Bringing Home the Bachelor. Sarah M. Anderson
“Here, let me see—”
She had taken two steps when Billy grabbed her shoulder, holding her in place. He boomed, “Figure it out, kid. It ain’t rocket science. You can’t size a bolt, you can’t build a bike.”
She froze, waiting for the fit Seth would pitch. It didn’t happen. Seth screwed up his face, scratched his head and then Jenny almost saw the lightbulb go on. He looked around, grabbed a wrench and started measuring.
“Good job,” Billy said, and his hand squeezed Jenny’s shoulder. Not tight, just a gentle pressure. It sent shock waves down her back that almost buckled her knees. He was so strong, but the sensation straddled the line between tender and erotic.
Then he let go, trailing his fingers down her arm. That—that was purely erotic. If she weren’t so determined not to let this man have an impact on her, her knees would have given way.
“Thanks for the tea,” he said, low and quiet as he walked past her.
She stood there, wondering what the heck she was supposed to do with that. Billy was flirting with her, she was sure of it. Pretty sure, anyway. She was so out of practice that even if she wanted to flirt back, she wouldn’t know how. Maybe that was the problem.
Billy settled back onto his stool, his gaze on her. “See you later?”
Was she being dismissed? That didn’t match with everything he’d just made her feel. Maybe she’d read him wrong.
“What?”
He shot her one of those intimidating glares, and for a second she knew she was being dismissed. But then he turned, pointedly looking over his shoulder—right at the small camera with the steady red light. Then he stared at her again, and she realized he’d asked her a question, not given her an order.
“I’ll, uh, stop by after my meeting?”
“Yeah, okay, Mom,” Seth said, clearly preoccupied. “Bye.”
But Billy? He favored her with one of those half-hidden smiles that told her loud and clear that was the answer he was looking for.
He wanted to see her later.
Jenny all but floated back to her classroom.
* * *
Billy couldn’t say how he knew that Jenny had walked into the shop. He sure as hell didn’t see or hear her. He had his welding mask on and was holding down one end of a pipe as Seth tried his hand at cutting it with a miter saw. Don Two Eagles stood on the other side. Billy was watching Seth’s hands; Don was watching Billy. He couldn’t hear anything over the whine of metal against metal.
He knew Jenny had come in, all the same. And he didn’t like it.
The shop—any shop—had always been a place apart from femininity. Josey didn’t come to the shop very often, and when she did, she wasn’t there very long. Even Cass, the receptionist at the Crazy Horse Choppers headquarters—who was as tough as a woman could be—stayed off the shop floor. Billy liked it that way. Nothing and no one to distract him from the choppers.
Except it didn’t work like that here.
Seth finished cutting the pipe without also cutting off a finger or thumb. He even remembered to turn the blade off before doing anything else. Then he peeled off the welder’s mask Billy had made him wear. “That was so awesome!”
Billy took his mask off, too. Damned if that woman wasn’t sitting on his stool at his table, two cups of tea in front of her and a small smile on her face.
Double damned if he wasn’t thrilled to see her there.
“How’s it going?” Her gaze danced between the three men and their protective gear.
“Billy’s letting me cut a pipe!” Seth grabbed the pipe and took it over to Jenny.
She regarded the rough, angular cut with suspicion. “How...nice, sweetie.”
“Mom,” Seth whined as Billy choked back a laugh.
“It’s part of the frame,” he explained, wondering if the tea was for him, the kid or Don.
Jenny’s eyes got a little wide.
“What?” Billy asked, mentally slapping himself when it came out as defensive.
“You really are building this from scratch?”
“Women,” Don muttered under his breath as he stripped off his shop apron and checked his watch. “Gotta get home. You guys going to be okay here?” He directed the question to Jenny, but he kept a wary eye on Billy.
For some reason, Billy thought about decking the old man. Who was he to suggest that Jenny and her kid weren’t safe with Billy? He had been nothing but a gentleman so far. Except for the part where he’d moved her car. Oh, yeah, and stripped off his shirt. But other than that, he’d been a paragon of virtue.
“I’m not my old man,” he muttered.
Don didn’t back down. “It ain’t a matter of if the apple falls from the tree. It’s a matter of how far it fell.”
The two men stared at each other.
“Don, we’ll be fine.” Jenny’s voice was calm and surprisingly unconcerned with the standoff going on in front of her.
Don shot Billy a hell of a mean look, but said, “See you all tomorrow,” and left.
Billy turned back to Jenny and Seth. The kid was holding his length of pipe against the plans, trying to figure out how to put a puzzle together with only one piece. Jenny, however, was still sitting on his stool, her lips hidden behind her cup of tea. She looked as if she were waiting for something. What, he didn’t know.
This was why he didn’t like women in the shop. The only expectations he was comfortable with were design specs and delivery dates, not rules of civility.
“He doesn’t like you.”
Seth snorted in amusement as he studied the design. “Yeah, but Don doesn’t like any wasicu.”
Jenny’s eyes flew open as she slammed her cup back on the table. Tea sloshed everywhere. “Seth!”
“A what?”
The kid went red. “White...man,” Jenny replied without meeting his gaze.
Yeah, right. Billy had been called enough names in his lifetime to know an insult when he heard one. He leveled one of his meaner looks at the kid, who physically shrank right before him. “Yeah, well, I’m not like any whatever he’s ever met. Now suit up. We’ve got more pipe to cut.”
Billy had never seen a kid move as fast as Seth did. Billy walked over to Jenny and held out a pair of earplugs. “Don’t look at the saw without goggles,” he told her as she stared at the plugs.
“It wasn’t that loud when I came in. Do I really need these?”
If Billy had let her son get anywhere near a power tool without all the proper precautions, she’d probably have thrown a fit. But when it came to her own well-being?
She was the kind of woman who put herself last, he realized. Even when she didn’t have to.
So he didn’t bother telling her that the saw was always loudest at the beginning of the cut. Instead, he leaned forward, smoothed the few strands of hair that had come loose from her schoolmarm bun and tucked the plugs into her ears for her.
Her skin, from her cheeks to the back of her neck, flushed a beautiful pink as he pressed the plugs into place. Then, because he doubted that she wouldn’t watch him and the kid work the saw, he snagged a pair of goggles from the table. He stretched the elastic back so that it wouldn’t tangle on her hair and settled the plastic on the bridge of her nose. It wasn’t his fault that this required him to lean over her so that he could smell the scent of her—baby powder and tea and