“Sweet.”
“Thanks for this, guys,” Mickie said as she accepted a fork to go along with the container for Keith. “I had a blast. Didn’t realize how much I needed a night to chill and laugh.”
Ronnie threw an arm around Mickie’s shoulders. “Kinda thinking we’re gonna be besties.”
She smiled. “Me too.” Damn, that felt nice. “Tell JP I said bye.”
After accepting a hug from both Ronnie and Jagger, she made her way back across the street.
Time to take dinner to Keith. Because she was a kind and friendly neighbor and the poor guy had missed the meal.
It had nothing to do with the way he smelled.
Or his voice.
Or those muscles.
Or tattoos…
She groaned. “I’m an idiot.”
HE COULD HAVE gone to dinner. Maybe should have gone to dinner. It was just a meal, after all, with his siblings and the woman who lived across the street. What was the big damn deal?
Good question.
Instead of joining the rest of the crew, he’d gone to his deserted garage and worked on the bike he’d been slowly building over the past few months. His first, and something he’d always dreamed of doing when he was a child. Actually, when he was a kid, he’d wanted to rebuild a car with his old man. But of course they didn’t have the money for that kind of thing. Their neighbor had a rusted out old mustang behind his trailer. The outside had gone to shit, but the guts had been salvageable. His neighbor was a grizzly old war vet who used a wheelchair and swore like he knew no other words. He’d also grumbled about having no use for the beater. He’d offered it to a pre-teen Keith for a summer of odd jobs, which Keith had sweated out without complaint.
Now, looking back on it with the eyes of an adult, he realized Mr. Brigg’s intentions were more about giving teenaged Keith a way out of his home for the summer rather than needing his trailer washed, painted, and repaired. But back then, Keith had a laser focus on the car. And at the end of the summer, when he’d presented the title to his old man and asked him to help his son rebuild it, his father had surprisingly said yes.
Then, not twelve hours later, he’d had a buddy tow it to the salvage yard. An hour after that, the seventy bucks he’d betrayed his son for was sloshing around in his gut.
Christ, why had that memory risen to the surface? He rubbed the back of his hand across an itch on his cheek. For the past few days, his head had been a jumbled mess of guilt, resolve, and desire.
Guilt because he’d done as his siblings advised and hadn’t paid their father’s debt, going against the promise he’d made to his mother. Neglecting their father also went against the vow he’d made himself when he left the military. For the past sixteen years, Keith had been working to make up for leaving them without their oldest brother to take the brunt of their father’s abuse while he joined the service.
Resolve because they were right. Bailing the fucker out time after time wasn’t helping anyone and wouldn’t have been what their mother wanted.
And desire. The easiest to explain; all it took was one look at Mickie to get him hard, yet it was the most complicated of what he’d been feeling.
Right at that moment, as he cranked the wrench with more force than necessary, she sat at his dining table with his siblings.
Were they laughing?
Were Jagger and JP flirting with her?
Was she relaxed and not putting on airs the way they’d discussed? Was she the amazing woman he’d spent a few hours baking with? Were his brothers reaping the benefit of her quick wit and the fun personality he’d been privileged to yesterday? And if so, why the hell did it bother him so much?
“Fuck,” he growled, tossing the wrench on the ground.
He should have gone to fucking dinner. The mental circus was proving to be more stressful than suffering through the actual meal would have been. He peeked at his watch. Seven thirty. They’d probably moved onto dessert by now. The dessert he’d made with Mickie in the hours where they’d put aside their troubles and he’d almost kissed her. Damn, how he’d wanted to feel her lips against his. Which would have been a terrible idea. But maybe then he’d at least have been at dinner instead of obsessing over the idea of her having fun with his brothers.
If he left now, he could make it home in time to hang out for a bit and prove he wasn’t the antisocial asshole he’d presented himself as.
Just as he was about to give up and head to his office to grab his shit, there was a light knocking on the open garage bay door. He swiveled to find Mickie standing in the open bay. Wearing skin-tight jeans and a fitted sweater with her hair in its customary sleek style, she looked elegant, classy, and completely fuckable. Not much revved him more than the idea of messing up a put-together woman. Something about seeing rumpled clothes, swollen lips, mussed hair, and maybe a mark or two and knowing he’d been the cause of all that mess? Especially in someone who always appeared perfectly styled? Not every man could make a woman like that lose control.