Free She's Gotta Be Mine by Jasmine Haynes, Jennifer Skully Page A

safety from any potential streams of juice. “Yes?”
    “I just wanted to warn you that woman’s a viper.”
    Well, here was someone she could see eye-to-eye with. Upon closer examination, he wasn’t quite as old as she’d first thought. It was the gray, grizzly sprouts of beard that made him look somewhere in his sixties rather than his fifties. Nor did he smell as bad as the sweat stains indicated.
    “You mean Cookie Beaumont?” she said to spur him on. Goodness, the people in this town loved to gossip. Before her first week was out, she’d know who had done what to whom over the past fifty years.
    “I’m talking about that conniving woman you work for.” He rolled his eyes as if he’d encountered an imbecile.
    “Mavis Morgan?”
    “That’s the one.”
    “Why?”
    He scratched behind his ear. “You ask her about it.”
    The mangled spines of the overhang barely shaded her eyes from the sun as she looked at him and murmured with exceeding politeness, “Might I at least tell her whom I heard it from?”
    “Name’s Beau. I own this garage.” Duh. His much-washed blue shirt had his name emblazoned over the pocket. “Your car need a tune-up?”
    “Actually, it’s new.”
    “One of those foreign jobs?”
    Somehow a Bug seemed as American as apple pie. “It’s a VW.”
    “Well, you gotta be sure to do an oil change every three thousand miles even on those German cars. Can’t let a good engine rot, ya know.”
    At the rate she’d been driving, she wouldn’t be reaching three thousand miles for at least three years.
    “I don’t sell gas any more,” Beau went on, “but I still do oil changes. Better than anyone you’ll find up the highway. Those wet-behind-the-ears punks have been known to leave screw drivers in the fan belt. They don’t love cars the way a man should. It’s those damned electronics, confuses the hell out of ’ em .”
    He smiled then, a big toothy grin that showcased two rows of straight white teeth. She gaped. How on earth did he have white teeth in such excellent condition when he chewed tobacco? Was that possible?
    “It’s that whitening crap you put in little trays and stick in your mouth for twenty minutes,” he said, correctly reading her slack-jawed look. “Ex-wife makes me use it every day or she won’t kiss me. And she sends me off to the dentist twice a year to get ’ em cleaned. I’m on her dental plan seeing as how I don’t have one of my own over here.”
    “Well, that’s very nice of her.” Being an ex-wife and all. Warren could pay for his own darn dental insurance. And he could dream about kissing her again. Not in this lifetime. All she really wanted was a chance to turn her back on him when he came begging. Vindictive, yes, but oh so satisfying.
    “Which reminds me”—Beau stroked his chin—“I better shave just in case she shows up for sex tonight. Hasn’t been around in...oh...three or four days. Starts to get a little cranky if she doesn’t get it often enough. But you’re a woman, you know all about that kind of thing.”
    Bobbie knew all about a woman’s needs, about not having them met on a consistent basis. But this didn’t seem like a proper discussion to be having at the corner of Main and Pine Streets with a stranger, and after Beau had just called her boss a viper.
    “Well, thanks for warning me about Mavis. I’ll be sure to ask her about it.”
    “You watch out for her, else she’ll stab your eyes right out of your head. Just like she did me.”
    Oh-Kay. Bobbie sidled two steps towards Pine Street. “I better be going now.”
    He raised a finger at her. “And come to think of it, better watch out for that bitch Cookie, too. Mavis’ll stab you, but at least you’ll see it coming. Cookie, she’ll turn your own family against you and make you think you deserved what you got.”
    Now that was the Cookie Monster she knew. What did the woman want from Warren? Certainly not money, if her expensive suit meant anything. And it