Jenny hadn’t slept much. Her ears still burned where Billy had touched her with the barest hint of pressure. She couldn’t get past how gentle his touch had been—or how much it had affected her. She’d have expected a man like him to be all rough, very tumble. But soft, tender caresses? Coupled with the heated looks he kept giving her?
No amount of tossing and turning in her bed had let her sleep.
“Billy said that he’s going to let me help weld the frame,” Seth repeated for the fourth time that morning.
Yawning, she turned the final corner, looking for Billy’s bike. It wasn’t in the parking lot, which left her feeling vaguely disappointed, but then Seth said, “That’s his truck!”
Maybe it was. And it was parked right next to her spot.
She rolled up and came to a stop before she looked in the cab. Well, tried to, anyway. The truck sat a good two feet above her. Black, of course. She expected nothing less from Billy Bolton.
“Morning,” Billy said as he rounded his truck and opened her door for her.
The gentlemanly act threw her for another loop, but if he was insulted that she sat there staring at him in the dawning morning, he didn’t show it.
“Hey, where’s your bike?” Seth got out of the car.
“Had to bring pipe,” Billy said as he closed Jenny’s door behind her, turned and opened up the passenger door of his truck. “Brought you some tea.”
“Really?” She caught herself. “I mean, thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied, handing her a cup from a fancy coffeehouse she couldn’t afford.
This time, Jenny’s fingers had to linger over his, not the other way around. This time, she was the one who was doing the touching. This time, she let herself feel the span of his fingers. They were thick, but long. Perfectly balanced for their size.
Just like Billy.
She needed to say something—anything—to extricate herself from this situation. “How much do I owe you?”
It was hard to make out his features in the early-morning light, but she thought he raised an eyebrow at her—the same look he’d given her when she’d caught him stripping off his shirt in front of her class. “You don’t owe me anything, Jenny.”
“What do you need pipe for? I thought we cut the pipe for the frame last night? Aren’t we going to weld it?”
She pulled her hand—and the tea—away from Billy and walked away from the narrow space between their vehicles.
On the one hand, Jenny was thankful for Seth’s interruption. He was keeping her from doing something completely stupid, like continually touching Billy Bolton. Because that would be bad. Somehow.
On the other, she wanted to strangle her boy. Things with Billy had such interesting potential—potential that was always interrupted by a teenager or a bike. Yes, she was pitifully out of practice at flirting, but even an old pro would find it challenging in this situation.
“Whoa. We might get to welding after school today—if your mother says it’s okay.” As he opened the gate on the truck, Billy looked at her for approval.
“As long as he’s got all the safety gear,” Jenny replied, taking a sip of her tea. Lightly sweetened black tea. Still warm enough to be hot. Perfect, she thought with a satisfied sigh.
“But everyone else gets a crack at cutting pipe, too. Bobby says it’ll look good for the camera. So the rest of the kids get to cut junk pipe. And you,” he added, pointing a finger at Seth, “get to carry it all to the shop. Get started.”
“Me? Why?”
“This is the grunt work, kid. And you are the grunt.”
Jenny managed not to laugh at this keen observation. Mumbling under his breath about how this totally wasn’t fair, Seth hauled out a few lengths of pipe and began carrying them to the shop. He dropped one, then another. Juggling the remaining pipe, he tried to kick the pipes on the ground, but only succeeded in stubbing his toe.
“Let him handle it,” Billy said, close to her ear as his massive hand settled on her shoulder and pulled her back—gently—toward the truck.
Too late, she realized she’d gasped, although she would have been hard-pressed to say if her response was out of concern for Seth or because of the sudden pressure of Billy’s touch.
She wanted to squirm—this was different than the last time he’d held her back. Instead of the middle of the well-lit shop, with a camera recording their every move, she was alone with Billy in the dark.
She tensed. Would he press her against the truck’s side, all of those tattooed muscles giving her no place to go? Would he take a kiss from her—or something more? Would she let him?
Good girls didn’t let bad boys take those kisses, and Jenny had spent the past fourteen years being a good girl. Through hard work and dedication, she’d become a respectable woman—not someone who chased rich bad boys.
So why did she want him to kiss her so much?
Darn it all, he didn’t do any of that. Instead, he trailed his hand down her back—which still made her insides quiver, especially when his hand traced the curve of her hips, just above her bottom.
God, she needed to say something. Anything.
“I...” Then she looked up, her gaze meeting Billy’s.
His face was only a few inches from hers, and the look in his eyes melted the part of her brain that was trying to engage in polite conversation.
Billy grinned. Not a full-on display of teeth, just the corners of his mouth moving up in unison, but he looked as if he’d discovered the cookie jar and was about to stick his hand into it.
“This is the part,” he said, his voice rumbling out of his broad chest as he reached up and smoothed her hair away from her face, “where you threaten to feed me to the coyotes.”
Ah. Yes, that was her line. But she was powerless to say that, much less anything else. All she could think was, dance with me. Dance with me and make it worth it.
Then the sound of metal clanging on metal and what was most likely an inappropriate curse word muttered by her son snapped her out of her stupor. Seth was still about, after all. It wouldn’t do to have him see his mother and this man making googly eyes at each other.
She pulled away. It took more effort than she thought it would.
“How you doing?” Billy called out, looking none the worse for wear.
“This is stupid,” came the completely Seth-like response.
“You don’t have to haul metal,” Billy responded, still looking completely unflustered. “You also don’t have to help with the welding. Your call, kid.”
Seth stomped up to the truck, gave Billy the dirty look that was all-too-familiar to Jenny, and grabbed another couple of pipes.
“I carried metal when I was your age,” Billy called out after him. “Builds character.”
“Whatever.”
This time, Jenny did giggle. She should have been irritated that Seth was snotty to Billy, but honestly, it was a relief to know that he wasn’t like that only with her. And to know there were limits to Billy’s ability to charm the boy.
Even if there didn’t appear to be limits on how much he could charm her.
“What?” he asked over the lip of his cup.
“You’re better at this than I thought you would be.”
This hung out there for a moment. Truthfully, he was better at a lot of things than she would have given him credit for. Working with the kids. Managing Seth. Humoring Don.
Making her feel special. That was the biggest surprise of all.
After a heavy pause, he shrugged. “Shop is good for kids.”
“Oh?”
He nodded. “You may have trouble believing this, but I wasn’t exactly a perfect student back when I was his age.”
“No!” she gasped in mock surprise, which made him chuckle. “Actually, neither was I.” After all, she’d already lost her virginity by Seth’s age. That’s how a girl wound up pregnant at fifteen.
But then the silence between them stretched, and she realized that he was staring at her. And she remembered that he’d asked her how old she was, how old Seth was.
“That was a long time ago,” she hurried to add, feeling the kind of shameful embarrassment she hadn’t had time to feel in years. Then, after the words were out, she realized they made her sound old.
Maybe she should drink her tea.
“Interesting,” he muttered as Seth stomped up, grabbed more pipes and hauled them off. When he was out of earshot, Billy continued—by tucking her hair behind her ears again.
There was no way in heck her hair was that messy this early in the morning. But she couldn’t pull away. The pads of his fingertips grazed her earlobe and moved down her jawline with a steady pressure.
“What is?”
“You. I even look at your boy funny, and you’ll rip my liver out and leave it for the vultures. But I look at you?” He leaned in—so close that she could feel the warmth of his breath on the side of her face as his fingers lifted her chin. “I look at you, I ask about you, I touch you—you curl up in your shell, like one of those crabs.”
“I’m not a crab,” she managed to get out.
“Says the woman who promised to feed me to the coyotes.” She could hear the laughter in his voice, even if he wasn’t laughing. A man had no right sounding that sexy. Not when he was only inches from her, not when his fingertips had complete control over her. None.
He was going to kiss her. He was going to kiss her and Seth was going to walk up and see him kissing her and she didn’t know why but she couldn’t let Seth see her like that. She couldn’t. She was a good mom. She did not lose her head over men. Not anymore. So she said the first thing her mind threw up in defense. “Maybe I’m just scared of you.”
The moment the words left her mouth, he pulled back. The sun was up high enough now that she could see the way he shut down—his eyes went blank, almost mean-looking, as he crossed his arms. His whole attitude became one of sullen rebellion.
Seth trudged back up. “Last three,” he said. “Now what?”
Billy looked at her from behind his mask of attitude for a pained moment before his body uncoiled. He grabbed the pipe out of Seth’s hands and took off for the shop at a good clip. “We get to work.”
Jenny watched them go, too stunned to say anything.
What the heck had just happened?
* * *
Billy had been wrong. That’s all there was to it.
He’d misread Jenny. The huge, wide eyes? The lip biting? The pretty blushes? Not desire. Fear. His own wishful thinking had him thinking she wanted him, when in reality? He scared the crap out of her.
He’d thought she’d been different. Hell, he thought he’d been different—that he wasn’t making the same mistakes judging women that he always made. He’d thought he was getting it right this time.
He’d been wrong. Again.
It wasn’t like this was the first time he’d misjudged a woman. Hell, he’d thought Ashley loved him back when he was young and stupid. He’d loved her, at the very least—loved her and been willing to marry her, even though he’d only been seventeen, even though it had felt like his life would end if he got married and had a baby before he was old enough to vote, much less drink. Then Ashley had gone and had that abortion, had thrown it in his face when he’d been crushed and furious about her doing it without telling him. “I got rid of it because I didn’t want you” is what she’d said during their fight, right before she walked out of his life for good.
Yeah, he’d misjudged women before. Maybe he’d never not misjudged one. Which was why he was thirty-four and still damned alone. Just him and his bikes.
In this foul mood, Billy found himself cutting pointless pipe all damn day long. He got into an argument with Don about whether or not the kids could take their lengths of pipe home as a souvenir. He snarled at Seth when the kid tried to adjust the saw like Billy had shown him the night before. And when Billy’s kid brother Bobby shoved a camera in his face to get him cussing at little kids on film, Billy punched him in the gut.
None of that made him feel any better. If anything, he felt worse. He wanted to hit a bar and drink until he didn’t feel anything at all. He used to do that all the time, back when he was still young. Back when he was trying to forget Ashley and the baby that wasn’t and never would be. Back when he would throw down at the drop of a hat.
Back when the cops knew him on a first-name basis.
Those days were long gone, though. He was too damn busy to spend his time drunk and brawling—he had the business to prove it. A business that provided him with a purpose—and more money than he knew what to do with and the “opportunity” to have his whole life filmed.
Yeah, he was in one hell of a bad mood.
The bell rang back in the main building and kids bailed. Billy sat in the shop, brooding. If Seth knew what was good for him, he’d steer clear today.
Kids never did seem to know what was good for them.
“Um, Billy? Mr. Bolton?” Seth poked his head around the door. “Are we going to weld today? On the frame?”
“No. Go home.”
How had he gotten it so wrong? Of course he scared her. She was a soft, delicate little woman—sensitive and pretty—and he was, well, he was still a badass biker, covered in ink. Nothing would ever be able to change that basic fact—not the money he’d made or how unwillingly famous he’d become.
“I can still sweep up...”
“Go. Home.”
What the hell was wrong with him? He didn’t go for women like Jenny Wawasuck—women who were smart and cared about kids. Who put other people first. The women he normally went for were women who weren’t surprised that Wild Bill Bolton was, in fact, a little wild.
“Look, if this is about this morning, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
Billy’s attention snapped back on Seth as the kid edged into the room. “What?”
Seth looked as if he was on the verge of throwing up. “I wasn’t trying to make you mad. I don’t mind carrying pipes. I won’t complain next time.”
If this were just a misunderstanding between him and Jenny, well, that would suck enough. But the additional layer of the kid mucked everything up. Billy had half a mind to toss the boy out on his rear, but the moment the thought occurred to him, guilt hit him upside the head. Would Cal Horton, his shop teacher in high school, have thrown Billy out because Cal had had a bad day teaching? No. No matter what was going on with Cal, he was there when Billy needed an adult to talk to. If it hadn’t been for Cal, Billy would be rotting in prison. If he weren’t dead.
It wasn’t this kid’s fault that Billy couldn’t read a woman. Even if that woman was the boy’s mother. Damn. “I don’t want to hear a lot of lip.”
Seth’s face brightened. “Understood.”
Billy regarded him for a moment longer. Shop had saved him, back in school—shop and Cal. When Billy had finally made good and done something with his life, he’d promised Cal that he’d pay it forward.
“Suit up, kid. Let’s weld.”