by Zoey Parker
“That is, if you still want to go,” he continued.
“Are you serious right now?” I asked him.
“Absolutely.”
“What about the shop?”
He laughed and shook his head. “You and work. Sometimes I wonder which one of us is really the workaholic here. I think you’re just better at hiding it.”
“Maybe, but that’s another reason you keep me hanging around. Or that’s what I like to believe anyway,” I said.
“Well, don’t worry about work. You can work your schedule around school,” he said.
“Are you really serious right now?” I asked again. I could barely contain my excitement. It was all I could not to jump on him.
“I’m absolutely serious, Maria. One of the goals of opening this shop was to use the money from it to get you into nursing school so you could finally pursue your dream of becoming a nurse. And it’s time for us to make that happen,” he said.
“But I don’t want to leave you high and dry without any help,” I argued. I laced my fingers into his and stepped closer. I ran a hand through his hair.
“You won’t. I trust that you’ll figure something out to make it work. You’re a damn genius when it comes to working smarter instead of harder,” he said, continuing to sing my praises.
“I mean, if you say so.”
“I do. I’ve got some money put back for you, just for school,” he said.
“Aside from what you’ve been paying me?” I asked.
“Yeah. Why do you think I’ve been working so hard? I mean, part of it was just for the fun of it, because you know me and work, but a lot of it has been because I promised to help you, and I want to be able to do that. Your pay was never really supposed to be school money, not the way I was thinking anyway.”
Tears were welling up in my eyes. “Just shush, Brawn,” I said. I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him.
After a moment, he slowly put his arms around my waist and held me to him.
“Thank you so much,” I cried. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I pulled back and kissed him.
Our lips locked together and pressed against each other. I broke the kiss and hugged him even tighter. I was so thrilled, I didn’t know what to do. I had never expected anyone beyond my father to do so much for me.
“I’ll start looking immediately,” I told him.
“Good, and let me know what you come up with.” He looked like he was about to go back to work as we pulled apart from each other.
I grabbed his hand and pulled it from his work. “Stop, please. Let’s go home,” I told him.
He smiled and put down the sander. “Sure,” he said. “Let me get cleaned up real quick.”
“Okay.” I let go of him and he went to the sink in the back to start washing his hands.
I listened as the water trickled in the sink and watched as he worked the soap over his hands and half way up his muscular arms. I always wondered why he washed his arms instead of just his hands, but whatever his routines were, they worked. There was no reason to mess with them.
“I saw Cory leaving tonight,” I said.
“Yeah, he’s a good kid,” he said.
“So, when do I get to meet the rest of the guys in the MC? I’ve heard a lot about Mark, and I think you mentioned your prez and the VP a couple of times,” I said.
“Maybe soon. Cory is actually Mark’s son. Looks just like his mom, nothing like Mark.”
“So Mark’s got an old lady?” I asked.
“Hell no!” He laughed. “Mark loves women too much to settle down. Now, don’t get me wrong, he’s one hell of a gentleman, but that’s because he truly loves women. He makes the rest of us look like monks, but you’d never know it.”
“Damn. Okay.” That seemed like an odd bit of information. I wondered how many other kids he had out there if he loved women so much.
“Don’t worry about it. You’ll meet everyone soon enough,” he assured me as he turned off the water and dried his hands.
“Well, there’s another thing I wanted to run by you.”
“Okay. What’s up?” He walked over to me and put his arm around my waist.
“I’m thinking about taking my own advice. You know, like I told you about the apprenticeships with the guys from the club? I’m thinking about talking to the old ladies about coming in and covering for me while I’m in class,” I told him.
“Absolutely. That’s a great idea. That’ll get you in with them for sure.”
“And instead of putting them on the books, I think I should just pay them myself out of what you pay me,” I continued.
“Another excellent idea. That will make paperwork and everything much easier. Plus, it will give them something they all like, and that’s the whole under-the-table feel of working off the books.” He chuckled. “You gotta understand., a lot of the people associated with The Twisted Ghosts are old school. They do things the way they did back in the sixties and seventies, regardless of how legit it is or not.”
“I get it. I’ve kind of figured that out from what you’ve told me.”
“Good. You’ll fit right in, then,” he said, pulling me close for another kiss.
Our mouths met again, and kissing him felt so comforting. It felt like the only time I could really relax anymore. It was the one time I didn’t have to worry about how much he was working or how frantic our lives had been since we had opened the shop. I didn’t have to worry about where I stood with him outside of work, because his lips and tongue told me where I stood. I stood right next to him. I wasn’t just his partner at work. Despite the fact that we hadn’t labeled our relationship, I was his partner in life.
There were many ways that I supposed we had told each other how much we cared over the course of the last several months, from the physical affection to making sure we ate, making sure we were both well, making sure we slept at night.
I had dated men before, and I had been really close with my father, as well, until the day I walked out of his office after quitting his company and getting kicked out of the family, but I had never had someone as supportive as Brawn in my life. He didn’t just say he supported me. He actively supported me, by providing me with financial stability and a place to live, by making sure I didn’t go without, and by allowing me to call the shots and make the decisions when it came to his work, to our company.
It meant so much more to me than I knew how to tell him.
“So, when do I get to meet the girls?” I asked as I pulled back from our kiss.
“When do you want to meet them?” he asked.
“As soon as possible, because I know everyone in the MC will be happy to see both of us at the clubhouse sometime.”
“Have you been talking to Shift?” he asked.
I smiled. “Why, you feeling jealous? No, I haven’t been talking to Shift, but I know you never go by there these days, and I know you only rarely went by there.”
“Yeah, but there’s so much work to do,” he protested.
“Cry me a river, kid,” I said. “That’s your family, and trust me, you’ve got to cherish them while they are there. You’ve got to do right by them even if you feel like they aren’t always doing right themselves. I know they get up to some business you don’t agree with, but they are there for you.”
He sighed, and his grip on my waist relaxed a little.
“No, don’t get like that. You need to go see them before they get sick of your shit and back away. And something tells me it’s not pretty when an MC lets someone go. I don’t want to see that happen to you, Brawn. You’re too good for that, and you mean too much to that organization. You have too much to offer them to let it get to that point,” I said.
“Okay, okay. We’ll go.”
“When?”
“Soon,” he said, and he kissed me again.
I took him at his word, grabbed the laptop bag, and walked out of the shop arm in arm with my partner.
Chapter 12
Brawn
“Hey, Brawn.” Cory caught my attention with a nod of his head, directing my attention from the junior member of The Twisted Ghosts who was sanding down a bed post, to Maria standing in the doorway to the workshop.
She wore a wide grin, and her eyes sparkled with joy as she stood there, staring into the room where I worked with Cory and two other guys from the MC we were training to do our job. She held an envelope and an unfolded letter in her hand. I already knew what it was, or at least what I hoped it was.
“Hey, cover for me,” I told Cory, putting him in charge of both of our apprentices as I wiped my hands on a shop towel – a habit I had picked up from working on bikes – and walked up to the door to see what the news was.
“I’ve got some good news,” Maria said, like a kid who knew a secret everyone else had been desperately trying to figure out.
“I see that. You won a million dollars?” I guessed.
“No,” she said with a gentle push on my chest. “Here, read the letter.”
She stuck the unfolded piece of paper in my face and I accepted it, looking over the message quickly before starting to pretend to read it out loud. “Dear Miss Kelly, we are sorry to inform you that at this time we do not consider you a good fit for our nursing program. Better luck next time.”
“Bull. That’s not what it says.” I laughed as she grabbed the letter from my hand and read it again, as if to make sure she hadn’t misread it the first time.
“No, I see what it says,” I told her. “Congratulations,” I said as I wrapped my arms around her in a quick embrace.
Her arms went around my waist, but she pulled away quickly and cleared her throat. She turned her attention back to the letter in her hand.
“Thank you,” she said distractedly.
“You’re welcome. Good job.” I lightly slugged her shoulder, trying to diffuse the situation.
“So I guess we need to talk about my schedule.” She still kept her face to the floor and her eyes away. Her tone was turning somber, like she was sad to be going back to school.
“I already told you I’ll work with you. You just worry about school and let me handle things here. Besides, when do classes start?”
“In a couple of weeks.” She pulled down the bottom third of the page and looked at the date again.
“Well, we’ve got time. In the meantime, we need to celebrate. Let’s go out tonight.” I was already planning the evening in my head – dinner, a few drinks, maybe some dancing, and then take our exhausted asses home. She’d earned a night out on the town.
“Are you sure?” She looked at me with eyes that seemed to wonder if I was asking her out as her friend, employer, or something more.
“Yeah, I’m sure. This is a big step for you. Let’s shut it down early today and hit the town.” I put an arm across her shoulder and felt her wince. We still hadn’t talked about what happened between us after dinner with Shift, and affection in front of the people at work was still off-limits because we hadn’t defined anything. It was all unspoken, which made it even more frustrating.
“I’ve still got more work to do with the ladies,” she argued. “How about shutting it down at the normal time?”
Part of the appeal of being my own boss was being able to do it my way. If I wanted to knock off early, I was the boss, and we could do that. Luckily, I had Maria there with sense enough to see that closing early or opening late wouldn’t have helped our business in any way. So I agreed, like I always did.
“You’re right, we’ve got too much to do to close early. Let’s get back to work, then.” I gripped her shoulder the way I would have one of the guys as she turned to walk away. It was a brotherly gesture we used in the MC, but, in our case, she knew it was a substitute for something more personal. She shot me a look that said as much and walked back into the office where the two old ladies from the MC were working on the phones and trying to learn her scheduling system for accepting work.
Everything was on the waiting list now. Thankfully, Cory had picked up the craft pretty quickly, showing a strong natural talent for the work we did. It was because of his natural talent that we had taken on two more apprentices – two more junior members of the MC – to train so we could get more work done in less time.
I paid the boys under the table every day, handing them cash before they walked out the door so they had money in their pocket after giving me a day’s worth of work. We had the money coming in, so I didn’t feel the need to make them wait for weekly paychecks. Maria, on the other hand, was teaching the ladies how to work the payroll system so if they didn’t figure it out, they didn’t get paid.
Once everyone was gone I waited with the door closed as Maria gathered her things so we could leave. I watched as she shut down her computer and made sure her new cell phone was tucked away in her new purse. She stuffed the letter in its envelope into her purse, as well.
“Okay, I’m ready,” she said as she glanced over her desk again to make sure she had everything. Then, she walked past me as I held the door open for her. She stepped away and kept her distance. I couldn’t help but wonder what she was thinking.
“Are you ready to go out?” I asked her.
“Where are we going? Do I need to change?” She held her arms out to the side and turned around, showing me the clothes she’d worn to work – jeans and a black blouse. I supposed she could have gone dancing in those clothes, but I knew she would have wanted to look her best out on the dance floor.
“Let’s run by the house first,” I told her.
“Oh, damn, we must be going someplace nice,” she said as she turned toward the car.
I locked the front door and walked up behind her, placing a hand on the small of her back as I unlocked and opened the passenger side door.
“And a gentleman, too? It’s like you don’t want me to leave,” she teased as she got in the car.
I closed the door and walked around. I hadn’t actually thought about her going back to school as her leaving. Sure, she was going to be leaving the office. I wasn’t going to make her juggle work and school, but leaving outright? I hadn’t even considered it. I just knew I had promised to help her, and I was going to. Our relationship was based on an agreement. Nothing more. We were partners.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” I told her as I pulled away from the curb.
“A surprise? Did you know this letter was coming?” she asked.
“Not exactly, but I did plan for it,” I admitted with a wink.
We pulled up to my house, where we’d been staying together since that first night in my cabin. Admittedly, it wasn’t as large as my brother’s, but I didn’t feel the need to have a millionaire’s mansion. It was a cozy one-story home, not much bigger than my cabin.
I held the door open for her to go in ahead of me.
“Where’s this surprise?” she asked as we walked into the living room from the foyer.
“It’s in my room,” I told her.
“I see.” She raised her eyebrows. “You wouldn’t be trying to get me back in there, would you?”
I smirked as I remembered the night we’d spent in there, too tired to do anything. I remembered thinking it was going to lead to us spending every night together in my bed and possibly forging a new, deeper bond. But things had gone back to normal the following day and, as usual, we moved forward without a word, both of us ignoring the things that happened between us like they never even happened except to make little remarks.
“Well, I do want you to see the surprise, so I guess you’ll need to go in there.”
She looked at me with suspicion in her eyes as she walked through the doorway into my room. One corner of her mouth lifted up as if she still suspected I was up to something. She sat on the side of the bed and leaned back on her elbows, an inviting, distracting position.
“So, what is this surprise?” she asked as I walked past her to the closet. She almost sounded disappointed that it wasn’t sex. She certainly seemed to expect it.
“This is your surprise, and I’d like you to wear it tonight,” I said as I pulled a new evening gown out of the closet and held it up for her to see.
“Are you serious? Brawn, you didn’t have to buy that!” She covered her mouth with her hands. Her eyes opened wide with surprise.
“I know I didn’t have to, but I figured you would need something to wear out on the night you were accepted into a nursing program.” I sounded a little more dismissive than I intended, but it was true. I had bought the dress just for that occasion.
She got up from the bed and looked at the gown, taking the bottom of it in her hands and holding it so she could see the whole thing in the light. Her mouth opened to say something, but words didn’t come out. She looked at me with gratitude beaming in her eyes.