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“So you’re just giving her a brand-new engine for free? A woman you just met? You’re not doing that out of the goodness of your heart, so what’s your angle?” Margot stuck her fork in her mouth with a rhetorical flourish.
“Marg, shut up and chew,” Phoebe snapped. They’d been friends from childhood, and back in the day, they’d been about evenly matched, personality-wise. Neither was a shrinking little flower, neither was afraid of confrontation or reluctant to stand up for themselves, and each was doubly scrappy in defense of someone else. But since Phoebe’s injury, Margot had gotten even more protective, to an almost maternal degree. More than Phoebe’s actual mother had ever been.
Phoebe found it endearing and aggravating in equal measure, depending on circumstances. In the current circumstance, it was aggravating as fuck.
But Duncan was smiling. “Nah, it’s okay. Margot’s looking out for you. That’s what a friend should do.” He shifted in his seat at the dinner table to face Margot directly. “First, not a brand-new engine. A junkyard find that I pulled and rebuilt. Second, it’s more a donation than a gift. I cleared it with my work because this ranch is a non-profit”—he shot a glance Phoebe’s way—“Right? Officially?”
She nodded. “We are a 501(c)(3), yes.”
He answered her nod with one of his own and turned back to Margot. “So the station will write it off. Third, I like my work, so I was happy to do the job.” He turned to Phoebe again with a smile. “And yeah, I just met Phoebe, but there’s no angle here. I just like her and wanted to help because I could. Anything else between us, I don’t know yet. I got no expectations. We’ll figure it out together.” He plowed his fork into his dirty rice and shoved the mound into his mouth. With his mouth full, he looked at Margot and added, “Any other questions?”
Margot considered him for a moment, her dark brows drawn into suspicious slashes. “It’s more than a charitable donation. You didn’t just drop off the truck and go. You’re sitting at our dinner table.”
Phoebe dropped her own fork onto her plate. “Enough, Margot. What is your damage?”
As usual, her friend was unfazed. “There is a strange man eating with us. That’s never happened, so I want to know what’s what.” She sighed dramatically. “I mean, look, honey. You just told us you ran potential sponsors off the property this afternoon. I know bitches like that are hard to choke down, but you know the ranch needs more sponsors. You’re barely staying afloat as it is. Maybe you’re not making the best decisions right now.”
Furious now, Phoebe barely kept her voice calm. “I am making perfectly good decisions. Maybe I was a little impulsive in the way I sent them off, but only that. If she makes good on her threats, I’ll figure out what to do then. But I know for sure I don’t want those kind of people involved here. Those kind of people will think they can make demands about how we do things. But you’re right—money’s tight. So I don’t know why you’re having a hernia about Duncan’s help with my truck.”
“Because I want to be sure that help doesn’t come with an expectation of services rendered.”
Now humiliated as well as infuriated, Phoebe slammed her hands on the table and made everything on it bounce and rattle. “Jesus Christ, Marg!”
With a loud sigh, Vin raised both his large hands and entered the chat. “Okay. Take a breath, both of you. Margot, I took Duncan’s measure the other day. I sure don’t know him well enough to vouch, but he made a good first impression. More importantly, Phoebe’s got this. If she wants to invite a guy to dinner, or anything else, that’s her call, not ours.” He plucked a cornbread muffin from the tea-towel-lined basket and tore it open. As he slathered honey butter on the steaming halves, he added, “And I don’t want snooty bitches around here, showing up whenever they feel like it, either.”
Phoebe gave Vin a grateful smile. He was always the level head. When she turned to Duncan, he was smiling at her.
Margot studied her three dinner companions in turn, landing last on Duncan. She sucked her teeth, then sighed. “Fine. Just know, Biker Boy, we both got Phoebe’s back, and neither one of us is squeamish.”
“Noted,” Duncan said, obviously unmoved by her implied threat.
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~oOo~
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Phoebe closed her bedroom door and left her annoying roommates on the other side. “Sorry about Margot. Since I got back home after ... everything, she thinks I need a minder, and she thinks she’s it.”
Smiling—it seemed like the guy had a smile for every occasion—Duncan caught her by the hips and pulled her close. “It was a little intense, sure, but you’ve got great friends. That’s important. You don’t need to apologize to me for having good people at your six.”
That phrasing struck her. At your six. Sure, it had become part of popular slang, but it had originated in the military. She was reminded that Duncan was a member of a biker gang, styling themselves like soldiers. But biker gangs fought wars of their own making. Real soldiers did not.
Was it more honorable to fight somebody else’s war? Phoebe didn’t know. Until now, she’d never had a reason to wonder.
“Hey,” he said, brushing her hair back. “You just disappeared, all of a sudden. Where’d you go?”
His fingers found the edge of the scar that tracked across most of that side of her head and lingered there. When he realized it, he dropped his hand.
She picked his hand up and set it on her head. “Don’t feel weird about wondering,” she told him.
His eyes locked with hers as he took the invitation and gently traced the full span of the scar. “It’s so wild to me that you were hurt so bad. The scars are the only signs, and they barely show. It keeps surprising me, like I can’t keep it in my mind.”
She laughed. “Funny, it’s the same for me. But that’s because there are a lot more signs for me—like my memories are kind of soupy. I get surprised a lot by remembering things I shouldn’t have forgotten.”
There were other things, too; things people in her life needed to know. Things that served as reasons Margot was hyper-protective. Fatigue and stress did weird things to her personality and to her physical coordination, for example. Enough of either, or a combination of both, could make her spin out. She could be impulsive, like this afternoon, jumping down that bitch’s throat without acknowledging the risk. Not all the time, but unpredictably. The switch that kept her reckless impulses in check had gotten just a touch loose. Sometimes she got terrible migraines, and when they hit, she could barely speak or move, or even think. And, of course, she was on daily meds for depression and focus, and probably would be for life.
