“Oh yeah. Right.” Holley giggles.
“Okay, fine. She didn’t make me watch it,” I admit. “But I wasn’t lying about the teenage daughter. It’s a fact that I have one of those.”
“Hey!” Holley snaps with a laugh, both amused and jilted by my trickery at the same time.
“Sorry.” I shrug.
“All right, you little closet Brad Pitt lover, you.” I grin and shake my head as she continues. “What do we do now?”
“Paperwork,” I say simply, and she cringes.
“Oh. Yuck. Is there an option number two?”
“For me?” I shake my head. “No.”
She sighs.
“Sorry Charlie. If I don’t do paperwork, Matt and Johnny don’t get paid. I’ve tried it before, and they really didn’t like it.”
“So…what should I do? I assume you don’t want me rummaging through your payroll.”
I laugh. “You can take my truck and go get lunch for everyone.”
She looks from me to the trunk and throws out an arm in disbelief. “That truck?”
I nod.
“I can barely get in it! I don’t think I should be driving it. I really don’t.”
“Okay,” I agree. “Then I suggest you find a comfy spot and camp out.”
“Here?” she questions, looking around with obvious disdain for the comfort she’s going to be lacking.
“Unless you have the ability to teleport.”
She puts a defiant hand to her hip. “And what do I do if Matt or Johnny asks me more construction-y type questions?”
“You’re a smart woman,” I say with a wink. “I know you’ll figure it out.”
She shrugs and wanders to the other side of the house where a framed-out window makes a nice seat. She settles in, pulls a book from her bag, opens it up to the middle, and starts to read.
Her legs look a mile and a half long, and with a glance up to the roof, it’s painfully obvious that I’m not the only one who’s noticed. I look back down to Holley as she tucks a thick piece of wavy hair she took down from her ponytail behind her ear and chews at the plump flesh of her lip, unconcerned with the wait.
I’ve never known a woman who would so easily settle into an uncomfortable situation and occupy her mind without resentment.
But I guess I’ve never had a woman around who was getting paid to hang out with me either.
I shake my head and force myself to get back on task.
Time to get back to work.HolleyWe’ve been up since before the sun, and even at four thirty in the afternoon, we’re still on the move. Jake’s like the Energizer Bunny of men. I swear, I don’t even think he stops to take a breath most of the time. However, I cannot, as of this moment, give personal testimony as to the state of his bushy tail.
After finally leaving the jobsite—which took forever—we headed for the storage facility where he keeps his motocross trailer. I, being a woman of limited life experiences, didn’t even really know what that meant until we got to the facility and he backed his truck in front of it.
Jake didn’t waste any time hopping out and hooking it up, and as much as I wanted to follow, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it in the time allotted. Instead, I climbed to my knees in my seat and spun around so I could watch him work through the back cab window.
Muscles flexing and bunching as he bent over to do something between the truck and the trailer, he was a bit of a distraction, but I did the best I could to follow along with the technical side of it all. Black and gray and green, his trailer has one of the coolest paint jobs I’ve ever seen, his name sliding through the inside of a graphic slash mark.
His number—apparently number 86—is stamped directly below his name.
In no time at all, he had us hooked up and was climbing back into the truck. I didn’t get to see what was inside, but I didn’t have to wait long.
Once we arrived at the track—a big, dirt-covered, hilly thing that is apparently what you do with motocross—he backed into a spot, jumped down, rounded the truck to help me out, and then opened up the trailer immediately.
“Ohh,” I hummed to myself as he pinned back the trailer door and I had the chance to lean inside. “It’s like a motorcycle.”
His smile lit up the blue in his eyes. “Yep. Motocross.”
I’d simply shrugged, and he’d let it go. Obviously, he had other things to do than sitting around explaining it to me. I could watch for myself.
And that’s what I’d been doing ever since he got changed in the back seat of the truck, climbed in the trailer, and started unhooking everything inside to free the bike.
Jake backs his bike out of the trailer, climbs astride it, and pulls his helmet on, offering me a hand. I stare at the hand.