He pulls up in front of the salon, shutting off the bike, and I’m shocked by the sudden eerie silence. I climb off, adjusting my skirt to cover myself, and he smirks, patting the red lace on the bars.
A thought occurs to me. “Hey, how’d you know this is home too?”
I see a flash across his eyes. “I do a lot of my best work at night. Nobody’s around to fuck with me. Sometimes, I even sleep here. There’s a bed up on the second floor that I use when I don’t feel like going home. I see everyone coming and going along the street. Maybe not as much as Old Earl, but watching what’s happening around me is deeply ingrained in me. I know you barely drive your car, so I figured you must be living in an apartment above the salon.”
I feel a warmth inside, even if it is silly. “You’ve been watching me?” He thinks I’m judging him, nervous at his surveillance, but he nods his head once. “Good. That makes me feel safe. Thanks for looking out for me. And uh, Evan? Trust me, I’m well aware that I can look directly into your garage and watch you working up a sweat. My best day this week was when you were working on that Camaro and took your shirt off. I damn near missed the timer alarm I set for a client’s highlights because I was staring out the window at you.”
He grins, leaning against his handlebars. “You’ve been watching me?”
I nod, biting my lip to contain my laughter. He cups my face, leaning in for a soft kiss. It’s different from the kisses we’ve had before. There’s not fire but tenderness . . . and the thrilling promise that no matter what Evan said in that dirt parking lot, this isn’t over.
When it’s over, he leans back, whispering into my hair. “You pervy stalker. Take a picture. It’ll last longer.”
My laughter escapes, Evan even letting out a chortle, which I’m taking as major progress for the stoic man. “Yeah, well, you already got your trophy. I’m just gonna have to get my own sometime.”
“We’ll see,” Evan says, giving me a kiss on the cheek. “Goodnight, Princess.”
“Goodnight, Evan.”
I turn, walking into the salon. He waits while I lock the door, then he pats the lacy handlebars one more time without looking at me, and I think maybe he doesn’t even know he did it, but he fires up the bike, shooting across the lanes of traffic and into the garage.
I head upstairs to sleep, excited that he’s just mere steps away.
Evan
“Stop the presses. What in the actual fuck is happening here?”
I stop work on the wiring job I’m doing on the Range Rover I’m working on as I hear TJ talking to me. I glance down my body and see his scuffed work boots standing by the rear hitch, the cause of all the problems. Fucking amateurs thought they could install a trailer hitch and wiring by themselves. Not on a Range Rover. The Brits love making their wiring harnesses difficult.
I roll out, giving him a questioning look. “What’s up, man? Just checking out the turn signals on this tea slurping son of a bitch.”
TJ looks me up and down as I get to my feet, raising an eyebrow. “You have the same hair, you rode in on that same bike . . . but I’m not sure if you’re really my brother. You sick? Win the lottery? Get laid?”
Confused, I stare back at him. “Huh?”
“Well, the ‘fuck off, world’ look you normally wear is gone, I haven’t smelled you light up one of those damn Marlboros all day, and when I checked the trash, I didn’t see a single can. The coffee pot’s still full. What gives?”
“Nothing,” I reply, trying to growl but for some reason, just not able to find myself able to. TJ’s just trying to be cool. “It’s just one of those days.”
TJ scoffs, rolling his eyes. “Bullshit, Evan. You were whistling. Not a song, or hell, even a tune, but you were damn sure whistling while you worked. That’s new, not just a ‘good day’. What’s up?”
Was I? If I was, I didn’t realize it. I was just focused on the job at hand, but now that he mentions it, my brain has been a little quieter this morning. I mean, I slept halfway decently, and when I got to work today, instead of seeming stupid or infuriating, I just found this job to be a puzzle to solve. “I dunno. Like I said, nice weather today.”
TJ gives me a look I used to get in the Army, the one that senior sergeants would give when they knew I was full of shit but wasn’t quite going over the line yet. “Nice weather, huh? My money’s on your getting laid. Finally. It’s been forever, man. Gotta grease the pipes every once in awhile or you get rusty, Tin Man.” He laughs, then shakes his head.
Without warning, white heat sparks in my core, singing out through my body as my fists clench. I grab his coveralls, jerking him to his tiptoes before pushing him away, pain lancing through my head. “Fuck you, TJ. I was doing all right this morning, but thanks for fucking that up.”
He leans back, but he’s used to my outbursts and just shakes his head softly. “Bro, I was just teasing you. Chill out.”
I sigh, still wound tightly, and turn away to snatch a cigarette, realizing he was right. I hadn’t grabbed one of these today.
Standing in the doorway as I start to puff away, I hear TJ talking behind me. “Sorry for hitting a sore spot. I was just glad to hear the noise. In other news, I went on a date with Alice again.”
I side-eye him, my brows furrowing together as I rack my brain but come up short. Maybe I really do need some caffeine. “Who?”
TJ leans against the side of the shop, upwind of me, as always, and looks across the street with me as I take a deep drag, the swimmy feeling rushing up to my brain like it always does even as the disgusting taste floods my mouth, reminding me of other smoke I’ve breathed and making me want to gag.
“The girl I told you about, asshole. From the hotel? We went to dinner last night, had a couple of drinks, and then I dropped her back home.”
I can’t help but egg him on a little. He’s my baby brother, after all. “That’s it? You didn’t fuck her?”
He growls a little bit, glaring at me. “Don’t talk about her like that. No, I didn’t. It was a damn first date, and she’s not like that. We just kissed on the little porch when I dropped her off.”
I flashback to my date with McKayla. Well, I don’t even know if it qualifies as a date when you go for a ride and finger bang her before dropping her off curbside, but as I didn’t blow my load until later that night, I guess you can’t call it a booty call either. TJ definitely wouldn’t call that a date, but McKayla didn’t seem to mind.
But maybe she should.
TJ’s chick, Alice, probably liked being picked up for a proper date with a decent guy. From everything he’s told me about her, now that I think about it, she’s probably the kind of girl any guy would like. Smart, I guess cute, and TJ is obviously over the moon about her. She’s probably what a lot of guys would call ‘marriage material’. She’s the sort of girl you treat right, take her out to dinner, pick her up at her doorstep, and maybe even shave most of the time beforehand.
McKayla should have that too. Too fucking bad that’s not me though. I’m far from decent. I shave two, maybe three times a week, and I can’t remember the last time I dressed ‘nice’.
I puff away as TJ tells me every little damn detail about his date, and I stare across the street into the salon in order to distract myself a little, watching McKayla tell a very animated story to a lady in her chair.
As I’m watching, I see that weasel Jaxson pull up and park his gleaming BMW at the curb, blocking half my sightline of the salon interior. He walks in, and from far away, I hear TJ. “What’s wrong?”
I look over at him, fury coursing through my veins and my fingers crushing the last remnants of my cig so completely that I don’t even feel the burn of the ember as it’s snuffed against my palm. “What?”
TJ looks startled, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. “You’re snarling. What’s wrong? Flashback?”
I sigh. He can be a pain in the ass, but most of the time, he’s always there for me, and he’s tried to understand. “Nah, just saw that cit
y council shit going in the salon.”
TJ glances over, recognizing the car. “Jaxson? Don’t really know him, but he seemed all right when I opened up the garage. Came by, shook hands, wished me luck. It even sounded half genuine.”
I think over my answer. Like TJ, I first met Jaxson soon after I came back to town just after my discharge, full of anger, clothed in my winter riding leathers, and barely able to sleep at night without screaming myself awake.
He’d come by the diner along with one of the local cops on my third day back, I guess after figuring out that I wasn’t just some transient biker. The discussion had been full of veiled comments, some snide remarks about a former service member looking like I did, and the implied threat that I’d better watch my ass.
Not that I’m going to tell TJ about that. He might try to understand, but he wouldn’t really. It’s like John Rambo said, Over there, I was in charge of million-dollar equipment. Here, I can barely hold down a job parking cars. “He’s trying to get McKayla to go out with him and he’s a slimy little shit.”
TJ stares at me in total disbelief for a solid minute before figuring out what to say. “Yeah, she could really do worse than a stable, employed guy who wants to take her out on a date. Maybe you’d rather she go out with you? Because lord knows, you could offer her so much joy and happiness with your aura of rainbows and fucking glitter.”
He huffs and stomps back into the office, shutting the door a little hard, but the hydraulic keeps it from slamming.
What the hell’s wrong with him? I just said I didn’t like the guy . . . the guy who wants to date McKayla. It wasn’t like I told him every reason I hate the fucker.
I lean back against the garage again, maintaining my study of the scene across the street. The sad part is, I know that TJ is right. McKayla deserves someone nice who’d treat her right and take her on dinner dates and carry on a conversation beyond grunts. She deserves a guy who’ll give her everything she wants and then some. Not someone haunted like me. Someone whole, who’s not half-soulless with a void filled with demons.
I don’t have any right to inflict myself on her. I need to maintain the status quo and minimize my impact by keeping to myself. Nobody needs to know just how fucked in the head I really am, and if I don’t talk to them, they won’t know. Just stay quiet, and if it gets too bad . . . I move on. The advantage of a motorcycle and a military background is that I can pretty much go wherever I want and get along just fine with what I can fit in my saddlebags and the duffle I still have at the house. Between that and my check from the military that says I’m partially disabled, I’ll get by.
Decision made, I dust the last crumbles of tobacco off my hands, rubbing them together before scrubbing them on my jeans. I give one last glance across the street, where I take a small measure of comfort in seeing Jaxson marching out the door, rounding the front bumper of his car as he dangerously tightens his already straight tie. Denied!
He looks up toward the garage, and I swear I can see a familiar coldness in his eyes when he sees me standing outside watching him. I’m doubtful he’s ever going to stop seeing me as the possible biker gang member who rolled into his town and is eventually going to cause trouble. He yanks open his car door to get in and then fires up the engine before pulling back into traffic, once again the perfect city council member as he accelerates at just the right speed up the street. It’s another thing I don’t like about the man. When you’re pissed, you’re allowed a half-second to gun your fucking engine if you’re in the clear. In fact, maybe that’s the real reason. Maybe there’s nothing slimy about him and he’s just too much of a goody-two-shoes.
My eyes tick back to the salon, and McKayla and Brad are talking like nothing happened. Brad’s waving his makeup brushes around and twirling, making McKayla laugh uproariously before her eyes glance across the street and she sees me. Before she can do anything, I turn and go back inside. That wiring harness isn’t going to fix itself.
Whatever. Maybe he just needed a cut and she couldn’t fit him in. Not my business and I don’t care.
I keep telling myself that as I head back inside and climb back under the Range Rover.
McKayla
Sweet moonrise over the mountains . . . it’s the perfect end to a busy week as I sit with Brad and Rose at the Grand Waterways Hotel bar and peer out over the distance.
When Rose invited me, I’ll admit I had a snobby moment thinking a hotel bar didn’t sound all that appealing. But she insisted they have good drinks, delicious food, and the best jukebox in town. “Don’t worry, they totally revamped when the new place opened up in the mountains,” she said. “They wanted to differentiate themselves from the snow set tourists, so while it still has the luxury look, they’ve expanded the food spread a bit. No way you won’t find something you like.”
So why the hell not? I decided. I haven’t had a chance to just kick back and see the town, and I could use a night out. And what do you know? She was right, I think to myself as I try to delicately grab my fourth piece of Toro sushi.
I glance over at Brad, the epitome of a fashionable male in his open-neck paisley shirt with the cuffs rolled up, jeans that are tight but not too tight, and boots. I happen to know that his ensemble took him thirty minutes to put on and get just right, and by now, his feet have to be killing him. I’ve never seen him in those boots before.
But I won’t give him too much hell because I took at least that long to curl and pin my pink hair into victory rolls, and that was before I slipped fishnets and a halter circle dress on. Brad may not be country, but I’m a helluva lot of rock ‘n’ roll.
If I’m going on a night out, I’m doing it my style. With Rose completing our ragtag group in a sleek modern body-hugging sheath and a chic updo that I did for her today, we look like three folks who would never fit together, but somehow, our friendship works.
Taking a sip of my scotch—no frou-frou drinks here . . . that’s Brad’s poison—I listen to Rose talk about the town as she sips at her ‘Michelada,’ a Mexican import that’s one part beer, one part tomato juice. It’s all hers. No, thank you. “I’ve been here for five years now, and I’m creeping up on my thirties. Business is finally starting to gain a foothold, I’ve been featured in the town paper twice, and have made some great friends. Really, all of us along Tourist Trap Drag are doing pretty well with the ski resort bringing in tourists. It’s far enough away that we stay pretty small but close enough that we get traffic down here to help keep businesses going.”
Brad raises his drink in the air. “To successful ventures, five-star service, and happy lives.” We toast, and he tips back some light blue thing, draining half of it before he continues. “Rose, you said this place is struggling. Why?”
Rose giggles and downs half a Michelada. “Basically, some corporation sank a ton into building this place a long time back, but the university didn’t grow the way they thought it would or something. Hell, I dunno. But for a long time, this place was the biggest eyesore in the county. Then a retired football guy invested in it, and when he did it up, he did it up right. It’s the fancy-schmancy bourgie place around here now.”
“Fuck it,” I mumble. “The food’s good.”
“That it is,” Brad agrees. “Hey, McKayla, what about that Jaxson guy who came in the other day? What’s the story there, chickadee?”
I groan, rolling my eyes. “Ugh, he’s just so, so . . . nice,” I say with look of disgust. “I bet he’s a deacon in church or something.”
Brad leans over to stage-whisper to Rose. “Nice is bad to McKayla. That means he’s a no-go.”
Rose laughs, maybe a little loudly, but who gives a damn? We’ll get home safely somehow. “Nice is a bad thing? I don’t get it.”
I take a big inhale, trying to settle my thoughts so I can explain without sounding half drunk. “I don’t know. He’s just polite and mannered and boring. Just so nice, not my type at all. The first time he tried to ask me out, I dodged and he took Brad and me to the diner for in
troductions. But he came back and asked me to dinner and kissed my cheek. I was blunt and told him I’m not looking for romance, but we could be friends. Should be a done deal, yeah? Nope, he was back again a few days later, saying he knew I was settled into town now and he was ready for that date. It was so awkward. He doesn’t seem to be taking the hint, and I’ve damn sure not been subtle. It’s not in my nature.”
“So, he really likes you, is a nice guy, and wants to take you out. I guess I’m not seeing the issue because I’d be all over that like white on rice if I could find the mythical creature known as ‘The Nice Guy’.”
I laugh, shaking my head. “I know it’s stupid, but there’s just no spark. Take-charge, I like, but there’s something with Jaxson that’s just the opposite of spark. It’s like a fire extinguisher instead. And sparks are the first ticket to McKayla Land.”
Brad, who’s heard my complaints about Jaxson before, chuckles. “Speaking of sparks, what about our across the street bad boy biker neighbor with an oh, so delicious last name, Evan Hardwick? What’s the story there? Because there’s like a whole case of fireworks going on but I’m a little concerned about the blast zone, if you catch my drift. He always seems like an angry dude.”
I laugh, knowing Brad’s got nothing to worry about from Evan, before I sigh happily. “Well, y’all know I’m not one to kiss and tell . . .”
Brad coughs, the sound suspiciously coming out like “Bullshit!” before he waves me to continue, and I laugh.
“Okay, who am I kidding? Of course I am. We went for a ride the other day and it was heaven. Things got a little hot and heavy, but I haven’t heard from him in a couple of days. Just casual for now. We’ll see, I guess.”
Brad and Rose meet eyes, an echo of a conversation they’ve obviously already had about this topic singing out loud and clear. I’ve gotta admit, I’m a little jealous. It took me a long time to get that sort of telepathy with Brad, and more than a few scratch fights.
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