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Rip
I glanced over at Jessi's face, seeing the excitement and nervousness there in her eyes. This was it—the big moment that she'd been waiting for. J.T.'s bike was finished, and it was time to give the keys to him.
The bike had really turned out well, I thought. We'd made a few modifications to it from the original design that Jessi had come up with, mostly at Mick's suggestion, but everything seemed so perfect for J.T., to be honest. I couldn't believe that she had managed to capture the man's essence so easily, especially given that she hardly knew the guy.
But then again, having grown up around Greyhound Custom Motorcycles, I guess she had to know the biker type, and J.T. was about as stereotypical as they came.
“Relax,” I said to Jessi, reaching over to squeeze her hand lightly.
She tried to smile over at me, but the smile didn't quite reach her eyes. “What if he doesn't like it?” she asked fretfully. “I mean, it's one thing to see the thing, but when you're riding on it, there's so much to the feel of the bike as well. What if it-”
“You rode it, didn't you?” I asked.
“Yeah, I took it out yesterday afternoon,” Jessi said, bouncing a little on her feet, clearly impatient to get this whole thing over with.
“Then you know exactly how it feels,” I pointed out. “Would you have changed anything about it?”
“No, but I'm not J.T.,” she said, shaking her head. “What if-”
“Jessi, if he doesn’t like the bike, I'm sure you'll find someone else who wants to buy it off you,” I interrupted. “Seriously. She's a nice bike.”
“You never rode her,” Jessi protested. “I'm the only one that test-drove her—even Dad didn't have a chance to do that. So you're just saying that. He really could get on the bike and hate it. It doesn't matter that I think it felt great. It just matters what J.T. thinks, and I'm telling you, he's going to get on that bike and-”
I grinned cheekily over at her, heading off the rest of her panicked ramblings. “You think I never rode her?” I asked. “I took her out a few nights ago, before we finished all the detailing. I wasn't about to tell J.T. that we had built the perfect bike for him without knowing for certain that we had built the perfect bike for him.”
Jessi gaped at me for a moment and then reached out to punch my arm. “You're not supposed to do that!” she cried. “And what, then you reset the odometer to zero?”
“Of course,” I said. “I wanted you to think you were getting on a brand-new bike as the first person to ride it.” Jessi scowled at me, and I laughed. “No, actually—that was how I found out that the odometer wasn't working. That's why we did work on it the next day.”
Jessi rolled her eyes a little and cracked a bit of a smile at that. “At least it was useful, then,” she said.
“Oh, very useful,” I told her. “I haven't been on a new bike in ages. I'm thinking maybe I need to commission you to build me one.”
“Just wait until after everyone who needs a new bike gets theirs,” J.T. said as he walked into the shop. He eyed the new bike appreciatively and then came to swing his leg over it, settling on it, ready to ride. “This is a nice bike,” he said, sounding impressed. He glanced over at Jessi. “And you designed this all by yourself?”
Jessi glanced over at both me and Mick. “Well, I had some help with the fine-tuning of all of it,” she said modestly. “And obviously I didn't build the thing myself, but-”
“You're being too modest,” Mick said, his eyes shining with admiration for his daughter.
“Well, it's time that I got ready to ride,” J.T. said. “Rip, are you guys still coming along?”
“Yep,” I said, grinning over at Jessi. “I guess we should get moving too.”
J.T. wheeled his bike out of the shop and then revved the engine, looking pleased with the way that she purred. “That's a beautiful sound,” he said, grinning lopsidedly over at me.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes a little. “You're going to have the nicest bike on the ride. Don’t worry, I know it.” I grinned over at Jessi, slinging my arm around her shoulder. “But at least I'm going to have the prettiest girl on the ride—and the latest hotshot designer, to boot!”
Jessi ducked her head a little. “Don't bring that up again or we're going to end up with more business than we know what to do with,” she warned.
“I'm still so proud of you,” Mick told her, leaning over to give her a one-armed hug before we climbed onto my bike. “The Severn's Young Talent Award for Design and the finishing touches on J.T.'s bike, all in the same week. What are you going to do next week?”
Jessi snorted. “Sleep, I hope,” she said. “It's been a lot of long nights and early mornings lately!”
“I second that,” I said, snorting too.
As Jessi swung onto the back of my bike, I grinned, feeling her arms settle around me. “You know, I never thought I would take someone else on this bike, but this is becoming a pretty regular occurrence,” I said.
“I know,” Jessi said. “I mean, I tried to tell you that we could take that experimental one that I've been working on, but ...”
“Anything that you admit to as being 'experimental' isn't something that I want to fly down the highway on,” I told her. It was a conversation that we had already had, but that made it easy and familiar rather than boring.
“I told you, the 'experimental' bit just has to do with-”
I revved the engine on my own bike, effectively cutting her off. “Come on, enough shop talk for the day,” I told her. “Let's get going.”
There were a lot of bikers out at the meetup point when we got there, and I looked around for familiar faces. Of course, Jessi had already met most, if not all, of the Hounds of Hades' club members, but there were a few guys from different clubs that I wanted her to meet—guys from different parts of the country that I rode with whenever they were in town. And Jessi seemed to be game to meet them all, fortunately.
We flew down the highway together, starting at 10am. J.T. was out in front of the Hounds of Hades group, and I could tell that he was loving his new bike—and if I could tell he was loving it, I was sure that Jessi could as well. She was good at reading people. That was part of why she was such a good designer.
Around noon, we stopped off to barbecue some lunch, and I made the rounds with Jessi. “This is Nick, but we all call him Chainsaw,” I told her. “And that's Rooster over there.”
“Chainsaw and Rooster,” Jessi said, shaking her head and laughing a little. “I bet there are some pretty good stories behind those nicknames?”
“Yeah, but not as good as the one behind Rip's nickname, which is just 'Asshole' because-”
“Hey!” I said, lunging playfully towards Mikey, who easily fended me off.
“We're going to have to give your wife a nickname as well, if she's going to be hanging around with us,” Chainsaw said seriously.
I blushed a little, and when I glanced over, Jessi was blushing as well. “She's not my wife,” I said to the guys. “We're just ...” I trailed off, because Jessi and I hadn't really had that conversation yet, despite the fact that we had cleared everything with her father.
“I'm his girlfriend,” Jessi said, looking over at me with a challenge in her eyes.
“She's my girlfriend,” I affirmed, smiling at her. Surprisingly, the words weren't as difficult to say as I'd expected them to be. I didn't feel any reason to go running for the hills now that we were getting closer to one another. We worked well together as a partnership, both professionally and personally, and now that Ellsmith was out of the picture, everything was good.
“Guys, hotdogs or hamburgers?” one of the guys asked, coming around from the grills. We put in our orders and he walked off.
“Can I get you a drink?” I asked Jessi, slipping an arm around her waist. “There should be beer somewhere. Or there's water, probably.”
“Water would be great,” Jessi said, smiling up at me.
I raised an eyebrow at her. “And I can't tempt you to even a single beer?”
I didn't miss the way her hand strayed towards her stomach, although it didn't quite come to a rest there. “No, no alcohol for me today,” she said pointedly.
I blinked at her and then pulled her into a hug. “Jesus, woman, you're going to drop something like that on me in front of all these people?” I asked in an undertone. “Why not tell me about that when we can celebrate it properly?”
Jessi laughed and pulled away. “Well, I've been trying to figure out how to tell you for days now,” she said. “This just seemed like the perfect opportunity.”
J.T. chose that moment to wander over, a huge smile on his face. “I'm loving the bike,” he said. “She handles so smoothly, and she just really lays into those turns. Man.” He tapped Jessi on the nose. “But there are a lot of other guys who are eyeing the bike and seem pretty interested, so I have a feeling you're going to get plenty more work out of this deal.”
“She might not be working around the shop for too much soon,” I said, looking down at Jessi's stomach, even though I knew she wasn't showing yet.
J.T. raised an eyebrow at me, watching where my gaze went, and then he whistled softly. “You're going to be a father, aren't you?” he asked.
“And I guess you're going to be some sort of a godfather, aren't you?” I asked, a smirk on my face.
“Oh, no,” Jessi said, shaking her head. “This kid is having nothing to do with bikes. I'll send him away to boarding school if I have to.”
I laughed a little at that, even though I honestly had some of the same trepidations that she felt.
“Well, I'm sure that you'll keep designing, even when you're not working directly in the shop, won't you?” J.T. asked. “And, pretty soon, maybe the newest young talent will have some new young talent to inspire her.”
Jessi snorted a little. “I don't want this kid anywhere near bikes,” she said. “Last thing I need is for him to grow up anything like me or Rip!”
“Speak for yourself,” I said haughtily, and she laughed.
“In all seriousness,” J.T. said, shaking his head with mirth in his eyes. “Congratulations, you two. That's great news.”
Of course, that meant that things were really happening and that I was going to need to either run through the club rules with Jessi or quit the club myself. There would be plenty that we would need to figure out. But for right now ...
I smiled a little and turned my face towards the sun, already thinking about what it would be like to have a son who I could ride motorcycles with and who I could work in the shop with. Someone who would eventually take over the family business, just like Jessi would when her dad retired.
I leaned over and kissed Jessi lightly on the lips, stroking her hair back behind her ear. “If there's anything that you need, just let me know,” I told her. “You know that I'm here for you.”
“I know that you're here for me,” Jessi affirmed, smiling at me. “And thanks for that, Rip. You're a wonderful guy.”
“I love you,” I said quietly to her, my voice probably as serious as she had ever heard it.
She looked up at me with the same seriousness in her expression, though. “I love you, too,” she told me. “I love you, too.”