High Heels & Motor Oil

Her platinum-white hair fell down her back in a glossy wave, too elegant for the dust gathering around her shoes. She had dressed for the occasion in a cream silk blouse, fitted black trousers, and a pair of sunglasses large enough to hide a confession.

The station seemed to recognize her anyway.

Victoria crossed the forecourt. Her heel caught in a crack, and she steadied herself against the rusted pump nearest the office. The metal groaned under her hand.

“Don’t you dare,” she told it.

A gust of wind pushed grit against her ankles.

The office door stood half open. Its glass was broken, its frame swollen with rain. Behind it, darkness filled the room.

Victoria removed one heel, then the other.

She tucked them beneath one arm and stepped into the weeds barefoot. The ground was warm and rough beneath her soles. She had spent a lifetime walking through hotel lobbies, private terminals, and marble houses where people lowered their voices when she entered. None of those places had ever frightened her as much as this patch of Texas earth.

A loose length of chain blocked the path to the service bay. She lifted it over her head and ducked beneath.

The bay doors were jammed halfway open. Victoria gripped the bottom edge and pulled. The metal shrieked. Dust poured down in a gray curtain.

She coughed once, then laughed.

“Fifty years, and you’re still dramatic.”

“Talking to the building?”

The man’s voice came from behind her.

Victoria turned too quickly. One bare foot slid on grit, and she caught herself against the door.

A man stood beside the black pickup parked near the road. He was tall, broad through the shoulders, and dressed in a faded work shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. His dark hair had silver at the temples. He held a ring of keys in one hand and watched her with the patient irritation of someone who had seen a woman make a poor decision and was waiting for gravity to prove him right.

Victoria lifted her sunglasses onto her head.

“Talking to whatever has the good sense to listen.”

His gaze moved from her bare feet to the silk blouse, then to the open service bay.

“You bought the station.”

“I did.”

“You’re going to restore it?”

“That depends. Are you going to stand there asking obvious questions all morning?”

His mouth shifted, not quite a smile. “Depends. Are you going to keep trying to pull that door down on yourself?”

“I had it under control.”

“You were losing a fight with a garage door.”

“I’ve lost fights with better-looking men.”

That earned her a real smile, brief and unwilling.

Victoria disliked how much she noticed it.

He walked closer, boots crunching over gravel. Up close, he smelled of cedar soap, sun-warmed cotton, and motor oil. His eyes were gray, though the shade changed when he looked toward the station.

“Elias Rusk,” he said.

She knew the name. Everyone in town had been mentioned in the reports her attorney sent, though she had not read most of them. Elias Rusk owned the repair shop on the highway. He had worked on engines since he was old enough to hold a wrench. He had also been the only person who refused to bid on the station.

“Victoria Steele,” she replied.

“I know.”

Of course he did. In a town this small, her return had traveled faster than her jet.

Elias stopped beside the bay door and placed one hand beneath the rusted track. “Step back.”

“I’m capable of moving metal.”

“I’m sure you are. Step back anyway.”

The order should have annoyed her. Instead, it settled somewhere low in her chest, irritatingly warm.

Victoria moved aside. Elias braced his shoulder against the door and shoved. The metal rose another foot with a violent scrape, then caught.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a short iron bar.

“You carry tools everywhere?” she asked.

“Only where things are falling apart.”

“Then you must be very popular in this town.”

“Not with property owners who arrive in silk.”

She glanced at her blouse. “This is not silk.”

“Whatever it is, it doesn’t belong under a transmission.”

“You don’t know what belongs under a transmission.”

His eyes dropped to her hands. Her nails were painted a deep red, but the polish was chipped at the tips. She had spent the flight from Dallas rebuilding the carburetor on a vintage Jaguar engine in the hangar’s workshop. Grease still shadowed one cuticle.

“You’re right,” he said. “I don’t.”

The words carried more weight than they should have.

Elias wedged the bar into the track. The door lurched upward. Victoria caught the edge before it slammed back down, and his hand closed over hers.

His palm was rough and hot. Her fingers rested against the hard ridge of his knuckles.

For one quiet second, neither of them moved.

Then Victoria pulled away.

“Thank you,” she said, making the words sound like a dismissal.

Elias lowered the bar. “You shouldn’t be in here alone.”

“I’m not alone now.”

He looked at her.

The air between them tightened.

Victoria bent to retrieve her shoes. “That was not an invitation.”

“I didn’t take it as one.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

Their voices landed on the same word, but not in the same way. His was dry. Hers was sharp enough to cut.

He glanced into the dark service bay. “Floor’s bad near the back wall.”

“I can see that.”

“You can’t see much. The lights are dead.”

“I’ll have electricity restored.”

“Roof needs bracing first.”

“I’ll have that done.”

“Office windows are broken.”

“I’ll have those replaced.”

“County may not approve occupancy until - ”

Victoria raised one hand. “Mr. Rusk, I have restored a house in Paris, a hotel in Monaco, and a man’s reputation in Palm Beach. I can manage an abandoned gas station.”

His expression changed at the mention of the man, though she could not tell whether it was amusement or disapproval.

“Maybe,” he said. “But this station has teeth.”

The remark slipped beneath her ribs.

She turned toward the service bay before he could see it.

Inside, the air was cooler and heavy with the smell of old rubber. Sunlight came through holes in the roof, striping the concrete. Shelves leaned against the walls. A workbench sagged beneath empty oil cans and a nest of brittle wiring. In the far corner, the rusted collection of cars waited beneath tarps.

Victoria walked toward them.

The first was a blue 1968 Mustang, its tires flat and its hood spotted with rust. The second, a yellow Chevrolet pickup, had a cracked windshield. The third was a dark green Cadillac with fins like wings. Her father had called it the Queen.

She touched the Cadillac’s hood.

A flake of paint came away beneath her finger.

“I’ll save this one first,” she said.

Elias remained near the entrance. “Why?”

“Because it deserves better than this.”

“Cars don’t know what they deserve.”

“People say that when they’re afraid of wanting something.”

His gaze sharpened. “You always diagnose strangers?”

“Only when they’re standing in my way.”

“I’m standing here because the floor is unsafe.”

Victoria looked down.

A thin crack ran across the concrete from beneath the Cadillac’s front tire toward the back wall. It was fresh. The edges were pale and clean, unlike the dark stains and old fractures scattered across the rest of the floor.

Her hand tightened around the Cadillac’s hood.

Elias noticed.

“That wasn’t in the inspection report,” he said.

“Inspections miss things.”

“Not a break like that.”

He crossed the bay, crouched, and brushed dust from the crack. Victoria watched his fingers. He did not touch the line carelessly. He studied it like a wound.

“Could be settling,” she said.

“Could be.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I’m not.”

The crack ended near a square of concrete beneath the old office wall. Victoria knew the place without looking for it. She had known it in dreams. She had known it while sitting in penthouses above cities where no one knew the girl she had been.

Fifty years ago, she had stood there in a yellow dress with a torn hem and dirt beneath her fingernails. She had helped cover something no one was meant to find.

She had never returned.

Until now.

Elias straightened. “Who else has been inside?”

“No one.”

“Property records say the county locked it six months ago.”

“I have the only key.”

“Locks can be picked.”

Victoria forced a laugh. “Are you suggesting someone broke in?”

“I’m suggesting you don’t know what happened here before you arrived.”

The words struck too close.

She stepped toward him. “I know exactly what happened here.”

His face softened, just slightly. “Do you?”

The question was not cruel. That made it worse.

Victoria turned away and walked to the office. A wall of dust-covered shelves stood beneath the broken windows. She set her shoes on the counter, opened her handbag, and removed the deed.

Elias followed but stopped at the threshold.

Victoria unfolded the paper and pressed it flat against the counter. Her name sat at the bottom in black ink.

Victoria Steele.

She took a fountain pen from her bag and signed the date beneath it, though no signature was required.

“There,” she said. “It’s mine.”

Elias looked at the deed, then at her. “Owning a place doesn’t mean it will let you leave its history behind.”

“I’m not asking it to leave anything.”

“Then what are you asking?”

Victoria folded the deed again. Her hand had begun to tremble, so she tucked it beneath the papers in her bag.

“I’m asking for a roof that doesn’t fall on my head and a floor that holds.”

“That all?”

“For today.”

He studied her in the dim office. Dust softened the sharp lines of his face. He looked less like a mechanic now and more like a man who had learned, through painful practice, when not to believe someone.

Victoria hated him for seeing that much.

She hated herself more for wanting him to ask again.

Instead, Elias reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small brass key.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Back door.”

“I have the keys the county gave me.”

“They don’t fit.”

“Why do you have it?”

“Your father gave it to mine.”

The room seemed to shrink.

Victoria stared at the key. It rested in his palm, dull with age, the teeth darkened by oil.

“Then give it to me.”

Elias did not move. “You want the station. You need to know what’s inside it.”

“I know what’s inside.”

“Then you won’t mind if I come back tomorrow and look at that crack.”

“I mind.”

“Why?”

Because the crack was near the place where the past had been buried. Because the floor had shifted before she arrived. Because Elias Rusk had looked at her as if he could see the fear beneath the diamonds and the money and the white hair.

Victoria stepped closer.

“Because I don’t need a man deciding what I can handle.”

His eyes held hers. “That isn’t what I’m doing.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Trying to keep you from getting hurt.”

The answer left no room for wit.

Victoria looked down at his hand. “I’ve been hurt before.”

“I figured.”

The quiet between them changed.

She could tell him that she had survived men with private armies and husbands who mistook possession for devotion. She could tell him she had learned to sleep beside locked doors and wake at the smallest engine noise. She could tell him the station was the one place in the world she had never managed to forget.

Instead, she said, “I don’t want to be rescued.”

Elias closed his fingers around the brass key.

“Good,” he said. “I’m not offering rescue.”

He set the key on the counter between them.

“I’m offering a warning.”

Then he walked out.

Victoria heard the black pickup start. The engine turned over with a deep, confident growl. Through the broken window, she watched him drive past the faded pumps and onto the road.

Only when the truck disappeared beyond the cottonwoods did she pick up the key.

It was warm from his hand.

She carried it to the back door and fitted it into the lock. The mechanism resisted, then gave with a hard click.

The door opened onto a narrow passage behind the service bay. Dust drifted in the beam of sunlight. At the end of the passage, the concrete floor had split wider, exposing a dark hollow beneath.

Victoria stood on the threshold, barefoot, the brass key pressed into her palm.

She had come to claim the station without confronting the past.

The past had already begun digging its way up.

She took one step inside.

End of chapter one. 15 more chapters and about 39,348 words in the full book.