Chapter 1 #2
I don’t know that I’ve ever met someone who curses as much as I do.
And I curse a fucking lot, which is saying something considering I don’t speak much.
I think I just fell in love a little bit with this wisp of a woman.
Not seriously, of course, but that big mouth is kinda fun in a surprising way.
A very small percentage of folks stand up to Brody Tannen, and an even smaller percentage of women ever gives me sass.
Insults, yes, but smartass back-talk? This might be a first.
“Hell of a way of getting customers—blasting metal, attacking people, and cussing them out when they’re just trying to hire you to do your damn job,” I deadpan, only half joking.
She’s shit for customer service. I’m shit at being a customer. Match made in heaven, we are.
“Waltzing in here like you own the place, putting hands on people, and somehow thinking you’re in the right.
” She ticks off my shortcomings on her greasy fingers with the wrench and enough attitude that she should be ten feet tall and bulletproof.
“Fuck off. We’re closed.” Somehow, the movement of dismissal she makes with the wrench feels like she just flipped me off.
Makes no sense, but it’s the truth, and there’s talent in that, I suppose.
Lil Bit—that’s what I’ve decided to call this pretty stick of dynamite because one, I think it’d piss her off and that sounds like twisted fun, and two, she seems full of sparks and danger—turns her back on me, spinning in place and stepping back onto her footstool, which puts her roughly at the same height as me.
I’m stuck here with Bessie misbehaving the way she is and a woman who damned near took my head off with a Craftsman tool. Luckily, just my actual head, not my cock because it’s feeling some quick stirrings of ideas it wants to accomplish before I start pushing up daisies.
“So can someone take a look at my truck or not?”
“Nope. Shit outta luck, Cowboy.” The words echo in the engine compartment of the truck, but I can hear her victory in shutting me down.
“How’d you know I’m a cowboy?” I curl the brim of my hat out of habit, not admitting that I’m double-checking myself that I don’t have my cowboy hat on, because it’d be just my luck to challenge her when I’m wearing something that makes it real obvious what I do for a living.
With echoing words again, she says, “Dirty boots, dirty jeans, dirty shirt, dirty hands, and you smell like cow shit.”
My lips quirk of their own volition. I barely notice that last one anymore. “Seems like you checked me out pretty good while you were sizing me up as a threat. No worries. I was checking you out too.”
My flirting is rusty, like a tractor left to rot in a field for a few years’ worth of rain and snow, and comes out more threatening than complimentary. Lil Bit makes not a peep of noise under the hood.
Something interesting occurs to me, and the question pops out before I can stop it. “How’dya know what cow shit smells like? As opposed to horse shit, dog shit, or people shit?”
What the hell am I doing? Why am I talking about shit?
Before she answers, or maybe she’s not planning to anyway because who wants to talk about shit, a door opens and my eyes are pulled away from her ass. I figured I could try to suss out what was under those coveralls without her noticing. Hadn’t planned on someone else catching me, though.
Two guys come into the garage, also clad in navy blue coveralls, and I make the mental jump that they work here too.
The first guy is tall, not like me, but compared to the short and stocky other guy, he seems to think he’s the hotshot here.
The tall guy crosses his arms, trying to widen his rangy frame.
Posting up to me ain’t a good move, man.
Once upon a time, that challenge in his eyes is all it would’ve taken for me to start throwing haymakers.
I’ve gotten better now, more stable, more thoughtful.
Not because I’m getting soft in my old age, but I don’t have the same rage boiling in me like I used to when I was constantly dealing with Dad’s shit.
The chest patch on the lucky bastard I’m not beating up says Reed. The other guy’s says Manuel.
“What can we do you for?” Reed says. His narrow eyes measure my height, width, and the distance from me to Lil Bit’s ass. I don’t move.
“Truck started acting up. Think it’s the transmission, thought someone might take a look at it.”
I’m still talking to Lil Bit, even though she’s tits-deep under that hood, but Reed’s eyes light up when I say transmission.
I don’t know much about trucks, but I know it’s an expensive repair, and a shop would have to be stupid to turn down a sure job with the vehicle sitting like a stone in the lot.
“Yeah, sure,” Reed agrees easily.
That echoey voice calls out again. “Touch that truck and you’re fired, Reed.”
He licks his lips like it pains him to tell me, “Sorry, no can do, man.”
I take a deep breath, hold it, and then exhale loudly, knowing I sound like I’m accepting defeat. I’m not. I get in one more dig. “Mind if I leave it in the lot overnight ’til I can get it towed somewhere else that wants to take my money?”
She grunts. I’m fluent in them, though, known for speaking the language myself, so I hear her permission to leave Bessie overnight.
I’m also planning to be here when the tow service comes to get Bessie, just so I can get another eyeful of Lil Bit.
Maybe see if she’s as ornery when I haven’t scared the shit out of her right out of the gates.
I nod to Reed and Manuel and step toward the open bay door to dig my phone out of my back pocket.
I could hit up one of the guys at the ranch to come get me, but it’s a long drive over the mountain, and Katelyn, my boss’s wife, is at the resort right between me and home.
She’ll be heading toward the ranch shortly when she gets off work, so I shoot her a text thinking it’ll consolidate trips, if nothing else.
Me: Bessie died. Stuck at Cole Automotive. Need a ride home.
Yeah, not so much on the manners, but of anyone, she’s the most used to it since she’s married to Mark.
Mark is, to put it as kindly as possible, an utter asshole and even quieter than me.
Once upon a time, we’d been sworn enemies, but he’d come through for us Tannens when the shit hit the fan, and I’ll be forever grateful for that, even if I have to work for the motherfucker now.
Katelyn: Busy. Will send Marla. Hang tight. Mark loves that truck.
See? She’s accustomed to it. And she’s giving me fair warning that Mark is going to kick my ass for being the unlucky son of a bitch who was driving Bessie when she finally gave out.
She’s had a good life, though, and hopefully isn’t ready to be sent to scrap.
She just needs a good mechanic. One not at Cole Automotive.
Not meaning to, I overhear Reed. “Hey, you wanna grab a bite tonight?”
He’s nervous, the question weighted with intention beyond grabbing a burger with a coworker.
His possessive look comes back to me, and I realize something.
Reed is sweet on the ball-busting, wrench-wielding woman and doing his best to flirt with her.
I chuckle under my breath. “Good fucking luck, man.”
Anybody who ever tells you women are the gossipy ones ain’t never spent time with men.
We might not sit around and gab about shit like women are wont to do, but we have our own ways.
Like me right now, leaning against the doorframe, hat pulled down low so it seems like my eyes are on my phone.
But I’m watching everything go down like a bored housewife at church on Sunday.
Lil Bit ain’t having it. She’s wiping down something under the hood with zero interest in, or even the slightest awareness of, Reed. “Nah, heading home early to catch the game tonight.”
He shoots, but instead of scoring, he goes down in a blazing ball of flames. But he’s not done.
“We could watch together?” Give the man points for gumption and perseverance. I don’t, but somebody should.
“You don’t know the first thing about baseball, and I’m not spending three hours explaining shit to you, Reed.
” She manages to make it sound like he’s not worth the spit it’d take to explain a strike-out, but then she laughs, softening the insult like it’s something they’ve done a thousand times before.
From my undercover vantage, I see Reed shake it off. Manuel looks back and forth, from her to him, and then he follows Reed out the door like a catty hen ready to get to clucking about the situation.
See? Gossipy guys are the worst.
I wait a few minutes in silence, examining Lil Bit’s ass in those coveralls, and when that doesn’t yield any useful information, I scan the rest of the shop.
It looks busy, several vehicles in the lot and every bay filled.
There’s a long workbench along the front with organized tools arranged on a wall of pegboard.
The left side of the garage holds an old refrigerator, a cheap pressed wood cabinet with a hanging door that’s topped with a small microwave and a coffee maker, and a desk piled high with file folders.
It reminds me of Mark’s office, bare-boned and functional, nothing that’s not useful and necessary.
It tells me something about the woman who’s still busy working under that hood.
“What’s wrong with your truck?”
“Oh, she speaks.”
Sarcasm drips from my lips because I know she heard me tell Reed about the transmission.
Apparently, I’m a recent convert to masochism because I’m looking forward to her vitriol-filled comeback, but Lil Bit doesn’t respond.
Eventually, I give in. “Bessie was doing fine, then started jerking. Seemed like the tranny was slipping.”
“Bessie? What is she?”
I swear I hear a smile, but when her head pops up, her lips are pressed straight. But trucks seem to be an interest, so I indulge her. “Ninety-six Ford F-250, Power Stroke diesel.”
Lil Bit hops off her stool, her thick-soled boots making a small thud.
Her hands go to her coverall pockets as she eyes me.
I’m not sure what measure she’s taking this time, but I’m eye-fucking the shit out of her.
She moves toward me, and my cock stands up at hopeful attention.
But she simply frees one hand, holding it out palm-up. “Keys?”
I don’t question it, just drop them into her outstretched hand as she passes me by. She pulls open Bessie’s door and literally hops inside. Vaguely, I wonder how many things she has to hop up on and down from in a day.
A second later, the loud engine breaks the silence.
Lil Bit looks thoughtful, and I realize she’s listening to the chug-chug-chug sounds as if they hold the secrets of the world.
Hell, maybe to her, they do. To me, it sounds like a truck.
Loud and ready to work, except I know Bessie ain’t doing so well once she gets in drive.
A four-door sedan pulls into the lot, drawing my eye.
I can see Marla, Katelyn’s assistant, waving at me.
She’s a good helper for Katelyn, though I know more of her from Katelyn’s stories than I actually know Marla.
This makes the third time I’ve ever met her face-to-face.
Luckily, the other two times, she rambled nonstop about her husband and twin girls, and I assume today will hold more of the same and I won’t have to say a word.
I lift two fingers in a wave to Marla and the truck silences.
Lil Bit hops down again, walking toward me already talking. “I’ll take a look at her. It’ll be a couple of days before I can get to it, though. Once I’ve done diagnostics, I’ll call before I fix anything to get approval on the charges. Number?”
She puts the keys in her pocket, smart businesswoman taking the truck hostage until I agree. But I’m desperate and she knows it.
I’m not usually one to be at a disadvantage with anything, and certainly not with women. But damned if she doesn’t have me dead to rights intrigued, and she seems wholly unaffected by me.
“Sure. There’s a business card for my boss in the visor. Call him to approve the money stuff.”
Lil Bit nods and keeps on walking, past me and right back into the garage.
She grabs a chain off a hook and the door rolls down between us.
A loud click sounds out, letting me know she’s locked the door.
It reassures something in me that she’s locked safely away for the night to watch the baseball game she didn’t want to explain to Reed.
Dismissed and striking out just as badly as Reed, I amble toward Marla’s car. Just before I get in, heavy metal music starts blaring again and I look up to see Lil Bit watching me leave through the row of glass windows in the blue garage door. Maybe not a complete strikeout, then?
I expect her to jump, maybe act like I didn’t bust her clear as day looking at me. She does nothing of the sort. She simply stares at me as I fold my long legs into Marla’s sedan.