“Long time, no see.” She smiled, showing off caps. “Can I make you a drink?”
“Where’s Moose.”
“Out back. Where else would he be. It’s not like all of his friends are coming over and he’s expecting me to do all of the work by myself. Hey, why don’t you help me in here? I’ve got lasagna made with gluten-free noodles, and gluten-free bread, and I was just cutting up organic vegetables. You could toss my salad.”
Her hair was lighter by a couple of shades, and he wondered, if this trend kept up, whether she’d have a triple-H chest and Daenerys Targaryen’s coloring by Easter. And he knew exactly what she was playing at.
Danny shook his head. “I’m not good in the kitchen. Sorry.”
Deandra’s heavily lashed lids lowered, her smoky eye going down right stinky. “Anne’s not coming, you know. I spoke with her this afternoon.”
Ah, yes, all the charm I remember so fondly, he thought.
“She’s really busy.” He turned for the back door. “Let us know when the food’s on.”
If it had been anybody else, he would have stayed and helped because it was rude to have only one person cooking for five or six. But considering it was Deandra? He was going to follow Moose’s example.
Opening the slider, he stepped out into the unseasonably warm night. The back porch was half finished, the planks stopping halfway across the frame—and the project was going nowhere until after the winter, Danny was willing to bet.
Ah, yes, the sprawl was starting. The back acreage was all cleared meadow circled by a ring of forest, and Moose was starting to fill it with crap. The two-car garage had been turned into a car workshop and there was a commercial dumpster, a transport box trailer, two rusted-out cars, and half a dozen drums full of God only knew what metastasizing outward.
No doubt the guy was going to gradually fill the field to the property’s tree line with that kind of stuff.
Danny got to walking, closing in on the glow as Bruce Springsteen’s The River got louder.
“Dannyboy!” Moose’s voice boomed from the garage. “My man!”
The guy ducked out from under a raised, rusted out Shelby Mustang that was about as structurally complete as his porch and far, far older than he was. With a Bud in one hand and a wrench in the other, grease was his middle name: the stuff was on his UMass T-shirt and his old Levi’s and his work boots were black from gunk.
Danny clapped palms with him, nodded at Duff and Duff’s cousin T.J., and gave Deshaun a bear hug. And he was surprised, in a good way, to see Jack, his supposed roommate.
“Where you been, asshole?” Danny gave Jack at hard embrace. “I keep thinking I hear you coming in at night, but nope.”
“At least I’m still paying rent.”
“Good point.”
“Beer?” When Danny nodded, Jack went over to the red-and-white cooler. “Coors Light?”
“You remembered. I’m touched.” As the longneck came flying at him, he caught it and cracked the thing open. “How’s your sister?”
Everyone got quiet, and Danny wanted to curse. Some things were best not asked about. On that note, he was hoping no one else brought up Anne.
“She’s the same. You know . . . the same.”
“I’m sorry.” He took a swig and looked at the car carcass. It had been blue once, and the engine as well as all four tires had been removed and were off in the corner. “So, Moose, what’s this mess?”
“Mess? Can you not see the potential?” The guy banged on the steel frame. “Come on, she’s a ’66 Shelby GT350, bitch—one of the first two hundred fifty-two that were ’65 Mustang K-Code Fastbacks before Shelby-American converted them.”
“Jesus Christ, Moose, how’d you get a hold of her?”
“I bought her out of Ohio and just shipped her in. She’s gonna be gorgeous.”
“After a lotta plastic surgery.”
“All women want that,” Moose muttered.
No, not all, Danny thought as he pictured Anne on that climbing wall. Some recognized they were perfect just the way God made ’em.
“So lemme help,” Danny said. “I like getting my hands dirty.”
* * *
As Anne parked her Subaru at the end of the lineup in Moose and Deandra’s front yard, there was only one truck that she saw. Getting out, she took a minute to pull up her jeans and make like she was checking out the land. Good bit of cleared acreage with a loose fringe of trees and underbrush, Mother Nature’s version of a chain-link fence.
Wow, nice cars, she thought as she came up the front walkway.
Moose’s eyesore of a Charger was next to a brand-new BMW. Wedding present? she wondered. Then what was the house—the honeymoon?
Knocking on the screen door, she waited. When there was no answer, she backed up and went around to the rear. It was a good guess. In the gloaming, the lights glowing in the open garage were intensifying and illuminating a classic male-bonding scene: dudes with beers around a car on a lift.
Of course Bruce was playing, what else would be? she thought.
And then it was a case of double takes on the part of the menfolk. Jack and Moose saw her first. Deshaun, second. Duff and T.J., his cousin, third. Danny had his head shoved into some part of the undercarriage, and it wasn’t until he stuck his hand out and no tool smacked into his palm that he bent over and looked around.
His face showed no reaction. His eyes went up and down her body.
“Hi,” she said to everybody. “Sorry to crash, but I decided to change my mind.”
“This is great!” Moose said. “Come here, lemme hug ya.”
She got wrapped in a bear hug, and then she was greeting the others, starting with Danny’s old roommate Jack. The SWAT team leader was as military-looking as ever, his dark hair buzzed so tight on the sides you could see his scalp, the top like a trimmed hedge. He was wearing an NBPD T-shirt that stretched over his heavy, tattooed arms and camos on the bottom. Even his treaded shoes looked like the kind you could climb Mount Kilimanjaro with.
“Jack, I haven’t seen you in forever.” As she hugged him, it was like trying to throw her arms around a house. “How you doing?”
“Same ol’, same ol’.” The guy forced a smile. “Everything’s great.”
So his sister had fallen off the wagon again. Poor man. He was more determined than that woman was to keep her alive and on track—and that was the root of his problem.
“Duff,” she said. “T.J., God, I haven’t seen you in forever, either.”
And then there was Danny.
He was back under the car again, his torso and legs coming out from the bottom like he’d mutated into the Transformers’ old grandpa.
“Hey, Danny,” she said. Back in the old days, whenever she’d been around the crew with him, she’d called him Dannyboy. But you could only do that if you were a member of the club and that was not her anymore.
“Can you hand me the five-eighths wrench?” he said.
“Yeah, sure.”
She went over to the beat-up built-in table, and of course, Moose’s tools were as organized as he was, everything in piles that made no sense. She weeded through, found the right one, and went back over to the Shelby Mustang fastback.
“Here.”
Danny’s dirty hand emerged, and man, she liked the looks of a calloused male palm. There was something erotic about the strength, the utility, the competence for practical things. The speculation about how it would feel across her naked skin.
She gave him the tool, but before she could get out of range, he looked out at her. “I need another hand in here.”
His eyes were not flirtatious. They were factual, and she ignored the flush of pride that came with being asked to help.
“Yeah, sure.”
Under the car, she was able to stand up all the way, and she inspected the automotive anatomy. They were stripping everything so that the rusted undercarriage and crappy floor pan could be cleaned with a wire wheel and drill, then resealed to form a stable, healthy foundation for the restored car. Danny was having trouble removing one of the corroded brackets.