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Seeing him get off his bike, take off his shades and tuck them in the front of his tee didn’t do anything to me either. Except piss me off. Because I was exhausted, frustrated and sweaty.
My tank was covered in paint stains from this morning, when the kids and I had decided Lily’s room needed a ‘feature wall’. Well, it was Lily who’d decided that, Jack and I’d just been roped into actually doing the painting. I was also covered in sweat since it was the middle of the afternoon, the middle of the summer and the middle of a heatwave in California.
I was wearing a pair of Ranger’s shorts I’d cut to not look ridiculously long on me. Most of the things I wore around the house belonged to my dead husband. Most I hadn’t even washed, though barely anything still smelled like him. The healthy thing to do would’ve been to burn or donate all of his clothes, but I wasn’t healthy. I was sick with grief, and if getting rid of all of the reminders of my husband was some kind of cure, I didn’t want it.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, wiping the sweat from my forehead and glaring at Kace.
He glanced to me, his forest green eyes flickering up and down my body before he surveyed the yard and then the lawn mower I would’ve hurled across the street if I’d had the upper body strength.
“Well, I was just driving by at first, then I saw all of this,” he waved his hand at me, the lawn mower and the grass. “I figured it was my duty for your grass, your lawnmower and most likely your entire neighbourhood, if I offer my services.”
“Your services?” I repeated, my foot tapping impatiently.
“Well, my day job involves fixing cars... among other things. But I am known to be a expert at mowing lawns. And...” he moved forward, knelt down, opened a cap, moved the lawn mower slightly then looked up at me. “I’m also an expert at knowing when it’s run out of gas.”
I bit my lip. Heat flushed my cheeks, but this time it had nothing to do with the heat of the day and everything to do with the fact that I was seconds away from driving to Home Depot to buy a new lawn mower because ours was ‘broken’ when all it really needed was gas.
Kace stood up. “I’m guessin’ you got some gas cans in there.” He nodded his head toward the garage.
I pursed my lips. “I’m guessing we do,” I replied, not exactly sure whether we did or not. But it was highly likely, since Ranger was an orderly, organized kind of guy when it came to the garage and maintaining the house.
No matter what was going on with the club, he’d mowed the lawn once a week. Took out the garbage. Cleaned the gutters. Changed lightbulbs. He took care of all of the ‘man’ jobs. Despite how sexist it sounded, that was the way it had been because I couldn’t do that shit. He’d changed the oil in my car. He’d taken pride in our home. In giving me small things.
Hence me deciding to mow the lawn.
While I’d been in my... funk these past few months, the lawn had been mowed. I hadn’t been the one doing the mowing, which meant someone had been doing it. I hadn’t even noticed. When I did start to notice, I realized a Prospect came once a week to do the job my husband could no longer do. I’d scared him off earlier this morning, which didn’t say much about his potential for getting patched in. You had to be able to survive a lot more than the wrath of an Old Lady. Okay, maybe not a lot more, but close.
Since I was paying attention now, deciding to try to figure out how to live my life without my husband, I thought it was beyond time for me to learn to do things like mow the lawn. No way was I going to be the woman who had the club take care of all of this shit. Like some kind of burden. A charity case.
Fuck that.
How hard was it to mow a lawn?
After an hour, an inner temper tantrum and a crying jag in our garage, I’d deduced it was very fucking hard if you had no idea how to operate a lawn mower. Which I realized was totally fucking pathetic. I was a single mom raising two kids, I should be able to teach them every life skill. Ranger should’ve taught me every ‘man job’. He should’ve fucking known there was a possibility I’d be right here, alone, unable to mow the goddamn lawn without someone on a Harley feeling obligated to save the day.
