Total pages in book: 27
Estimated words: 25339 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 127(@200wpm)___ 101(@250wpm)___ 84(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 25339 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 127(@200wpm)___ 101(@250wpm)___ 84(@300wpm)
He’s teasing me, goading me into a reaction. But I’m not falling for it. In fact, I just shrug and proudly brandish my wrench. “Bikes don’t fix themselves.”
He slowly nods, eyeing my wrench before very deliberately dragging his eyes up my body, causing my flesh to heat like a revving engine. “You like to get your hands dirty, little mechanic?”
Little mechanic?
His arrogance is overwhelming. It’s also sexy. “Only when there’s work needs doing.”
His smile widens. He likes that answer.
He also very obviously likes some other things about me…
And Lord save me, I like that he does.
“Speaking of work,” I say, fighting to change the subject before I lose myself in his eyes. “Did you need help with something?”
His smirk fades, and his eyes narrow in on me like two rifle scopes. “Yeah. I have a job needs doing.”
Relief floods through me, mixed with a dose if disappointment. So that’s why he’s here. He’s got a job for the shop.
Of course he does. It would be stupid to think he was here because of me.
His dirty-blond hair falls carelessly in unkempt waves from his forehead, just low enough that I’m aching to brush them back and expose those stormy blue eyes without anything in the way. They hang lose, wild and untamed, just like him.
I realize I’m staring again and snap myself out of it. “You need your bike looked at?”
Slate doesn’t answer right away. He just looks at me, studying me, his eyes tracing over my face, my lips, and my cheeks–which are no doubt completely red by now. The intensity he’s able to project with his gaze is overpowering. Almost too much.
Almost.
“Nope. I’m not here about my bike,” he finally says, his voice low. “I’m here about you.”
My breath catches in my throat, like I’ve got a frog in there doing his best to ribbit its way out and embarrass the hell out of me. “M–me?”
I’m stammering. Stuttering. I have to brace myself against the bike as he takes a step closer. So close that I realize how much I have to look up at him. He towers above me like a giant. He’s well over six-feet. An absolute Adonis. Even other men must be intimidated by his presence. “I want to take you out, Ivy.”
His words crash into me like an out of control sport bike. I was not expecting that.
He wants to take me out? I’d believe it more if someone just told me an alien spacecraft had landed out back.
I do my best to ignore my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest as I mutter, “Well…that can’t happen.”
His left eyebrow lifts, and he cocks his head to the side. “No? Why the hell not?”
I’m quivering as I glance through the window into the office where my dad is having a heated phone conversation. If he knew Slate was even thinking about doing what he just did, he’d erupt like a volcano.
“Because…my dad would kill you,” I whisper.
I shouldn’t have said that. You don’t talk like that to one of these guys.
But my dad, Hank Calloway, is different. He’s the kind of man who, when he speaks, people listen. No matter who they are. He’s solid and dependable, like the machines he works on. And although his hair, once dark, is now gray, he can still kick butt like a guy half his age.
He’s been running Calloway’s Bike and Auto for as long as I’ve been alive, and nobody–not even the Bastards–question his authority when it comes to his shop. He takes no shit. Not from anybody. And when it comes to me, he’s like a guard dog. Protective–maybe overly so–with a watchful eye, ready to tear into any guy who even looks my way.
It makes sense considering my past. My mom’s been out of the picture since I was eleven. She was reckless, addicted to bad men and worse behavior. And when she cheated on my dad with a member of another gang, I don’t know which one, she ended up in debt beyond anything she could pay. Instead of working it off herself, she tried to sell me into the gang’s trafficking ring.
Can you imagine? I’m convinced my mother was born with a piece of ice where her heart was meant to be.
Luckily, my dad found out just in time. He still won’t give me the full details of how he stopped those men from taking me, but I have a feeling he built most of his reputation on whatever went down that day.
I know he loves me. But sometimes it feels like he’s devoted his entire life to making sure I never get close to any of the men he gladly deals with on a daily basis. And I get it. I really do. But that doesn’t change the fact that sometimes I feel like a caged bird just desperate to fly.