REBEL, a New Adult Romance Novel (The Rebel Series) (13 page)

“Who lives in the other one?”

Mick’s face goes dark.
 
“My brother when he’s not in jail.”

My attention snaps back to Mick at the word jail.
 
“Seriously?”
 
This family is way more complicated than I gave them credit for.

“Yeah.
 
He’s pure trouble.
 
That’s why we’re behind with the work right now.”

“What’d he do?” I ask at a near whisper.
 
If he says ‘murdered someone’ I’m so quitting this job.

“Got in a fight.”

“Oh.
 
Well, that’s not so bad.
 
Lots of guys fight.”
 
Stupid roosters that they are.

“Yeah, but not all of them fight cops.”

“Oh.
 
That
is
a problem, isn’t it.”

“Like I said, he’s trouble.
 
When he gets back you should just stay away.”

“I’m not attracted to jail birds, so no problem there.”

Mick smiles.
 
“That’s what they all say, until they meet him.”

I fold my arms.
 
“So Rebel’s all workaholicky and your brother’s pure trouble … what does that make you?”

He grabs the door to leave.
 
“Me?”
 
The grin is totally contagious.
 
“They call me Hellion.” And with that he steps outside and leaves me alone in the office with my greasy hair, dirty clothes, and exhausted brain.

“You leaving?” Rebel asks from the opposite doorway, distracting me from following Mick out and asking him just how he earned that nickname.

“Yes, it’s after five.
 
Is that okay?”
 
I’m nervous all of a sudden.
 
I want to lick my lips but worry that I’ll look like a crazed druggie or like I’m making a sexy move on him.
 
Sexy is the last thing I feel like I can be right now.

“Yeah.”
 
He turns to walk away.

“Rebel?”
 
I have no idea what I’m going to say.
 
I just don’t want him to leave for some reason.
 
I’m a glutton for punishment, I guess.

“Mmm?”
 
He doesn’t turn all the way around, but I get a profile shot that’s enough to make my heart skip a beat.

Dammit, his back is so frigging wide!
 
And now that I’ve seen him walking around shirtless half the time, I know exactly what’s under that stupid mechanic suit of his.
Dammit, dammit, dammit.
 
Good thing he’s such a jerk most of the time.
 
It’s helping to keep my sexy thoughts to a bare minimum.
 
Unfortunately, I think that’s only going to work when I’m around him.
 
As soon as he’s far away and I’ve forgotten the assholey parts of his personality, I know I’m going to start picturing his chest and face again.

“Thanks,” I say, feeling like a fool.
 
“Thanks for giving me this job.”

He faces front and walks away.
 
“Don’t screw it up,” is the last thing I hear before the sound of clanking tools takes over the silence again.

“Yeah, right,” I say, slamming the door behind me and walking out to my car.
 
“Don’t screw it up.
 
Don’t screw it up.
 
How about you not screwing things up?
 
How about you not being a jerk for once, how about that?”
 
I’m fumbling with my keys when I realize I’m not alone out in the parking lot.

I sigh heavily and look up.
 
“You heard me again, didn’t you?
 
What are you, a vampire?
 
How do you do that?”

“What time will you be in tomorrow?” Rebel asks from the doorway.

I’m completely lost, so I give up trying to get into my car.
 
“I don’t get you.”

He says nothing, of course, so I continue.

“I mean, you say hardly anything at all to me all day, and when you do finally talk, it’s like you ration your words because you only have a certain amount of them you can speak in a day, and then you sneak up behind me to ask me stupid questions, like you actually want to talk to me and that’s all you can come up with to talk about.
 
If you want to chat, just chat!
 
Open your mouth and talk to me!
 
I promise I won’t bite.”

I want to die when his expression doesn’t change.
 
“I need to know if you’ll be in here before I’m in. I have a delivery to make.
 
Here’s a key.”
 
He walks forward with his hand outstretched.

My face is on fire again.
 
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve opened my mouth and inserted my own foot.
 
Of course he doesn’t want to chat with me.
 
This man doesn’t chat.
 
He fixes cars and walks around being sexy all day without even trying.

I take the key from him with a trembling hand.
 
I don’t know if my nerves are a result of having accused him of wanting to talk to me or from having him so physically close.
 
I step away quickly just to be sure.

“I don’t bite either,” he says.

“What?” I ask, brushing my hair out of my face.
 
I
 
heard him, but I don’t know what to say to that, so I’m stalling for time.
 
I’m so flustered, I feel like running out of the parking lot as far and as fast as my feet will take me.
 
I guess I’ll have to get them out of my mouth first, though.
 
God, why is it that I come up with witty things to say fifteen minutes after I’ve left the scene?
Come on, Teagan, say something awesome!

“I said, I don’t bite either.
 
See you tomorrow.”
 
He turns to leave and makes it halfway to the door.

“Rebel!” I shout too loudly.

“Yeah?”
 
He turns halfway so I can see the side of him.

“Do you have any degreaser I can use?”

He frowns as he turns the rest of the way towards me.
 
“What do you need it for?”

“My shower.”
 
And my hair, but we’ll keep that part a little secret.

“Your shower?”

“Yeah.
 
It has black slimy stuff all over it.”

“Wait here.”
 
He disappears into the office.

I bite on a hangnail while I wait for him, wondering if I should offer to pay for the stuff he’s going to bring me. I hope he doesn’t think this is my lame attempt at making a move on him. That would go down in the books as the worst pick-up line of all time.
 
Do you have any degreaser I could use?
 
It’s almost perverted.
 
I’m picturing what kind of weirdos would do things with black grease when he comes back through the door carrying a spray bottle.

I look at it when he hands it over and am instantly frustrated.
 
“This isn’t degreaser.”

“No, it’s not.”
 
He leaves me standing there.

“But I need degreaser!” I yell at the closing door.

“No you don’t!” he yells back.

A spark.

A
spark!

That blonde girl might own his ass in that club, but in this moment at Rebel Wheels, I feel a genuine spark between us.
 
The kind of spark that didn’t just originate from my lonely-ass heart.
 
He was smiling when he answered, I know he was; I could hear it in his voice.
 
Maybe he still is.

I leave the parking lot with a big shit-eating grin on my face.
 
It lasts all the way to my apartment, up until the second I see the broken locks and bashed-in doorframe of my new home.

“Mother fucker,” I say under my breath, as I realize I’ve been robbed.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

MY HAND HOVERS IN FRONT of my apartment door, but I don’t push it in like I want to.
 
What if someone’s still in there?
 
What if they have a knife?
 
Or a gun?
 
I know this makes me an asshole, but I leave my door and walk around to the one I saw Julio go into the other day.
 
I knock loudly, hoping someone inside will hear me over the loud music.

A woman comes to the door.
 
She’s almost a foot shorter than me, but the wrinkles around her eyes tell me she’s an adult.

“Hello.
 
Um, is Julio around?”
 
I try to look past her but see only a small foyer with vinyl floor covering that looks almost as bad as my walls, yellowed and torn in a couple spots.

She answers me with a bunch of Spanish.

“Julio?” I try again.
 
“Estoy Julio … here-o?”
 
I really should have taken Spanish in school.
 
French is so not spoken in LA anywhere.

The woman turns her head and yells into the house something I can’t understand, but a minute later Julio is standing next to her without his hat.
 
He looks ten years old.

“Oh, hey, Teagan, what’s up?”
 
He smiles and his blindingly white and gold teeth glow out from the gloomy apartment interior.

Before I can answer, his mother is spouting off something angry-sounding.
 
Julio answers just as passionately, opening the door wider so he can go around her and come out.
 
She’s still yelling a thousand miles an hour when he shuts the door gently behind him.

“Holy shit.
 
Was she mad about something, or what?”

“Nah.
 
She was telling me to finish my homework before I take off.”

I frown, not sure I believe him.

“So what’s up?
 
Need more wall repair advice?”
 
He pulls his hat out from his back pocket and slaps it onto his head, twisting it to the side so it’s off-kilter.

“Uh, no.”
 
For some reason, now that I’ve seen him with his little mamacita, I feel terrible about wanting him to go with me into my possibly dangerous apartment with me.
 
What was I thinking?

“Never mind. I gotta go.”
 
It crosses my mind after the day I had with Rebel and this situation now, that it’s very possible I left my brain behind in the dorm.
 
Maybe I should go back there and see if I can find it again.
 
At this rate I’m going to get myself killed playing in traffic.

I turn to leave, but he follows me.

“Tell me,” he says.
 
“I’m bored.
 
I can help.”

“It’s nothing. I just got broken into and I was looking for moral support, but you should probably stay home.”

“Oh, shit … burglarized?
 
What’d they take?”

“I don’t know,” I say, arriving at my door.
 
“I haven’t looked inside yet.”

We stand facing each other at the entrance.
 
“You want me to go in?” he asks.

“Hell, no.
 
I want neither one of us to go in.
 
What if he’s still in there?”
 
My heart rate is picking up.
 
There are no sounds coming from inside, but what kind of burglar stomps around in the middle of robbing someone?

“Nah, man.
 
He’s long gone.
 
This is the time everyone’s coming home from work if they have a job.
 
He wouldn’t stick around to get caught.”

“How do you know that?”
 
I narrow my eyes at him.

His eyebrows go up.
 
“You think
I
robbed your place?”

I punch him in the shoulder.
 
“No, I don’t think you robbed my place.
 
But you sure know a lot about doing it.”

“No, I don’t.
 
It’s common sense.
 
Even tweakers know to be gone before people get home.
 
Come on.”
 
He pushes the door in before I can stop him.

Since my whole apartment is only one room, it’s not difficult to see what’s been done from out on the front walkway.
 
“Son of a bitch!” I yell.

“Dude,” he says in a disbelieving tone, “they re-did your hole.”

“Can I just tell you how wrong that sounded?”
 
I leave off messing with him to stare slack-jawed at the new hole in my wall, exactly where I spent about four hours fixing the last one.
 
“What the fuck.”
 
I shuffle into the room, unable to take my eyes off the patch that used to look totally ready to be painted.
 
“Who would do such a thing?” I look back at Julio.
 
“The building department?”

“What?
 
Why would you think that?”

“Maybe I did it wrong.
 
Maybe they came in here and did an inspection or something.”

He moves past me into the room.
 
“If you tell me you’re serious right now, I’m going to advise you to move out of this hood and never come back.”

“Why?” I ask in a small voice.
 
I wasn’t kidding about the building department.

“Because.
 
No one can be that naïve and stay alive here for longer than a few days.”

“Shut up.”

“Seriously.”
 
He sweeps his arm across the room.
 
“You think the building department gives a shit about this place or any of the people in it?”

My gaze follows his gesture.
 
“You’ve got a point.”

“Hell yeah, I’ve got a point.”
 
He points to the hole in the wall.
 
“What you have here is a person who thinks you’ve got something valuable to hide.”