Which was mostly true. But he was still surprised that he hadn’t heard mention of her new sports car. After all, he was a guy who liked cars, and they did live in the same small town where any kind of gossip was fair game. Then again, they didn’t exactly travel in the same circles. Never really had.

Sidney had always been out of his league. It had just apparently taken her longer to realize it than he had. But once it finally got through to her, she’d hauled ass out of their relationship and never looked back. Yeah, avoiding him for the past year had spoken volumes.

Brett couldn’t really blame her though. He didn’t have the best reputation, and the last thing he wanted to do was soil hers any more than he probably already had. That was why he hadn’t bothered asking her out the first time he’d met her.

She’d walked into the shop wearing a pink blouse and a knee-length tan skirt that matched her high heels. Unfortunately, he’d been busy with one of his regular customers, and another mechanic had walked over to help her. Or so he had thought.

The moment he overheard the other mechanic recommending unneeded services to her and quoting marked-up prices, all because she was a female customer who probably didn’t know the difference, Brett stepped forward and offered to take over. Lord knows he’d seen plenty of mechanics pull that dick move on unsuspecting women, and surprisingly even on a few men, and it wasn’t at all something Brett condoned. In fact, once he finally managed to open his garage, if he found any of his own mechanics pulling that kind of a bullshit scam, he was going to fire the asshole on the spot.

He was just glad that he had been there that day to save Sidney from the jerk who tried to screw her over. And she had seemed pretty grateful about it too. The moment Brett had come over and declared that he was taking over, she seemed a little surprised and not entirely sure of what was going on. But within minutes, she must’ve figured it out because she’d smiled and mouthed a thank-you to him under her breath.

She’d come in for a tune-up, and that was the only thing she was charged for…and not a penny more. Brett had made sure of it. But after that, things had started to get a little weird.