She raised an eyebrow.
“Do you keep your own books?”
Marcus glanced toward Dean.
Dean looked away.
Luis suddenly became very interested in his pastry.
Marcus frowned.
“Mostly.”
Sarah smiled.
“Mostly?”
He sighed.
“All right. I'm a mechanic.”
She looked toward the invoices.
“I used to study business accounting at community college.”
Marcus seemed surprised.
“You did?”
She nodded.
“I didn't finish the program, but I completed several courses. I also help Evelyn with inventory and ordering at the bakery.”
Marcus looked toward the paperwork.
Then back at her.
For a moment, he seemed thoughtful.
Sarah continued.
“If you ever need someone to help organize invoices or set up a better tracking system, I could do some paid work on an agreed schedule. We can keep it separate from what you did for my car.”
Marcus stared.
The final sentence mattered.
She wasn't offering herself as an unpaid servant to settle an imaginary debt.
She was proposing work.
Real work.
With terms.
He looked toward the desk.
Then sighed.
“Would you believe I've been meaning to sort those papers since Christmas?”
Dean snorted.
“Which Christmas?”
Marcus shot him a look.
Sarah laughed.
Then she studied the boxes more carefully.
“You might have a few things worth finding in there.”
Marcus smiled.
“Lady, I'm almost afraid of what you'll discover.”
She extended her hand.
“Then perhaps we should find out.”
He shook it.
And neither of them realized that the invoices piled across that desk contained the beginning of a second crisis.
One that would threaten the garage itself.
Marcus's father, Robert Hale, opened the original shop in 1978.
It wasn't called Hale's Motor Works then.
It was a rented two-bay repair garage beside a gravel lot, and Robert worked there alone for the first eighteen months.
He'd returned from military service years earlier with a bad knee, a toolbox, and the belief that a person who could repair something useful would always find work.
He wasn't entirely right.
There were slow months.
Bad customers.
And winters when business nearly disappeared.
But he kept working.
Robert was a large man with enormous hands and a voice that could carry through a workshop without sounding angry.
He taught Marcus to use tools before the boy was old enough to understand why certain bolts required a different size wrench.
By eleven, Marcus could identify most common engine sounds.
By thirteen, he helped clean the shop every Saturday.
And by sixteen, he could perform simple supervised repairs with enough care that his father began allowing him to work on customers' motorcycles under direct oversight.