style="font-size:15px;"> “Heavens, can you believe Bobby actually wants to bring your father out here and let him and Don go at it?” Josey’s voice dropped down to a whisper. “Sometimes I don’t know about that brother of yours.”
“Makes two of us.”
This was why he liked Josey. She understood how the Bolton family worked and was committed to keeping it from imploding. Ben had picked well.
Then he heard himself ask, “Will Jenny be bringing her class out?”
Josey gave him an odd look. “No, the first and second graders aren’t allowed in the shop.”
“I wasn’t trying to break her car,” he added.
“I know. Just solving a problem. That’s what you do best, Billy.” She patted him on the arm again—she had that whole mothering thing down.
Billy was about to rub the dust off his tires when Vicky, the production assistant, came up to him. “We need to get you miked, Billy.”
Vicky definitely fell into the category of women who were afraid of him. Her production company, Villainy Productions, sounded far tougher than she was. Miking Billy usually involved taping a mike to Billy’s chest, and she didn’t seem to think his tattoos were impressive.
“Well,” she said, surveying the fitted T-shirt Billy wore. “I guess...you’re going to have to take the shirt off?”
Billy grabbed the hem of his T-shirt, but before he could peel it off, the doors to the school burst open and about fifty kids came pouring out. Almost immediately, Josey was next to him, a hand on his arm. “Can we do this somewhere else?”
Vicky swallowed. She worked real hard on not being alone with him. Which was funny—Bobby was the much bigger threat to the female race. Billy hadn’t even been with a woman in...
Damn. That turned into a depressing train of thought. The fact was, it’d been a long time since he’d gotten tired of going home with the kind of woman who looked like she was auditioning for a heavy-metal music video and waking up alone. Years.
Since then, he’d thrown himself into building bikes. Which wasn’t such a bad thing—it kept him out of trouble. He was good at it, which had made him a boatload of money—also not a bad thing. However, with the money had come a different kind of woman—older, richer, more mercenary, if that were possible. Billy had no interest in those women. None. The one time he’d dated a woman out of his league, he’d gotten his heart run over like roadkill. It was easier just to build more bikes.
But now building bikes was making him famous. Hell, half the time he was afraid to leave his house in the morning. A few groupies had showed up at the Crazy Horse shop and tried to treat him like a rock star, screaming and even throwing a pair of panties. Which Bobby had filmed—if he hadn’t set the whole thing up in the first place. No way, no how was Billy falling into that trap. He’d rather be alone than be with a woman who was only interested in using him.
Which meant he was alone.
“Go around the side of the school. We can’t have him stripping out here in front of the students,” Josey said before hurrying over to help explain the rules to the kids.
Not that it was stripping, but yeah, even he saw the wrong in taking off his shirt in front of kids. He had tattoos—lots of them. The kind that scared small children and little old ladies.
So he trudged around to the side of the building with Vicky following at a safe distance and whipped off his shirt. Vicky clipped the battery pack to his jeans, ducked under his upraised arm, and handed him the mike while she ripped off a piece of medical tape. They’d learned after the first show that clipping the mike to the collar of Billy’s shirt didn’t work—too much static from the machines ruined the audio feed. Now they taped the mike to his chest and let the shirt filter out the extra noise.
Vicky handed him the tape, and he put the mike on above the rose and thorns—above where Jenny had touched him.
As the thought of the sassy little teacher crossed his mind again, his ears developed a weird burning sensation, as if someone were talking about him. He glanced around and saw that—much to his chagrin—an entire class of undersized tykes was crowded around the windows, staring at him.
And behind them stood a shocked Jenny Wawasuck.
Her eyes were as wide as hubcaps and her mouth had dropped open as she looked at his exposed torso. Billy froze—he was pretty sure this violated someone’s rule.
If he were Ben, he would probably figure out some calm, cool way to exit the situation and mitigate the damage. If he were Bobby, he would flex and pose for the pretty little teacher. He wasn’t either of them. And as such, he had no idea what to do besides brazen it out. So he stood there and stared back at her, almost daring her to come out and turn him into coyote food.
She said something sharply to the kids, who all scrambled back from the windows as if she’d poked them with a cattle prod. Then she shot him the meanest look he’d ever seen a woman give him—which was saying something—then pulled the blinds.
The whole thing took less than a minute.
Damn. He was screwed. The only question was, how badly? Would she kick him off this rez? Would Don Two Eagles do the kicking?
He sighed. This was how things went. He wasn’t trying to stir up trouble, but it always found him anyway. All he could do now—since he’d promised to watch his language and not throw things—was wait for Jenny to storm out of the building and tear him a new one.
It’d be easier if it were Don. Billy knew men like Don, knew how they thought, knew what to expect. But a woman like Jenny was something else, someone he didn’t know and couldn’t anticipate. A sweet little first-grade teacher—with one hell of an edge to her.
Given the way his thoughts kept turning back to when she’d touched him this morning, he was going to be spending a lot more time trying to anticipate her.
Resigned to his fate, Billy slid his shirt back on and went out to his assigned position. He’d never understood why he had to be the one on camera—other than the fact that he was the one who built the bikes. Ben didn’t have to be on camera at all. Bobby was the one who had the Hollywood thing going on, from the way he wore a tie every day to the way he talked circles around everyone. Times like this, Billy wished he could be as smooth as Bobby. The man was good with people—well, people who weren’t Jenny Wawasuck.
Billy stood there, keeping an eye on the door as the smaller kids were introduced to him in a group. Where was Jenny? Surely she wouldn’t let such an offensive act as taking off his shirt in front of a bunch of first and second graders pass. Flashing a lifetime of ink at a bunch of little kids didn’t seem like something Jenny Wawasuck would let stand.
As he started shaking the hands of the bigger kids, the ones who’d be “helping” him build the bike for charity, Billy realized two things. One, Jenny wasn’t going to come out and pick another fight with him, and two—he was disappointed.
One of the kids shook his hand and said, “Hi again, Mr. Bolton.” Billy’s attention snapped back to the present.
The kid looked familiar. Billy didn’t have a head for names and faces, but he knew he’d met him before. “I know you, right?”
