Straddling the Line

Four

The clanking of the garage door sliding up snapped Ben back to awareness. He was at the shop? Funny. He didn’t remember deciding to come back here. The last thing he remembered was…

Kissing Josey White Plume.

Damn. He’d kissed her. Again. This time had been different, though. He’d touched her. The heat of her bare skin still burned against his palms. Under his touch, her body had shaken with the kind of desire that couldn’t be faked. The way she made him feel—it went way beyond not getting laid for a while. She drove him to distraction. If her mom hadn’t barged in on them, there was no telling how far he would have taken her. How far she would have let him take her.

Not a mistake.

Was it?

“What are you doing here?” Ben’s head shot up to find his older brother, Billy, standing in the middle of the shop, a muffler in his hand.

“I went for a ride today. She was pulling a little to the left.” Ben rolled his bike into an open bay. “Been a while since I took her apart and put her back together.”

So he hadn’t consciously come back here. He normally changed the oil at his place. But getting his hands dirty and shooting the breeze with Billy was just what he needed to get that woman—that kiss—out of his system.

Billy shot Ben one of those looks and then smiled. It was probably a damn good thing the big man never shaved. No woman would ever look at Ben—or even Bobby-the-playboy—if Billy bothered to clean up. God only knew why he didn’t. “Who is she?”

He ground his teeth. Was it that damn obvious? He stripped off his nylon jacket and dug out his coveralls. “No one. I just need to take better care of my bike.”

Billy laughed at him. “Yeah. Right.” But he had the decency not to press the issue. Instead, he turned back to the bike he was working on.

Zipping into his coveralls, Ben did a double take. The chassis of the machine Billy was working on was three-pronged. “I didn’t think we made trikes.”

Billy’s normal glower settled back over his face. “We don’t.”

“So what are you doing?”

“We don’t. I’m doing this on my own time.” Before Ben could ask the most important question, Billy added, “And my own money, too. This has nothing to do with the company.”

Ben didn’t get anything else, and he didn’t push. If he wasn’t shouting at Dad, Billy rarely talked. Now that Ben thought about it, this was the longest yell-free conversation he’d had with his big brother in years.

Ben got to work. He’d built this bike with his own hands back in high school. He didn’t care if the money was in wild choppers with crazy handlebars or Batman rip-offs with ultralow-profile tires. This bike was his and his alone. He knew exactly how fast it accelerated and decelerated, and exactly how fast he could bank a corner before he lost control. He had the scars to prove it.

He started with the oil while Billy worked in the next bay on his trike. “Who’s the trike for?”

“What’s her name?” Billy shot back a few minutes later.

“None of your damn business.”

“Typical.”

Ben ignored him as he took the carburetor apart. It was some time before he said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Silence.

This was the difference between talking to Billy and talking to Bobby. Bobby slung words around like bullets and he had stocked up on ammo. So what if a few ricocheted away from him and he drew blood? So what if he never listened? Words were disposable. Meaningless.

Billy, on the other hand, hoarded words like they were gold coins. He could say three sentences in three hours and consider that a conversation. He thought about each and every thing he said, and he didn’t say something he didn’t mean.

True to form, it was another twenty minutes before Billy answered him. “The only time you come down out of your little cave up there and actually get your hands dirty, you’ve got woman problems.”

Ben bristled. Maybe today, he liked Bobby better, because even though the little jerk said crap like this all the time, Ben knew he didn’t mean it. “It’s called an office. You have one, too. You should check it out sometime.” Billy used his office for storage and sleeping. The shop was his office and everyone knew it. “You know you’re behind schedule. Why the hell are you wasting time on that?”

Billy couldn’t be goaded into a fight as easily as Bobby, though. He merely snorted in amusement and kept working. Slow. Methodical.

“You remember Cal Horton?”

The silence had gone on so long that Ben had half forgotten Billy was still there. “Horton? The shop teacher in high school?”

“Yeah.” Billy sighed as he wiped his hands on a rag. “He was like…the anti-Dad, remember?”

Ben nodded. Billy had lived in the shop class. If it hadn’t been for shop, Ben didn’t doubt that his brother wouldn’t have graduated from high school. And Mr. Horton—Mr. Who, the kids had all called him behind his back—had been a scrawny guy with big ears, buck teeth and a voice that never shouted. Ben had taken shop for a while, but it was the one class in high school where he couldn’t show up his big brother. After Billy, all the other teachers were thankful to have a Bolton who could be taught. But Ben always had gotten the feeling that Mr. Who would take Billy every day of the week.

“Anti-Dad. Very funny.”

“I’m serious. He didn’t make you earn his respect, you know? He gave it to you. To me, anyway.”

The weight of thirty-two years’ worth of effort to get Dad’s honest respect suddenly crushed Ben’s chest. “Yeah. I can see that.”

“Cal helped me out a few times, when I got in real…trouble.” Suddenly, Billy looked way more than serious. He looked positively moody.

Billy’d had no shortage of trouble back then. A smart remark about bail money and strippers danced around Ben’s mouth, but a strange sort of sadness made Billy look young. Small, even—which was no mean feat. Let Bobby be the jerk in this family. Ben knew how to keep his mouth shut.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Billy stood there for a moment. Ben was about to give him some space and get back to work on his bike when Billy unexpectedly went on. “After September 11th, he re-upped with the army, did three tours in Afghanistan before an IED got him a few years ago. He finally got clearance to ride again—but his wife doesn’t want him on a chopper.”

Hands down, this was the longest, heaviest conversation Ben could ever remember having with his brother. A lifetime of loyalty—what the hell kind of trouble had Billy gotten himself into back then?

Ben didn’t even get his mouth open before Billy started talking again. “He expected better of me. Everyone else—even Dad—expected me to fail. But not Cal. He almost died for me, for my country. He never asked me for anything. The least I can do is build him a damn bike. On my own time. With my own money. And if you’ve got a problem with that—” His shoulders dropped and he swung his hands into loose fists.

“No, no problem.” Ben threw up his hands in surrender. Only an idiot would push Billy.

“You don’t look like an idiot to me.” Josey’s voice floated around his head as he and Billy went back to their respective bikes. Something else she had said popped into his head. “People expect them to fail.”

One man had made the difference for Billy—a man who asked for nothing in return, but got unshakable loyalty anyway. Ben thought back to the little girls who’d been scared of him, the young boys who wouldn’t look at him. Those kids—people expected them to fail. Was he one of those people?

Josey’s face swam before his eyes. Not the polished businesswoman, not the hot chick at the bar, but her face today, with the big paint smear across her forehead and her hair crazy around her. He saw the warm, bright smile she had for those kids. She expected better of them.

She expected better of him.

Everyone expected so much from him—to keep Billy working, to keep Bobby in line. Dad expected him to fail, but also expected him to keep the company afloat. Not her. She didn’t act like he had to have all the answers, like he was the one thing between her and complete, total failure. All she expected from him was to be something better. And all he’d done was kiss her.

He could do better. He could be better.

“Billy!” He had to shout over the air compressor.

“What?”

“You got any tools you don’t use anymore?”

*

The dull pain in residence behind Josey’s eyes picked up speed at an irregular clip. What a disastrous day. She could still hear Ben saying, “You have one drum for how many students?” Because one drum was all she was going to get.

At least she could take comfort in the fact that building the shop class from the ground up counted as real, live shop class. Maybe they’d postpone music class until after winter set in, when they couldn’t do much on the shop anyway. Surely she’d be able to get some instruments in three months.

She could always try asking Ben—he was a musician, after all—but she’d already made up her mind about that. She didn’t know what, if anything, was going on between her and Ben Bolton. She only knew that asking him for anything else would muddy the waters between pleasure and business.

Even if that meant no more kissing.

In this foul mood, Josey rounded the bend and slammed on the brakes. A massive, dual-wheel pickup truck—gray—with a custom trailer attached to it was parked next to the school. That wasn’t the weird part. The weird part was that the kids were swarming over both the truck and trailer, unloading box after box.

Josey did a quick mental check of her calendar. Nope—no planned deliveries today. No more planned deliveries, period. She didn’t recognize the behemoth vehicle. What the heck?

Livvy came running the moment Josey opened her door. “He came back!”

“He? He who?”

“That guy! He brought stuff!” With those helpful words, Livvy turned around and took off for the truck. It was loaded with boxes. Some were brand-new—circular saws, power drills—and some were the kind of boxes a person scrounged up for moving.

Shop tools? That guy? That was as much as Josey could process before Ben Bolton himself strode back around the building, talking to Don Two Eagles, of all people. Shock stopped her short.

God, he looked good. Dark jeans that fit like he might as well have been born in them, and a red chambray shirt—cuffed to the elbows. He said something to Don, and the older man nodded before barking out orders in Lakota. Don was taking directions from Ben?

Power. Josey’s blood began to pound. This was power so real that she could smell it on the wind. Ben Bolton commanded absolute respect, and he got it—even from the likes of Don.

And Ben had used his power to help her.

Livvy bounded up to him and pointed to Josey before grabbing another box and taking off. His eyes met hers, and he shot her a look that invited all sorts of contact. His long legs cut through the grass as he headed her way.

Just once, I want to be ready for him.

That was all the thinking she could formulate before a horn sounded behind her. She jumped and spun to see a van pulling up behind her. The window rolled down and a guy who looked vaguely familiar leaned out. “Is this the school?”

“Yes?” It came out as a question, because, honestly, Josey wasn’t sure of anything right now.

“Where do you want the instruments?”

“The what?”

“The instruments.” A hand touched her in the small of the back, the fingers splaying out against the hem of her shirt before settling in. Speechless, she turned to see Ben standing next to her, a wicked grin on his face. He was touching her in full view of everyone. Including her mother. How could something that was so clearly a bad idea feel like it was the most natural thing in the world? “Stick, glad to see you didn’t get lost.”

“Says you,” the man named Stick said with a raspy chuckle. “Where the hell am I?” His eyes turned back to Josey.

“Stick, this is Josey White Plume. Josey, this is Leonard ‘Stick’ Thompson, the guitarist in the band.”

“Screw you.” Stick flipped off Ben, but he was still smiling. “Call me Stick. Only my grandmother calls me the L name.”

Josey tried to nod, but nothing seemed to be working. Not even her brain.

“What did you get?”

His hand still resting on her back, Ben leaned into the van. Josey had no choice but to lean with him. The whole thing was filled with black cases strapped down with bungee cords.

“Everything but a trombone, man. The only one he had was bent. Where do you want it?”

Ben had the freaking nerve to look down at her, as if she could put together more than two syllables in a sentence. All she could do was blink at him. His eyes flashed with something outrageously wicked. “Multipurpose room, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

Ben’s hand slid around to her side and he pulled her away from the van—and into his chest. “Just park by the steps in front and ask for Sandra. She’ll get some kids to unload for you, okay?” Stick nodded and rolled toward the entrance to the school.

He was on a first-name basis with Mom?

Ben didn’t let go of her. Instead, he leaned down to whisper, “I told you I’d be in contact.” As his lips grazed her ear, her body shuddered with a rush of heat. Oh, that was contact, all right.

At least Josey had brushed her teeth today. And her hair was smooth and neat in a twist. She was wearing a business-appropriate dress with a jacket.

And all of her supply problems had been solved in the space of three minutes. By a man who made her all fluttery and melty at the same time.

However, she wasn’t even sure she was breathing, she was so paralyzed with terror at this exceptionally public display of—well, maybe not affection, but familiarity.

No matter how good Ben’s body felt against hers, this kind of touching was off-limits. Or it should be, anyway. What if people saw and, worse, what if they started making assumptions? What if this simple touch—okay, this not-so-simple touch—undid everything she’d worked so hard for?

Finally, her mouth opened. “Razor-thin? Margins?”

Lord.

Ben’s chest—strong and hard against her back—shook for the briefest of moments. He was laughing at her. “Yeah, well, the business operates on razor-thin margins. My personal margins are not nearly as sharp—or as skinny.”

His own money. He’d paid for all of this out of his own pocket. Her mouth went dry. Of course she’d had a couple of people cut her a check before—usually out of a combination of pity and leave-me-alone contempt. This was different. She knew good and well that time was money to a man like Ben Bolton—and he’d spent both on her school. On her.

His hand left her waist and trailed across her back before finding her other hand. He stepped away. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he laced his fingers with hers. “Come. See.”

Beaming from ear to ear, Mom had kids emptying the van like it was a bucket brigade and the school was on fire. Clarinets, trumpets, amps, guitars, a complete drum kit—one piece at a time, a music teacher’s dream come true—made its way into the school.

Ben let go of her hand mere seconds before Mom saw them and hurried over. “Isn’t it wonderful, sweetie? Mr. Bolton—”

“Sandra, I told you to call me Ben.”

The two of them grinned like they were on a second date, and Josey decided that she’d entered an alternate universe. There was just no other rational explanation for her mother to be smiling warmly at a white man, or Don to be following the same white man’s directions, or a hard-rock guitarist to be handing out drumsticks like it was Halloween, for God’s sake. None.

“Of course. Ben is just an answer to our prayers.” Her mom turned shining eyes to him. “We cannot thank you enough for this.”

“Sandra?” Stick called to her from the front steps of the school, and Mom excused herself. What next? Hell’s Angels would swoop out of nowhere and finish the shop this afternoon, like an Amish motorcycle gang at a barn raising?

She grabbed him by the arm and hauled him out of earshot of the buzzing school. “What—?” At least that was a word, right? She cleared her throat and tried again. “What did you do?”

The corner of his mouth hitched up. The real smile. Boy, she was in serious trouble—but then, she already knew that.

“It turns out that Munzinga would rather not lose a valued customer such as myself, and he would prefer that word not get around that he’s ripping off children. And he’d really prefer to keep all his teeth, so in order to make amends, he volunteered to provide a range of instruments for half off.”

Ben had threatened Munzinga on her behalf? And then paid for the difference?

“Now,” Ben went on, as if this were just another day on the rez instead of Christmas four months early, “some of those tools are secondhand from my brother Billy, but they’re still all good. Billy sees the words new and improved and he thinks he’s died and gone to heaven. The rest is small stuff—”

“Small?” A trailer full was small?

Something about his eyes changed, and he leaned down until he was less than a foot from her face, like he was daring her to interrupt him again. “Yes. Small. Things like band saws and planers take a little more work, and Don agreed that the shop building needs to be finished before those get delivered.”

“Don agreed? With you?”

Just once, she wanted to be ready for this man, but nothing in her lifetime had prepared her for Ben Bolton on a mission.

*

Ben couldn’t remember having more fun. Josey had no idea how delicious she looked right now. Her eyes were wild with shock, the breeze had tugged a few strands of that reddish hair loose and her mouth hung open. The only thing that kept him from closing those pretty lips himself was the audience of about fifty people—including relatives—all watching the two of them out of the corners of their eyes.

Hey, at least people were looking at him. More than five thousand dollars’ worth of school supplies made a guy an instant insider.

He felt like laughing. For once, he didn’t care about how much this cost. Anything was worth the look of stunned relief in her eyes—a burden lifted from her shoulders. The funny thing was, he felt lighter, like making things easier for her made it easier for him, too. Maybe part of that was the way distrust had changed to shock and then welcome the moment Don had realized Ben had come bearing gifts.

All he knew was that, right now, he wasn’t the stick-in-the-mud trying to keep the wheels from falling off. All of a sudden, he was Santa Claus. It was an oddly satisfying feeling—something almost but not quite connected to the way his blood hammered into his groin when Josey looked at him with that mix of vulnerability and lust.

Like she was looking at him right now.

“Yes, with me.” Maybe he’d kiss her anyway. No one would say anything. They wouldn’t dare.

“I don’t know how we can thank you.” She swallowed, her eyes cutting down to his lips. “How I can thank you.”

He could think of a couple of ideas—and that was just for starters. The stupid part of his brain tried to argue that he just needed a woman. That was all. But he was starting to think he didn’t need just any woman. He was starting to think he needed this woman.

She looked up at him through those lashes again, her cheeks coloring a pretty rose. The sunlight caught the red in her hair, making her glow without a sequin in sight. He was pretty sure she’d glow anywhere.

Damn, he was screwed. He’d thought that move had been seductive in the dimly lit bar, but that was nothing compared to the impact of her beautiful light brown eyes in the full light of day. His body vibrated with the need to pull her into his arms, to feel her chest rise and fall against his—to know she only wanted to hear the band play.

“Let me take you to dinner—tonight.”

Oh, yeah, he wanted her. But he wanted her to want him back. Just him. Not his money, not his band, not his financial skills and most certainly not his ability to keep the family together.

Her mouth parted, and she lifted her chin toward him. One kiss—what could it hurt? Idiot, he thought to himself as he moved closer. Like there was a shot in hell he could stop at just one.

“Benny!” The van honked behind him as Stick rolled up. “Setting a bad example again?”

The pretty went right out of Josey’s blush as red embarrassment ran roughshod over her face. She took a step back. Ben glared at Stick. “Later? I’m going to grind you into dust, man.”

Stick liked to laugh in the face of danger. Right now was a good example of that. “Whatever. Hey, I’m going to take off. We should hire those kids as roadies—they got the van unloaded in record time, man.” He looked at Josey, unaware of how embarrassed she really was. A lifetime of bad bar behavior made him oblivious to the gentler ways of a woman. “Good kids. Maybe’ll I’ll come out some time and teach them some chords or something.”

“That would be wonderful.” She answered Stick, but she looked at Ben as she said it.

“Cool, cool. Hey, Benny—don’t forget the gig tonight.”

Damn. The gig. Now he looked like a total tool, inviting her to a dinner he couldn’t make. She was thinking the same thing—he could see the disappointment of low expectations on her face.

To hell with this. He grabbed her by the arm and hauled her behind the relative safety of the van. “Come to the gig. It’s at Fat Louie’s.”

Behind them, Stick wolf-whistled. Ben whipped his head up and glared at him. “Stick,” he said in warning.

“Hey, man, um, look! Grass!” Stick turned his eyes to the front, although Ben could still hear him humming.

“Come tonight,” he said again. Somehow, they were in the same position—her backed up against a wall, him pressing against her. God, the feel of her body against his… “I want to see you.”

Again, she palmed his cheeks and pressed her forehead to his. “I can’t,” she whispered. Was he imagining things, or was her voice a little wobbly?

“Why not?”

“I have to go through all the things you brought—get them organized, cataloged, stored. I can’t afford to let anything walk off. Not when you spent your own money… It’ll take me a couple of days, at least.”

Damn it all. He knew she was right, and part of him appreciated her treating his time and hard-earned money with respect. But that part was small and buried beneath a growing frustration. What did a man have to do to get a woman alone for more than two minutes? Or was this more her blowing him off now that she’d gotten what she wanted? He wanted to think she was different, but maybe he’d been wrong.

As if to highlight how uncomfortable his frustration was, she kissed him. A soft and gentle thing, her lips touching his—but it felt like so much more. Something inside him, something he couldn’t pin down, shifted. It had nothing to do with the bottom line and everything to do with her.

“I wanted to make things easier for you,” he said, his voice low and deep against her cheek.

Her chest hitched up, like she’d sucked in a bunch of air. “You did. You do. It’s just…”

Yeah. Someone had to keep the wheels from falling off.

“Monday?” One of her hands had snaked around the back of his neck.

“Can’t. Meetings scheduled with bankers all day. Same for Tuesday.” Speaking of keeping the wheels from falling off… “Wednesday.”

“That’s the opening day of the powwow. The powwow!” Her body shot up against his, chasing most of the soft and gentle thoughts right out of his head. “You could come!”

No, really—what did a man have to do to get a woman alone? Because a powwow sure sounded a hell of a lot like more quality time with all of the people who were probably wondering where the two of them had run off to.

She must have sensed his hesitation, because she added, “There’ll be drumming on the traditional drums, you know.”

Well, hell. He had to admit he was curious about that big leather-and-wood thing in the multipurpose room, and it did seem to be the only way to see her outside of his office and her school. “Okay. I’ll pick you up.” So he didn’t know where he was going. He wasn’t about to let her drive him on something that was most definitely a date. “When and where?”

“Come to my apartment in the city. Here.” She slipped free of his arms and dug around in her pockets until she came up with a piece of paper and a pen. “Can you be there by five?”

“One of the nice things about running my own company is I can be there whenever I’d like to,” he said, more because it sounded good than because it was true. Some days, he felt like he was chained to the damn place.

A low whistle cut through the air. “Heads up, man—not that I’m looking or anything,” Stick said with barely contained laughter.

Less than twenty seconds later, Sandra White Plume rounded the front of the van. Her gaze cut from him to Josey and back, but she just said, “Josey?”

“Hi, Mom.” Man, that pretty blush was going to be the final nail in his coffin. But then, to his utter amazement, Josey went on, “So, as soon as I have that tax-deductible information for your records, I’ll be in contact.”

“Sounds great.” Tax-deductible powwows?

“Mr. Bolton, we cannot thank you enough,” Sandra began for the fourth time. “You must come to the tribal powwow this week—meet the people you’re helping.”

He looked at Josey, who was doing her level best not to laugh. How the heck had Sandra called that? “Sounds great. When does it start?”

“Wednesday.” Sandra beamed at him. “I’m sure Josey can fill you in on all the details.” She looked at Josey, and Ben almost heard her say, “If she hasn’t already.”

He wasn’t fooling anyone.

Least of all Josey.