Chapter One
Asa Wilder was a sexy, tattooed god of a man.
And life was unfair.
When you were driving in the middle of nowhere and you most needed a signal, all the bars on the cell phone disappeared. When you were craving chocolate more than life itself, the only flavor left was vanilla strawberry swirl.
And hot, unattainable bad boys—six times out of ten—became hot, unavailable men.
Un-fucking-fair.
Delilah took a deep breath and rolled the window of her Mustang down for a much-needed blast of fresh Spring air. She’d seen Asa getting off his motorcycle and opening the repair shop when she drove by this morning on her way to breakfast. One look was all it had taken to send her speeding to the nearest diner for a comfort latte and a stack of blueberry waffles that were physically, if not emotionally fortifying. Her sisters hadn’t answered their phones to distract her, so she’d stayed in her corner booth fiddling with sugar packets until the waitress glared and started making passive-aggressive comments about getting ready for the lunch crowd.
She was going to have to face Asa eventually. She knew that. It wasn’t like she hadn’t expected to run into him today. Or to see how snugly his worn jeans cupped his backside or the way his biceps bulged when he’d lifted up a hand to push his hair out of his eyes as her car raced by….
Damn. Okay so she maybe she hadn’t expected her reaction to that backside.
But Asa “Wild Man” Wilder was the reason—one of two business reasons—she was back in San Rafael after an eleven-year absence.
Had it been that long? Eleven years? Time had barely changed him. It definitely hadn’t changed him in the way she’d hoped when she was being petty in the years since their last meeting—he still had all his hair and teeth and he didn’t walk with a limp after a run-in with some psychotic lover he’d wronged.
If anything he was better looking now. Sexier than she remembered. From what she could see, the reckless twenty-year-old with eternally mussed light brown hair and wicked blue eyes—the troublemaker who’d starred in all her naïve seventeen-year-old fantasies—had matured into a lean, rugged, heartbreakingly handsome man. And the grown up Delilah was finding it impossible not to create new and decidedly less PG-rated fantasies about him.
Her fingers tightened on the wheel as she automatically followed the curve of the 101 freeway that she used to know by heart. Her hometown.
No. San Rafael was Dirty Del’s hometown. She wasn’t that tomboy in greasy overalls intent on disguising her curves anymore—the one who’d hung out at her father’s motorcycle repair shop every day learning more about engines than most men twice her age, and knowing next to nothing about dances or getting along with the other girls at school.
She was Delilah Dean now, a woman with a closet full of dresses and heels…no overalls in sight. She was vice president of DD4, a successful business that dealt in specialized parts for classic bikes and gear that had—thanks to her older sister—gone from utilitarian to the popular fashion for the recreational rider.
She was also the one Asa Wilder would have to negotiate with to purchase Dean’s Garage after just over a decade of leasing—if the guy who owned the shop in the other half of the building couldn’t convince her to sell to him first.
She took the exit, making the familiar turn onto 3rd Street, passing buildings that weren’t so familiar anymore. There were new businesses, new facades on some of the older buildings…it looked like the town had changed too. The breathed a sigh of relief when she passed B Street and saw the little Italian Bistro her father had loved to take them to on special occasions was still there, letting her know she hadn’t come to the wrong place.
There had been no question that she would be the one to come here. The one to handle this particular business transaction in person. Her sisters, Drew and Darcy, never had any interest in the shop, and her father, well… Dallas Dean had left his heart in the old garage, in more ways than one.
“I’m not sure why they both chose to offer for the Garage, but I’m too close to it,” he’d told her. “You’re the only one I trust to make the right call, Del. The only one who came close to caring the way I did. Do. I can’t go back yet. You understand.”
She did. There were too many memories here for him. Too much pain.
But he wasn’t the only one with memories.
Now he was trusting Delilah to make the decision about the sale, and he hadn’t been talking about whose bid was the highest. If that was all it was about she wouldn’t have had to leave her West Hollywood apartment and drive nearly six hours to spend a few days “making the call”.