Page 1 of Desired By Diesel
CHAPTER 1
GRACIE
Two weeks in Tucson, and I'm still sleeping with a kitchen knife on my nightstand.
Not that I'd know what to do with it. Not really. But there's something about the weight of it there, the dull gleam when the streetlight catches the blade through the gap in the curtains, that lets me close my eyes at night.
Small comforts. I'm collecting them like pennies in a jar.
The house is small — two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen that's seen better decades. The linoleum is peeling near the fridge and the air conditioning makes a sound like a dying animal every time it kicks on. But it's ours. Mine and Amelia's. The first place I've ever signed a lease on alone, with my name and only my name on the paperwork.
That matters more than granite countertops.
"Mom?" Amelia's voice drifts from the living room, where she's supposed to be doing her reading homework. "Can I have a snack?"
"After you finish your chapter."
"But I'm hungry."
"Then read faster."
A dramatic sigh. I hide my smile behind my coffee cup, even though she can't see me from here. Seven years old and already a master negotiator. She gets that from me. The stubbornness, anyway. The rest of her — the big brown eyes, the way she chews her lip when she's thinking — that's all her own.
I'm standing at the kitchen window, which has become a habit I should probably examine. The view isn't much. Scrubby yard, chain-link fence, the neighbor's driveway. His motorcycle.
Him.
I don't know his name. We haven't spoken beyond a nod when we both happen to be getting our mail at the same time. But I know he's out there most evenings, working on that bike. I know he's big — tall, broad, the kind of build that comes from actual labor, not a gym membership. I know he's got tattoos that crawl up both arms and disappear under his t-shirt, and that when he works without a shirt on, which is often, there are more across his chest and back.
I know he's older. Forty-something, I'd guess. There's gray threaded through his dark hair, visible when the light hits it right. The kind of face that's lived some life.
And I know I've been watching him way more than a woman with my history should be watching any man.
It's just looking, I tell myself. Looking is safe.
He's out there now, crouched beside the bike, doing something to the engine that I couldn't name if my life depended on it. His back is to me. The muscles in his shoulders shift as he works, and I catch myself following the movement, tracing the lines of ink that disappear beneath his waistband.
Then he turns his head, like he can feel my eyes on him.
I jerk back from the window so fast I slosh coffee over my hand.
"Shit — ow." I grab a dish towel, mopping at the burn. My face is hot. Which is ridiculous. He couldn't have seen me. The angle's wrong, the light's wrong, there's no way?—
But when I risk another glance through the window, he's still looking this way. Not smiling, not waving. Just looking. Steady and unhurried, like he's got all the time in the world.
I duck out of view entirely and press my back against the wall like a teenager caught doing something she shouldn't.
Get it together, Gracie.
I'm twenty-seven years old. I have a daughter, a new job starting Monday, a restraining order that Ryan's lawyers are already trying to challenge. I don't have time to be flustered by a neighbor who probably thinks I'm the weird new lady who stares at him through her kitchen window.
Which, to be fair, is exactly what I am.
The coffee's gone cold by the time I convince myself to move. I dump it in the sink and check on Amelia — she's actually reading now, stretched out on the couch with her book propped on her stomach, lips moving slightly as she sounds out the harder words. My heart does that thing it always does when I watch her. That fierce, aching swell that's equal parts love and terror.
I uprooted her whole life to bring her here. Pulled her out of her school, away from her friends, away from everything familiar. Because I was scared, and because I needed to believe that distance could keep us safe.
Some days I'm sure I made the right call. Other days, I lie awake wondering if I just made everything worse.
