Into the Fire - Anne Stuart [24]
She opened the door to the cavernous garage and was immediately assaulted by noise, a vast rumbling that had been almost completely muffled. She closed the door behind her and began to sort through the cacophony. The rush of white noise was actually some kind of space heater, spewing hot air into the vast expanse of the room. The music was loud, too, Nirvana, Jamie suspected, though she’d never been that fond of the group. But Dillon had always favored the raw-pain sound of Kurt Cobain.
Beneath it all was the rumble and roar of a car engine, punctuated with the steady sound of a hammer on metal. And then a stream of curses as Dillon emerged from beneath the hood of the Duesenberg.
She’d half hoped to watch him for a bit without him realizing she was there, but he honed right in on her, his eyes narrowing. It was too loud to do anything other than shout, and Dillon wasn’t about to bother raising his voice. He simply disappeared back beneath the hood of the old car, leaving Jamie with two choices. She could go back into the kitchen and wait. Or she could go over there and make him talk to her.
The kitchen option sounded immensely appealing, but Jamie was made of sterner stuff than that. She wasn’t about to turn off the heat—her sojourn in the alleyway still hadn’t worn off completely—but she could put a stop to the cacophony blaring from the huge stereo system.
She walked over to it and punched the power button, and the noise level decreased substantially.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Dillon demanded, emerging from the Duesenberg engine once more.
“Turning off the noise. I want to talk with you.”
He dropped the hammer on the cement floor and headed toward the stereo. And her. “I’m working,” he growled. “And when I work, I listen to music.”
“If you call that music,” she scoffed.
“You can’t fix cars to Mozart, princess, no matter what your mother might think. Not that the Duchess would think about anything as mundane as fixing cars, but you know what I mean. I promised to get this Dusey ready sometime before Thanksgiving, and obviously I’m running behind schedule. So if you’d take your cute little butt out of here and let me listen to my music then I won’t have to shoot you.”
“Do you even have a gun?”
“I’m a convicted felon. Not allowed to own firearms.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“And I’m not going to.” He had moved up close to her, because she was fool enough to be blocking the stereo. He reached past her, pushed the power button, and suddenly the music was blaring in her ears.
She punched the power button off again, glaring at him. Until she saw the thoughtful expression on his face, and realized she might have misplayed her hand.
“Are you going to get into a wrestling match over Nirvana, Jamie?” he drawled, turning it on again. “I’m game if you are, but I can think of only one way it would end, and the floor of this garage is a rotten place to have sex.”
She didn’t blush, didn’t flinch, though it took a great deal of effort. “In your dreams,” she said.
“Yes.”
The one-syllable word was even more unsettling, and she wisely decided it was time to change the subject. “Look, you’ve got at least half a dozen cars over there. Surely one of them is in good-enough working order that I could drive it back to Rhode Island. I’d have it shipped back to you, I promise. I just really need to get the hell out of here.”
“Most of those cars belong to other people. That’s what I do for a living—restore cars for rich people who don’t have the soul or the knowledge to appreciate them.”
“You can’t convince me you haven’t kept some for yourself.”
He smiled then, a predatory grin that gave her pause. “As a matter of fact, three of those cars are mine, and two of them run. You want to check them out?”
She didn’t trust him, didn’t trust that faintly