Chapter 3 A Little Too Much Service

The rain was still coming down hard. Oliver held out his arm to help Elena.

Instead of taking it, Elena reached for Lucy's arm.

She wasn't deliberately giving him a hard time. He was simply too tall and broad.

The difference in their size was hard to ignore, and him being that close made her feel cornered.

Elena finally relaxed once she was safely inside the passenger seat.

Oliver got behind the wheel and fastened his seatbelt. "Where do you live?"

"Elmwood Apartments," Elena said.

Oliver glanced at her. "Elmwood Apartments? That's pretty far from the university."

"I like the area. It's nicer there," Elena responded.

Oliver started the car and pulled onto the main road. After a moment, he casually asked, "How much do you pay in rent? I'm thinking about finding a place too."

Elena gave him a surprised look. He was looking for a rental?

If he ran around with rich guys like that, he probably wasn't short on money.

Then again, he owned an auto repair shop. When rich heirs wanted to play with cars, they went to private tracks or exclusive clubs—not some ordinary repair shop on the street.

Besides, Oliver had personally worked on her car, and she couldn't deny that he had handled everything with skill and professionalism.

Elena wasn't the type to dig into someone else's business. Whatever Oliver's situation was, it had nothing to do with her, so she let it go.

"Two thousand a month," she said.

Oliver seemed to think about it. "Isn't Elmwood Apartments pretty old? I heard the security there isn't that great."

"It's good enough," Elena answered.

He wasn't exactly wrong. Elmwood Apartments had been around for years, and most of the guards at the entrance were old men who dozed off on the job.

Still, Elena had moved there a few months earlier after a huge argument with her mother over all the blind dates.

Her father had died when she was young. Afterward, her mother had worked hard to raise her and her older sister on her own.

Her sister eventually married into a wealthy family, and the whole family rose with her. From then on, her mother turned her attention to her and kept pressuring her sister to set her up with rich men.

As far as her mother and sister were concerned, only one thing mattered: money.

Elena couldn't stand that way of thinking. It bothered her even more because her father's death had been caused by a group of wealthy heirs racing their cars through the streets.

Thirteen years had passed since the accident, but the pain had never completely left her. Like the endless rain outside the window, it had stayed inside her—dark, cold, and impossible to shake.

By the time they reached Elmwood Apartments, the rain had finally let up.

Oliver got out of the car and handed Elena her keys. "What floor are you on?"

"First floor," Elena lied. "Thanks for bringing me back. I'll call you a cab."

Oliver waved it off. "Don't worry about it. Just get inside."

Elena had asked him to stop near the middle of the residential complex. A long strip of greenery stretched from east to west and separated the parking spaces.

On the other side of the driveway stood a six-story building with eight units. Every apartment on the ground floor came with its own small yard.

Elena hesitated. She didn't actually live on the first floor.

But she had already told Oliver she did, and from the way he stood there, he clearly intended to wait until she was safely inside. Now she was stuck.

Oliver suddenly laughed. "I get being careful when you live alone, but don't you think this is a little much?"

"We barely know each other." Elena gave him a strained but polite smile. "You think I'm being too careful, but aren't you going a little overboard for a client?"

Oliver raised an eyebrow. "You paid me, didn't you?"

His meaning was obvious. In his mind, she'd paid for the service, so he was just delivering it.

"You charged me a hundred dollars to fix the car and gave the other two hundred back," Elena reminded him. "I'd say you've already done plenty." She clearly wasn't going to give in.

If Oliver kept pushing, he would only make himself look suspicious. He backed off. "Alright. I'll leave you alone. Take your time getting inside."

"Thanks." Elena turned away and used the long-handled umbrella from the car like a cane. She slowly made her way forward until she was completely out of his sight.

After reaching her apartment, she went straight to the window and carefully looked downstairs. Oliver was gone.

She finally breathed out in relief. She turned away from the window and flopped onto the couch. Then she hooked a throw pillow with her uninjured foot, pulled it over, and rested her injured ankle on it.

She hadn't even had time to settle down when her phone began ringing over and over.

She checked the caller ID and saw that it was her mother, Martha Barrett. She put the call on speaker.

"Dina told me today's blind date didn't work out either," Martha said the moment Elena answered.

"Yeah," Elena replied coldly.

"See? I told you this would happen." Martha sounded almost pleased to be proven right. "What kind of decent man do you expect to find by yourself? Just listen to us for once and meet the men Rosalie picks for you."

"No," Elena retorted.

Martha's temper immediately flared. "You've gotten bold, haven't you? Rosalie and I are trying to help you. Would we ever hurt you?"

"I haven't liked a single man you've introduced me to," Elena said. "And none of them are good enough for me."

"Not good enough for you?" Martha laughed as if Elena had said something ridiculous. "They're too good for you."

"Then I guess I'm better off staying single for the rest of my life." Elena was usually quiet and distant, but whenever she argued with her mother, her words became unusually sharp.

Martha was so furious that she hung up.

Elena gave a bitter little laugh. Martha had always favored her older daughter, Rosalie Sullivan. She had spoiled Rosalie into something vain and pampered, while Elena had grown into someone quiet, guarded, and difficult to get close to.

But Elena hadn't always been that way. Before she turned fourteen, when her father was still alive and there to protect her, she had been cheerful and carefree.

The rest of the weekend passed quietly while Elena stayed home and gave her injured foot time to recover.

By Monday, it was still throbbing, so she took a cab to work instead of driving.

Her classes weren't scheduled until the final two periods of the morning, so she went straight to the teachers' office when she arrived.

Several colleagues noticed her limp and asked what had happened. Elena simply smiled, told them she was fine, and brushed off their concern.

A new colleague seated by the window leaned toward her. "Hey, didn't your car break down on Friday?"

Elena nodded. "I ran over a nail and got a flat."

"Did you get it fixed? How much did they charge you?"

"A hundred dollars. That included some kind of dynamic balancing, and they gave me a premium car wash for free."

And that wasn't all. The shop owner had also given her coffee and snacks, then driven her home himself.

Oliver had also sent back the extra two hundred dollars she had tried to pay him.

"That's actually pretty cheap. Was it the new shop across the street?"

Elena gave a nod.

A male colleague leaned over from nearby. "How's the service there? I took my car somewhere else for maintenance last week, and they ripped me off for a few hundred bucks."

"Tell me about it," another colleague joined in. "Repair shops are all scams. Half the time they won't even give you a straight quote, and half of them don't know what they're doing."

The deputy dean, who was sitting at the back of the office, looked up with a smile. "You guys seriously haven't heard yet? The logistics department picked a new repair shop for the school this year."

Someone immediately asked, "Which one?"

"Vanguard Auto Repair. The one right across the street," he said. "Staff get thirty percent off with their ID. The school worked out a deal—free services included too. Notice should come out this week."

A female colleague brightened. "And the owner is really handsome."

That immediately set everyone off laughing, and a few teasing comments followed.

Elena gave a small, polite smile. She was never taking her car across the street again.

She had only gone there because she had no other choice. And then she'd ended up having a blind date right there in that shop.

Just thinking about it made her cringe. Running into Oliver again would be a thousand times worse.

A week passed, and Elena's foot finally recovered completely.

After what had happened with her low blood sugar, she made a point of waking up early and putting together a quick breakfast.

She had four major classes scheduled back-to-back that morning, so she left the apartment a little earlier than usual.

Once downstairs, she unlocked her car and opened the driver's door.

She hadn't driven it since Oliver brought her home, so the driver's seat was still pushed way back for his long legs.

Elena got in and reached down with her left hand for the power seat controls. Nothing happened.

She tried the manual lever next. The seat still refused to move.

"You've got to be kidding me..." She frowned at the seat. After all that, she was going to be late because of a stupid chair.

Annoyed, she climbed back out and started toward the main gate while opening a ride-hailing app on her phone.

Later, during a break between classes, Elena opened WhatsApp and tried to find Oliver's repair shop. She scrolled for far too long before it hit her—she had deleted his contact.

Of course she had. Karma really had it out for her.

The problem was too minor for the dealership to send someone to her apartment. At most, they would send a free tow truck—way too much hassle for a stuck seat. After running through every option, Elena had to admit there was only one left. She was going to have to ask Oliver to take a look.