Free I Do! by Rachel Gibson

about now.
    Holly Ann’s brows lowered over her brown eyes. “Obviously, Nate.”
    “How long have you been here?” He could fix this. He could, but he just had to figure out how.
    “Long enough.” Her foot stopped. “Don’t you think you should have told me that I’ve been replaced?” And started again. “Or is this just a hookup that I wasn’t supposed to find out about?”
    “No.” He finally forced himself to look at Becca, sitting on the couch, dressed in her clothes from the previous night. She didn’t look mad, just deeply hurt. “Ah shit.”
    Her blue eyes filled with moisture and she rose to her feet. “I told you that I don’t like cheaters,” she said, and grabbed her purse. “I told you and you still used me to cheat on your girlfriend.”
    “It’s not like that, Becca.”
    “Right.”
    He held a hand toward her as he watched her walk to front door. “I can explain.” But he needed to deal with Holly Ann. He needed to resolve things with his girlfriend first.
    “Don’t come near me ever again.” Becca ducked her face as a tear slid from her bottom lashes.
    Nate curled his hands into fists to keep from reaching for her as she walked out the door.
    “I can’t believe you’ve cheated on me.” Holly Ann rose and planted her hands on her hips. “If you wanted out, you should have told me.”
    “When?” He lifted a hand and dropped it to his side. “You’ve been out of town for months.”
    “You know I love you and that I was coming back.”
    “If you really loved me, you wouldn’t have been able stay away so long.” He took a breath and let it out slow. “Did you really want me to end things over the phone or by text?”
    “It would have been better than walking in here and seeing your hookup in one of your T-shirts.”
    “Becca isn’t a hookup.”
    “Then what is she, Nate?”
    “More.”
    “How much more?”
    Good question.
    She swallowed hard. “I deserve an answer.”
    Maybe she did. The problem was that he didn’t have a real good answer. Not for her or himself.
    JACK PARRI SH WALKED past his secretary of twenty years, busily directing calls and typing with her long fingernails at the same time. “Give me half a minute, then put him though, will ya, Penny honey?”
    “You know I’ll do anything when you call me honey,” she answered without pause.
    Yeah, he knew. He walked into his office and closed the door behind him, shutting out the whine of spinning sanders and the grind of metal on metal. He moved behind his desk and sat in a comfy new chair Daisy had wheeled in just last week. It was the first new chair he’d had since taking over taken the business twenty-six years ago. Until Daisy had insisted on the new chair, Jack had always sat in his father’s old wooden spindle back that had once belonged to his mama’s dining room set. Though the years, Jack had changed the cushion under his butt, but the chair had always remained the same, only slightly more scratched up and grimy than when his father had run the business.
    He punched a few keys on his computer and typed in a freight bill number for a double pump carburetor he needed for a ’57 Bel Air. He tracked the part to Tulsa and leaned back into the leather of his new chair. After Tulsa, the carburetor had been shipped to Dallas, then had taken a detour south to Houston. His brows lowered as he turned on the chair massager. He hated to admit it, but Daisy had been right. A lifetime of pulling engines and turning wrenches had taken a toll on him. Now in his mid-forties, he had more aches and pains, and he ate more ibuprofen than his doctor recommended.
    The phone beeped and he picked it up. “This is Jack Parrish.” He leaned farther back in the chair to take advantage of the rolling massager on his left side. The pain in his back this morning hadn’t come from heavy machinery, but from sleeping with his two-year-old daughter wedged between him and Daisy the night before. “What can I do for you?”