Bringing Home the Bachelor

by Sarah M. Anderson

  “You’re not going to move your car?” he asked.

  “No.”

  She couldn’t see his eyes behind his glasses, but she got the feeling he was giving her the once-over. Then, with a curt nod, he turned around, walked to the front bumper of her car and picked up the whole dang thing. With his bare hands. True, it was a crappy little compact car that was about twenty years old, but still—he picked it up as if it didn’t weigh much more than a laundry basket. If she wasn’t so mad right now, she’d be tempted to do something ridiculous, like swoon at the sight of all his muscles in action. He was like every bad-boy fantasy she’d ever had rolled into one body.

  “Hey—hey!” Jenny yelled as he rolled her car about thirty feet away and dropped it in the grass with a thud. “What the heck do you think you’re doing?”

  “Solving a problem.” Billy dusted his hands off on his chaps and turned to face her, as if he regularly moved vehicles with his bare hands. “You.”

  That absolutely, totally did it. It was bad enough she had to take a constant stream of attitude from her son. She’d tried being nice and polite—like the good girl she was—but what had that gotten her? Nothing but grief.

  “You listen to me, you—you—you.” Before she knew what she was doing, she’d reached out and shoved—actually shoved—Billy Bolton.

  Not that he moved or anything. Pushing his chest was like pushing against a solid wall of stone. And all those stupid goose bumps set off again. She ignored them.

  “I am not here for you or your brother or his film crew to treat like garbage. I am a teacher. This is my school. Got that?”

  She thought she saw Billy’s mouth curve up into something that might have been a grin. Was he laughing at her?

  She reached up to shove him again—not that it would hurt him, but she had this irrational thought that something physical might be the only thing a man like him understood.

  This time, Billy captured her hand with his massive fingers and held it. In an instant, all those goose bumps were erased by a licking flame of heat that ran roughshod over her body.

  With effort, she held on to her anger and wrenched her hand away from his. “You listen to me—I don’t care how big or scary or rich or famous you are—you’re at my school, on my rez, mister. You make one mistake—touch one student, say something inappropriate—I’ll personally grind you up into hamburger and feed you to the coyotes. Do I make myself clear?”

  Billy didn’t say a thing. He looked at her from behind his dark shades. The only reaction she could see was the possible curve of his lips behind his beard, but she couldn’t even be sure about that.

  “Mom,” Seth said from behind her.

  “We need to get filming, Jenny,” Bobby added. He stepped between her and Billy and tried to herd her away.

  She leaned around Bobby and leveled her meanest glare at Billy. “We aren’t done here.” Then she turned around and stomped off.

  As she went, she swore she heard Billy say behind her, “No, I don’t think we are.”

  Two

  Billy stood there, thinking that his day had taken a turn for the better.

  Had that pretty little cousin of Josey’s really threatened to feed him to the coyotes? Man, no one threatened him anymore—except for his brothers. Everyone else either knew about his Wild Bill reputation—even though all that stuff had happened more than ten years ago—or they knew he had enough money to sue them back into the Dark Ages.

  Hell, the pretty little woman named Jenny probably knew both of those facts—and she had threatened him anyway. He ran his fingers over the spot on his chest where she’d amusingly tried to shove him—right where he had a rose wrapped in thorns tattooed. He could still feel the warmth from her touch. How long had it been since a woman had touched him?

  He’d always had terrible taste in women. He had the scars to prove it. He’d had other offers since the biker babes who used to hit on him—high-class women who were more interested in his newly made money than him. But Billy wasn’t interested in having his heart ripped out again. And he usually threw off enough stay-away vibes to scare most women away.

  In fact, if memory served, he had been sure that Jenny Wawasuck had been afraid of him when they’d met at Ben and Josey’s wedding. He supposed he hadn’t helped put her at ease.

  Josey had asked him to wear a tux to her wedding in such a sweet way that he’d dug deep into his closet to find the one he’d had custom-made a few years ago when Bobby had insisted on dragging him to some sort of posh party in Hollywood. Even though it was his own suit, and fit well, the bow tie hadn’t done anything to improve his mood. Seeing how happy his brother had looked getting married had been just another reminder of what Billy didn’t have.

  Jenny had been this cute little thing—nothing like the kind of woman he’d taken home back when he’d hit the bars as Wild Bill. And nothing like the vacuous, high-maintenance women he’d run into when Bobby forced him into those high-society parties. Her long hair had been curled but not teased, and her bare shoulders had been free of any kind of ink. She’d looked beautiful that day. She’d obviously been the kind of sweet, good-natured woman who avoided the likes of him. And the fact that he hadn’t come up with a single decent thing to say to her?

  Damn. The memory still made him burn.

  Of course, she wasn’t his type—and her type never went for guys like him. Easier to let it go at that.

  Now, he turned to Bobby and let his brother shoo him onto his bike and instruct him to drive up and down the gravel road to school until the film crew told him to stop. Bobby had this irritating habit of wanting twenty takes for every ten seconds of footage. Normally, it drove Billy nuts, but today he was glad to have the chance to think.

  He did his best thinking on his bikes. Usually, that meant solving the latest design problem or figuring out how to work around his dad or brothers. But today, riding up and down the same mile of territory that hardly qualified as a road, the problem he found himself thinking about was Jenny.

  She’d smelled of baby powder, a soft scent that matched the woman he’d met at the wedding but seemed out of place on the woman who’d threatened him. Not a hint of coffee, and he knew Josey preferred tea when she was on the rez. The guess hadn’t been a huge leap, but the way Jenny’s eyes had widened when he’d been right? Worth it.

  He still couldn’t get over how she’d promised it wasn’t over. Maybe he was getting soft in his thirties, but he found himself hoping she was right.

  Finally, after an hour of rolling up and down the same mile, Bobby decided they had the footage he wanted. By that time, the school was overflowing. All the kids were there, and a fair number of their parents had come to watch, too.

  Back when he’d earned his reputation the hard way, people had been in awe of him. Some had wanted to be on his good side, some had tried to prove they were bigger or badder. People’s reactions had only gotten worse since this whole webisode thing started. People were watching him, expecting him to be funny or crude or what, he didn’t know. All he knew was they were here for Wild Bill Bolton. And he hated it.

  His brother Ben’s wife, Josey, came up to him as he parked his bike next to the shop where they were going to be building the bike. “Morning, Billy,” she said. “Everything go okay so far?”

  Right. No doubt Jenny had had a little powwow with her cousin. “Bobby’s still an ass—”

  “Language! There are children present!”

  It was going to be such a long day. “Twit. Bobby’s still a twit.”

  Josey sighed. “Billy, remember the rules.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know—language, attitude, no throwing things.”

  Josey patted him on the arm. “It’s just three weeks.”

  Sure, it was only three weeks at the school, but he was stuck with Bobby running his life for the foreseeable future. He’d only agreed to do this show because Ben said this was a good way to justify the cost of new equipment for the shop, and Billy loved new equip
ment. Hell, testing out a new tool was half the fun of building a bike. Plus, he’d thought it was a good way to keep the peace in the family. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  Sure, Billy guessed it was nice that people recognized him now, and yeah, it was probably good for his ego that someone had started a Facebook page called The Wild Bill Bolton Fan Club. But most of him wanted “Real American Bikers,” which was what Bobby called the webisodes, to fail and fail big. That way, he could go back to doing what he did best—building custom motorcycles. No more cameras, no more groupies, no more being famous.

  Back to building his bikes in peace and quiet.

  Although that didn’t look like it was going to happen anytime soon. “Real American Bikers” was getting a healthy number of hits on YouTube, where Bobby was hosting a channel for it—whatever the hell that meant. Billy hadn’t actually watched more than about two minutes of the show. It was too painful. Too much of a reminder that he could never really leave his Wild Bill reputation behind him.

  “Oh, here comes Don Two Eagles,” Josey was saying as she waved an older guy over. “Don, this is—”

  “Billy Bolton. You look like your old man,” Don said. Didn’t sound like a compliment, and Billy sure as hell didn’t take it as one.

  Ben had told Billy all about Don. “You’re the guy who broke Dad’s jaw back at Sturgis in the eighties, right?”

  “Damn straight,” Don said.

  “Language!” Josey snipped as she checked to see if any kids had been listening.

  “I put your old man down, and I ain’t afraid to do the same to you, so you best behave, hear?”

  “Don,” Josey said under her breath. Billy got the feeling that this was a conversation they’d had before. Then she turned on the charm. “Now, the kids are going to come out and line up. Bobby thinks it’ll be a nice shot if we introduce some of the older students to you personally and you shake their hands, so we’ll start filing them past you. Can you handle that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be watching you,” Don said before being called away by the production crew.

  “Heavens, can you believe Bobby actually wants to bring your father out here and let him and Don go at it?” Josey’s voice dropped down to a whisper. “Sometimes I don’t know about that brother of yours.”

  “Makes two of us.”

  This was why he liked Josey. She understood how the Bolton family worked and was committed to keeping it from imploding. Ben had picked well.

  Then he heard himself ask, “Will Jenny be bringing her class out?”

  Josey gave him an odd look. “No, the first and second graders aren’t allowed in the shop.”

  “I wasn’t trying to break her car,” he added.

  “I know. Just solving a problem. That’s what you do best, Billy.” She patted him on the arm again—she had that whole mothering thing down.

  Billy was about to rub the dust off his tires when Vicky, the production assistant, came up to him. “We need to get you miked, Billy.”

  Vicky definitely fell into the category of women who were afraid of him. Her production company, Villainy Productions, sounded far tougher than she was. Miking Billy usually involved taping a mike to Billy’s chest, and she didn’t seem to think his tattoos were impressive.

  “Well,” she said, surveying the fitted T-shirt Billy wore. “I guess…you’re going to have to take the shirt off?”

  Billy grabbed the hem of his T-shirt, but before he could peel it off, the doors to the school burst open and about fifty kids came pouring out. Almost immediately, Josey was next to him, a hand on his arm. “Can we do this somewhere else?”

  Vicky swallowed. She worked real hard on not being alone with him. Which was funny—Bobby was the much bigger threat to the female race. Billy hadn’t even been with a woman in…

  Damn. That turned into a depressing train of thought. The fact was, it’d been a long time since he’d gotten tired of going home with the kind of woman who looked like she was auditioning for a heavy-metal music video and waking up alone. Years.

  Since then, he’d thrown himself into building bikes. Which wasn’t such a bad thing—it kept him out of trouble. He was good at it, which had made him a boatload of money—also not a bad thing. However, with the money had come a different kind of woman—older, richer, more mercenary, if that were possible. Billy had no interest in those women. None. The one time he’d dated a woman out of his league, he’d gotten his heart run over like roadkill. It was easier just to build more bikes.

  But now building bikes was making him famous. Hell, half the time he was afraid to leave his house in the morning. A few groupies had showed up at the Crazy Horse shop and tried to treat him like a rock star, screaming and even throwing a pair of panties. Which Bobby had filmed—if he hadn’t set the whole thing up in the first place. No way, no how was Billy falling into that trap. He’d rather be alone than be with a woman who was only interested in using him.

  Which meant he was alone.

  “Go around the side of the school. We can’t have him stripping out here in front of the students,” Josey said before hurrying over to help explain the rules to the kids.

  Not that it was stripping, but yeah, even he saw the wrong in taking off his shirt in front of kids. He had tattoos—lots of them. The kind that scared small children and little old ladies.

  So he trudged around to the side of the building with Vicky following at a safe distance and whipped off his shirt. Vicky clipped the battery pack to his jeans, ducked under his upraised arm, and handed him the mike while she ripped off a piece of medical tape. They’d learned after the first show that clipping the mike to the collar of Billy’s shirt didn’t work—too much static from the machines ruined the audio feed. Now they taped the mike to his chest and let the shirt filter out the extra noise.

  Vicky handed him the tape, and he put the mike on above the rose and thorns—above where Jenny had touched him.

  As the thought of the sassy little teacher crossed his mind again, his ears developed a weird burning sensation, as if someone were talking about him. He glanced around and saw that—much to his chagrin—an entire class of undersized tykes was crowded around the windows, staring at him.

  And behind them stood a shocked Jenny Wawasuck.

  Her eyes were as wide as hubcaps and her mouth had dropped open as she looked at his exposed torso. Billy froze—he was pretty sure this violated someone’s rule.

  If he were Ben, he would probably figure out some calm, cool way to exit the situation and mitigate the damage. If he were Bobby, he would flex and pose for the pretty little teacher. He wasn’t either of them. And as such, he had no idea what to do besides brazen it out. So he stood there and stared back at her, almost daring her to come out and turn him into coyote food.

  She said something sharply to the kids, who all scrambled back from the windows as if she’d poked them with a cattle prod. Then she shot him the meanest look he’d ever seen a woman give him—which was saying something—then pulled the blinds.

  The whole thing took less than a minute.

  Damn. He was screwed. The only question was, how badly? Would she kick him off this rez? Would Don Two Eagles do the kicking?

  He sighed. This was how things went. He wasn’t trying to stir up trouble, but it always found him anyway. All he could do now—since he’d promised to watch his language and not throw things—was wait for Jenny to storm out of the building and tear him a new one.

  It’d be easier if it were Don. Billy knew men like Don, knew how they thought, knew what to expect. But a woman like Jenny was something else, someone he didn’t know and couldn’t anticipate. A sweet little first-grade teacher—with one hell of an edge to her.

  Given the way his thoughts kept turning back to when she’d touched him this morning, he was going to be spending a lot more time trying to anticipate her.

  Resigned to his fate, Billy slid his shirt back on and went out to his assigned position. He’d never understood why
he had to be the one on camera—other than the fact that he was the one who built the bikes. Ben didn’t have to be on camera at all. Bobby was the one who had the Hollywood thing going on, from the way he wore a tie every day to the way he talked circles around everyone. Times like this, Billy wished he could be as smooth as Bobby. The man was good with people—well, people who weren’t Jenny Wawasuck.

  Billy stood there, keeping an eye on the door as the smaller kids were introduced to him in a group. Where was Jenny? Surely she wouldn’t let such an offensive act as taking off his shirt in front of a bunch of first and second graders pass. Flashing a lifetime of ink at a bunch of little kids didn’t seem like something Jenny Wawasuck would let stand.

  As he started shaking the hands of the bigger kids, the ones who’d be “helping” him build the bike for charity, Billy realized two things. One, Jenny wasn’t going to come out and pick another fight with him, and two—he was disappointed.

  One of the kids shook his hand and said, “Hi again, Mr. Bolton.” Billy’s attention snapped back to the present.

  The kid looked familiar. Billy didn’t have a head for names and faces, but he knew he’d met him before. “I know you, right?”

  “We met at Josey’s wedding,” the boy said with a stammer. “I was an usher.”

  “Yeah.” Billy shook his hand again. Probably some sort of nephew or cousin or something. “See you in the shop.”

  The kid’s face brightened up. He couldn’t be much more than thirteen. Billy remembered being that age once—although he tried not to think about it too much.

  He got to the end of the line and mercifully, Bobby didn’t make them do the whole meet-and-greet thing all over again. Don and Josey began herding the kids into the shop to set up the next shot—Billy explaining how the kids were going to help him—when it happened.

  The back door of the school swung open and out stepped Jenny. Billy’s temperature spiked, which didn’t make a damn bit of sense. Now that he could see her in the full light of the morning, he noticed she had her long hair pulled back into a boring bun-thing at the base of her neck. She wore a white-collared shirt under a pale blue cardigan, all of which was over an exceptionally plain khaki skirt. The whole effect was of someone trying not to be noticed.