Beard Mode (The Dixie Warden Rejects MC Book 1)

by Lani Lynn Vale

  “Thanks,” I nodded to him as we passed.

  Richards’ eyes went to the woman’s chest.

  I couldn’t blame him.

  I’d done the same thing the moment I’d gotten to her side.

  What I couldn’t help was the irrational surge of jealousy that poured through me at seeing him checking her out.

  Twenty minutes later, I had Imogen’s face numb, and her asshole nephew sitting in a chair leaving us the hell alone long enough for me to sew up her face.

  “Are you allergic to anything?” I asked.

  “Latex,” she answered, eyeing the gloves.

  I sighed and threw them down onto the counter, washed my hands, and then reached for the non-latex gloves…which sucked ass, by the way.

  They didn’t stretch worth a shit, and I was a man with big hands.

  Non-stretching gloves meant I had to work them onto my hands carefully so I didn’t rip them.

  They also made my hands feel disgusting for hours afterward.

  “Glad you asked before you touched me with those,” she murmured.

  “That’s something you need to mention before you’re ever seen. Everything has latex in it,” I told her.

  She shuddered.

  “Oh, I know,” she winced. “I figured that out the hard way.”

  I was intrigued.

  “What happened?” I asked conversationally, pressing into her leg as I leaned over her to start stitching the cut.

  She blushed to her roots, and I had a feeling I knew without her having to say exactly what was wrong.

  “Condoms?” I guessed.

  She nodded.

  “Condoms.”

  Chapter 2

  When life depresses me, I look down and think ‘at least I have great boobs!’

  -Imogen’s secret thoughts

  Imogen

  “Why are you doing this?” my mother asked me.

  I turned to face her, tired of having to explain myself.

  “I’m trying to do the right thing. If he wants to see him, then I’ll take him to see him,” I replied with very little patience.

  “You’ll regret it,” my mom said. “Mark my words.”

  ***

  Five hours, and three stitches later, I was regretting it.

  My mom saw my face and immediately tried to hide her smile.

  She also managed not to say, ‘I told you so.’

  Barely.

  “That’s going to go over well at work tonight,” my mom supplied.

  I glared at her.

  “I know,” I sighed. “Jesus, the boys are going to give me a fit over this.”

  “Yep,” Mom agreed.

  I looked at the clock.

  “Does it have any bruising?” I asked, touching it lightly.

  My mom scooted closer so she could inspect it more thoroughly. “Not yet. But it’s gonna. What happened?”

  “Rod happened,” I grumbled. “He, of course, ‘didn’t meant to trip me with the leg extension on the wheelchair,’ but I’m not stupid.”

  My mother groaned.

  “How many times do you want me to tell you…”

  I held up my hand, refusing to let her finish.

  “That was the last time,” I promised. “I’m not letting Davis guilt me into taking him anymore. My head is killing me.”

  My mother nodded in understanding.

  “Did you get stitches at the ER? Did Cooley take care of you?” she asked.

  ‘Cooley’ was my father. ‘Cooley’ was also an ER doctor and a great guy. He and my mom, however, couldn’t get along. And would never get along if they kept being so stubborn and pigheaded.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I let the medic at the jail do it. He’s our neighbor across the hall. The one that moved in with one box, remember?”

  My mother grinned.

  “I do,” she confirmed.

  My mother and I knew the moment he arrived. Not because we were nosy, but because the man’s bike was loud as hell. He announced himself everywhere he went.

  Even if he was only going to the damn store that was on the corner of the intersection that was down about a mile from the apartments. I heard him start his bike up. Heard him accelerate all the way to the convenience store. Then I heard him accelerate all the way home.

  The man definitely didn’t have a ‘slow’ speed in his body.

  “He’s the one who fixed me up.”

  “And you didn’t go to the ER because?” Mom asked.

  “Because I didn’t want Dad to say, ‘I told you so’ like you really wanted to,” I told her bluntly.

  Mom snorted.

  “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” she asked.

  I nodded. “I do.”

  “Then get there.”

  I sighed.

  Then I ‘got’ there.

  ***

  “Bob!” I bellowed as I walked in the door to my shop. “Why is there a broken-down Nova in the middle of the driveway?”

  Bob wheeled out from underneath the car he was working on, a piece of shit Impala that needed a lot more work than I was willing to do for it, and blinked.

  “What happened to your face?” he asked.

  Bob was a forty-nine-year-old hard-nosed man, married to the love of his life, Darcy. He had two kids in college and was on the brink of retiring, and I dreaded the day he told me he was done.

  “Rod happened,” I sighed. “Though you probably already know that, don’t you?”

  Bob’s mouth twitched.

  “Small town,” he agreed, not disagreeing with my assumption. “I heard you were hurt, just not why you were hurt.”

  I rolled my eyes. “The Nova?” I pushed.

  Bob disappeared back underneath the car. “Had a guy bring it in today. Said it was for a buddy. Told me he would be by today to get it inside and that the guy wished to help us work on it when we had the time.”

  My brows furrowed. “Since when do we do that?”

  “Since the guy was a Marine and I had a hard time telling him no.”

  I snorted.

  “Whatever.”

  We were all Marines at one point.

  I’d served the mandatory four years before I got out, specializing in mechanics while I was in. Then I’d gotten out, taken over my grandfather’s shop, and somehow ended up collecting a lot of retired Marines in my employ.

  Mom was a Marine. Dad was a Marine. Grandpa was a Marine. My sister, Clarabelle, was a Marine.

  Everyone I knew was a Marine.

  So it was no wonder that Bob would extend that invitation to a fellow Marine.

  Hell, I would have, too.

  “Did he say what time the friend would be coming by?” I asked casually as I walked over to the office and tugged my work coveralls off the hook right inside the door.

  “After three when his shift at the jail ends.”

  Something hot swept through my body as I thought of possibilities of who the man could be.

  One pair of beautiful teal blue eyes stood out, and I hoped that it wasn’t him, even though I’d seen the Marine Corps tattoo on his right forearm.

  Then I quickly squelched that hope.

  He’d yelled at Davis.

  He was mean. Had a shit bedside manner…and I was fairly sure there was no possibility that that man wouldn’t be taken—by a woman, not by kidnapping.

  I was fairly sure the man could handle himself. He was big enough. Mean enough.

  He was sin. You know the type.

  Tall. Dark. Handsome. Delectable. Bitable. Sexable.

  Though sexable likely wasn’t a word, but if it were, this man’s picture would be in the definition.

  “Don’t you have work to do?”

  I turned and sneered at Tagon, the other employee that’s worked here since my grandfather owned it.

  Tagon wasn’t like Bob, however.

  No, Tagon was a dick.
/>
  He was old, set in his ways, and made absolutely no effort to hide his disdain at having to work for a woman. A woman who was tiny and could be smashed underneath his fist if he ever felt like doing it.

  “I don’t know, Tagon. Do I?” I asked sweetly.

  I liked to act like a dumb blonde to add insult to injury.

  If Tagon—don’t ever fucking call me Tag—wanted to think I was incapable, I would go out of my way to act like I was incapable.

  Hence the dumb blonde routine.

  Sometimes, I even purposefully shorted him hours so he would have to come ask about his check.

  Sure, it was petty, but I liked the way it caused his cheek to twitch.

  “You have a Jeep that needs a new transmission, and a Ford truck that’s making a knocking sound in the motor.” Tagon crossed his arms. “Remember?”

  I blinked.

  “Oh yeah.”

  He growled in frustration before walking off, but not before I heard him mutter under his breath.

  “Don’t know what your grandfather was fucking thinking.”

  I grinned and walked to the office, waving at the grandfather in question.

  “Hey, Pops,” I called. “What are you doing here so early?”

  Pops was my mom’s father, and he acted like he didn’t retire and sell me his business four years ago.

  He still opened. He still followed all the comings and goings, bill-wise. He made sure the stock was current.

  Literally everything he used to do, besides pay bills, he still did—though I noticed he never offered to pay the electric bill even though he was practically living in the office with the air conditioner blasting.

  “Hi, Gen,” Pops said distractedly. “Did you see the Nova?”

  I growled.

  “Yes,” I replied, clipped.

  Pops eyes lifted from the paper he was steadily reading.

  “What was that ‘yes’ for?” he asked. “Is there a reason you’re throwing attitude? What’s wrong with your face?”

  I brought my hand up to my eye.

  “Rod,” I replied simply.

  Pops started to growl.

  “I’m going make sure that boy never gets out of prison,” he snapped. “I got a lot more things I could press charges on him for.”

  It was Pops’ fault that Rod was even in our lives to begin with.

  Rod had been an employee at Pops’ Garage about eight years ago when he met my sister. Clarabelle had immediately fallen in love, and they slept together before Rod had even worked for Pops for a week.

  Rod, being Rod, had immediately dumped her, but thought he could continue to work for my grandfather. Something that my Pops didn’t allow him to do.

  But then Clarabelle had fallen pregnant, and Rod had tried to do the right thing by getting back with her. Which worked only long enough for Pops to rehire Rod.

  Then Clarabelle had given birth to Davis nine months later, and he’d split at the first sign of domesticity.

  Over the course of Davis’ life, his father and mother had gotten back together multiple times, and broken it off just as many.

  Davis knew his father. Loved his father. But his father didn’t feel the same way about him.

  Though Davis didn’t know that.

  Davis thought his father was a grand ol’ guy, while the rest of the world knew him for the piece of shit he really was.

  As in, thieving, lying, cheating, I’m-going-to-do-whatever-the-hell-I want-to kind of guy.

  Rod had stolen quite a lot of stuff from my family over the time he’d been in our lives, and it’d finally forced Pops—who was never argued with no matter what—to press theft charges on Rod for him to go away.

  Though, during his getaway from the garage the last time he’d stolen something from Pops, he’d also tried to run from the cops, who Pops had called, and then tried to pull out a gun. That resulted in the cops drawing their weapons, and things escalated from there when shots were fired. Rod wound up with a bullet to the spine that rendered him paralyzed from the waist down.

  “You won’t get a chance to send him back to prison,” I murmured. “When…if…he gets out, he won’t be doing much of anything. He can barely even move his wheelchair. How is he going to get away if he tries to steal something?”

  Pops started to laugh.

  “And to answer your earlier question, yes, I did see the Nova in the driveway. Did you meet the man that owns it?” I tried to change the subject.

  Rod was anything but amusing to think about. And after today, I really, really didn’t want to talk about him. Not even a little bit.

  “Nope,” Pops said. “I was out to breakfast with Nan, and I didn’t get a chance to see him. Bob said he was a looker, though,” Pops grinned. “And I rented him two stalls. One for his junker that he’s going to scrap for the Nova, and the other for the Nova.”

  I snorted.

  A ‘looker’ to Pops meant the man had tattoos.

  Pops liked tattoos, even though he didn’t have any of his own. He was absolutely enthralled, and never made it a secret that he was obsessed with them.

  “All right, Pops,” I sighed. “I have to go take care of a few cars. Which one are you taking?”

  In answer, Pops picked up his paper again and I had my answer.

  Obviously, he wasn’t taking any today.

  Wonderful.

  ***

  “Pops!” I called when I heard him walk up to the Nova I found myself underneath. “Can you give me a three quarters?”

  I held my hand out from underneath the car, and immediately I had the wrench in my hand, which I brought below and immediately put it to use.

  “Did you get a chance to talk to the guy about my suggestion?” I asked, looking up through the hole where the engine used to reside.

  Then I promptly gasped when a man’s face, which most assuredly didn’t belong to Pops, leaned casually over the side of the car and looked down at me.

  Me, with streaks of dirt and grease all over my face. It was also rather likely that I had chunks of dirt in my hair.

  “Yes, he did call me.” The man—the completely intolerable man—stared at me. “But I’m not sure that I want to sell. Not yet, anyway.”

  I snorted.

  “You’d be stupid not to take this offer,” I told him. “The man who saw it is a local car restoration guru. He pays triple what they’re worth.”

  “I know the guy,” the sexy prison medic who’d sewn me up only hours prior, informed me. “But even if I did want to sell the car, I wouldn’t sell it to that piece of shit.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  “You really should be careful who you call a piece of shit,” I tried to keep a straight face. “It’s not very nice.”

  “If the shoe fits,” he shrugged. “I heard you cursing up a storm as I walked up.”

  I sighed.

  “That’s this car’s fault. When was the last time you had this thing cleaned?” I asked, gesturing to my hair.

  The man’s blue eyes found mine.

  “I just got it last week, but if the trash in the interior is anything to go by, the last time it was driven was the seventies—according to the old newspapers I found in the back seat. Likely, the last time it was washed was around then, too.” His stare was unnerving.

  I cleared my throat.

  “Old man Rayburn?” I guessed.

  The man nodded.

  “Yes,” he confirmed. “How did you know?”

  “We used to have a house that backed up to his property.” I slid out from underneath the car on my creeper, and did a sit up so I didn’t have to look up at the man anymore. “I used to hit baseballs over the fence, and then have to sneak over there to retrieve them. He had quite a few old cars. Cars that he refused to sell.”

  “If you ever go see Rayburn, mention Aaron to him. He’ll sell you a car if he knows you are the one fixing up the car for me.”
/>   I tried not to laugh at the hilarity of buying a car.

  I couldn’t afford a car.

  I couldn’t afford insurance on a car. I also couldn’t afford an apartment.

  When Clarabelle left for a tour of duty in Iraq, she put not just me, but my mother, in a bind. Though, at the time, she’d thought that she was leaving Davis with Davis’ father—who had sworn up and down that he would take care of Davis while she was gone.

  Then he’d gone and stolen from Pops again, and then had gotten shot and put in jail, leaving my mother, my younger sister and I taking care of Davis until my older sister came back in six or seven months.

  Really, it likely wouldn’t have been all that bad, sharing Davis with my mother.

  Then we’d had a series of bad things happen.

  Like my car breaking down. Then my car’s tires were stolen. And then it was broken into.

  My mother’s house had been burglarized, and then she’d lost her job as a truck dispatcher during the oil recession—and hadn’t been able to find a job since then.

  Though Mom had disabilities that rendered her unable to do certain jobs that would likely never affect people that could work for less money.

  So then Mom and my sister had moved in with me, and I’d taken over as the primary breadwinner for not just myself, but my mom and Davis as well.

  Though it’d been my decision not to take Clarabelle’s offer of money when she’d heard what was going on.

  “What’s that look for, Pixie?” the man mumbled.

  “What look?” I feigned ignorance.

  “The look that practically screams that you have shit on your shoulders that you’d rather not deal with.”

  I shrugged and stood up, immediately walking to the sink in the corner and scrubbing my hands clean—or as clean as I could get them since I was a fucking mechanic who didn’t wear gloves like a pussy.

  “I pulled the engine today,” I said. “I had some free time since the cars I planned to work on I couldn’t get the parts for. This is going to need a lot of work, but the chassis is in great shape, not to mention the body work on it is near perfect.”

  The man cocked his head to the side.

  “I told the man I dropped it off to that I wanted to be a part of this project,” he murmured. “He told me I could. Was he wrong?”

  I shook my head.