Unsteady (The Torqued Trilogy Book 1) (18 page)

First thing she asks after I remove a nail from her tire?

“So, Red…” She looks at my hand on her door just before I’m about to close it. “What are you doing later tonight?”

Jesus… what’s with this woman?

“Sorry, Amber,” I tell her, even though I’m the farthest from sorry. “Aside from the fact that I don’t think your husband would appreciate me hanging out with his wife tonight, I gotta date with a pretty girl.”

Her cheeks flush. “Oh no. I wasn’t implying that you and I should go out alone. No, I was thinking maybe we could get the girls together, and we could all have a playdate.” She lets out a nervous laugh, her eyes searching my face for the denial she knows is coming. “I thought I could pick up a DVD for the girls and a bottle of wine for us. And while the girls are having fun, we could talk.”

I’m getting really tired of women using a playdate as an excuse to get time with me. I mean what do they think is going to happen? Our kids are in the other room, and I’m going to bend them over the kitchen table and fuck them into orgasm?

That’s probably exactly what they’re thinking.

I step back. “I appreciate the offer, but I promised Nova that it would just be us tonight.”

The disappointment on her face is obvious. “Oh, okay then. Maybe some other time.” And then she reaches in the front seat of her car and pulls out a box of donuts. “Here.” She pushes the box toward me. “I picked these up for you guys.”

Maybe she thinks the old adage is true. The best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Not so much with me, but I take the donuts.

“Thank you, that was nice of you.”

As I turn to walk away from Amber, I notice Lenny staring at us taking in the conversation with a look of amusement on her face.

“What are you smiling about?” I ask, stopping in front of her, opening the box of donuts for her to have one. “Want a donut?”

Her wide brown eyes shine brightly as she stares at my mouth, and then my chest before meeting my eyes. I’m close enough I can feel her warmth and the only thing separating me from making contact with her body is a box of donuts. I want her to pick one so I can watch her lick the frosting off it. “Well, I just get the feeling that Amber there would love for you to do more than just remove a nail from her tire.” As she says this, her smile gets wider and more mischievous, selecting her donut. “She would probably like you to, oh, I don’t know…” She shrugs, one hand on her hip, the other with the donut in hand as she brings the pastry to her lips. “Check her oil pressure.”

Taking a slow bite, she chews even slower, and I can’t help but watch the way her lips move. She did that shit on purpose.

When she senses my inability to focus on anything but her mouth, she shifts her eyes to the side of us, and I can sense that this little show is not just for her amusement but for everyone in the shop.

I shift, uncomfortably.

Not because what she is saying is making me uncomfortable but because what she’s saying is turning me the fuck on. And the way her lips look with the chocolate on them, I’m struggling to keep control.

I knew from the moment I met Lenny, she had a dirty side. No way a girl who looks like her, and enjoys getting her hands as grimy as she does, doesn’t enjoy a little dirty talking between the sheets as well. You can see it on her face as she watches me, if not in her snide comments.

The girl has snarky and sexy down.

“Yeah, well.” My voice lowers and I know I have an effect on her. It’s the flush of her cheeks and the eyes that lower to my lips. “I do have the skill of making sure there is just the right amount of pressure down to an art.” I toss her a wink, and I’m rewarded with a small blush and Lenny biting her bottom lip like she’s picturing something she likes.

“Why don’t you meet me in the parts room and show me how it’s done then.”

What in the ass?
Well, I’d like to see that ass for sure but fuck me she knows how to lay it on.

I clear my throat and decide I had better change the subject before I bend her over one of these cars and show her just how good I am at applying just the right pressure. “Did you figure out what’s wrong with that Honda?”

“Yeah, they said it felt like it was hopping when it went around corners.”

I don’t look at her as I say, “I know what the repair order said, Lenny. I read it. I’m asking if you figured it out.”

A sardonic snort grabs my attention, and my eyes reflexively seek out Lenny again. She picks up the shock she took out of the right rear. “Yeah.” And then she takes the shock in her hands and compresses it. Usually, a shock will take some effort to compress, and this one glides freely in an up and down motion. “It’s lost its stroke.”

I really should sit down, but apparently, I’m into fucking torturing myself with blue balls.

I step in as close as possible. Close enough where I feel her heartbeat against my chest.

“And we all know it’s about the stroke, right?” I’m only teasing, trying to get a rise out of her because seeing her flustered makes me weak, and it seems I like being that way lately.

Lenny’s reaction is guarded, and I think maybe I’ve offended her. Until she laughs. Then I realize offending her is pretty much impossible to do. She’s just about to say something when Daniel interrupts her. “You baggin’ married women now?” he asks, walking toward me when he sees donuts. “Fuck off,” I grumble, turning around to my toolbox to hide my erection. “She had a nail in her tire.”

“Would you ever—” Daniel’s eyes go wide, and he can’t finish what he was about to say. He knows he said the wrong thing.

“Don’t fucking ask that.” I shove Daniel back against the welder near my toolbox and my eyes dart to Lenny’s for a reason unbeknownst to me. “She’s married.”

“You can’t be sticking your dipstick in customers,” my fucking sister points out, looking through the box of donuts.

“I never made a move on her.”

“Yeah… I know. I just like giving you shit.” She gives me a sarcastic nod and starts to walk away toward the office. As she’s just about to me, I turn and knock the donut out of her hand and onto the floor.

She smiles, and picks the donut up off the ground and takes a bite of it. “You’re an asshole.”

“Stop your fucking bitching,” Rawley says to Tyler as they both walk out of the parts room. “You’re starting to sound like my brother now and believe me, we only need
one
in this shop.”

When Rawley is outside looking for the car he needs to change the oil in, Colt smiles at Lenny, who’s watching all this with a smile. “How many times do you think ‘asshole’ is said in the shop on any given day?”

“Probably a lot,” Lenny replies, smiling at me now.

“I once counted.” Colt approaches my toolbox and takes a donut. “Red was called an asshole thirty-six times in an eight-hour period.”

“By who?” I ask, never looking up.

Colt chuckles. “Your sister…”

“Though it’s strangely accurate,”—Tyler walks by, reaching inside the box as well and side-eyeing Colt and his cup of bourbon—“we should be worried that
you
counted, not that it was said.”

“Honestly, I’m impressed your old ass can still count that high,” Lenny adds, smiling.

“I also counted how many times Daniel here scratches his balls during the day.” Colt leans back into his toolbox and takes a large bite of his donut. “You’re a dirty motherfucker, man, if you’re constantly scratching the shit out of your nuts.”

Rawley walks by and tosses a repair order on my toolbox. Slowly looking through the other twelve I have here for the morning, I don’t look up. “I can’t fucking find this car. Give me something else.”

“Just because you can’t find it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be done. Go find it.”

“I said I can’t find it. I looked.” I can tell immediately Rawley isn’t letting up, his ink-covered arms crossing defiantly over his chest.

“Listen, you little fucker.” I turn around to face him, getting in his face. “I don’t have time for your bullshit this morning. Get your ass out there and find it.”

Rawley lets out a bitter laugh. “Make me.”

I’m going to. For sure. Just as I have his shirt fisted in my hands and him back against my toolbox, metal clattering as tools crash to the ground, Mom comes out of the office to separate us. “You two, I swear to God I’m going to call Hendrix up here to knock some sense into the both of you!”

“Oh, just let them fight,” Colt says, unable to keep the grin off his face. “I’m tired of their shit.”

“Stop fucking around.” I shove Rawley away from me and toss a pair of keys at him. “Car’s in your stall already, dumb shit.”

A few minutes later, I shake my head when Hendrix, my uncle, comes walking up the street, that slow walk he has where he limps. He was in a bad wreck when he was nineteen that left him with a broken hip. Since then, he’s never walked right.

He takes one look in the shop and smiles. “Who’s that?”

Figures my mom called him anyway. She’s always sending him lately when Rawley and I get in each other’s faces.

“You know damn well who that is old man,” I mumble, unbolting the power steering pump on a Chevy truck in my stall.

Uncle Hendrix leans into the car, his burly arms resting on the fender as he examines the engine. “Seems like trouble.”

He’s not talking about the engine by any means.

I don’t say anything because he’s right. She is trouble. Hot blonde wearing skin-tight jeans in a shop full of men, it’s trouble for sure.

“How’s everything else going?”

Of course he would ask that. I get the notion he wants to help out, but there’s not a lot he can do.

“It sucks right now,” I say, tightening the intake manifold onto the engine. I glance up at him from the corner of my eye. “How’s it going down there?”

He shrugs and runs his calloused paint-splattered hand over his jaw. “We’re not all that busy. You want Jude to come down and help you out?”

I think about that for all of two seconds. I know Jude, and I also know my cousin’s taste in women. He’d be all over Lenny, and that’s not an option.

“That’s okay. We can handle it. I’ve got Tyler and Lenny’s hanging in there.”

Hendrix looks over his shoulder and then back at me. “I can see you’re hiring for eye candy now.”

He’s teasing me, but I don’t like it and glare. “She knows what she’s doing.”

“That’s good.” He gives me this look, similar to the one he gave me when he caught me stealing spray paint from his shop when I was sixteen and told him I was painting emblems to match my car. I wasn’t. I was spray painting “Rachel Clayton can suck my dick” on the wall in the women’s bathroom in gym class. She actually did suck my dick, and twenty other guys in school, but that’s beside the point. I got caught stealing from my uncle and never got caught again.

He crosses his arms over his chest, watching me. “But I can’t help but wonder if you know what you’re doing?”

We stand there just staring at each other for a minute. Maybe he’s thinking about the spray painting incident. Maybe not. Either way, he’s waiting for an answer.

“Yeah. Everything is under control.” That’s bullshit. Nothing’s under control and my uncle senses it. He knows when I’m lying.

He laughs, stepping back. “Okay.” And then he walks toward the office to probably harass my sister a little. She’s the only girl in our family, aside from the mothers, and of course, Nova now.

Hendrix is in the office about ten minutes when Sheldon pulls up to the shop in his 1969 Plymouth GTX 426 Hemi I’ve been drooling over since I was eight. Here’s the thing about a small privately owned shop. People show up during the day just to bullshit. And while that’s fine as you want to build relationships and trust in the community, it sucks when you’re busy.

You can’t miss the throaty hum of the hemi as he stops it in front of the shop. For a car guy like myself, driving this car would be a dream come true, owning it would be fucking heaven.

“Reddington.” Sheldon greets me with his wide Ed McMann smile. Sheldon’s a salesman. Always has been and he’s got the demeanor to go along with it. Looking around the shop, he notices the row of cars. “Wow, you guys are staying busy, aren’t you?”

I lean back against the wall. “Yeah, pretty busy. We just hired a new mechanic so it’s coming around.”

Sheldon’s been around this shop as a customer for as long as I can remember. He knows my dad left me a legacy and the last thing I want him to see is that I’m failing.

He puts his hand on my shoulder. “You know your dad had faith in you. He knew you could handle it.” And then he nods outside. “Why don’t you take a little break? I brought your baby by. Wanna take her for a spin?”

He’s never asked me if I wanted to drive it before. “Why would you let me drive it now?”

“Why not? You can handle it, right?”

He’ll bring it by a few times a year. Mostly to tease me. I tried to buy it from him not long after I got my license, and again when I turned twenty-one but he never sells it… and
never
lets me drive.

I stand up straight, smiling at him. “Seriously?”