Ride All Night

by Michele De Winton

  When Rusty turned up in LA after getting himself out of his brother’s indenture with the Reapers, Grim’s face had dropped. Like a stone. Of course he’d covered well, had introduced him to Jake and Lucy and put up some money toward the garage. But he hadn’t been happy about it. Grim was all about Grim.

  It was supposed to be the other way around. Grim was the older brother, the one who should have been looking out for Rusty after their dad died in a car crash and their mom died a year later. Rusty had been a teenager, vulnerable, needy. But the accident had just pushed Grim further into himself ’til all he could focus on was getting famous. How he got there, who he crushed on the way up, didn’t seem to matter to Grim.

  Well now it was Rusty’s turn. The garage was going to take off. It was a dream his pop had had and now Rusty was going to make it a reality.

  So here he was. Rusty looked around the apartment he’d installed above the workshop. Beth was at the desk, looking at his pin-board of notes for the show. She’d spent a week downstairs and sorted through all the paperwork in record time. She’d gotten him to download some free systems software she’d found on the net and had made a couple of spreadsheets that even he could work through. She wasn’t kidding when she said she was efficient. In fact she might be the smartest hire he’d made after getting Lucy Black to be his lead mechanic. He figured it was time to show her the bones of his TV show and see what she made of it.

  He’d only gotten a tiny share of any cash he brought home when he was with the Reapers in Illinois, the rest went to paying off Grim’s debt, so things had always been tight. Now he subsisted on the paltry income he got from running the shop on the tightest budget possible. But he wanted Grim’s name off the title to the workshop and the only way to do that was make more money. The TV show was his ticket to making that happen. It had to. With Beth in the mix, it was looking like it might just happen.

  Rusty’s eyes strayed down the line of Beth’s back to her hips and his hands surged with the memory of having nothing between them except the thinnest scrap of satin. Stop it. He’d introduce her to his brother like he’d promised. And he’d give Grim a swift kick up the ass if he was an idiot to her. So stop looking at her like that. He lifted his eyes from where they’d lingered, watching the hem of her skirt lift as she reached up to pin another card chock full of notes about a bike he’d thought would make a good episode for the TV show.

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but meeting you might turn out to be a good thing.” Beth broke into his thoughts.

  “That’s what all the girls say.” Watching her smile falter and fall made him regret his words as soon as they were out.

  She recovered fast and rolled her eyes. “Just when I was trying to play nice.”

  “Sorry. Not much call for nice around here.”

  “Clearly. When did you last tidy up?”

  He was impressed. Every time he threw a barb at her she got right back up again, usually with something smart to say. “Never had much time for tidying. Things just get into a mess again.”

  He realized that as she’d been looking at all the notes and episode cards that he and the producer had brainstormed and put up on the board, she’d systematically removed some of them and those that were left were now all pinned in perfect lines back on the board. Huh.

  “I’m good at this,” she said defensively. “I did a bunch of papers on screenwriting at film school back in Australia and I interned for a TV station.”

  “So you’re not just an actress.”

  “Well, I am. But I enjoyed those bits too. I just figured I’d do the acting part first.”

  He shrugged. “I told you I’m no expert. Show me what you’ve done.” He waved a hand at the wall. “Looks more complicated than it needs to be.”

  “This isn’t even the half of it,” she said confidently. “And if you don’t agree with me, well, I’ll just beat you over the head with a bit of chrome or something until you do.”

  He couldn’t help himself; he laughed. She was so cute when she was trying to be threatening. “It’s okay. You’re hired, remember? The downstairs desk has never looked so neat.”

  “You need some system is all.”

  “Why were you wasting time in a bar when you could have been running my workshop all this time?”

  “Because the bar is flexible. Meant I could go to auditions whenever I needed to. Standard story.”

  “Right. Of course. Sorry. Well, you’re welcome to take an audition or two if you’re working here. As long as you get all your work done. But first we gotta get this pilot made.”

  “Thanks.” She looked up at him from under her lashes and he felt a tightening in his groin.

  The moment lengthened ’til he cleared his throat and she turned back to the wall of note cards. He watched her back, the curve of her spine accentuated by her dress, and had to curl his hands into fists to stop himself for reaching out to her and pulling her, hard, against his chest. She wants Grim, remember.

  “If we just put these here, and then move this group here . . .” When she’d repinned everything on the wall to her satisfaction, grouping them by bike type and client and potential drama, he started to see what she saw in the notes. “Hey, I never thought of putting it together like that.”

  “We need to get some shots of your team. And you, of course.” She scribbled on a card and put it up on the wall.

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “You can’t want a show about your shop and expect to not be in it. It might not end up in the final cut, but we have to try. Come on.” He let her drag him back downstairs and film him on her phone with Tiny going over a glorious bike he was sure the owner would want in the show.

  “I can’t say that.” Tiny loomed over Beth but she didn’t flinch, even under his gigantic shadow. “No one will believe it.”

  “Of course you can. You can say anything because at first everyone will be too scared to not believe you. And then you’ll look at the camera and they’ll see your eyes and realize that they’re the biggest part of you. They’ll see your heart in then.”

  Rusty watched Tiny’s face melt and a slow smile spread across his face.

  Lucy snorted. “She’s got your number, Tiny.”

  But Beth turned her charm on her next. “Don’t worry, I won’t try and make you be in this.”

  “Why not?”

  Rusty almost laughed out loud. Beth had Lucy right where she wanted her by denying her a shot at being on-screen too.

  “I know you’ve got bigger things to do. So few female mechanics in the world, you don’t want to waste your time faffing about being on camera instead of doing real work. What sort of message would that send?”

  “Too right,” said Lucy. Beth kept up a steady stream of encouragement with Tiny but Rusty saw her sneak a few glances back at Lucy, who was coaxing an empty fuel tank back into shape. Then out of nowhere Lucy stopped and walked up to Beth. “You don’t think it’s exactly because there ain’t many female mechanics in the world that I should be in your stupid-ass show.”

  Beth pretended to think about it. “So that people get it? You’re right, you should be the most visible one in this workshop. You should definitely be in it.”

  Lucy nodded then smirked. “Nice try, babe. Waiting for me to come up with the old but I should be in your show.”

  Beth laughed. “I know. Sorry, I didn’t think it would work. But seriously, you should be in it. Otherwise there will be nothing nice to look at.” Beth looked around the workshop and held her hands up.

  “Unless you manage to get Rusty to take his shirt off,” said Lucy. The two women looked at each other and cackled and Rusty shook his head. How did she know how to read people so well?

  He watched Beth bossing his team around for longer than he should have. But seeing her amongst the bike pieces, he realized he might just have struck gold. Her little instructions and insights had them all grinning within minutes. She even had Tiny laughing and he couldn’t reme
mber the last time the big man had cracked anything more than a chuckle.

  When Rusty filmed a few pieces with her, him explaining the technical aspects and her pretending to be the office manager for real, dropping delicately sexy hints about who the client was, he felt the warmth of her attention too and made up an excuse to reshoot the shot just to feel the glow of her attention a bit longer.

  Then there was a roar at the door and three bikers pulled up.

  “Martinez!” Tiny called and walked away from Beth as the tall, dark Hell’s boy swung his leg over his bike. The guy was a picture of darkness. Dark hair, dark eyes, a dark glower. Rusty watched as Beth’s face closed down.

  “You poaching Wilde’s staff?” Martinez asked Rusty, nodding at Beth.

  “No one poached me,” Beth said instantly and Rusty laughed. “He’s just having me on.”

  Martinez gave Rusty a light punch in the arm and ducked when Rusty swung back. “Rusty by name, rusty by nature, old man.”

  “Who are you calling old?” Rusty ran his hands down the chassis of Martinez’s bike and clicked his tongue against his teeth disapprovingly.

  “Oy. Big mitts off. No one but Lucy touches The Fire.”

  Beth groaned and everyone turned to her. Rusty watched her squirm but she was saved by Lucy who put a hand on her shoulder. “Yes, he calls his bike The Fire. And yes he’s an ass-hat. He thinks it makes him all mysterious and fly.”

  “Don’t need a bike for that,” Martinez said and wiggled his eyebrows at Lucy.

  “Enough already,” Rusty cut in. There was work to do and not much time to do it in. “Lucy, fix his bike. Everyone else, back to work. Beth, we need to go over this footage.”

  “Footage?” Martinez asked.

  “Reckons he’s gonna make us all stars,” Lucy said and then snorted. “Make us look like a bunch of dicks more like.”

  “I promise you won’t look like a dick,” said Beth quietly.

  “Fair call. Bethy here is going to do her best to not make us look like dicks. Except Tiny, there’s no hope for him.” Tiny gave a fake growl and the two of them pretended to face off.

  “Come on,” Rusty said and pulled Beth upstairs, unwilling to defend her anymore in front of everyone. In his experience, letting people know you needed them never turned out well.

  But over sandwiches as they watched the footage he’d taken of her, the feeling of striking it lucky returned. She looked just as good on camera as in real life. Animated and bright, she drew the focus in the shop, making him . . . he wasn’t quite sure what she did but she made him care about the bike. About the bike, the client, the work that went into making everything fit together. “Who would have guessed having you slide into my bed would turn out so nicely for both of us.”

  Her mouth was full of sandwich and she struggled to get any words out. Taking a giant swallow, she said, “You said if I did this you wouldn’t mention that night again.”

  “And I won’t, to anyone else. I’m just saying that you never know what life is going to throw at you. Perhaps we were meant to meet.”

  She pursed her lips. “No. We definitely weren’t. But seeing as we have, we’re both making the most of it.”

  Damn. This was not going like he’d thought it would. Talking women into bed he could do, conversing with them in daylight, not so much. And talking to Beth made him uncomfortable in a way he hadn’t been for a long, long while. So what if watching her made him act like a teenager with a first-date boner? “Don’t get your panties in a knot. I was trying to be nice. I asked you to show me your stuff and you have. You might even get a director’s credit on the pilot if you keep this up.”

  She softened. “You don’t care that I don’t know anything about bikes?”

  “You’ll learn,” he said. “Smart girl like you.”

  They sat in awkward silence a while, both eating their sandwiches. He looked through to his apartment and another thought struck him. “Do you like staying at Wilde’s?”

  “Are you kidding? Sharing a room with who knows how many on any given night? Last week two guys crashed and I woke up because I thought there was a bear in the room. Their snores were worse than a koala orgy.”

  “I don’t even know what that means.” He shook his head. “You can move into the spare room upstairs and live like a real petrol head. It’ll be a crash course. Get you right inside this world. What do they call that? Method acting or something?”

  Beth tipped her head to the side and looked at him carefully. “It is called method acting. And I guess it’s not a terrible idea. If you’re serious about me being able to go to auditions as well as work here that would be great. I’d much prefer to do this than pour beers. Are you sure?”

  Rusty shrugged, belying the twist of anticipation in his stomach. “The room’s just sitting there. If it makes this project happen better and faster, then it works for me.”

  “And it won’t be weird when I start seeing Grim?”

  Of course it would be weird. “What if I decide not to introduce you?”

  “Then this is off. You need me. But I need Grim. He’s my perfect man. If you set me up with your brother I’ll give this thing my all. And you won’t regret it. We’ll blow this producer’s pants off.”

  He smirked. “Socks, little bird, I think you mean socks. Although if you blow his pants off he’s bound to say yes, so knock yourself out. It’s settled then, we up your technical knowledge, get this show in production, and you’ll have parts being thrown at you so you won’t have to stay in anyone’s spare room.”

  “True. Okay.” She finally defrosted completely. “I’m in. But you will have to be in it.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Indeed we will. “I’ll sort everything out back at Wilde’s first then come and stay in a couple of days. Grim and I will be able to talk about our bike research too. Win, win right?”

  Right.

  She looked at her watch. “Okay, we have this afternoon to go through all of this and then make a plan. If you’re sure about the client you want to use in the pilot then you need to get ahold of him so we can get this whole thing scripted.”

  “You didn’t script what we did downstairs and it came out great.”

  “Not who says what and when. Just what shots we need to get; the story. You know. I’m sitting at my desk then a call comes in. The bike rolls in and we all chat about how cool it is and what we need to do to it, blah, blah. I assume you don’t have much money for this, so the cheapest way is to plan it out before the camera starts rolling. Who’s going to shoot it?”

  “Haven’t got that far yet.”

  “Well, we need to sort that out too. If there is another show out there already then this one has to look and feel and be better.”

  They spent the rest of the afternoon hunched over footage, Beth taking notes in between him on the phone to his client. He also discovered another client was an editor, one who would shoot and edit the whole thing in exchange for Rusty doing work on his bike.

  By the evening, Rusty’s head was spinning at the possibility that this show was going to happen. Happen-happen, and he looked over at Beth with gratitude. This might actually fucking work.

  Her stomach gave a giant growl.

  “Pizza?”

  “Heck yes.”

  Picking up the phone again he ordered two pies and when they arrived, he led Beth into the living room of his apartment. “I’ll tidy up the spare room, but it’s private and has its own bathroom.” He poked his head in the room then shut the door on it. He was suddenly acutely aware of everything: the crumpled sheets on the spare bed, the faded couch, the pile of papers on the coffee table, the dirty cup sitting next to them, the stack of books that hadn’t quite made it to the bookshelf yet, the bachelor-sized TV that dominated one full wall of the living area. The lack of any other signs of living. He’d always lived sparsely, didn’t see the point in having lots of furniture just to look at. He spent all his money on parts for the shop now. Where he put his
head in the evenings was just a temporary distraction from making this garage every bit as great as the one his dad had planned before he died.

  At least the apartment was mostly clean though. He watched Beth take it in properly and wondered what was going on in her head. She walked over to the bookcase. There were three frames up there. Two his mom had given him of the four of them, and the other showed a picture of his dad he’d found in his mom’s things. Beth picked up the two family shots.

  “Look at how little Grim was. I can’t even picture him as a kid. Feels like he came out of the womb all grown up. What was he like when you were younger?”

  Of course that was the thing she focused on. Rusty gave himself a mental shake and dropped onto the sofa. “He was an ordinary kid. We had a pretty good life. Dad was around, which was pretty out of the ordinary around there. My folks were a tight unit back then. True love and all that.”

  She came over to sit next to him, still holding the photographs as he opened the two boxes of pizza. “Your mom and dad passed?”

  Rusty tore off a chunk of pizza with his teeth but had to wait for the cheese to cool so he could chew and swallow before he replied. “My dad first. Then Mom got sick. Real sick. Reckoned the grief turned into a growth in her stomach.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s life.”

  “Was it broken heart syndrome? I’ve heard of that.”

  “No, it was cancer. Plain old cancer. Ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”

  “Sorry.” She bit her lip and put down the photos, picking up a slice of pizza instead. “I just . . . it’s a good opportunity to hear more about you before we put you on camera. And it’s nice to hear about Grim too, although I guess it’s kinda cheating.”

  Cramming more pizza into his mouth, Rusty wondered at his reaction. Whether she ended up with Grim or not was none of his business. Hell, if she was half as organized in her dating technique as she was at getting his show in order, she really would be good for Grim. Right there he decided to make sure of it. If she was seeing Grim instead of talking about him, this distraction would go away. Grim would soon show his real stripes and Rusty wouldn’t have to hear about it. That would be better, wouldn’t it?