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Jenny stepped forward and looked. She hadn’t noticed the small camera with the red light before, but she saw it now. “What’s that for?”
“They’ll film me the whole time I’m building, then speed up the footage. If the kid helps, he’ll be on film a lot more.” He leaned to the side, and Jenny realized that they were less than two feet apart. “It’s your call.” Then Billy turned to Seth, “You’ve got to pull your weight. I hear that you’re not helping your mom at home or your grades drop, you’re out of here. I don’t tolerate slackers.”
Seth’s gaze darted between her and Billy. Clearly, he was waiting for her to blow up like she had that morning. And she was still mad about the language Billy had used around her son.
The only thing was, she liked everything Billy had said.
She couldn’t believe that she was on the verge of agreeing to let Seth spend more time with Billy Bolton, but what could she do? Seth wasn’t a little boy anymore, and something told her that he’d be safer with Billy than he would be if he were running around with Tige or any of his thuggish friends.
Billy turned and looked at her, one eyebrow raised in silent challenge.
“Can I, Mom? Please?”
This was a rock, and Billy Bolton was a hard place. The way his chest had not moved when she pushed it? A very hard place.
“We’ll see how tomorrow goes.”
“Was that a yes?” Seth hopped from foot to foot, a ball of nervous energy. “That was a yes, right? Yes!”
“Hey,” Billy thundered. “Settle. Your mom told you to go get your things, so get moving.”
Seth was gone before the broom hit the ground. She turned to Billy to lay down the law on the probationary day, but he beat her to the punch. “I won’t make any promises about cussing—too set in my ways. I’d bet you dimes to dollars that he’s heard it all, anyway. He’s safer with me than he is with any of those hotshot troublemakers he calls friends.”
Had Seth told him about Tige? Or was he that good at guessing?
He leaned in closer—less than a foot separated them now, and she thought he was going to kiss her. Different parts of her brain screamed out “No!” and “Yes!” at the same time, paralyzing her. She couldn’t lean in, and she couldn’t pull away.
But he didn’t kiss her. Instead, he took another one of those savoring breaths. “Yeah, tea,” he said in a low voice that set off another round of quivering she could only pray he didn’t notice. “You should know something about me, Jenny. I keep my promises, or I don’t make them.”
The air stopped moving into or out of her lungs. Heck, everything stopped as he looked down into her eyes, so focused that she wasn’t sure she’d ever move again.
“Mom? I got my stuff.” Seth’s head popped back into the room as Billy straightened up and put a respectable distance between the two of them. “I’ll do my homework when I get home, okay? And you’ll be here in the morning, right, Mr. Bolton? And I can help?” He sounded so excited that she wouldn’t have been surprised to see him start spinning in circles like he used to do when he was four.
Seth eager to do his homework? A man flirting with her? Jenny looked around the shop, wondering if she’d woken up in an alternate dimension that morning.
Billy huffed as if he were insulted. “Mr. Bolton is my grandpa. My name is Billy.”
“Yes, sir, Billy!” Then Seth spun and all-out ran for the car.
Billy turned back to her. She needed to say something fast—she couldn’t let him dominate this interaction—or whatever it was. She was still in control of things, by God. But her brain was still muddled up, so the best thing she came up with was, “Are we done here?”
He smiled—a full-on, melt-in-her-mouth smile, the likes of which she had never seen before. “No,” he said, moving toward his workbench. “We’re not.”
Four
Seth was up and dressed before Jenny’s alarm clock went off. He rushed her through her oatmeal. They arrived at the school a good twenty minutes earlier than normal.
Billy was already there. Light shined through the shop’s open door, despite the chill of the October morning. “Bye” was all she heard as Seth threw the door open. Then he was gone.
Jenny fought the urge to follow him. He wasn’t a baby anymore, she kept reminding herself. And she had no desire to see Billy Bolton first thing in the morning.
Unfortunately, her mind took that image and threw some sheets and pillows into the mix, and suddenly, she had a great desire to see Billy first thing in the morning.
Just because Billy was treating her son well and paying attention to her didn’t mean she should develop a crush on him. It didn’t matter if he had a melt-in-her-mouth smile, more muscles than God and money to burn. He was still a hard-core biker with a foul mouth. Heaven only knew what he did for a good time, but Jenny was willing to bet that it was something she would not approve of.
So she went inside and reviewed her lesson plans. When she was done, she still had half an hour before the students showed up.
She stood in front of her electric teakettle, at war with herself. Should she go out there and check on the shop? Or was that being too overbearing?
Oh, to heck with it. Just because Billy had said all those things about promises in that serious manner didn’t mean he was honorable. Wanting to visit the shop had nothing to do with how he looked with or without his shirt on. Nothing at all.
She made two cups of tea and walked out to the shop. For some reason, her stomach was turning. What the heck did she have to be nervous about?
That question was answered the moment she set foot inside. Blinking through the bright lights, she saw that devastating smile on Billy’s face.
Maybe she was dreaming, but if she didn’t know any better, she’d say that smile was for her.
It wasn’t possible. Men didn’t look at her with interest—with need. Men looked at her shabby clothes and her rusty car and her smart-mouthed teenager and kept right on walking. If they looked at her at all.
Except for yesterday. And, as Billy rose from his stool and made his way over to her, possibly also today. Seth hadn’t given her a lot of time to apply makeup this morning, which she barely wore anyway, but she was suddenly quite glad she’d managed to brush on a little blush and hit her lids with some eyeliner.
“That for me?” Billy asked, looking down at the mugs in her hands.
“Yes.”
She offered a mug up to him. His hand was so large that there was no way to avoid touching him unless she threw the tea at him.
So she had to stand there and not react as his fingertips skimmed over the backs of hers so lightly that she found herself shivering. The touch was much gentler than she would have given a man of his size credit for. Immediately, her mind took off in crazy directions, although she tried to slam the door on those thoughts. She was not lusting after, crushing on or, God forbid, even liking Billy Bolton.
Then the mug was in his hand and the contact was over. They stood there for a second, looking at each other. Had he felt the same shock she had? Of course not, she tried to tell herself. She was being as silly as the girls in her TAPS meetings, falling head over heels because of a grin and a touch. She had one job here, and that was to make sure Seth was doing okay. No attraction, no flirting. Just mothering.
“How’s it going?”
Billy held her gaze for a beat longer. She could almost hear him reminding her they weren’t done here, but instead he said, “Got him sorting out fasteners. They got all mixed up when we unloaded.” He pointed with his chin to where Seth was sitting at a table, staring at a pile of nuts and bolts with a look of intense concentration on his face.
“I can’t tell if this is a one-half or a nine-sixteenths.” Jenny could hear the frustration in Seth’s voice.
“Here, let me see—”
She had taken two steps when Billy grabbed her shoulder, holding her in place. He boomed, “Figure it out, kid. It ain’t rocket science. You can’t size a bolt, you can’t build a bike.”
She froze, waiting for the fit Seth would pitch. It didn’t happen. Seth screwed up his face, scratched his head and then Jenny almost saw the lightbulb go on. He looked around, grabbed a wrench and started measuring.
“Good job,” Billy said, and his hand squeezed Jenny’s shoulder. Not tight, just a gentle pressure. It sent shock waves down her back that almost buckled her knees. He was so strong, but the sensation straddled the line between tender and erotic.
Then he let go, trailing his fingers down her arm. That—that was purely erotic. If she weren’t so determined not to let this man have an impact on her, her knees would have given way.
“Thanks for the tea,” he said, low and quiet as he walked past her.
She stood there, wondering what the heck she was supposed to do with that. Billy was flirting with her, she was sure of it. Pretty sure, anyway. She was so out of practice that even if she wanted to flirt back, she wouldn’t know how. Maybe that was the problem.
Billy settled back onto his stool, his gaze on her. “See you later?”
Was she being dismissed? That didn’t match with everything he’d just made her feel. Maybe she’d read him wrong.
“What?”
He shot her one of those intimidating glares, and for a second she knew she was being dismissed. But then he turned, pointedly looking over his shoulder—right at the small camera with the steady red light. Then he stared at her again, and she realized he’d asked her a question, not given her an order.
“I’ll, uh, stop by after my meeting?”
“Yeah, okay, Mom,” Seth said, clearly preoccupied. “Bye.”
But Billy? He favored her with one of those half-hidden smiles that told her loud and clear that was the answer he was looking for.
He wanted to see her later.
Jenny all but floated back to her classroom.
* * *
Billy couldn’t say how he knew that Jenny had walked into the shop. He sure as hell didn’t see or hear her. He had his welding mask on and was holding down one end of a pipe as Seth tried his hand at cutting it with a miter saw. Don Two Eagles stood on the other side. Billy was watching Seth’s hands; Don was watching Billy. He couldn’t hear anything over the whine of metal against metal.
He knew Jenny had come in, all the same. And he didn’t like it.
The shop—any shop—had always been a place apart from femininity. Josey didn’t come to the shop very often, and when she did, she wasn’t there very long. Even Cass, the receptionist at the Crazy Horse Choppers headquarters—who was as tough as a woman could be—stayed off the shop floor. Billy liked it that way. Nothing and no one to distract him from the choppers.
Except it didn’t work like that here.
Seth finished cutting the pipe without also cutting off a finger or thumb. He even remembered to turn the blade off before doing anything else. Then he peeled off the welder’s mask Billy had made him wear. “That was so awesome!”
Billy took his mask off, too. Damned if that woman wasn’t sitting on his stool at his table, two cups of tea in front of her and a small smile on her face.
Double damned if he wasn’t thrilled to see her there.
“How’s it going?” Her gaze danced between the three men and their protective gear.
“Billy’s letting me cut a pipe!” Seth grabbed the pipe and took it over to Jenny.
She regarded the rough, angular cut with suspicion. “How...nice, sweetie.”
“Mom,” Seth whined as Billy choked back a laugh.
“It’s part of the frame,” he explained, wondering if the tea was for him, the kid or Don.
Jenny’s eyes got a little wide.
“What?” Billy asked, mentally slapping himself when it came out as defensive.
“You really are building this from scratch?”
“Women,” Don muttered under his breath as he stripped off his shop apron and checked his watch. “Gotta get home. You guys going to be okay here?” He directed the question to Jenny, but he kept a wary eye on Billy.
For some reason, Billy thought about decking the old man. Who was he to suggest that Jenny and her kid weren’t safe with Billy? He had been nothing but a gentleman so far. Except for the part where he’d moved her car. Oh, yeah, and stripped off his shirt. But other than that, he’d been a paragon of virtue.
“I’m not my old man,” he muttered.
Don didn’t back down. “It ain’t a matter of if the apple falls from the tree. It’s a matter of how far it fell.”
The two men stared at each other.
“Don, we’ll be fine.” Jenny’s voice was calm and surprisingly unconcerned with the standoff going on in front of her.
Don shot Billy a hell of a mean look, but said, “See you all tomorrow,” and left.
Billy turned back to Jenny and Seth. The kid was holding his length of pipe against the plans, trying to figure out how to put a puzzle together with only one piece. Jenny, however, was still sitting on his stool, her lips hidden behind her cup of tea. She looked as if she were waiting for something. What, he didn’t know.
This was why he didn’t like women in the shop. The only expectations he was comfortable with were design specs and delivery dates, not rules of civility.
“He doesn’t like you.”
Seth snorted in amusement as he studied the design. “Yeah, but Don doesn’t like any wasicu.”
Jenny’s eyes flew open as she slammed her cup back on the table. Tea sloshed everywhere. “Seth!”
“A what?”
The kid went red. “White...man,” Jenny replied without meeting his gaze.
Yeah, right. Billy had been called enough names in his lifetime to know an insult when he heard one. He leveled one of his meaner looks at the kid, who physically shrank right before him. “Yeah, well, I’m not like any whatever he’s ever met. Now suit up. We’ve got more pipe to cut.”
Billy had never seen a kid move as fast as Seth did. Billy walked over to Jenny and held out a pair of earplugs. “Don’t look at the saw without goggles,” he told her as she stared at the plugs.
“It wasn’t that loud when I came in. Do I really need these?”
If Billy had let her son get anywhere near a power tool without all the proper precautions, she’d probably have thrown a fit. But when it came to her own well-being?
She was the kind of woman who put herself last, he realized. Even when she didn’t have to.
So he didn’t bother telling her that the saw was always loudest at the beginning of the cut. Instead, he leaned forward, smoothed the few strands of hair that had come loose from her schoolmarm bun and tucked the plugs into her ears for her.
Her skin, from her cheeks to the back of her neck, flushed a beautiful pink as he pressed the plugs into place. Then, because he doubted that she wouldn’t watch him and the kid work the saw, he snagged a pair of goggles from the table. He stretched the elastic back so that it wouldn’t tangle on her hair and settled the plastic on the bridge of her nose. It wasn’t his fault that this required him to lean over her so that he could smell the scent of her—baby powder and tea and chalk.
He inhaled, his nose coming within inches of her forehead. This was the reason why he didn’t want women in the shop. Too distracting, and being distracted led to injuries.
When he managed to step away from her, he saw that she’d tucked her lower lip under her teeth with enough pressure that the flesh was bleaching white. What had been, up to that moment, a mere irritating attraction shifted right over to desire. He wanted the pretty little schoolteacher in a way that had nothing to do with civility. He wanted to kiss the color back into her lip, to find out how hard she was capable of biting.
Then she looked up at him through thick lashes, and he saw his own desire mirrored in her eyes. She wasn’t scared of him, nor was she mad at him. As difficult as it was to believe, she wanted him, too.
