A very, very belated Happy Valentine's Day to JessieBess!

For the Sybil x Tom Secret Valentine Exchange, she requested the following:

Modern AU where Sybil and Tom are next door neighbors - Sybil thinks Tom seems like a playboy

Apologies for taking so much extra time to complete it. Hope you enjoy!

DAY 1

"So did you meet your new neighbor?"

Sybil came into her living area from the kitchen in the back of her small Dublin townhouse to find her best friend Gwen standing at the front window.

"Don't stand there!"

Gwen turned toward Sybil with a grin. "Why not? It's a nice view."

Sybil rolled her eyes and walked over to the window to pull Gwen away, but she caught sight of the man she'd met the week before, when he'd knocked on her door to introduce himself and let her know he'd rented the adjoining townhouse and would be moving in in a few days. The "view" that Gwen had referred to was nice, especially up close, but he'd been interrupted by a phone call and after talking long enough for Sybil to overhear the caller's voice and hear him say her name (Sarah), he went on his way with a wave and a wink.

Sybil and Gwen watched him go back and forth from the truck parked on the street with boxes a couple of times before Sybil spoke up again.

"His name is Tom," Sybil said finally. "And before you get any ideas, you should know he has a girlfriend."

Sure enough, just as the word had left Sybil's mouth, a young woman stepped out of the house to hold the door open for him as he brought in another box.

"Chatted him up already, have you?" Gwen asked finally stepping away from the window and following Sybil to the living room sofa.

"Yes and no," Sybil said, sitting down with a sigh. "He stopped by to introduce himself last week. Mrs. Connelly said he rented the garage—"

"But I thought it was meant to be shared."

"Technically, but I don't have a car, and he offered to pay extra for it. Anyway, I'd only just opened the door when someone rung him. It was a woman. I can only assume a bloke who looks like that is not single."

Gwen laughed. "So you've met and you've checked him out!"

Sybil laughed too. "Well, I'm not blind and happy to concede he's nice looking, but like I said—"

"Yeah, sure, a woman called him—maybe it was his mother. I know plenty of handsome men who are only too happy to stay single."

"Which is not an endorsement. But please, darling, the last thing I need or want is to get involved with my next-door neighbor. What happens if it ends badly and he decides to torture me with loud parties every night? These walls are very thin or do I need to remind you about the percussionist who just moved out."

"I suppose you're right," Gwen said. "Pity. You could have used a good shag."

Sybil grabbed the pillow next to her and threw it at Gwen as the latter fell into a fit of giggles.

DAY 4

Given how few unannounced visits she got, it took Sybil several minutes to realize her doorbell was ringing. It was a woman who looked to be in her late 20s, about Sybil's own age.

"Hi," she said brightly. "You must be Sybil."

Sybil's brow furrowed slightly.

"I'm Sarah. Tom next-door is my—"

"Oh, right," Sybil said quickly.

"Yeah, sorry for the intrusion, but I'm in a bit of a fix. He was supposed to meet me, but I couldn't leave work on time and my phone decided to die all of a sudden. Would you mind terribly, if I . . . "

Sybil smiled. "Of course." She walked into her kitchen to grab the handset of her cordless phone.

Sarah smiled as she took it. "A landline! Ha! Just the other day Tom was laughing at me for still having one."

"It belongs to the landlady, Mrs. Connelly," Sybil said, "but I've grown rather dependent on it. Without it, I'd never be able to find my mobile."

Sarah laughed and nodded. "Right?"

While Sybil waited, Sarah dialed and then talked to Tom, whom she only referred to as "darling." After several minutes of planning when they'd meet and a bit of gushing—from what Sybil could hear on Sarah's side—Sarah finally hung up. Turning to Sybil, she said, "If only the honeymoon period never ended."

Sybil smiled. "If only."

Sarah sighed and looked around. "Well, it was lovely to have met you, Sybil. Maybe I'll see you around, yeah?"

"Maybe. I'm a doctor, so I'm afraid my hours are bit odd," Sybil said as she walked Sarah to the door.

"Well, don't be afraid to knock on Tom's door if you need anything. He can be a bit of a hermit, especially when he's in writing mode."

"He's a writer?"

"Of sorts. The car thing is what really pays the bills, though it hasn't done much for his social skills, I'm afraid. He'd happily live under the bonnet of one if he could."

Sarah rolled her eyes good-naturedly as one does when discussing at the bad habits of loved ones. Sybil felt a slight pang of jealousy, not about her new neighbor exactly—though she considered Sarah a lucky girl, sure—but at the the feeling of loving someone in spite of the annoyances they brought into your life. It was one she was familiar with thanks to Gwen and her husband, John, whose work had brought him and Gwen and eventually Sybil herself to Ireland.

Once out the door, Sarah waved as she walked down the steps, heading down the street, rather than across the porch to Tom's. Sybil looked at his door for a long moment, then at Sarah's retreating form, then at Tom's door again.

A sudden realization came to her.

This was not the girl who had helped him move in.

Sybil's shoulders drooped, and though she wasn't sure why, she felt herself fill with disappointment.

"A playboy," she muttered. "Figures." Then she closed her door.

DAY 10

"Hello?"

"Hello?"

Sybil stepped into the garage. "It's Sybil. I got your note?"

Tom's head popped up over the open bonnet of a car that to Sybil looked old but rather fancy, and he greeted her with a surprised smile that, despite the decision she'd made not to like him, she found endearing.

She was about to smile back as he stepped between the car he'd been working on and the newer, more sensible model parked next to it, but her cheeks were subconsciously rendered immobile by the sight of his shirtless torso.

Bloody hell.

"Hi," he said brightly.

Sybil looked around—anywhere but at him, she thought—and tried not to wring her hands. "I like what you've done with it," she said hoping to come off as nonchalant. Please put a bloody shirt on.

"I'm a bit of a car nut," he said. If he'd noticed how nervous he was making her he wasn't showing it.

"Clearly."

He stood watching her with a smile for several minutes, until Sybil couldn't avoid his eyes any longer. "I suppose if I ever need help with one I can call you." Heavens, why am I flirting!

"Absolutely," he answered without hesitation. "Or I could teach you, if you like?"

Sybil bit her lip to keep the smirk of her face. Of course, he would flirt back. Something had to account for the parade of girls that showed up at his door. Something other than his looks. And his obvious charm. And those eyes. And—STOP!

She'd counted at least five—Sarah among them—and he'd been there less than two weeks. Whenever Sybil noticed Sarah going up the steps to Tom's from her living room window, she considered going out to talk to her and telling her the truth. You've a lothario for a boyfriend.

But then Sybil remembered that she would have to live with the fallout. In any case, whenever she saw Tom himself, it never looked like he was being sneaky exactly. Sybil wondered if perhaps it was all just their arrangement. Shaking the thought away now, she said, "So why was it you wanted to talk?"

Tom blinked a few times at her question, then shook his head and smiled to himself as he turned away from her.

Was he blushing?

He grabbed his shirt from the floor and slipped it back on. "Mrs. Connelly said you'd stored a few boxes in here—"

"Oh!" Sybil exclaimed. "I'd completely forgot. I'll get them out of your way. I told her I would if anyone rented the garage."

"No, it's all right," Tom said, taking a step toward her. "I just wanted to show you where I put them in case you needed them."

Tom walked past her and pointed up to a built-in wood shelf behind her.

"Were those there before?" Sybil asked.

Tom shook his head. "Mrs. Connelly said her last renter bought them but left them behind unassembled. I offered to do it for her. It made it easier to make room for the second car anyway."

Sybil turned back to him. He had a nice face—not just that it was nice to look at, though it was . . . his smile looked genuine, kind even. Despite evidence to the contrary, he didn't seem the playboy type.

Perhaps that's what they mean when they say, "It's always the nice ones."

"I met Sarah the other day," Sybil heard herself say.

His face brightened, which was not the reaction she'd expected. "Yeah, she said as much. And she said she liked you, which is rather incredible because she's the hardest person to win over that I know."

"You should be kinder to her, and not . . . "

Tom's brow furrowed in genuine curiosity. "And not what?"

"Tom?"

Both of them turned as a woman came into the garage from the alley holding a large soup pot.

Another one!

"Oh, hi," Tom said. Turning back to Sybil and pointing back and forth between her and this new woman, he said, "Sybil, Moira. Moira, Sybil. Mo, do you mind waiting inside? The keys are just there."

"Sure," she said, shifting the weight of the pot onto one hand and picking up the keys on a nearby table with the other. "I don't have long. I need to be home in forty-five minutes."

"I'll be right in," Tom answered, and Moira went out the door on the other side of the garage toward the back door of Tom's house, but not before calling out, "Nice meeting you, Sybil!"

"I'm sorry," he said, looking at Sybil again, "what were you saying?"

"Never mind," Sybil said with a roll of her eyes, and without another word, turned to leave.

She heard Tom calling her back, but she didn't bother to turn around.

DAY 23

"May I be honest?"

Sybil smirked into her wine glass before taking a sip. "Are you ever not?"

Gwen laughed. "Fair point."

The two friends were enjoying a late Saturday lunch out together and Sybil had brought up her promiscuous neighbor, Tom Branson, something that Gwen had noticed her doing an awful lot since he'd moved in.

"All right, then, what great truth do you have to tell me?"

"I think you have a crush on him," Gwen said plainly.

"What? I do not!"

Gwen laughed again. "Sybil, we've barely talked about anything else today. And every time I see you or talk with you, you have a full report on his activities."

"You're exaggerating."

Gwen picked up her phone. "Have you read through our texts recently?"

Sybil looked at her own phone, sitting on the table next to her plate, as if it were a traitor. With a roll of her eyes, she grabbed it and dropped it in her purse. "Gwen, you know me to be a sensible person—"

"Too sensible, even."

"I was an excellent student at uni. I went to medical school. People entrust me with their children's health. I've never taken any shit from silly men."

"You've hardly taken anything from any men at all," Gwen cut in with a smile.

"Yes! So why would I suddenly be interested in a man who seems bent on a mission to bed half of Dublin?"

Leaning forward with her chin on her hand, Gwen sighed and said, "I don't know, darling, you tell me."

Sybil opened her mouth to speak, but after a long moment merely dropped her face into her hands. "What's wrong with me?"

Gwen chuckled. "Nothing! He's fit! Having a crush on a nice looking person is normal human behavior."

"So you don't think I'm a nutter?"

"Not for that. What's not normal is avoiding said person and then making silly assumptions about his life and then obsessing about said assumptions. Talk to him. Maybe he's nice."

"I doubt it," Sybil said poutily, which made Gwen smile. "Men who are that gorgeous are rarely nice. And anyway, I don't need a man."

"I know you don't. I've never said you needed a man. I've said you need a good shag, and this crush is evidence that your subconscious agrees with me."

Sybil rolled the stem of her wineglass between her fingers and contemplated the swirling liquid for a long quiet minute. Finally, she took a sip and said, "So what am I supposed to do, just knock on his door and ask if he wants to have a drink?"

"Or maybe just not run the other direction next time you see him."

"But what if I'm right about him being a playboy?"

"For all your talk about the girls who pop by all the time, you've never complained about any noise that would indicate that he's . . . you know . . . showing them a good time?"

Sybil giggled at Gwen's use of euphemism.

"I'm serious, Syb. You've told me the walls are paper-thin. Shouldn't you be able to hear all the shagging he's supposedly doing?"

Sybil thought for a moment. "Well, if he isn't shagging them, what could he possibly be doing?"

Gwen winked. "A good question for you to ask him, I think."

DAY 26

Of course, it took Sybil a few days to work up the nerve.

And of course, when she finally knocked on his door, he wasn't alone.

A harried young woman Sybil couldn't imagine was more than 20 years old opened the door, and as soon as she saw Sybil, her eyes widened and she yelled out, "TOM, YOU'RE SAVED!"

Before Sybil knew what was happening, the girl grabbed Sybil's wrist and pulled her through the house, out to the small yard and into the garage, where Tom was sitting on the floor trying to reach a cut on the back of his arm that had bled through his shirt.

"Did you get the first-aid kit?" he said, looking up. "Oh, um, hello," he added, a bit bewildered when he caught sight of Sybil. "Cait, I asked for the first-aid kit. You didn't need to bother my neighbor—I'm very sorry about this."

"No, it's OK—she didn't," Sybil said quickly.

"I didn't bother anyone," Caitlin said with a roll of her eyes. "She was knocking on your door when I went into the house."

Tom's eyes widened in surprise, and immediately Sybil recognized the expression in the eyes that had greeted her at the door. His sister?

"You were coming over here?" he asked.

Sybil tucked a hair behind her ear and nodded, hoping the blush she felt on her cheeks was not obvious.

Caitlin went on. "Anyway, you know I hate blood, and Sarah said she's a doctor, so it seemed the logical thing to do to bring her to you."

At the word "blood," Sybil reacted and really looked at the mess Tom's cut had made for the first time. "Oh, heavens! What happened?" She quickly stepped over to Tom and kneeled down behind him so she could really look at the extent of the cut.

"He tripped and fell and there was a box cutter out," Caitlin answered, pointing at the offending object, which was on the floor next to him.

As she bent down to pick up it, Sybil said, "Would you grab that kit, um . . . ?"

"Caitlin!" she filled in cheerfully. "And yes, I'll get it now."

After Caitlin had bounded out of the garage, Sybil touched the area around the cut. Then, she grabbed the sleeve of his T-shirt between her fingers, used to the box cutter to tear a whole near the seam and then tore the sleeve off.

The quickness and ease with which she did it surprised Tom and kept him silent.

"I'm afraid stitches and a tetanus shot are likely in order," she said, finally, "but I can at least get this patched up for the trip to the hospital."

With that she met Tom's eyes again. He looked a little dazed.

"You were coming over here?"

Sybil looked down and bit her lip. Whatever speech she had concocted when she'd crossed the porch to his side of the building was out the window, so she merely nodded.

"Why?"

It was a logical question, but Sybil was now too aware of how close to him she was to know from logic. "What do you mean why?"

"Why were you coming over?" He smiled. "I was getting the distinct notion that you didn't like me."

Sybil tucked her hair behind her ear again. "Why would you think that?"

Tom's smile turned into a grin. "Because of your not particularly subtle efforts to avoid me when you see me out front."

She felt her cheeks get warm once again and looked down. When she looked back up, his grin had softened into a smile that warmed her all over.

Say something! she told herself, but as she opened her mouth to speak, Caitlin's return saved her from actually having to.

"Here we are!" Caitlin exclaimed, holding up the small white box and handing it to Sybil, who immediately stood up and set it on a nearby table to open it.

"OK, Tom, I'm going home," Caitlin said, turning to leave through the open garage door.

"What? Cait!"

"I have to get home!"

"For what? You just got here. What about your lesson?"

Caitlin laughed. "You're in no position to give it, obviously, and I, um, told mam I'd be home by six."

Tom rolled his eyes. "No, you didn't."

"Actually," Sybil said, looking at Caitlin. "He does need to go to the hospital, and someone should go with him."

"OK, but could maybe you take him? Because I have to get home. Sorry, Tommy, I'll text later OK? Bye!"

And just like that Sybil and Tom were alone.

She walked back over to him slowly, holding some gauze and antibiotic ointment, and kneeled down again.

Tom scratched his forehead with an obviously embarrassed look on his face. He squeezed his eyes together and laughed. "Little sisters, am I right?"

Sybil smiled as she began to clean the cut. "Watch what you say. I'm a little sister."

"Well, I'm sure you're not as much of a handful as mine are."

"My older sisters and my parents would beg to differ. I'm what you'd call the black sheep of the family."

"In what kind of family is the black sheep a doctor?" Tom asked.

Sybil looked him in the eyes and saw nothing but genuine curiosity. She looked back down at what she was doing and answered, "One that's not as interesting as you'd think."

After cleaning the excess blood, Sybil took a cotton swab from the kit and applied the antibiotic to the cut. She worked in silence, feeling his eyes on her the whole time but starting not to feel entirely disarmed in his presence. Once finished, she wrapped a bandage loosely around his bicep.

Looking up at him, she said, "You said, 'you're not as much of a handful as mine are.' Does that mean you have more than one younger sister?"

"Two younger and one older."

"Three sisters?" she said with a smile. "That's quite a lot for one man to contend with."

Tom laughed. "Tell me about it. Busybodies, the lot of them, especially when it comes to planning out my life. I'd move away, but at this stage I probably wouldn't know what to do with myself without them."

"So they all live here in Dublin?"

"Yes . . . you've now met all three."

Sybil's brow furrowed. "I have?"

"Caitlin is the youngest, then Sarah, the one you said I needed to be nicer to—and I still want to know what that's about, by the way—then me, then Moira."

Sybil thought back to her exchange with Sarah. His sister? His sister. His SISTER! "Sarah and Moira," she said quietly. "Of course." She put her hand on her forehead and laughed to herself. She looked up at him and found him smiling knowingly at her.

"You thought they were girlfriends, didn't you?"

Sybil crossed her arms. "Even if they aren't, that still doesn't account for the dozen or so others that I've seen come and go since you've moved in."

Tom threw his head back and laughed.

"What?" Sybil said, starting to feel indignant.

"Sarah said this was going to be a thing."

"What are you talking about?"

Tom laughed again and rubbed his face with his hands. "I give private classes on basic car maintenance."

"Oh! And let me guess all of your pupils just happen to be young beautiful single women."

"It's not by design! And not all of them are single!"

Sybil laughed and rolled her eyes. "I'll bet."

"It's true!"

Sybil narrowed her eyes. "How many dates have you gotten out of it?"

"One, which was such a disaster, Moira started booking the appointments for me to root out anyone with ulterior motives. Not that it matters. I haven't been able to keep a girlfriend for more than a month since I was 20."

"Is that supposed to impress me?"

"Wow, you really don't like me do you?"

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to," Tom said, scratching his head sheepishly again.

Sybil sighed and looked down guiltily. "It does . . . look funny. All the girls coming in and out. I mean, what else was I supposed to think?"

Tom didn't answer, but looked at Sybil for a long moment. "What do you think now?"

Sybil bit her lip. "Why car maintenance?"

Tom shrugged. "Moira got swindled by a mechanic once so I took it upon myself to educate her and Sarah so it wouldn't happen again. Sarah told all her friends. They told their friends and so on. I've just started with Caitlin, but as you saw, she has the attention span of a fruit fly."

Sybil laughed. "Is that why she left you here injured?"

"No, that was because of you."

"Me?"

Tom smiled a smile that she felt from head to toe. "Like I said. They're busybodies."

Sybil felt herself blush, but for whatever reason, she no longer minded if he noticed. She stood up and took the arm that wasn't injured to help him up as well. "So she left so I would take you."

Tom nodded. "You don't have to, though. I'm happy to take a taxi."

"No, I'll do it," Sybil said with a smile. She squeezed the arm she was holding playfully. "It's not good to disappoint sisters."

DAY 27

The attending doctor who had seen to Tom at the hospital had prescribed him a pain killer after stitching him up, while Sybil waited at the nurse's station and mostly unsuccessfully avoided questions from colleagues about who her friend was ("He's just my neighbor!"). So she insisted to Tom, after it was all done, that he get home, take his medication and rest, but she herself did very little resting once in her own house later. She spent many hours laying in bed thinking about how wrong she she'd been, how funny and interesting and intelligent he was, how well they'd gotten on in what might have been a terribly awkward situation, and what was supposed to happen now.

So she wasn't entirely surprised—but no less touched—when she stepped out her front door the following afternoon to go for a run and found a small vase with flowers with a note on her welcome mat.

Thank you for coming to my rescue. -T.B.

Sybil couldn't stop herself from smiling as she brought the flowers inside and forced herself to take several deep breaths before going back out to knock on his door.

When she did, he opened it with a slightly concerned look on his face and said, "You may want to run for it while you have the chance!"

Sybil narrowed her eyes. "What?"

"SYBIL! So good to see you again!" Sarah popped up behind Tom and took Sybil's arm to escort her into the kitchen, where Moira was stirring something at the stove and Caitlin was at the table looking at her mobile.

"Perfect beef and barley stew, if I must say so myself," Moira said as she looked up. "Oh, hello!"

Caitlin also smiled at her brightly. "Hi, again."

"Thank you so much for taking care of him last night," Sarah continued. "He can't get out of his own way sometimes."

"I do just fine," Tom put in, "no thanks to sisters who abandon me while I'm bleeding."

Caitlin looked up from for mobile. "Hey! I fetched you a doctor, you big baby."

"It was very kind of you to take him to the hospital," Moira said. "He showed us the stitches. You didn't have to do it yourself, did you?"

"No," Sybil replied. "They likely wouldn't have let me anyway. The emergency care doctors at my hospital like to protect their turf, and I'm actually a pediatrician."

Moira's eyes widened in delight. "You are?!"

"She has two very accident prone boys," Sarah explained.

"Not accident prone so much as too daring for their own good," Moira said.

Sarah laughed. "The phrase, 'Hey mam, watch this!' hasn't gotten so much use since this one," she said pointing to Tom.

"Says the one who did everything I did just to prove she could," Tom replied.

Sybil smiled. "How old are they?"

"Seven and four," Moira answered.

"Wonderful ages to be," Sybil said. "It can be tough on parents, but letting them explore and play really is the best way for them to learn who they are. Telling them to be careful is important but not to the point that it discourages activity. Many pediatricians wouldn't say so, perhaps, but broken bones are much easier to mend than broken spirits."

Moira looked over at Tom. "Oh, Tommy, we are definitely keeping this one."

Sybil bit her lip and looked over at Tom who was scratching his forehead in embarrassment.

"And on that note," Sarah said, looking pointedly at both Moira and Caitlin.

Caitlin stood abruptly. "Uh, yeah, I've got to be home."

"Sure, you do," Tom said, in a tone that suggested he'd seen this coming.

"She does!" Sarah said.

"And so do we," Moira said, putting a lid on the pot she'd been stirring. She quickly grabbed her purse and followed Sarah (who was pulling Caitlin along) out the door toward the front of the house.

Tom and Sybil continued to look at one another as the slam of the front door rang through the house.

"Do they always leave so quickly?" Sybil asked with a smile.

Tom looked at her with a smile for a long moment. "Sometimes they don't leave quickly enough."

Sybil blushed and looked down, not sure what to say or do next.

"So, um . . . fancy some beef and barley stew?"

DAY 30

"OK, I'm done!"

Tom looked at his stopwatch. "Twenty-eight minutes and nineteen seconds."

Sybil was kneeling beside his car, which he'd used to show her how to change a tire because she did not have one herself. After walking her through it twice, he'd tasked her with doing it on her own, without his help or instruction. She'd have to keep practicing, he'd warned, until she could do it in less than thirty minutes using a hand jack and a lug wrench.

"That long?"

"That long?! You did it in less than half an hour on your first try!" Tom laughed as he stood from the lawn chair he'd been sitting in as he watched her work and came over to kneel next to her.

Sybil sat back on her heels and sighed. "I thought I was really moving fast, like I was going to be done in ten."

"Sybil, even I can't do it in ten minutes without power tools."

Sybil crossed her arms in indignation, a gesture and reaction with which, merely three days into their friendship, Tom was already feeling very familiar. "So you're saying if you can't, then I definitely can't—why, because I'm a woman?"

Tom laughed again. "No, because this is literally the first time you've changed a tire on your own and I've done it hundreds of times. And because you don't have to do it in less than ten. You don't even have to do it in less than thirty. I only tell the women I teach that in case you happen to have a blowout at night or in the rain when you're on your own, so you've learned well enough that you don't feel unsafe doing it by yourself because you know it won't take you that long if you pack an electric jack, which you should."

Sybil frowned and looked at the tire on her car again. "All right, but you should know I don't like being told I can't do something."

He smiled. "I could tell, and believe it or not, I like that about you."

"And when I learn something new, I don't just want to learn it, I want to master it."

"I don't think you're getting how impressive it is that you changed a tire in less than half an hour on your first try."

Sybil laughed and buried her face in her hands. "I'm sorry. I can't help it."

"I can't imagine what it would have been like to be your classmate in medical school."

"Would you believe I've mellowed since then?"

"I'm not sure I would, no," he replied, teasingly.

Sybil bit her lip, feeling a wave of nerves hit her all of a sudden. Again.

After his sisters' not-so-subtle departure a few days before, they'd spent the rest of the afternoon and evening together, getting to know one another, but at the end of the night, a panic came over Sybil about whether he was expressing interest due to the prodding of his sisters or because he genuinely liked her, so she made an excuse and left quickly before a potential goodnight kiss moment presented itself. They'd found excuses to see each other each of the next two days, but now Sybil couldn't tell if the romantic chemistry she'd felt on the first night really was there or was merely her imagination.

"So, what's next?" she said, forcing herself not to let silence linger between them too long.

Tom sighed as he stood and held out his hand for her to do the same. "Next is the battery—how to recharge one and how to replace a dead one. But that'll have to be for another day."

"Oh?" Sybil said, her shoulders drooping slightly.

"I have another appointment in about twenty minutes. I'm afraid you can't learn how to change a battery in less than twenty minutes—and lest you want to take that as a challenge, what I mean is that I can't teach you how to do it in twenty minutes."

Sybil laughed and covered her face with her hands again, bending over at the waist slightly before straightening back up to look at him again. The action tousled her hair a bit, but before she could tuck it back behind her ear, he did it for her.

"So—"

"So how much do I owe you?" she asked quickly, for some reason feeling the urge to avert whatever it was he planned on saying.

He looked at her puzzled. "What? Sybil, I'm not going to charge you."

She put her hands on her hips playfully. "There you go telling me my business again. Of course, I'm going to pay you, Tom."

"But—"

"No, this is your livelihood. You can't ask me not to pay. I've taken up so much of your time."

"Actually, I've given it to you," he replied.

"Tom—"

"Sybil, do you even own a car?"

The question stopped her short.

Busted.

She looked him in the eyes, then smiled, looking away, knowing her cheeks were likely giving her away before she could even answer. "No."

Tom put his hands behind his back and leaned forward slightly so their eyes were level. "So why are you here?"

Sybil rolled her eyes at his knowing look, but couldn't keep the smile of her face. "You."

"And you think I'm not here for the same reason?"

Sybil crossed her arms and looked down. "I think maybe you're here because you love your sisters and, apparently, they love me."

Tom laughed. "May I try to convince you otherwise—not about the fact that they love you, which is true, but about me?"

Sybil looked into his eyes. "Sure, but how do you plan on doing that?"

And he kissed her.