Free Asking for Trouble by Rosalind James Page B

didn’t comment, just held out a
broad palm for the keys, which Alyssa surrendered reluctantly. He squeezed
himself into the driver’s seat, looking much too big for her tiny subcompact, backed
out with another jerk that had Alyssa wincing, and did a circuit of the lot
before pulling back into the same spot.
    He got out and slammed the door, handed the keys back to
Alyssa. “It’s your transmission. Pretty obvious. Didn’t the shop tell you
that?”
    She sighed. “I didn’t take it in yet. It’s just got a couple
hiccups. You guys need to relax.”
    “It’s not a hiccup when you’re merging onto the freeway, and
then all of a sudden you’re not,” Joe said. “It’s an accident. How long has
that been happening, that rough shift?”
    “I don’t know,” she said reluctantly. “Before Christmas,
anyway. Maybe a month?”
    “A month?”
    “I had a lot going on,” she defended herself. Like losing
her job, and looking for a new one, and interviewing in San Francisco, and
getting ready to move to a brand-new city, which had involved a drastic
downsizing in her life. You could call that a lot going on.
    “Think we can make it?” Alec asked Joe. “Or buy a car right
here, do you think?”
    “I can’t buy a car right here,” Alyssa protested. “I can’t afford
a new car. OK, maybe there’s something wrong. If there is, I’ll get it fixed.
Happy?”
    “A new transmission’s going to run you a couple thousand,”
Joe said. “More than it’s worth.” He eyed her little yellow car with a cynical
eye that made Alyssa want to give it a reassuring pat.
    “We don’t even know that it needs one,” she said.
    “True,” Joe said. “Not until they run the codes. We could
try having them flush the fluids, see if that helps. When was the last time you
had them checked? Your fluids?”
    “I don’t know. How
would I know that?”
    “You don’t keep a record in your owner’s manual?”
    “Does anybody really do that? Anybody but the seriously
anally retentive?”
    He smiled a little. “I do.”
    “Annnddd . . . my point’s made. Bet Alec doesn’t.”
    “Well, no, but I have a Mercedes mechanic making some pretty
good boat payments on my dime,” Alec said. “I let him keep a record.”
    “Sure you do. You’ve got people for that.”
    Joe focused on the matter at hand. “We’ll take it to a shop.”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket, did a quick search. “Another hour, looks
like. Should be all right that far on the freeway, keep the speed even. No hard
braking if you can help it, no hard accelerating, keep it in the same gear.
We’ll get the codes run, get the fluid changed, see where we are.”
    They’d made it to San Francisco a bit later than they’d
intended, but they’d made it. And after that, Alyssa really started getting
bossed around, because Rae came over to help with the move-in.
    Well, “help” might be the wrong word. She actually just
plain took over. Starting with going out to buy new shelf paper to line
Alyssa’s dresser drawers, and moving on to unpacking all her boxes.
    “I can do it tomorrow,” Alyssa had said in a futile bid for
independence. “If you’ll just help me get the sheets on the bed and my bathroom
stuff unpacked, I’ve got plenty of time for the rest. I don’t start work for
another week.”
    “You don’t want to spend days stumbling over boxes,” Rae
said. “We’ll do it now. It’s just one room.” She looked around the large but otherwise
completely unimpressive bedroom, the off-white walls with a scuff here and
there, the uninspiring gray carpeting, clearly chosen to hide wear but losing
the battle, the stiff, ugly beige drapes across an aluminum-framed window with
a view of the apartment house across the street. “It’ll look a lot better when
we have it all set up,” she said, which made Alec, humping two boxes of books
through the door, give a dubious snort. “We’ll get you unpacked, and the guys
can take the empty boxes back