Page 2 of The Medic
“What’s funny?” I snapped.
The man looked up at me from under the plane’s open engine cover, one eyebrow raised like he’d been born with an attitude problem.
“You, yelling at your driver like he just crashed Air Force One.”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
He stood. Tall. Broad. Tanned skin and tousled brown hair with sun-lightened tips that screamedI don’t care and still look like this. And that face—sharp jawline, scruff, eyes so deep and brown they looked almost liquid, like melted chocolate with something unreadable beneath the surface. He wiped his hands on a rag and gave me the slowest once-over I’d ever been subjected to.
And I had been subjected to many.
“You looked like you were going to start throwing shoes,” he said. “Figured I’d brace for impact.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You work here?”
A pause. “Something like that.”
Of course, he worked here. Or maybe he was just one of those airport guys who liked to hang around places they didn’t belong, pretending they were someone important. He looked like the type—probably rotated between fixing things and breaking them, depending on his mood. Maybe a mechanic. Or one of those off-the-books maintenance guys who bartered parts and labor for beer and favors. Definitely the kind of man who called his truck a she and thought an oil change was an act of intimacy.
He probably lived in some one-bedroom box outside North Charleston with a dog named Buck and a wall full of NASCAR memorabilia.
The way he was dressed, the grease on his hands, the smirk—it all screamed working-class swagger with a side of misplaced confidence.
“Well, then.” I adjusted my sunglasses and pointed toward the gated section of the runway behind me. “Go find someone in charge. I’m not standing out here in this humidity waiting fora driver who apparently doesn’t know the difference between a hangar and a Hilton Garden Inn.”
He just looked at me.
What was it about Charleston men and their inability to follow instructions?
“Did I stutter?”
“No,” he said, tossing the rag onto a toolbox. “But your tone gets me all hot and bothered. You always talk to strangers like they owe you a yacht?”
I bristled. “Only when they’re wasting my time.”
He let out a low whistle and walked toward me—slow, deliberate steps like he was deciding whether I was worth the trouble. I’d seen that look before. Usually right before someone got fired.
“Your time’s valuable,” he said, voice dipped in something Southern and unbothered. “Must be nice.”
“You have no idea.”
When he stopped in front of me, he was close. Too close. I caught the scent of motor oil, leather, and something warm underneath. Not cologne. Just him.
“I could drive you,” he said, thumb jerking toward a dusty black truck parked beside the hangar. “If your highness is okay slumming it.”
I laughed. “Are you serious?”
He smirked, gesturing to his truck. “She’s got personality.”
“She’s got rust.”
Of course, he called it she. Men like him always did. Their trucks, their boats, their motorcycles—maybe even their damn toolboxes. Like giving something a feminine pronoun made it lovable instead of outdated and barely functioning. It was all so performative. Some weird, blue-collar attempt at romance, like if they treated a carburetor with enough reverence, it would thank them with horsepower and loyalty.
He probably had a list of shes longer than my closet inventory, and not one of them wore heels.
I’d met his type a thousand times. Charleston had plenty. The kind of guy who thought using his hands made him interesting and calling a woman “darlin’” made him charming. The kind who made fun of your latte order, then showed up to a first date in a camo hat and took you somewhere with sticky floors.
“I’ll take rust over entitlement any day,” he said with a smirk.
