mack looked in Willa’s direction and chuffed a laugh. “Sherlock and Encyclopedia Brown.”

  Willa had earned the nickname because she knew a little something about everything. All the reading she did in her off time, Jackson supposed.

  Mack continued. “Pop never ran a background check as far as I know. His live-and-let-live attitude. I can’t imagine she has an outstanding warrant out for her arrest.”

  She was back under the hood and on her tiptoes, reaching for something deep under the hood. Jackson wished she was in those worn-thin jeans instead of the thick coveralls. “Me either. She could have robbed us blind and run long ago.”

  “But you think she’s hiding something,” Mack said.

  “Or hiding from someone.” Jackson’s tone darkened. “Told her we’d protect her if an ex came looking for her.”

  “Damn straight we will.”

  “Last thing I want is for her to disappear.” When Mack’s eyes narrowed on him, he added, “We’d never find anyone as good to replace her. And now that we’re getting serious about restorations, we need her.”

  Mack focused again on his work, but his humming acknowledgment contained a fair amount of sarcasm. “Sounds like you’ve tried asking her outright. Maybe the best thing is to stick close to her. Earn her trust.”

  Jackson thought he’d done enough to earn her trust, but considering her evasions, he hadn’t come close.

  “Or you could sweet-talk Gloria down at the station to run her plates,” Mack added.

  Jackson turned his back to Willa as if she might sense the deception taking place behind her back. “Isn’t that kind of underhanded?”

  “Yep. Total dick move, but you’d be doing it for her own good, right? She can’t hide from her past forever.”

  Was Mack right? He and Willa hadn’t developed a real friendship. They were coworkers. And not even coworkers who chatted. Yet sneaking around and investigating her past without her blessing seemed like a betrayal. One she might not forgive him for. The thought was untenable.

  The day ended with the Cutlass ready to be fired up. He’d drawn the stick to take her out for her first test run. No matter how many cars he’d taken apart and put back together, this was the most nerve-racking and exciting part of any restoration.

  Jackson did one final check of hoses and connections before sliding into the driver’s seat. The car had arrived with an immaculate interior. Well endowed with Cottonbloom, Mississippi, old money, Ms. Carson, current owner of the Quilting Bee, had kept the car under a cover in her garage since her husband had passed a decade earlier.

  The internals, however, had been a maze of rotting hoses and leaks. The parts now were a mixture of new, classic, and custom-made. Jackson loved the search to restore things as close to the original as possible.

  The Cutlass was a beauty. He didn’t want to fail her. It took two tries for his trembling fingers to notch the key in the ignition. Blowing out a breath to manage his nervous energy, he cranked the ignition and pumped the gas pedal. The engine turned over several times before catching with a roar.

  Jackson couldn’t hear anything over the rumble, but Mack and Wyatt high-fived while Willa smiled and gave him a double thumbs-up. The car sounded like a perfectly composed piece of music. He shut the driver’s door and put it in gear, inching forward.

  Wyatt opened the bay door, and Jackson coasted out into the setting sun, letting the car idle in the lot. He rolled down his window. “Might as well take her on a test-drive. Everything look good from out there?”

  Mack walked around the entire car. “Looks perfect. No visible leaks. Keep an eye on the temperature gauge.”

  Jackson sent a “
no shit, Mr. Obvious” look in Mack’s direction and inched forward a few more feet, spotting Willa backing away. He hollered out the window. “Why don’t you ride along? You’ve put more hours in on her than anyone.”

  She glanced over her shoulder as if he could possibly be speaking to someone else. Jackson tensed, his hands tightening on the wheel, and waited. Finally, she skip-walked around the front of the car and slipped into the passenger side, her back not touching the seat.

  Jackson tooted the horn as he pulled onto the parish road. He tried to focus his attention on the gauges and the way the engine sounded and not on the way Willa’s fingers kept threading and unthreading on her lap.

  “You didn’t have a hot date or anything? Nowhere to be?” he asked.

  “A date? What’s that?”

  Her sardonic tone made him smile.

  “Come on now. You can’t tell me the boys down at the Tavern aren’t all over you.”

  “I don’t hang out at the Tavern. And I’m not looking to date.”

  Her answer reaffirmed his questions. Just how bad had her ex burned her? “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  He almost brake-checked, which without seat belts might have sent them both into the windshield. Readjusting his hands on the steering wheel, he shot a sideways glance toward her. Physically, she struck him as younger than twenty-five, but something in her eyes pushed her toward ancient. It was a difference that was hard to resolve.

  She grabbed his arm and an electric current buzzed through him. Her brown eyes were huge and flecked with gold toward the irises. How had he never noticed that? “We’re overheating.”

  He shook himself. The car. She was talking about the car. Sure enough, the gauge he was supposed to be watching had inched up. He rolled to a stop on the shoulder and turned the car off. After the growl of the engine, the silence was strange and awkward.

  She tucked one leg up underneath the other, turned toward him, and said, “What now?”

  Excellent question. In terms of the car, the answer was easy. A tow back to the shop and troubleshooting. In terms of her? Jackson wasn’t sure how to answer. All he knew was something had fundamentally shifted between them, and he would do whatever it took to earn her trust. And maybe more.