Lilian Darcy - It Began with a Crush

If he ever happened to catch her looking at him after one of those smart-mouthed comments, she always glared back, just to make sure he wasn’t in the slightest danger of thinking she might have a crush on him.

And now here he was in his father’s dilapidated garage, where he used to help out in his teens, hands stained with engine grease, forehead lightly sheened with grimy sweat, fixing cars for a living.

She thought she should probably feel sorry for him for being here, or maybe maliciously pleased at the contrast between his openly paraded ambitions of wealth and Hollywood stardom back in high school, and the place he’d ended up. Right back where he’d started in his dad’s garage.

And yet she didn’t feel any of that. Instead, the emotions that washed through her were curious and empathetic and wry and—

“Life’s a funny thing, huh?” Joe said quietly with a half smile, and she felt the blush heating her cheeks in reality now, not simply in her imagination. How long since she’d done that? Blushed? A hundred years?

“Um, yes. Yes, it is.” She took in a dragging breath and breathed in him , along with the air.

Jeepers, how did the man do this? Less than a minute in his company and she’d already been knocked sideways by the way he looked, and even the way he smelled , for pity’s sake.

* * *

The Cherry Sisters:Three sisters return to their childhood home in the mountains—and find the love of a lifetime!

It Began with

a Crush

Lilian Darcy

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LILIAN DARCYhas written nearly eighty books for the Mills & Boon ®Cherish™ and Medical Romance™ lines. Happily married with four active children and a very patient cat, she enjoys keeping busy and could probably fill several more lifetimes with the things she likes to do—including cooking, gardening, quilting, drawing and traveling. She currently lives in Australia but travels to the United States as often as possible to visit family. Lilian loves to hear from readers. You can write to her at PO Box 532, Jamison PO, Macquarie ACT 2614, Australia, or email her at lilian@liliandarcy.com.

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Excerpt

Chapter One

Mr. Capelli was not going to be happy.

Turning into the driveway of Capelli Auto, Mary Jane was already rehearsing her excuses. She knew her little blue car was overdue for a service, but it was the start of the summer season and they’d been so busy at Spruce Bay Resort. The car had been making a strange noise for a while, she would have to admit it, but the noise was definitely louder now than it had been at first, so it wasn’t as if she’d been ignoring something so blatant all this time.

Even in her own head, it all sounded feeble, and Mr. Capelli was so good at that tolerant yet reproachful look of his. The Cherry family had been bringing their vehicles to him for service and repair for as long as she could remember.

The garage, an old-fashioned and very reassuring place, was on a quiet backstreet. Art Capelli was the kind of mechanic who told you the truth and never overcharged. He didn’t deserve Mary Jane’s embarrassingly neglectful attitude toward her car. Dad was always so scrupulous about maintenance, but she...

She was the worst of sinners in that department, and she knew it.

Right now, she felt as remorseful about the noise in the engine as she would have felt about bringing the vet a mangy and half-starved kitten with a splinter in its infected paw.

She parked out front of the repair shop with its brightly painted Capelli Auto sign, leaving the car windows down and the key in the ignition. There was no one in the office but she could hear sounds coming from the workshop so she went through, needing to pause for a moment or two so her eyes could adjust to the light because it was dimmer in here.

A pair of legs clad in oil-stained dark blue overalls stuck out from beneath a red pickup truck. She addressed them tentatively. “Mr. Capelli?”

There came a grunt and an inarticulate noise that probably meant, “Give me a second.”

She awaited her moment of shame. Really, the noise had only gotten so bad these past few days, although it had been sounding on and off since... Oh, shoot, since her three-day spa vacation in Vermont, and that was back in mid-March, three months ago.

Problem was, when the noise occasionally stopped for a few days, she thought the car had—well—healed itself.

What? Cars didn’t do that?

There was another grunt, and the overall-clad legs suddenly shot toward her. A pair of sturdy tan work boots fetched up inches from her shins.

“Hi, Mr—” She stopped. It wasn’t Art Capelli, with his tanned and lined sixtysomething face, his wiry gray hair and fatherly brown eyes. It was Joe, his son.

Joe, whom she hadn’t seen in probably fourteen years. Longer.

Joe, with the sinfully gorgeous looks that began with his thick dark hair and ended with his perfect olive-skinned body, and encompassed pretty much every other desirable male attribute in between.

Cocky, egotistical Joe, who’d always known all too well how irresistible he was and had played on it for everything he was worth.

Possibly, she was blushing already.

“Hi,” he said. They looked at each other. He lifted his head from the wheeled roller-thingy that allowed him to slide easily beneath a vehicle. “Mary Jane, right?”

“Yes.”

“I saw your name in the book.” And probably wouldn’t have recognized her in a police lineup if he hadn’t.

“Where’s your dad?” she asked, and it sounded abrupt and clumsy.

He didn’t answer right away, occupied with levering his strong body up off the roller-thingy so he could stand. “I’m helping him now. Taking over, really. His health isn’t that great.”

Once he was standing, she could see him a lot more clearly. He hadn’t changed, she quickly concluded. He was every bit as good-looking as he’d been in high school. Better-looking, in fact. Her own eye for a man’s looks had matured with the years, and she liked the laugh lines around his eyes and mouth, and the fine, scattered threads of silver in the short but still thick hair that framed the top half of his face.

“Right. I’m sorry to hear that,” she answered him. “I mean, that he’s not well. Not sorry you’re helping out. Obviously.”

Smooth, Mary Jane. Real smooth.

There were a hundred questions she wanted to ask. What happened to the Hollywood plan? Was Joe back here for good, or just as an interim arrangement because his dad wasn’t well? Wasn’t there someone else who could take over the garage? What had gone wrong?