Harlequin Heartwarming November 2016 Box Set by Tara Taylor Quinn

Author:Tara Taylor Quinn
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781488027277
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2016-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU SHOULD’VE SOLD the lady the grille.” Sam spoke with the gravitas of an eleven-year-old who knew everything as she washed her hands in the chipped kitchen sink in the apartment over their repair shop.

Joe couldn’t smile like a good dad should’ve at his daughter’s wisdom. His smile had gone the way of cement shoes off the end of a deepwater pier. “She wasn’t serious about paying.” If Brittany had been, she would’ve gotten out her cash then and there.

“We don’t work on wrecks,” Sam said. “We work on performance machines.”

Oh, for the luxury of ego.

Gone were the days of big-screen TVs in every room, recliners with heating massage and vehicles with air-conditioned leather seats. Joe took in the neglected bachelor pad. The brown couch with wooden arms must be from the 1950s. The small Formica table in the cramped dining area didn’t seem any newer. And he’d bet no amount of scrubbing would remove the scuff marks in the gray linoleum.

Joe had traded in the good life. In return, he hadn’t been arrested and had kept custody of Sam. He’d get used to the lack of finer things. He might never get used to being forced to choose between the uncle who’d saved him half a lifetime ago and Sam.

Sam, who needed to understand this was their new reality. Uncle Turo and his larger-than-life lifestyle was no longer an option.

“Those cars in the field?” Joe pointed out the window. “Those are the kinds of cars I used to work on when I lived here as a kid.” The kinds of cars that were going to provide for him and Sam for the next five to ten years. Less for good behavior.

“Ew.” She’d said that the first time they’d entered the apartment this morning. And again when she’d seen the hard-water stains in the toilet. And once more when she’d spotted a garden snake slither into a hole in the wall of the garage office.

That had made Joe want to say ew, too.

Once they were rid of the trespassers, they’d finished unloading the truck and trailer that had their beds and few belongings—the possessions the FBI let them keep. Only then had he spared a glance to the house he’d grown up in. The one he refused to live in.

Besides bad memories, there’d be too much square footage to heat or cool for it to make sense for him and Sam to move in there. He’d barely looked at the barn in back where the family had once kept their personal vehicles. It was practically drowning in blackberry bushes and would probably have more spiders and snakes than either he or Sam was comfortable with.

Instead, he’d chosen the apartment his grandfather, and later his Uncle Turo, had lived in. He focused on being thankful that he hadn’t done anything illegal, and concentrated on rebuilding his life and his daughter’s.

“We’ll inventory the cars in the field later and find out which ones we own.” He wouldn’t sell a car he didn’t have the legal title to.

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