Out of the Ashes (5 page)

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you lying gives you ulcers and makes your nose grow?” I snapped.

“Yes, my mother did. But she also told me a little man lived under my bed and he would come and eat me if I ever talked to strangers,” she replied, rubbing her shoulder.

I put my hands on my hips. “That was for your own safety.” Little did she know.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t feel very safe lying in bed at night waiting for a little man to come and eat me,” she shot back.

“Well, you obviously had been talking to strangers, therefore you should have been scared,” I said, plonking down on the sofa next to her. “Now what are we going to do? Our hot neighbor thinks we’re crazy pervs,” I moaned.

Lexie gave me a look. “Not
we
. I’m just an impressionable young teen with a Peeping Tom for a mother,” she teased with a twinkle in her eye.

I slapped her with the magazine again.

She crawled away from me with false pain in her eyes. “Stop! You’ll maim me!” she cried dramatically.

I threw the entire magazine at her and she caught it with a grin.

I shook my head. My daughter was a total nut. I, however, was completely sane.

“Ouch!” I cursed as I tripped over yet another ill-placed box. I again managed to catch myself before I ate carpet luckily, considering a trip to the emergency room would make me later than I already was. Lexie and I almost had the house unpacked but there were a couple of rogue boxes that seemed determined to be a part of my demise.

“Lexie! Get you A into G—we are totally late. If we don’t leave soon you’re going to have to have Pop-Tarts for breakfast,” I threatened as I descended the stairs. “Pop-Tarts full of dangerous and delicious things, such as sugar and added preservatives,” I added, feeling hungry.

“Coming!” I heard her yell from her room.

I made it to the bottom of the stairs and scanned the room for my jacket. I spied it lying across an ottoman and slipped it on.

“Ready, ready.” Lexie came rushing into the room, packing her bag full of books.

“Okay, let’s go,” I said, making my way out the door.

“Mom,” Lexie called.

I turned to see she hadn’t moved. I waved my hand, “Come on, kid, I haven’t had coffee yet and I need some in my veins. Stat.”

The plan was to head to what was now our local breakfast spot for a quick caffeine fix and a muffin before work. I hadn’t had time to make some this morning and Lexie had uncharacteristically slept in, which meant we were both running sans caffeine. The Spencer girls
did not
do well without caffeine.

“You don’t have shoes on,” Lexie informed me.

I glanced down at my bare feet to see I had indeed forgotten footwear. The most important part of an outfit, no less. “I hate Mondays,” I muttered.

“It’s Wednesday,” Lexie pointed out.

I scowled and thrust the keys to the car at her. “Wait in the car. I’ll be down in a second.”

I struggled to think of a pair of shoes that would go with my pencil skirt and floaty blouse. “The blue pointy heeled ones,” Lexie called to me as she walked out the door.

It seriously freaked me out how much of a connection we had sometimes.

With shoes firmly on my feet, I left the house to see Lexie standing in the driveway staring at the car.

“You’re actually meant to get in the car in order to travel places,” I informed her.

She pointed at the back tire. It was flat.

“Drat and damn it all to Hell,” I snapped at the air.

We were silent for a moment, both staring at the flat tire, which I thought was taunting us.

“You know how to change a tire?” I asked Lexie.

“How would I know how to change a tire?” she replied, looking at me with disbelief.

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. You could have decided to take a course, watched an online tutorial.”

She turned to face me. “I don’t think there’s such a thing as tire changing courses. I can’t even drive yet—why would I learn how to change a tire?” Her expression had changed from disbelief to regarding me like I may be slightly crazy.

“You’re old enough to drive, yet you don’t seem to have the driving gene,” I pointed out, referring to the many times Lexie had risked my life when I tried to teach her. We were currently on hiatus. “Plus, you like learning things. You might have a tire passion I don’t know about.” I stared at the tire.

“A tire passion?” Lexie repeated. Now I was getting the full crazy stare.

“I haven’t had coffee,” was my answer.

There was silence.

“Do you think we can call AAA?” I pondered.

“That’s like, roadside assistance. We’re not on the road. We’re at home,” my smart daughter pointed out. “I don’t even think they come for flat tires.”

It worried me slightly she had more knowledge than I did. But, as mentioned, I hadn’t had coffee. Who knew what sort of stuff my caffeinated brain would have been able to come up with? It might even have been able to change that tire. The one that was for sure taunting us.

“We could walk,” Lexie suggested after another long silence.

I stared at her. “Walking would mean changing my shoes. Changing my shoes would mean changing my outfit. We’d be way late and I wouldn’t get coffee.”

“You’ve got coffee at the hotel,” Lexie said.

“Yes, but it’s not the
good coffee
. Shelly makes the
good coffee
. It sets me up for the day. Without it I’d be lost,” I told her, although this was something she already knew. She had experienced the Shelly coffee in all its glory. She had felt its effects.

“You’ve only been drinking it for a week and you survived before then without it.”

I frowned at Lexie. She was starting to tick me off. “What are you, the coffee police?” I searched my handbag. “We’ll get a taxi,” I decided.

“Keys,” a deep voice commanded.

Lexie and I both jumped. We had been so wrapped up in our conversation, we hadn’t noticed another presence. How I couldn’t notice this man earlier was beyond me. But here he was, clad in jeans, motorcycle boots, a tight black tee and a leather vest. He was scowling at me and holding out his hand. A hand attached to a very muscled arm; the veins were pulsing in it and everything.

“Keys,” he repeated, his voice rough and impatient.

“What?” I half whispered, still staring at the arm. It not only had beautiful muscles, but up close his tattoos were amazing. Works of art. Full of color.

“For the car. I need keys.” He spoke with irritation.

“Why do you want the keys to my car?” I asked, moving my thoughts away from his arm.

“To change the tire. You’ve been standing out here for ten minutes staring at it. I’m guessing you don’t know how to.” He spoke a full sentence and the irritation was even more prevalent. So was the hotness of his low and raspy voice.

Lexie and I both shook our heads slowly.

His scowl deepened. “Then give me the keys.” He was speaking to us like we were slightly slow.

“We haven’t had coffee,” I blurted randomly to explain our mental slowness.

The hard look he gave me told me I didn’t do much to help our case for mental competency.

Lexie wordlessly handed him the keys. He didn’t seem to be expecting her to have them, because his face softened a smidgeon at my kid. I mean slightly. So he went from looking like he might shiv us and steal our car, or he might just hogtie us and take it for a joyride. Not that I would mind being hogtied by him.

I shook that thought out of my head.

He didn’t say another word before turning and going to the trunk of the car.

“Mom, the hot but immensely scary biker from next door is changing the tire on our car,” Lexie whispered, not taking her eyes off him.

“I know,” I whispered back, keeping my eyes glued on his muscled body and the patch on the back of it.

There was silence as he got some kind of contraption and started to get to work on our tire.

“Talk to him,” Lexie demanded on a whisper.

“You talk to him,” I snapped back.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Ask him how many miles to the gallon his Harley gets,” I whispered. “Or where the best place to get a tattoo is.”

“So,” Lexie said, narrowing her eyebrows at me. “What’s your name?”

He didn’t look up. “Bull,” he grunted.

Lexie and I looked at each other.

“Bull?” she repeated after a beat.

“Yep,” he bit out, fiddling with the tire. I followed the cords in his arms with my eyes, entranced with the strength in them. That strength would translate well to the bedroom. I struggled to keep my mind out of the gutter. My daughter was right beside me, for crissakes!

“Bull’s a unique name. Is it short for something? I cannot picture a little baby called Bull,” Lexie continued, oblivious to my sexual fantasies, thank God.

There was a pause. “Road name,” he said weirdly.

Another sidelong glance passed between me and Lexie. Did this guy have a problem stringing a complete sentence together?

“What’s a road name?” Lexie asked. You could tell she was getting a bit more confident now that the shock of ‘Bull’s appearance had worn off. She had stepped forward to get a closer look at what Bull was doing and was leaning against the passenger door.

He glanced up at her. “Like a nickname,” he clipped. A look passed over his face at Lexie’s casual stance and friendly demeanor. It quickly left and he turned his attention back to the tire.

Lexie seemed to be chewing something over in her mind. I wanted to know why he was called Bull. Obviously he was freaking huge and intimidating. But I wondered if it had anything to do with his
downstairs
area. I knew bikers had nicknames due to their sexual escapades; maybe this was due to the fact he was hung like a bull.

Luckily, Lexie wasn’t thinking about his nether regions.

“What’s your real name? Please tell me it’s something like Tim or Alan. That would be hilarious if someone who looked like you with the name Bull was actually a Tim.”

“Or a Eugene,” I added, deciding to contribute to some form of communication. It was either that or start drooling over his arms.

Lexie nodded. “Gaylord,” she shot back.

I restrained a snort on that one. “Kevin.” We were so on a roll.

Lexie furrowed her brows. “I like the name Kevin.”

I gaped at her. “When have you ever seen a hot guy named Kevin?”

Lexie pondered for a moment. “Kevin Costner!” she declared, sounding victorious.

“Seriously? Okay, let’s forget that he’s sixty for a moment—even in his prime he wasn’t anything to write home about. You’re grasping at straws,” I said. “And we’re getting you some therapy for your older man fetish,” I added with concern.

Lexie scowled at me. “Saying one supremely talented actor was once a very handsome fellow in his prime does not constitute a fetish,” she argued.

“Supremely talented? We’re definitely getting you therapy,” I told her seriously.

I remembered our current company. The realization came with an uncomfortable sensation of heat, feeling his eyes on me. Sure enough, black eyes were darting between Lexie and I. Bull was standing, and the tire was changed. He was staring at us with a blank expression.

“Done,” he declared, ignoring our debate.

“Have you seen
Dances with Wolves,
Mr. Bull?” Lexie asked him, taking the keys and ignoring the fact he looked like he would rather be in Alcatraz than having this conversation.

“Nope,” he bit out.

“
Field of Dreams
?” she continued, unhindered by his attitude.

He shook his head. I personally thought he was lying. He just didn’t want to hand in his badass card by admitting he watched such a tear jerker. Then again, maybe his hobbies didn’t turn to watching movies. It was more likely he learned how to waterboard for fun, or practiced menacing looks in the mirror. He had that shit
down pat
.