I knew what I looked like.
A six-foot-three man with heavily muscled arms and wide shoulders sporting a cut indicating that I was a member of a motorcycle club—The Dixie Wardens, Alabama Chapter, to be specific. Dark hair, trimmed beard. Defined, muscular legs encased in a pair of blue jeans that had definitely been worn and used exactly like they were intended for—work. I was an intimidating bastard, just like I’d intended to be.
His eyes stopped on the tattoos curling around my wrists, and he swallowed thickly.
“I would hope that you’re going to fix it,” I told him bluntly. “Since you were the one to fuck it up in the first place.”
Tally snorted and turned her head to study the grounds, then walked off when she spotted the ducks and chickens that were directly behind me.
When we’d gotten closer, the drake had started demanding food, knowing if I passed him I wouldn’t be able to resist.
“We’re going to fix it. You’ll be happy,” Jody promised.
I wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of that statement.
“If you wanted me happy, you’d have done it right the first time,” I replied. “Now all you’re going to do is appease me, not make me happy.”
He swallowed and nodded. “I’m going to go to the store today and buy what I need to fix the problems. We’ll make it right.”
“I sure as hell hope so,” I told him, then turned around and started for Tally, who was trying to get one of the chickens to eat out of her hand.
“This one is about to start laying,” she informed me.
“How do you know?” I asked, remembering the discussion I’d had with her at one point during our shift yesterday about my chickens and how I was waiting for them to start laying eggs.
“I looked it up for you on my phone,” she waved it at me. “They’re ready to start laying when their little comb and wattles darken into a redder color.”
She indicated the red area between the chicken’s eyes and beak.
“Hmm,” I murmured. “What else gives you that indication?”
“When you pet them, they squat,” she demonstrated, and I watched the chicken do just that.
“Impressive,” I murmured. “I’ll have to keep an eye out.”
She stood and walked to where I kept the hand sanitizer.
“They say you can get some fake eggs at the feed store that’ll help them figure out where they’re supposed to go and do it at.” She grinned at me over her shoulder. “I’ll go look for you if you want.”
“We can go after breakfast,” I told her. “Are you ready?”
She wiped her hands nervously on her pants, and I had another realization.
She was nervous around me.
Well, that made two of us.
She scared the ever-loving shit out of me.
Chapter 9
Don’t be sad, laundry. Nobody is doing me, either.
-Tally’s secret thoughts
Tally
I cursed and started to run across the parking lot toward my car.
Tommy—what I’d just started calling him since he was tired of me always adding the ‘doctor’ onto the first part of his name—followed at a much more subdued pace.
He looked almost as if he were out for a casual stroll instead of walking during the middle of a freakin’ downpour.
“Do you want a ride?” I yelled at him.
He shook his head and pointed at his motorcycle, and I did nothing but shake my head.
He waved his bag of fake eggs at me, and I grinned before diving into my car, escaping the rain.
I watched him leave, totally surprised to see that he was almost completely unaffected by the rain.
That shirt he was wearing, though, was definitely affected.
As he finally made it to his bike, it was soaked. By the time he drove out of the parking lot, I realized that I needed to see him without that shirt on in better lighting than I had the last time. Mostly because if the defined chest and hardened nipples that I could clearly make out, as well as those bright tattoos, were anything to go by, I’d like what I saw.
That was if I could ever get him out of those clothes…and to do that I’d have to work up the nerve…and graduate.
Because I didn’t see him doing anything with me while I was still in school. He had a career to protect, after all.
That didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy the sight of him for the next few months.
***
“You’re joking.” Hadley leaned into the counter in front of me, opening the wrapper of her fifth mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. The ones that we kept in a jar on the counter in front of the cash register for impulse buys.
“No,” I shook my head.
“God, that’s so hot.”
I’d just told her what happened the night before, and she was practically drooling.
“Elba is going to freak…and, oh my God, when Arianna gets wind that…” I stopped her before she could continue.
“This goes no further than the two of us,” I ordered her. “I don’t want to get in trouble for something we haven’t done, and I don’t want him to get into trouble either. So keep it under wraps.”
She pouted.
“Fine,” she sighed. “That’s gonna suck seeing him every day when your hoo-ha is going all crazy for him.”
“I don’t see him every day,” I said. “Saturday and Sunday I’ll be studying my ass off like always, and I won’t see him.”
She gave me a look.
Thunder boomed, ruining her hard stare and causing her to jump in surprise.
“Jesus,” she breathed, placing a hand to her heart.
I picked up the chocolate she’d just unwrapped and put down on the counter, and threw it away.
“Hey,” she snapped. “That was mine.”
The fact that it touched the counter was enough to make me want to vomit.
Thinking about the number of people who had come into the convenience store where I worked, and touched this counter where she put her candy, was enough to make me nauseous. Her putting something in her mouth that had touched the counter that nearly every customer touched at some point during their visit was enough for me to declare the food unfit for consumption.
“Um, no,” I shook my head. “I haven’t cleaned the counter since I arrived over four hours ago. In that time, a large man wearing jeans that hung around his crotch leaned up against it, scratched his balls—inside his pants—and touched the counter with a very dirty looking hand. Then there was the woman who scratched her head and some unidentifiable nastiness fell out onto it…”
She lifted her lip in a silent snarl.
“Fine,” she shivered. “That’s gross. I hate that you have to work here.”
I shrugged.
“It’s worked out well. When Brett left, I was able to step right in since I’d spent enough time here watching him work that I knew how everything was supposed to run. Plus I get paid eleven dollars an hour. Where else am I going to find a job like that with good hours, that works well with my schooling and child?
She shrugged, not having an answer.
“I still hate that you work here. At any given time, someone can come in here and rob you,” she admitted.