“Depends,” Nico said behind Dodge.
The older man glanced over his shoulder. “Why don’t you have heat?”
Syn attempted to clear the tightness in her throat before saying, “He just told you why.”
His head tilted when he looked at her again. “Get it fixed.”
She swallowed her, “Thanks for the advice, genius,” typical response. He’d been nothing but helpful. She did not want to lose their opportunity to make some money tomorrow night—and the promise of more free food—all because she let out her inner smart-ass demon. Instead, she suggested, “Maybe we can if you give us an advance on our gig tomorrow night.”
“Yeah, right. I hand over the scratch and you all just ghost.” He snapped his fingers in emphasis.
“We won’t ghost,” she promised.
“And I know that how?”
He didn’t. He was right. If she were in his shoes, she wouldn’t fork over the money before the gig was over, either.
She shrugged. “Then don’t. We’ll head to a warmer location after we play Friday night. Then heat won’t be an issue.”
“Yes it will, because the A/C isn’t working right now, either,” Eddie revealed, oh-so-fucking helpfully.
Syn sighed.
“What works on this fuckin’ bus?” Dodge growled again.
“We do.”
His dark eyebrows pinned together.
Syn pressed her palm to her chest over the blanket and repeated, “We do. We work.”
“Ain’t what I meant.”
She knew what he meant, she simply decided to pretend to misunderstand him.
“Should get a better ride,” he had the balls to say next.
“Maybe we’ll do that with the four hundred bucks you give us.” She raised her brows at him while his lowered once more.
A corner of his eye twitched.
She waited.
His nostrils flared.
She waited some more.
In her peripheral vision, she could see Rex, Nico and Eddie had turned into stone statues.
She moved her feet from Rex’s lap, sat up, lifted her chin, still waiting.
Suddenly the deep freeze inside the bus—definitely not from the winter weather outside—thawed once Dodge’s muscles loosened. “Look, my club’s got a motel. You could get a room there… A coupla rooms…”
“For free?” Nico asked, unable to hide his excitement of actually sleeping in a real bed and having a real shower. With hot water. Like she had last night.
Now she felt guilty they didn’t get the same.
“Ain’t gonna be for free.”
“Thanks, but…” Nico didn’t bother to hide his disappointment, either.
Syn had enough of the bar manager-biker-whatever dropping orders. “I don’t think we can buy a new bus for us to live in and pay for a couple of motel rooms all on that four hundred. Do you?”
Dodge ground his hand over his mouth. Not once. Not twice. But three times. When he was done, she saw his jaw had become as tight as one of Eddie’s drums. Even under that thick, dark beard. “You got enough fuel to follow me a coupla miles up through town?”
“To where?” Eddie asked, stepping closer. “To the Walmart?”
Dodge shook his head. “Nope. To someone who might be able to help with the heater.”
Silence filled the bus.
“It’s an old diesel heater,” Syn warned him.
“Okay? Don’t know shit about them. Might know someone who does.”
The idea of the heat being fixed in the bus made excitement push away any suspicion about why the man kept helping them.
Her first instinct was to ask how much that would cost them. That was always the first concern. But he wouldn’t know that answer.
And if whoever looked at it told them some outrageous price, they could simply continue to roll down to the Walmart parking lot.
Wasn’t the first time they slept outside that retailer, wouldn’t be the last.
But she didn’t want to get her hopes up too high about the possible heater repair. Too many times her hopes had come crashing down and became crushed into smithereens.
She couldn’t live with too many more disappointments. She’d had more than enough for a lifetime already.
She was also tired of scraping along the bottom.
But maybe…
Maybe…
Could things be looking up for them?
She sure as hell hoped so.
Because the way things were right now, the only direction left to go had to be up.
Chapter Six
Dodge glanced in the rearview mirror of his ’79 Power Wagon for the hundredth time to make sure the bus was still behind him. And that it didn’t take a shit somewhere along Main Street. It was hard to miss the cloud of black smoke billowing from the exhaust pipes.
His restored Dodge 4x4 was probably much older than the skoolie, but then, his beast was in pristine shape and he also didn’t have to live in it. Stepping into that bus a half-hour ago, he had to hide his reaction as best as he could. The inside of it was just as bad, if not worse, than the outside.
Besides being messy, it stunk and was cramped as fuck.
Worse, Syn was living in it with three guys.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
He gritted his teeth when he recalled the way that motherfucker was touching her.