Motorcycle Man (3 page)

Oh my God. Did he just say that?

I felt the blood stop rushing through my veins as my entire body solidified.

“Did you just say that?” I asked when I got my lips moving again.

“Red, give me your number, get your ass in your car and I’ll call you when it’s time for us to play again.”

He did. He did just say that because he’d also just mostly repeated it.

I clenched my teeth again but this time for a different reason.

Then I asked, “Do you know my name?”

“What?” he asked back.

“
My name,” I stated. “I told you my name Saturday night and I know I did so don’t tell me I didn’t.” And I did. I absolutely,
totally
told him my name. In fact, I’d done it at least three times when he kept calling me “Red”.

“You’re shittin’ me,” he said again.

“Stop saying I’m shitting you. I’m not. What’s my name?” I demanded to know.

“Babe, who cares? We don’t need names,” was his unbelievable answer.

“Ohmigod,” I whispered. “You’re a jerk.”

“Red –”

“Totally a jerk.” I kept whispering and he crossed his arms on his chest.

“Two choices, Red, give me your number, get your ass in your car, get outta here and wait for my call or just get your ass in your car and get outta here. You got five seconds.”

“I’m not getting in my car,” I told him. “I’m waiting for Eloise to come and show me the ropes then I’m going to work.”

“You are not gonna work here,” he returned.

“I am,” I shot back.

“No, you aren’t.”

“I am.”

“Babe, not gonna say it again, you aren’t.”

That was when I lost it and I didn’t know why. I wasn’t the type to lose it. You didn’t lose it when you planned every second of your life. Caution and losing it did not go together.

But I lost it.

I planted my hands on my hips, took a step toward him and lifted up on my toes to get in his face.

“
Now, you listen to me, scary biker dude,” I snapped. “I need this job. I haven’t worked in two months and I
need
this job. I can’t wait two more months or longer to find another job. I need to work
now.
” His blue eyes burned into mine in a way that felt physical but I kept right on talking. “So you’re good-looking, have great tats and a cool goatee. So you caught my eye and I caught yours. We had sex. Lots of sex. It was good. So what? That was then, this is now. We’re not going to play, not again. We’re done playing. I’m going to come in at eight, leave at five, do my job and you’re going to be my scary biker dude boss, sign my paychecks, do my performance evaluations and maybe, if you’re nice, I’ll make you coffee. Other than that, you don’t exist for me and I don’t exist for you. What we had, we had. It’s over. I’m moving on and how I’m moving on is, I’m… working… this…
job.
”

I stopped talking and realized I was breathing heavy. I also realized his eyes were still burning into mine. I knew he was still angry but there was something else there, something I didn’t get because I didn’t know him and I couldn’t read him. But whatever it was, it was scarier than just him being angry which, frankly, was scary enough.

When he spoke, he did it softly. “You think, Red, right now, I put my hands and mouth on you in about two minutes you wouldn’t be pantin’ to be flat on your back, legs wide open in my bed?”

At his words, I forgot how scary he was and hissed, “You’re unbelievable.”

“I’m right,” he fired back.

“Touch me, you bought yourself a lawsuit,” I retorted acidly.

“You are so full of shit,” he returned.

“
Try me,” I invited hostilely though I didn’t want him to. Not that I thought he was right, but because he was a jerk. A
huge
jerk. And I’d just decided I’d rather be touched by any man currently residing on death row before I wanted Tack to touch me again.

“Is everything okay?” We both heard and our heads turned to look down the steps to see Eloise at the bottom looking up at us with wide eyes.

I opened my mouth to say something to Eloise, what, I had no idea but before I could speak, Tack did.

“You tell her she wears that fancy-ass shit to work again, her ass is canned,” Tack growled and I watched Eloise’s body jerk in surprise.

She was in jeans, a tight t-shirt and high-heeled sandals and I was in a pencil skirt, blouse and high-heeled pumps therefore I had to admit I definitely made a mistake on the dress code but it wasn’t worth termination.

I looked to him to see his eyes cut to me. “And you,” he said, “I taste you again,
any
way I can taste you, and I will, Red, trust me, you’re gone. Outta here. Get me?”

“You won’t,” I declared and he glared at me then his eyes moved over my face. They did this for a while and while they did this, they changed. I could swear I watched the anger leak clean out of them and something else, something curious, something warm, and therefore something far more frightening filled them.

His warm blue eyes locked on mine and he muttered, “We’ll see.”

Then he stepped away, jogged down the steps, sauntered to a bike, threw a leg over it, started it, backed it out and roared away.

“What was that?” Eloise asked, I jumped and turned to see she was standing at my side.

“I don’t think I made a good first impression on my new boss,” I answered. Eloise was staring after Tack but at my words she looked at me, eyes still wide, so I pulled my “I can do this” mask over my face, smiled at her and cried, “Oh well, never mind! He’ll come around. Now, let’s get crackin’.”

And I turned to the office door.

Bring It On

It was day three at Ride. Eloise was gone, I was on my own and I had no idea what I was doing.

It would seem it was important to know a little bit about cars and bikes in order to be the office manager of a garage that made custom ones. Eloise did the best she could in the two days she had to show me around but she had a job in Vegas to get to. She was a blackjack dealer as well as a garage office manager. Her man had already left to start his new job there and she had to get her ass out there (her words) because her man was getting impatient. Seemed there weren’t many women who were equipped to run the office of a garage, or at least not ones that would meet Chaos MC (short for Motorcycle Club, one of the few things Eloise taught me that sunk in) standards and therefore her hiring efforts took longer than she expected.

She did not share what Chaos MC standards were but apparently they didn’t include knowing that first thing about cars and bikes.

The good thing about these two days was that after Tack roared off on his bike after our incident, I only saw him twice. The first, he was roaring in when I was leaving the first day. The second, he was standing, hands planted on hips outside the backdoor of the auto supply store talking to two other rough and ready motorcycle dudes. His back was to me and the conversation looked unhappy. I had a list in my purse and was on my way to get lunch for Eloise, the mechanics and me so I didn’t pay much attention. When I returned, Tack and the two rough and ready dudes were nowhere to be seen and didn’t return before I left.

Now I was back, my third day, my first without Eloise and Tack was there. I knew this because, as I drove up at ten to eight, one of the big bay doors was open and he was bent over the engine of a bright, cherry red car. His head turned to watch me drive in but that was all I saw because after I caught the initial glimpse I studiously avoided looking at him as I parked. I equally studiously put him out of my mind as I grabbed the box of donuts I brought for the mechanics, got out of my car, unlocked the office, turned on the lights and computer then started coffee.

Forty-five minutes later, some of the boys were in. I could hear them and a few had been in for coffee and a donut. I was sitting behind the desk, sipping coffee, staring at an order for parts I was clicking into the computer, no part I knew what the hell it was and the notes I was using that were scribbled on a scrap of paper looked like Sanskrit, when the door that led into the garages opened.

My eyes slid to it as my mouth started to form a smile for who I thought would be one of the mechanics when Tack walked in.

My smile froze. Then my eyes went back to the computer screen.

I tried to pretend he wasn’t there but I failed at pretending. I knew exactly when his body stopped at the other side of my desk even though I was studiously avoiding looking at it.

“Thought I told you ‘bout those clothes, Red,” he growled.

I didn’t pry my eyes away from the computer screen, took a sip from my coffee and kept clicking the mouse.

“You don’t have an Employee Handbook,” I informed the computer screen.

“Say again?” he demanded.

My eyes slid to the side and up.

Damn, he was gorgeous. Another white t-shirt, skintight across the wall of his chest, broad shoulders and lean abs, this tee stained with grease. His hands were also stained with grease even though he was carrying a grease-stained cloth. He’d obviously wiped them and, from the look of it, so had every other mechanic, all of them about ten thousand times.

I made a note to self to look into laundering the guys’ grease rags as I repeated, “You don’t have an Employee Handbook.”

“So?” Tack asked, his hands going to his faded jeans-clad hips, the cloth dangling from one.

“So, you don’t have an official dress code. Therefore, I can wear whatever I want. And I take this job seriously so I’m wearing serious clothes.”

And I was. Another pencil skirt, this one bone-colored. A cute little pale pink blouse with barely-there sleeves and darts up my midriff. And spike-heeled, pale pink slingbacks that I thought were awesome. So awesome, I bought the blouse, another skirt and a pair of slacks to go with them, I loved those shoes so much.

“Babe, this is a garage. You don’t wear uppity, high-class shit at a garage. You wear jeans at a garage.”

I straightened away from the computer and swiveled my chair to him, my head tipping back as I did so.

“Would you like me to draft an Employee Handbook that includes a dress code?” I asked.

“Yeah, Red, you do that,” Tack replied.

“Certainly,” I nodded. “Do you have a deadline?”

“End of business today.”

I blinked. Then I said, “That’s impossible. With everything else I need to do, that’ll take a week. Maybe two.”

“You got until the end of business. And I need those parts ordered and I wanna go over the order before you send it.”

Oh boy. Now I was beginning to panic. I was working on the order and I didn’t want to mess it up. Since I had a very loose hold on all that I was doing, I was certain I’d mess it up.

“It’ll be ready in an hour,” I told him, probably stupidly as it was highly doubtful I could learn Sanskrit in an hour and I knew for certain I couldn’t learn anything about cars and bikes in an hour.

“You don’t got an hour. I’m leavin’ in thirty minutes. You got thirty minutes,” he replied.

Damn!

“Fine,” I bit off.

He scowled at me then he turned away but stopped dead.

“Shit,” he muttered and twisted his torso to look back at me. “You bring in those donuts?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“Why not is not an answer to why, Red,” Tack returned, his whole body moving now to face me again.

“The guys like donuts,” I told him.

“So?”

“So, I bought donuts for my co-workers. If you’re a nice person, it’s something you do. And I’m a nice person.”

“
It’s something you do when you wanna crawl up their asses and make them like you. And it’s not something
you
are gonna do again, got me?”

Jeez. What was with this guy?

“I was just doing something nice,” I stated the obvious and kind of repeated myself.

“So you did it. Don’t do it again,” he returned.

“It’s donuts, Tack.”

“Don’t do it again, Red.”

I glared at him. Then I asked, “Are you this big of a jerk to just me or are you this big of a jerk to everybody?”

He shoved the rag in his back pocket and crossed his arms on his chest as he said, “Listen, darlin’, I told you I didn’t want you workin’ here. You cannot be surprised I’m gonna be an asshole to you because I haven’t changed my mind. I don’t want you workin’ here.”

I stared up at him. Then I thought of the order for car and bike stuff I had no idea how to make. I knew my attempt would probably piss him off and maybe give him reason to fire me. Then I thought of the fact that I’d slept with him, I thought it was something special, something beautiful and it was most definitely not. Then I thought of the fact that he didn’t want me there so why was I so fired up to be there? I didn’t like him, not at all. He was a jerk. The fact that I slept with him mortified me. The idea of dealing with him day in and day out wasn’t something that filled me with delight. Sure, I liked some of the guys in the garage and when they came in, they gabbed like women, but I hadn’t bonded with any of them.