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Wilde bit into the sausage and ambled over, using the bench to hold his weight. “That bad, huh?” he asked. Apparently, we were back to the professional zone.
“Put it this way, you see the state of the bike? Her owner is in a worse state.”
“Ouch.”
“I should have gotten to it sooner, but paying customers have to come first. I have the awful feeling I’m going to get a knock on the door announcing his death before I get it done.”
I waited, expecting him to tell me I was a fool for accepting, what was basically unpaid work, but he popped the last of the sausage into his mouth and handed me a wrench. “Looks like you might need a hand then.”
I tilted my head as I looked up at Wilde. My brother always objected when I decided to work on lost causes like this. But Wilde’s reaction? No judgement. No questions. He just treated it like I was doing exactly what I should be. I spent the morning working on the bike while Wilde helped. I refused to let him work on the body of it which would mean him having to bend and put pressure on his leg, but when I asked him to rebuild parts on the bench or pass me tools, he did it without complaint.
Since Pops passed, I’d worked alone, preferring solitude, but Wilde knew his way around a bike as well as I did. And if I was being real, I was digging the connection. The morning passed so quickly that I didn’t realize we’d missed lunch until my belly started to rumble at some point in the afternoon. I wiped sweat from my brow with the back of my sleeve and let my eyes drift over to Wilde. He was engrossed in his work, fixing the carburetor. I took a moment to watch him. Most people would have already given up on it and demanded I use a new one, but Wilde’s attention was fixed on the job. His fingers worked almost lovingly over the old metal. He treated it with such reverence that he could have been fixing the crown jewels instead of an ancient carburetor. As I watched his fingers, I wondered what they would feel like on my body.
“Wrench.” He didn’t take his eyes from the parts laid out in front of him, but he held his hand open behind him.
I didn’t respond quickly enough because he turned to face me. “Sorry. Can I have that wrench you’re holding, please?”
How did he know I’d stopped and stood, that I was watching him work? He must have felt my eyes boring into him. I offered him the wrench. As he made to grip it, his fingers brushed against mine. My heart hitched as the seconds passed and neither of us tried to let go.
Wilde’s eyebrows raised, and he glanced down at the wrench and then back to me with a hint of amusement in his eyes.
Crap!
He’d asked me for the wrench, not the other way around. I wasn’t the type to be coy, but I felt the blush rise to my cheeks as I finally let go of the tool.
“You know what?” I asked, then answered, “It’s getting late. We’ve skipped lunch entirely. What say we give this up for today and have an early dinner? I’ll have to go to the store and get something. The food I bought the other day wasn’t nearly enough.”
I hopped on my bike and headed out before he could say anything.
16
Wilde
I finished the carburetor and laid it to one side. The feel of her fingers still burned into my skin. Hot. The way she shot out of the shop after our fingers touched told me one of two things. Either she was scared of me or she was scared of how she was reacting to me. Neither was good. If she was scared of me, then I was going to end up hurting her by being in her space. Just my presence was causing her enough trouble. Adding her being fearful of my presence into the mix and this whole situation was shot to shit. On the other hand, if she felt something for me and didn’t know how to deal with it, that would hurt her too. I’d never felt more compatible with a woman in my life, but our situations were water and oil. The longer I stayed, the more danger she was in. She had every right to be afraid of me. With the AX3 on my back, I was bad news.
But, I’d be damned if touching her skin hadn’t put a flame under my ass. I was pretty sure we’d touched skin before. Hell, she’d hauled me from a ditch that first night and, although the whole night was still hazy in my mind, I was pretty sure she’d helped the doc. This time was different. As our fingers had brushed together, it had been like an electric current shooting up my veins. My fingers could no more let go of that wrench than I could let go of Betty. If she hadn’t dropped her hand in fright or embarrassment, we’d probably still be standing there.
I turned my attention back to the old bike. Bikes were easier to understand than women. Betty never ran away after I touched her. Then again Betty might make me feel good, but she didn’t come close to hitting that moment I just shared with Bou.
Mind back on the bike!
Bou had done a good job with what she had to work with. It wasn’t worth fixing really, but I understood the old man’s need to see it one more time. The old man was just me forty, fifty years down the line. I could imagine me still wanting to see Betty, even if I couldn’t ride her.
Bou had told me in explicit terms that I was not to work on the body of the bike, but it was so close to being finished, that it seemed a shame to leave it in bits. My leg screamed at me and my shoulder sent shockwaves of pain through my torso as I fitted the carburetor back into place and finished up the job Bou had been working on all day.
I had no faith at all that it would work when I turned the ignition and kickstarted it, but after a couple of chugs, it started up and purred like a cat. Fucking beautiful.
“You got it working?”
I turned to see Bou enter the shop, wonder in her expression. A thrill ran through me that I had put that expression on her face, or at least something I had done.
“Sounds a lot better than I expected.” She dropped the shopping bags she was carrying and headed over. I watched for signs of fear in her face and found none. A weight lifted.
“I didn’t expect to ever hear it make a sound at all. I mean...” She pulled her hands to her face in delight. I couldn’t help the grin that coated my face. “Beautiful. Just beautiful.”
“Beautiful,” I agreed, though I wasn’t thinking of the bike as the word fell from my mouth. I turned the ignition off.
The spell broke. It was as though the humming of the engine had created a vibe between us. I wanted to turn the ignition again just so I could hold onto the moment, but the old bike wouldn’t be able to handle it. It still needed too much work.
