Mechanics and Mistletoe Chapter One Stars
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Bella,
an uptight, cold executive, is on her way home for Christmas. The first
Christmas she’s been home since she started working for the Fortune 500 company
that hired her from college, almost ten years ago. The only reason why she’s
going home is to meet her brother’s new wife and her parents threatened to cut
her out of the will if she didn’t make time to see her family. However, it’s
snowing, a blizzard and Bella’s car wasn’t really designed for the cold. Or
snow. Or anything other than sunny, perfect weather.
Edward
Cullen is alone on Christmas Eve, working, as usual. His family was long gone
and all he had left was his family business, Cullen Towing Service and Garage,
though that wasn’t going well for him. Business was slow. His bills were piling
up and he was afraid he was going to lose his livelihood if something didn’t
turn around. Over the radio, he heard about a stranded driver, stuck on the
back road. Edward pulled on his winter coat, gloves and started his truck,
driving to the location.
A
small sports car was stuck in a ditch, almost completely covered with snow. A
beautiful woman, wearing heels and a fur coat was shivering outside her car.
Edward immediately recognized her as the girl he once knew and had secretly
crushed on for years. Her brother, Jasper, pretty told him to fuck off and said
that she was too good for him, a grease-monkey, a blue-collar boy.
Can
this uptown girl fall for a guy with grease on his hands?
As I made my way onto the highway, my cell phone rang through the speakers of my car, thanks to the Bluetooth connection. I looked at the caller ID, seeing it was my mother, Renee. “Hello, Mom.”
“Are you on your way, Isabella?” she asked. “We haven’t seen you in years, young lady. Far too long, in my opinion.”
“Sorry, work,” I shrugged. “But, yes, I’m on my way. I don’t understand why.”
“Isabella, you haven’t met your brother’s wife. You blew off his wedding! And they’ve got news! We’ve got news!” Renee screeched.
“I was in London for a business meeting,” I growled back. “It was scheduled …”
“Your brother’s wedding was scheduled far before that, Isabella,” Renee sighed, knowing she was never going to win. I was anxious to get out of my hometown from the first moment my dad brought me to his company before he sold it, retiring at the age of forty-five. Nothing was keeping me back and I only wanted to go up in the world, not down. My mom’s voice broke my reverie, “I get that you love your job. You’re so much like your father that way, but your job won’t keep you warm or love you when you get older.”
“I don’t need love,” I shrugged, lying to myself. When in reality, I just turned off my emotions after being hurt in high school. “I have a million-dollar condo and people to take care of everything I need. Look, I’m coming despite everything that’s going on at work, deadlines, meetings and end-of-the-year sales. It’s snowing and I hate driving in the snow. That one accident from when I was … I need to pay attention, Mom. I’ll be there in a couple of hours.”
Edward
“Bill, bill, bill,” I grumbled, tossing my mail onto the desk in my office. “Publisher’s Clearing House. Maybe, I won a million bucks? What do you think, Nicky?” I asked my cat, Nicodemus. He meowed, cocking his head adorably. Well, he wasn’t my cat. He was a stray that hung out in my garage because it was warm and we fed him. The garage that I inherited from my dad, who he inherited it from his dad before that, Cullen Towing and Repair. It’s been in the family for three generations, but with the way business was going, I’d be the killer of the family business. I opened up the envelope from Publisher’s Clearing House, sighing heavily. “No dice … damn it.”
I sat down heavily in my office. It was decorated for Christmas with twinkling lights and a small tree. Rosalie, one of my two employees, insisted that we make the place look festive. She brought the stuff from home and made it look like Rudolph took a shit in here. I had to admit, it was nice. It reminded me of home and the family dinners I’d had when I was a kid with my parents.
Now? It’s just me.
My mom, she died of cancer when I was a junior in high school. It was brutal, fast and it took her before we even had a chance to come to grips with the diagnosis. My dad, he mortgaged the garage to pay for her treatment, but it didn’t work, leaving us in debt up to our eyeballs. When she died, a part of him died, too. They were high-school sweethearts. My mom worked at the local high school as a secretary and my dad as a mechanic and tow-truck driver, like his dad. We didn’t have much, but we were happy, until Mom died.
My dad kept it together until I graduated from trade school. I finished high school and then went through a two-year program to try and make something more out of the garage, taking business classes, classes on foreign vehicles and tutorials on installing some of the newest technology into cars. The moment I finished trade school, my dad, he swallowed a bullet, leaving me the garage and the mountain of debt that came with it. Thankfully, my best friend and other employee, Emmett McCarty came and helped me out in my grief and loss. Emmett was a mechanic like me. Rosalie, she ran the office, took care of billing and handled more the business end of the garage.
They both are a god-send, but if things don’t turn around, I’d have to let them go. As it was, I was living in the small apartment behind the garage. I sold the house I grew up in to pay off some of my creditors.
It was like putting a band aid on a hemorrhaging artery.
I was almost thirty-two, an orphan and about to declare bankruptcy. And a partridge in a pear tree …
“Edward! Where you at?” bellowed Emmett.
“Office,” I yelled out. Nicodemus hissed, jumping from his perch under the tree. He hated Emmett. Probably, because the guy sat on him more times than I could count. My burly best friend came inside, sitting down heavily, just missing Nicky’s tail.
“Sorry, Slim,” Emmett chuckled.
“And you wonder why he doesn’t like you?” I snorted. “What’s up?”
“Rosie wants you to come over for Christmas. You can’t just stay here, listening to the radio, dude,” Emmett said.
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