Hott Shot by Serena Bell

Author:Serena Bell [Bell, Serena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781953498274
Publisher: Jelsba Media Group

22

Quinn

“Quinn?”

Sonya was supposed to leave a few minutes ago for her Portland training thing, but she’s standing in the doorway with a pained expression.

“Car won’t start,” she says, biting her lip. “I think it’s the starter. It’s not the battery because I’m getting lights and chimes.”

“Want me to take a look?”

“Do you know cars?”

“I worked a couple of summers at Rush Creek Auto. I was supposed to be in the office, but I got dragged into helping out from time to time in the garage, and it turned out I had a knack.”

I follow her outside and slide behind the wheel. As soon as I turn the key—yes, the car’s that old—and hear the clicking, I can tell that her diagnosis is likely right. “Could be the starter,” I confirm. “Or the alternator.”

She closes her eyes. “How much is that going to cost?”

“Could be as little as a couple hundred.”

She scrunches her face even more. “Or?”

“Not more than a thousand, for sure,” I say quietly. “Probably low hundreds. Seriously.”

She buries her face in her hands.

“Hey,” I say, reaching out the window to touch her arm. She looks like she’s on the brink of tears, and my heart clenches. “Would a loan help?”

“Absolutely not.” She gives me a fierce look. But her chin is down, her shoulders slumped, the way she was that day in the office when she discovered she couldn’t get the custom-branded product. Defeated. I hate seeing her that way.

“I could talk to Hanna—”

“No!” she cries. “Don’t you dare.”

She turns to me, and there’s panic on her face. Not because of the car, I don’t think. She’s genuinely freaking out that I might talk to Hanna about her salary.

“What is it?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“Sonya. What. Is. It?”

She closes her eyes. Then she opens them and squares her shoulders. “I haven’t been taking my whole salary.”

“You’ve—what?”

“I gave up a chunk of my salary as part of the plan to hire Bella back.”

“I don’t understand. Why would you—”

She crosses her arms, and her face sets into a stubborn expression I’m getting to know well. “Because—she’s the last one.”

“The last—the last what?”

She swallows. “The last employee of my mom’s old salon.”

“Right.” She mentioned that the night I cooked for her—the night we kissed. There’s something here I can’t see. Something that doesn’t make sense. “Why is it so important to you?”

She turns away.

“Sonya.”

“After my mom died, the salon was all I had.”

“Your dad?”

“My dad was a mess. I stopped going home after school because all he did was sit in front of the TV. It was like he’d disappeared into his grief. So I started going to the salon after school. People there talked about my mom, how great she was. They reminisced about her. They gave me tasks to do, introduced me to the people who came in. They taught me how to cut hair, paint nails, run the salon. They were my friends and my family. Reggie, Serenity, Lily. But especially Bella. She was like a mom to me.

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