Chapter 14
FRANKIE
Monday night after work, I left the shop for my shift at the hotel and changed into the uniform in the break room.
I was exhausted at midnight when I clocked out, but had checked the computer and found a room that hadn’t been serviced by housekeeping to sleep in.
It was a perk of working the front desk, knowing which rooms were vacant.
I couldn’t do it two nights in a row since I didn’t have another shift until Friday.
No way could I risk this job being caught by the manager in the building on my days off.
I could, though, sleep in my car in the parking lot if I bundled up.
It wasn’t ideal, but it’d be safe enough.
Tuesday, my second day of work, I felt Shep’s eyes on me as I did a quick plug job on a flat tire, then came over to help lift the heavy tire onto the car that was up on the lift. Our bodies bumped as we settled it onto the bolts. Our hands brushed as he passed me the hydraulic drill.
Even in the middle of the bay, I could smell him. The same scent he had Saturday night when he pressed me into the dining table.
After that, Shep watched me as I explained to Mrs. Kittle why it was worth the money to replace her minivan’s fuel pump instead of letting the engine die and be forced to get a new car.
Every time I flicked my gaze to him, afraid I was saying or doing something wrong, he wasn’t looking at me with disappointment.
No, he looked like he wanted to take me for a ride.
By eleven, I was wound up. If I messed up on any of my work, it would cost Shep money and time to not only fix the vehicle’s original problem, but my mistake on top of it. It was also important I gave him and his business good customer service.
I knew all of this, but my nipples couldn’t handle all the staring and touching. Thankfully, the coveralls made me pretty much shapeless and hid their interest in Shep sucking and biting them again.
How was I going to be able to work with him day in and day out if all I could think about was jumping him and having him fuck me again?
At eleven-thirty, I was eating a muffin I’d grabbed from the hotel’s breakfast buffet when he joined me in the back of the shop by the coffeemaker. He had a little corner set up as a mini kitchenette. My heart started pounding. “Everything okay?” I wondered.
He eyed my food. “That your lunch?”
I swallowed, then nodded. For breakfast, I’d eaten a bagel, yogurt, and a box of orange juice in my car, and also grabbed a banana, but I was saving that for later. I had the six hundred dollars from Rocky Trout–or, Shep rather–but it would go quickly if I wasn’t careful.
He eyed the muffin as if it had offended him. “Let’s go.”
I stared at his retreating back–and ass–for a moment, then quickly followed.
As we left the shop, he pulled the door shut behind us and pointed to the keypad just above the knob. “Code’s six-two-seven-three in case you come in earlier than me or get locked out.”
I nodded and memorized the four digits.
I couldn’t help but smile. It was silly, really, but he had no idea what it meant that he’d shared the code with me. He intended for me to stay. He trusted me.
When we started walking down the street, me practically running to keep up with his long legged pace, I asked, “Where are we going?”
He must’ve heard how breathy I sounded and slowed down. When a car came down the street, he put his arm around me and herded me to the inside of the sidewalk. Protecting me.
“Sip N’ Serv.”
I slowed, then stopped. He turned to face me, frowned down at me. “What’s the matter?”
I swallowed hard and it was almost impossible to meet his gaze. “I’m fine with my muffin. I’m sorry, Shep, I don’t–”
My face heated in embarrassment. I wasn’t ashamed of my current shitty situation. I was trying my best to get by, but admitting I couldn’t afford a meal at the local diner felt like he was shaming me.
“It’s not a date,” he said, eyeing the way I was wringing my hands, so I stopped. The coveralls blocked the cold air where we didn’t need coats, but only for the distance to the diner. “New employee meeting.”
Oh. Oh. Right. Of course, it wasn’t a date. I worked for him. This was work. WORK. I should be grateful because I couldn’t pay for a meal, but I didn’t feel that way at all.
We were still in our coveralls. While he looked hot in a blue collar romance book hero kind of way, I was sure I looked like I was wearing a potato sack with a zipper up the front.
God, I was so stupid. STUPID! I’d been thinking all morning about how attracted I was to him, remembering what’d been like between us. That he might want to do it again, without the money this time.
But no. No date. I was an employee. Who he paid.
Get your mind out of the gutter and back on your paycheck!
I nodded and didn’t say anything until we were tucked in a back booth across from each other. His gaze slowly cataloged every inch of my face and made me wonder how he looked at his past employees, because it was heated. Interested. Too interested.
It made no sense.
“Two days in a row,” the waitress said as she swung by. It seemed Shep came here a lot.
Shep grinned. “Mabel, this is Frankie. My new mechanic.”
The older woman’s eyes widened, then she grinned. “Nice to meet you. Good to know you’re keeping this one in line.”
“Hey, I’m nicer than Colt,” he told her, setting his hand over his heart as if she’d wounded him.
A grin tipped up the corner of his mouth and he looked like he’d talked himself out of all kinds of mischief with that.
“And Trig. Probably Cam, too,” he told her, then glanced my way and added, “My brothers.”
“I don’t play favorites with the Wilder boys,” she replied. “What’ll you two have?”
I realized the menu was on the placemat in front of me. I glanced at it for a second.
“Club, no mayo,” Shep said, then looked at me expectantly.
“Um, just a cup of chicken soup,” I replied. It was the cheapest thing I could find at a quick glance.
He frowned, like the soup was just as offensive as the muffin.
“She’ll have a cheeseburger, medium with no mayo, and a side of onion rings,” he told Mabel.
“Wait–” I said, holding up my hand. While that sounded really good, I couldn’t have it.
Mabel nodded, ignored me, then left.
“Shep, that’s–”
“What people eat for lunch,” he finished. “Not chicken soup. You sick?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Then no chicken soup for you.” He switched topics. I couldn’t keep pushing because it’d be annoying and he’d only wonder why I was so adamant. “How long have you wanted to be a mechanic?”
I remembered Saturday night and him asking me with that same voice, “You a virgin, cherry?”
I shifted on the long bench seat because I couldn’t think back to the two orgasms he’d given me. On a dining room table. In front of others. “Eleventh grade. I like fixing things.”
It sounded lame, but it was the truth.
“Your dad didn’t teach you anything? Change the oil together?”
I stared out the window to the street. The lot was filling up with a solid lunchtime crowd. The scent of greasy french fries made my mouth water, and I wondered how he knew I liked onion rings better. “He bailed on us when I was a baby.”
He sighed, ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Shit, that sucks. Brothers?”
I shrugged. “One a lot older and didn’t live with me and mom after he turned eighteen.
When I was twelve, I went to live with him, but he wasn’t all that handy around the house.
” Totally exaggerated, but I wasn’t telling him the whole truth.
“We’re pretty much estranged now.” Estranged if that meant that he took off without even a goodbye and almost a thousand dollars of my hard earned money, doubtful I’ll ever see him again.
“You?” I wanted to know more things about him, too, and a little less probing questions about me.
“Sounds like you have… three brothers?” I remembered he’d mentioned Trig, Colt, and Cam to Mabel.
“Seven brothers and a sister,” he replied.
My head whipped around to stare at him. “Seven brothers? Wow.”
He grinned. “Yeah. I’m the second to youngest. Between the nine of us, we pretty much know everyone in town. Mabel, though–” when he tipped his head I knew he was referring to the waitress “–really does know everyone. But you. That means you’re not from Devil’s Ditch.”
“Barnes.”
Mabel swung by and placed two waters and wrapped straws from her tray, then scurried off when the bell from the kitchen rang indicating an order was ready.
Shep leaned in close across the table, lowered his voice. “How’d you end up at Two Rivers Ranch?”
This close, I saw flecks in his blue-green gaze. How long his eyelashes were. The shape of his mouth and then I remembered where he’d had it.
On my pussy.
I blushed hotter than if I ate a spicy pepper. We’d made it a day and a half without talking about Saturday night. I was curious about him being there, too, but had been too afraid to ask.
So much for non-probing questions.
I pushed the straw from the wrapper, then dropped it in my cup. “Um, I… my friends Jasmine and Marie, let me join them.”
I tried not to shift under his very thorough scrutiny.
“You knew what was gonna happen?”
I cocked my head. “You didn’t?”
“Hell, no.” He swiped his hand through the air as if cutting off that possibility.
“I thought we were going to The Roadside. Maybe watch drunk people do karaoke or something.” He studied me with his dark eyes.
Ones that I looked into as he slid his huge dick inside me, slowly and carefully.
His scruff from Saturday night was now an official beard.
“Obviously, you never did anything like that before.”
I couldn’t meet his gaze any longer. I thought of everything we did. All of it. My blush must’ve been as red as the ketchup on the table by the salt and pepper shakers.
“No.”
“Then why?”
I wasn’t going to tell him I was broke. That I was planning on sleeping in my car in a hotel parking lot tonight.
That I needed his job too much to do or say anything that might get him to fire me.
I couldn’t tell him how much I needed him.
If I told him I wanted to feel his body pressing into mine, breathe in his scent, hear him calling me his good girl or the thick feel of him inside me, I might ruin it all.
I was the girl he’d paid for sex.
I was his employee, the one he was having an employee lunch with.
I had to ensure he forgot about one so I could be the other.
Tipping my chin up, I said, “I could ask the same thing. Why?”
Why pick me? Why spend that kind of money? Why even go in the first place?
He frowned, not too thrilled about answering the question either. I might be desperate for money, but I doubted he was so desperate for sex he’d pay three thousand dollars.
We were both saved by Mabel bringing our meals and then our mouths were too full to answer.