The Heir Who Quit Luxury novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Doyle's

Carter warns Theo to stay poor, and Theo talks his way onto a failing Eight Mile lot run by Frankie Doyle, who shows him the letter calling in her loan, signed Doug Hensley.

I parked the Maybach.

I did it because eighty people were watching, and because I wanted the keys in my hand for one more minute.

Carter followed me down the drive to the boathouse.

He waited until the tent was out of earshot.

"Grandfather called me an hour ago," he said. "He was furious. He said you turned him down in the car."

"He said you were a fool with good teeth."

Carter smiled with all of them.

"You said no. Good. Stay no."

I held out his keys.

He didn't take them.

"Here's how this goes, Theo. The old man dies. Everything comes to me. Unless you crawl up that drive in Bloomfield Hills and beg to be a Penrose."

"I'm not going to."

"I know. But I'm going to make sure you never can."

He finally took the keys.

"Your girlfriend's family thinks you're a charity case," he said. "I'm not going to correct them. Are you?"

"They can think what they want."

"That's the spirit."

He patted my cheek, twice.

Then he walked back up to the party.

Blair caught me at the gate.

She'd changed into a white sweater, and she had her arms crossed against the wind off the lake.

"You embarrassed my father," she said.

"Your father embarrassed himself."

"He offered you a job, Theo."

"He offered me a sponge."

She sighed.

"Daddy's a dinosaur. Take the job for a year. Smile. Let him feel big. Then he'll give you something real."

"I don't want something from him."

She looked at me for a long moment.

"You could have anything," she said quietly. "You're choosing to be nothing."

That stung more than the sponge.

"I'll call you tomorrow," I said.

"Maybe," she said, and went back to the tent.

Sunday morning I drove my Ranger down Eight Mile.

I hadn't been there since the funeral.

The sign was the same. Doyle's Used Cars, in red letters with one bulb out.

Same chain-link fence.

Same string lights strung over forty tired cars.

Same cinder-block office with the flat roof.

My father had run the two service bays behind that office for eleven years.

I used to sit on an upside-down bucket and hand him wrenches.

An old man sat in a lawn chair by the office door with a cane across his knees.

One side of his face didn't move right.

He squinted at me.

Then he pointed the cane.

"Brannock's kid," he said. The words came out thick. "You got his walk."

My throat closed up.

"Yes, sir."

"Frankie!" he yelled. "Danny's boy is here!"

A pair of legs stuck out from under a Chevy Malibu.

They didn't move.

"Busy, Pop!"

"Get out here!"

A creeper rolled out.

The woman on it had a Tigers cap on backward, auburn hair through the back, and grease up to both elbows.

Coveralls tied at the waist. Tank top. Freckles.

A shiny burn scar across her right forearm.

She looked at my khakis and my loafers.

"Whatever you're selling, we're broke."

"I'm looking for a job."

She laughed out loud.

"So are we."

"I'll work on commission. Nothing up front."

"Do you know anything about cars?"

"I know the Malibu you're under has a bad water pump. You can hear it from the street."

She stood up and wiped her hands on a rag.

She was about five foot five.

"I'm Frankie," she said. "I run this place. I can't afford you, college boy."

"You can't afford to not sell that."

I pointed.

At the back of the lot sat the ugliest car I had ever seen.

A 2011 Kia Soul, lime green, with a dent in the back door.

"That thing has been here since Easter," Frankie said.

"Then you won't miss it."

She crossed her arms and grinned.

"Fine. Sell the Soul today, and you've got a job."

Forty minutes later a woman in nursing scrubs pulled in, looking for something cheap to get her to the night shift.

I walked her straight to the Soul.

"Here's what's wrong with it," I said.

I told her about the hundred and ninety thousand miles.

The dent. The cracked cup holder. The radio that only got AM.

The rear brakes that would need pads by fall.

"Why are you telling me all this?" she asked.

"Because the engine's good," I said. "And the guy across town will tell you none of it and charge you two grand more."

She drove it around the block.

She came back laughing because the radio was playing a polka station.

She paid thirty-nine hundred dollars, cash, and shook my hand.

Frankie watched the whole thing from the office door with her mouth open.

When the Soul turned onto Eight Mile, she walked over.

"Twenty-five percent of the gross," she said. "Commission only. No benefits. The coffee's terrible."

"Deal."

"You told her about the cup holder."

"She'd have found it."

"Nobody tells them about the cup holder."

"My dad did."

Pop laughed in his chair, a big wheezing laugh.

Frankie's face changed.

She looked at me.

"Come inside," she said. "You should see what you just signed up for."

The office was one room with a desk, a coffee maker and a calendar from 2019.

She pulled an envelope out of the top drawer.

The letterhead was blue and gold.

"Our lender sold our loan," she said. "This came Friday."

I read it.

Doyle's floor-plan note had been bought by Hensley Auto Group.

They were calling it.

Eighty-four thousand dollars, due in thirty days, or they took the lot.

At the bottom was a big, looping signature I had seen on a birthday card to Blair.

Doug Hensley.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend