Which meant he was alone.
“Go around the side of the school. We can’t have him stripping out here in front of the students,” Josey said before hurrying over to help explain the rules to the kids.
Not that it was stripping, but yeah, even he saw the wrong in taking off his shirt in front of kids. He had tattoos—lots of them. The kind that scared small children and little old ladies.
So he trudged around to the side of the building with Vicky following at a safe distance and whipped off his shirt. Vicky clipped the battery pack to his jeans, ducked under his upraised arm, and handed him the mike while she ripped off a piece of medical tape. They’d learned after the first show that clipping the mike to the collar of Billy’s shirt didn’t work—too much static from the machines ruined the audio feed. Now they taped the mike to his chest and let the shirt filter out the extra noise.
Vicky handed him the tape, and he put the mike on above the rose and thorns—above where Jenny had touched him.
As the thought of the sassy little teacher crossed his mind again, his ears developed a weird burning sensation, as if someone were talking about him. He glanced around and saw that—much to his chagrin—an entire class of undersized tykes was crowded around the windows, staring at him.
And behind them stood a shocked Jenny Wawasuck.
Her eyes were as wide as hubcaps and her mouth had dropped open as she looked at his exposed torso. Billy froze—he was pretty sure this violated someone’s rule.
If he were Ben, he would probably figure out some calm, cool way to exit the situation and mitigate the damage. If he were Bobby, he would flex and pose for the pretty little teacher. He wasn’t either of them. And as such, he had no idea what to do besides brazen it out. So he stood there and stared back at her, almost daring her to come out and turn him into coyote food.
She said something sharply to the kids, who all scrambled back from the windows as if she’d poked them with a cattle prod. Then she shot him the meanest look he’d ever seen a woman give him—which was saying something—then pulled the blinds.
The whole thing took less than a minute.
Damn. He was screwed. The only question was, how badly? Would she kick him off this rez? Would Don Two Eagles do the kicking?
He sighed. This was how things went. He wasn’t trying to stir up trouble, but it always found him anyway. All he could do now—since he’d promised to watch his language and not throw things—was wait for Jenny to storm out of the building and tear him a new one.
It’d be easier if it were Don. Billy knew men like Don, knew how they thought, knew what to expect. But a woman like Jenny was something else, someone he didn’t know and couldn’t anticipate. A sweet little first-grade teacher—with one hell of an edge to her.
Given the way his thoughts kept turning back to when she’d touched him this morning, he was going to be spending a lot more time trying to anticipate her.
Resigned to his fate, Billy slid his shirt back on and went out to his assigned position. He’d never understood why he had to be the one on camera—other than the fact that he was the one who built the bikes. Ben didn’t have to be on camera at all. Bobby was the one who had the Hollywood thing going on, from the way he wore a tie every day to the way he talked circles around everyone. Times like this, Billy wished he could be as smooth as Bobby. The man was good with people—well, people who weren’t Jenny Wawasuck.
Billy stood there, keeping an eye on the door as the smaller kids were introduced to him in a group. Where was Jenny? Surely she wouldn’t let such an offensive act as taking off his shirt in front of a bunch of first and second graders pass. Flashing a lifetime of ink at a bunch of little kids didn’t seem like something Jenny Wawasuck would let stand.
As he started shaking the hands of the bigger kids, the ones who’d be “helping” him build the bike for charity, Billy realized two things. One, Jenny wasn’t going to come out and pick another fight with him, and two—he was disappointed.
One of the kids shook his hand and said, “Hi again, Mr. Bolton.” Billy’s attention snapped back to the present.
The kid looked familiar. Billy didn’t have a head for names and faces, but he knew he’d met him before. “I know you, right?”
“We met at Josey’s wedding,” the boy said with a stammer. “I was an usher.”
“Yeah.” Billy shook his hand again. Probably some sort of nephew or cousin or something. “See you in the shop.”
The kid’s face brightened up. He couldn’t be much more than thirteen. Billy remembered being that age once—although he tried not to think about it too much.
He got to the end of the line and mercifully, Bobby didn’t make them do the whole meet-and-greet thing all over again. Don and Josey began herding the kids into the shop to set up the next shot—Billy explaining how the kids were going to help him—when it happened.
The back door of the school swung open and out stepped Jenny. Billy’s temperature spiked, which didn’t make a damn bit of sense. Now that he could see her in the full light of the morning, he noticed she had her long hair pulled back into a boring bun-thing at the base of her neck. She wore a white-collared shirt under a pale blue cardigan, all of which was over an exceptionally plain khaki skirt. The whole effect was of someone trying not to be noticed.
Billy noticed her anyway, his heart rate picking up an extra few RPMs. She shouldn’t look sexy to him—but she did. Underneath that schoolmarm appearance was a hot-blooded woman with a smart mouth who wasn’t afraid of him. The combination was heady.
She stood on the steps, hands on hips that couldn’t be hidden by her boring skirt, and glared at him. Normally, Billy would either stare her down—he did that all the time—or turn away and pretend he hadn’t seen the disapproval in her eyes.
Instead—and this was insane—he gave her a mock salute, just to make her mad all over again. He couldn’t help himself. What had she thought of all the tattoos? Did they scare her, or had she liked them for the art they were?
“We need you inside,” Bobby said, once again stepping between Billy and Jenny. Over Bobby’s shoulder, Billy saw Jenny make a motion with her hands that perfectly conveyed both her disgust and also her fury before she turned and went back inside.
No, this wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
Three
Billy needed a drink.
Not that he drank much anymore, but still. A day of having to watch his temper around kids who kept picking up his tools and putting them down in the wrong places. A whole day of Bobby making him say the same thing over and over in different positions. A long day of not building a bike.
Better be a stiff drink.
It was almost over. The kids had, by and large, gone home. Only that one kid, the one he’d met at Josey’s wedding, was still in the shop. Billy had been allowed to take his mike off, and while Bobby and his production crew were still doing things, none of them required Billy to smile for a camera.
What was that kid’s name? Billy thought hard, but he drew a blank. “You’re still here.”
“Yeah, my mom stays late to talk with the pregnant girls.”
Suddenly, the feeling that Billy should remember this kid’s name got a lot stronger. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” The boy looked at his feet and scuffed his toe on the floor. “I’m sorry about the way she blew up at you this morning. She gets like that sometimes.”
Wait—wait a damn minute. Was this kid saying that Jenny was his mom?
No way—not possible. This kid was a teenager. Jenny couldn’t be that old.