Steph grinned up at me like an evil villain. “You need to check on him for a little car work? Hm. That’s weird.”

“It’s super normal, actually,” I said tightly. I put my back to Lizzie and gave Steph a bulged eye warning glare.

She rolled her eyes, but seemed to agree to stop being a pain in my ass.

“Go,” Lizzie said. “It’s fine. Steph can keep me company.”

“There’s more?” Steph asked, voice laced with fear.

“Well, yeah. This was my main choice as far as dresses go, but I’ve got two backup dresses. I need to get your thoughts. We’ll send you pics, Pearl.”

“Great,” I said.

As soon as I was out of view from the windows of the dress shop, I broke into an unathletic run–something like a baby deer trying to rush across a frozen pond, I imagined. Dean was in trouble, and I had to save him. Somehow.

* * *

I found Dean on the sidewalk outside the Ashford Inn. He was standing beside my dad’s old Subaru with his hands on his hips. I saw him walk over to the open hood, point at something, and nod his head. He looked like he hadn’t changed from fishing and still had on some crazy kind of rubber jumpsuit with a dirty white shirt underneath. His hair was wet and tousled, but he somehow still looked amazing.

Walter was scrambling around his feet, narrowly avoiding death by Dean’s heavy feet several times, but wagging his tail like it was a great game. Walter spotted me before anyone else. He came up, snorted, whined, and rolled over for a belly rub with his little tail thumping on the pavement. I scratched him and gave him a final pat, then rushed over to Dean and my parents.

“Hey!” I called out. “How’s it going?” I asked.

“Great,” my dad said. “Dean was just going to take a look under the hood and see if he can figure out what the knocking sound is.”

“Oh, is that right?”

“Yup,” Dean said. He planted both palms on the hood and leaned over the engine.

I watched, thinking that if mechanic work failed him, he could certainly play one in an erotic movie. My eyes fixated on the tightness of his ass and the rigid lines of muscle in his arms. Having an ass look good in a pair of rubber overalls like that was damn near superhuman, but Dean managed it. Of course he did.

“Knock in the engine?” Dean asked. “That could be a few things, but we should start with the spark plugs. It’ll be easier to check than the rods or the combustion chamber.”

If he was bullshitting, I thought Dean was doing a surprisingly good job at it for someone who claimed to not know shit about cars. Then again, I didn’t know anything about cars, either. He could be talking about flux capacitors and Jibbly-woo’s and I’d think it sounded pretty solid.