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She nodded. “Sounds good.” Her gaze fell to my mouth before bouncing back up to meet my eyes. “Think you could give me a ride to Kimmie’s? I need to get my bike.”
“Handily, I need to clean up over there, then go dog shopping.”
“Gotta get new stuff for the kid—er, dog.”
I grinned at her. “Something like that.”
She licked her lips, then stood up quickly. “Yeah. I’ll just go get my stuff and we can go.” And then she was on the run again.
It
was going to be an interesting few months.
Six
I’d played the coward card without remorse after Lucky brought me back to his worksite. It had been a damn long day, and I just needed a little time to myself. I’d hopped on my bike and headed to the shop.
The Phantom Rolls Royce at the top of my list was waiting for me in the back bay. I’d been working up the parts I needed to fabricate for weeks now. My client was a tech giant with more money than sense, but I didn’t mind taking some of that green off his hands.
Gage was helping me with the remodel. He had a light hand with welding that I’d never quite managed to match. We often worked as a team on the bigger projects. This one was slated for a November finish, and I needed to score some hours on Hilda, my fabricator, to get some pieces done for him.
It was end of the workday for most of our crew. A few new mechanics were doing end of shift paperwork. Gage and Dare were holed up in the office. Dare had his feet kicked up on the desk as he laughed at something his brother said.
I wasn’t ready to talk to humans, so I bypassed that side of the garage and sneaked into the locker room to change into my coveralls. Hilda used a large water bath for the cuts I was doing, and no matter how hard I tried, shit got messy.
I snagged my headphones off the charger and headed into my section. It took a few minutes to boot up Hilda and go through my digital drawings. The Phantom was built like a tank, but the base model my client wanted updated was an older model with pristine guts. Too bad the shell was beat to hell from a hailstorm in Texas.
That was where I came in.
I smoothed my hand over the dented hood. Gage had been busy stripping the car back, which left me wide open to start building her back up.
The precise work of measurements and picking out the right sheets of metal took all my focus and evened out my rough edges. The new Billie Eilish album thundered in my ears as I tore apart metal sheets. My muscles sang with the labor as I created the puzzle pieces that would make up a new and improved vision of the Phantom.
The world and all my problems faded as I fell into the work.
My partners knew not to bother me when I was in this space. The guys had families to go home to anyway. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d been left to my own devices at the garage.
And I liked it that way. Most of the time.
I shook off the twinge. My job kept me busy and fulfilled. Families and sticky fingers and having to cater to a male weren’t what I was about.
Arching my back to work out the kinks, I turned my head and a photo of Gage with Rylee and their little girl caught my attention.
The girl’s dark hair was in pigtails and her face was covered in white and pink frosting. Gage had one half of his face covered and Rylee the other as their daughter smushed between their cheeks.
They were a pretty cute family.
I shifted away from the wall of photos. Still wasn’t in my plans. Someday I wanted a family—maybe. I still wasn’t too keen on the idea of it. It seemed like a damn lot of juggling based on the conversations I heard in the garage.
A glance at the time on my phone made me wince. If I wanted to get some work done the next day before the wrecking crew of guys showed up at my place, I needed to get home and faceplant for a bit.
I locked up and sighed when I saw it was raining. I really didn’t want to put my bike away for the season yet, but it was getting dicey weather-wise. I supposed I’d need to put the beater on the road sooner rather than later.
Swapping a ponytail for a quick French braid gave me a few minutes to look around the dark town. The streetlights had that vintage feel with LED lights for extra energy savings. In our last election, that had been one of the items we’d voted on. We’d even ended up with cool flickering lights for the holidays.
Crescent Cove took their seasonal decorating seriously. From Halloween—thanks to Macy’s influence—to Christmas and the Fourth of July, the Cove did it up big. There was no shortage of community when it came to this lakeside town.
The diner was the only place open at this hour. The Rusty Spoon didn’t bend to the nine o’clock town shutdown, and I was forever grateful. I walked across the street and found the booths mostly empty, save for Luna and Caleb bent over a stack of notebooks and binders at the back of the room.
