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“Tessa …”
“I don’t want to hear any more about that.”
“Okay, okay.” Marnie put up both hands. “Since you insist, I’ll be more than happy to stay in your guesthouse for free. And if you weren’t talking about my paying rent, then …?”
“Look. Do you need money? If you do, just say so. We would be only too happy to—”
“No. Thanks. But no, thanks.”
“Don’t be so proud.”
“I’m not.” She rethought that. “Well, okay. I am. Pride’s about all I have left at this point.”
“It’s not a big deal,” Tessa insisted. “Don’t make it one. If you’re planning on staying for a while, you’re bound to need a little cash to tide you over. ”
“I have a little cash.” Very little cash, as a matter of fact. “Also, I’m planning to earn my way while I’m here.”
Her sister gave her a disapproving look and then asked, with her mouth pinched up, “A job?”
“That’s right. I’m sort of a Jane-of-all-trades, after all. I’m sure I can find something. Did you know that I was even a short-order cook once?”
Tessa was still frowning. “You want to flip burgers?”
“I want a paycheck for the time I’m here.”
“But … there’s no need to rush into anything. Maybe you should, you know, take it easy for a week or so at least. Relax. Take some time off.”
“Tessa.” Marnie gave her a patient look. “You so don’t get it. I’ve had time off. The past five years since I’ve been with Mark, I’ve hardly worked at all.”
“But if you—”
“Tessa.”
“Hmm?”
“Don’t go all Saint Teresa on me. Please.”
Tessa put on her most innocent expression. “I would never try to tell you what to do.” As if she hadn’t just done exactly that.
But Marnie didn’t take offense. She knew that Tessa was only being bossy out of love. “Well.” Marnie sent her sister a fond smile. “Then we understand each other.”
Tessa got her pinch-mouthed look again. But at least she didn’t say anything more.
Ash had left the morning paper on the table. Marnie picked it up and flipped it to the want ads. What she saw there sent a little shiver down her spine.
It also made her smile. “Speaking of jobs. What do you think of that?” Marnie set down the paper and pointed.
The ad read:
Temporary Office Manager Sought
Busy motorcycle shop: repair and custom
Familiarity with Word, Excel and general office experience required. Past experience in car or motorcycle repair a plus.
Contact Gus, San Antonio Choppers (212) 555–2873
Tessa’s nod was beyond reluctant. “Yeah. So?”
“Why only temporary?”
“The woman who runs the office is going on maternity leave—and you’re not thinking of going to work for Jericho, are you?”
“Why not?” Marnie laughed. “You don’t think he’ll hold it against me that I stole his bike, do you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you know you were thinking it.”
“You’re serious. You want to work in a motorcycle shop?” Tessa couldn’t believe it. But then, she’d never hung around the North Magdalene Garage in the old days, helping their dad, like Marnie used to do. To Tessa, a car was for transportation, period. And a motorcycle … well, she might admire the art and technical skill that went into Jericho’s choppers, but she clearly didn’t find them all that intriguing.
Marnie did. “Yeah. I think it might be interesting. And it just so happens that I have experience in car repair.”
“Working for Dad, you mean.”
“I also know Word and Excel. More or less. And I worked in an office. Once. Accounts payable and receivable. It was really boring.”
Tessa sipped her tea and wore her best I-am-staying-out-of-it look.
Marnie reached across and patted her arm. “Come on. Be fair. Think about it. Jericho is my brother-in-law. And we’re on good terms—as of now, anyway. And the job sounds kind of interesting. Plus, it’s temporary and I’m looking for something temporary. It could be just what I need.”
Tessa set down her cup and beamed her most beatific smile. “Did I utter a word of objection?”
“You didn’t have to. I can see it all over your face.”
“But did I say anything?”
“All right, fine. No. You didn’t. You’re a model of total non-bossiness.”
“Thank you.”
“Gus is Jericho’s partner in the shop, right?”
“That’s right,” Tessa said. “Gus owned the shop originally. And he and Jericho go way back. He let Jericho keep his first bike there, at the shop, while he was in prison.”
Marnie almost choked on her coffee. “Wait. What? Somebody went to prison?”
“I thought I told you that. Jericho used to steal cars. He would sell them to some guys who parted them out to repair shops. He got caught and did five years for grand theft auto.”
“Whoa. Wow. When?”
Tessa shook her head. “I could have sworn I told you all about this.”
“Tessa. When?”
“He was young. Twenty, I think. That was ten years ago. He did those five years and he’s been out for about five more. But right after his release, he got arrested down in Mexico for drug dealing. Gabe got him out of that one.”
Marnie remembered Gabe from the wedding—tall, well-dressed, slick. Really good-looking. “Gabe’s the family lawyer, right?”
“That’s right. And as it turned out, the thing in Mexico was a bad rap, a complete setup.”
“Jericho wasn’t really dealing?”
“No. It was just some trumped-up charge because he talked back to a policeman down there. Gabe got it thrown out.”
“So that was what you meant last night, when you said that Jericho has turned his life around …” Marnie thought of the spark of fury in his eyes when she’d joked about his sending her to jail for stealing his bike. His reaction made a lot more sense now.
Tessa explained, “Ash says Jericho was always the rebel of the family, the one with no interest in doing anything his father wanted him to do, ever.”
Davis. That was their father’s name. Marnie vaguely remembered the older man: thick, white hair, a commanding presence, a firm handshake and icy green eyes.
Tessa frowned and ran her finger around the rim of her teacup. “Davis is trying harder now to be a … kinder man than he once was. But he’s a tough character. And he was building a dynasty, you know? He wanted his boys to get good educations and come to work for the family company. He had no patience for a troubled son, and no respect for Jericho’s considerable mechanical skills. Ash said his dad once yelled at Jericho that he didn’t need a damn grease monkey for a son. If he wanted his car fixed, he’d take it to a shop.”
“What a bastard.”
Tessa sighed. “Well, yeah. Davis can be a real jerk, it’s true. But as I said, he’s been working on lightening up—and speaking of people’s fathers …”
Marnie moaned. “Oh, no. In case you didn’t notice, I’ve been putting that off.”
Tessa had on her wise-big-sister look again. “You have to let them know what’s going on.”
“No, I don’t.”
“What if Dad or Gina calls you in Santa Barbara?”
“They’ll try my cell if no one answers. And if Mark picks up in Santa Barbara, he’ll tell them I’m here, safe, with you.”
“Marnie.” Tessa said her name and then just looked at her. In her bed in the corner, Mona Lou let out a long, sad sigh.
Marnie grumbled, “You are going to make such a good mother. You’re so damn sure of what other people need to be doing.”
“Call home.”
Marnie said darkly, “And you know what will happen when I do.”
Tessa broke eye contact first. “Don’t worry about Grandpa.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“You’re not calling him, you’re calling Dad and Gina.”
“I don’t have to call him. As soon as Gina and Dad know, Grandpa will find out. He always finds out. And you know how he is. He’ll probably drive that old wreck of a Cadillac all the way here to Texas, just to give me some advice.”
“Come on, Marnie. He’s over ninety. His days of driving long distances are done.”
“Think again. He’s Oggie Jones.”
“He only does it out of love.”
“Well, right now, I don’t need Grandpa Oggie’s special brand of love.”
“Marnie. Phone home.”
Making that call wasn’t as bad as Marnie had expected it to be. Gina clucked over her and her dad asked her if she needed money.
Why did everyone suddenly want to give her money? It was a little insulting and a lot reassuring. They loved her, she knew that. They wanted to do what they could to make sure she was okay.
She told them to hug her half brothers, Brady and Craig, for her, and hung up feeling good that they knew what was going on. Hey, she could get lucky and they wouldn’t even tell her grandfather about her situation.
Well, a girl can hope….
Next, she called her birth mother in Arkansas. That was a short conversation. Marybeth Lynch Jones Leventhaal had remarried recently and her new husband was a widower with five young children. Marybeth also ran a busy real estate business. That didn’t leave her a lot of time for chatting on the phone. Marnie’s mom said she loved her and to call if she needed anything.
After that, she debated whether to call San Antonio Choppers and ask for the partner, Gus. Or to ask for Jericho first?
And then she decided it would work more in her favor just to show up and apply for the job. After all, she reasoned, it would be harder to turn down a needy relative in person than it would be on the phone.
Northwest of the 410 loop, on a stretch of dusty road studded with flat-roofed strip malls and used car lots, Jericho’s shop was housed in a barnlike structure of gray-painted brick.
The shop’s name, San Antonio Choppers, was written big and bold above the front entrance in a sort of Gothic/heavy metal–looking script on a logo shaped like a bat—or maybe a winged shield. A high chain-link fence topped with coils of barbed wire rimmed the wide circle of parking lot that surrounded the building.
Marnie drove through the open gate and parked her Camry across a stretch of blacktop from the door, next to a Harley that looked like it had been around since World War II, with handlebars wrapped in black tape and a hand-stitched rawhide seat. Feeling a little out of place, she got out of the car, straightened her snug denim skirt and walked tall across the asphalt to the thick steel front door with the wide pane of glass on the top.
Even from outside, she could hear the muffled beat of loud music, and the scream of some metal-slicing saw. And pounding. Someone was pounding with a heavy hammer—probably on steel. There were big bikes in a row close to the door and a number of mean-looking customized antique cars as well. One of the cars bore a giant plaque across the trunk that read Pedestrian Killer.
Marnie refused to be daunted. She marched up to that heavy door and yanked it wide.
The music got louder, so did the pounding and the scream of sawed metal. And she was only in the office, which had a high counter, a desk and file cabinets behind it. Beyond the desk and file cabinets, there was a waist-high sliding window that ran the width of the far wall, mirroring the windows that flanked the front door. Through the glass of the far window, she could see the cavernous shop itself and the men working in there. She counted at least six lifts and a welding area back in a distant corner, and steel-railed stairs going up to another level. It seemed a pretty big operation.
On the customer side of the counter, there was sort of a makeshift gift shop setup, stacks of T-shirts and sweatshirts with the San Antonio Choppers logo, a carousel draped with keychains. She spotted hats and skullcaps bearing the shop logo, and even what looked like rolls of San Antonio Choppers wrapping paper. The display could use a little tidying. Not to mention a serious encounter with a dust rag.
Burly men in old jeans, heavy boots and T-shirts sat in chairs along the wall beneath the windows on either side of the door. Marnie felt their eyes all over her. She sent a slow smile to the left and right, just to let them all know that as far as she was concerned, looking was free.
On the far side of the counter, an enormously pregnant blonde with pouffy side ponytails and some serious facial piercings dragged herself out of the chair behind the desk. “Help you?”
Marnie stepped up to the counter. “I’ve come about the job—the temporary one?”
The woman braced a hand on her hip and shouted good and loud toward a shut door to her left. “Gus! Job applicant!”
The door opened. A tall, lean black man with a shaved head, chin-strap beard and a moustache pulled open the door. He stuck his finger in his ear and scowled. “You got a voice like a band saw, Desiree. I’m right here.”
Desiree shrugged, flipped her blond head in Marnie’s direction, and lowered herself back into the desk chair with a long sigh. She picked up a stapler and began stapling papers together.
The man came toward Marnie, his wiry brown arm extended. “I’m Gus. Gus McNair.” He had a beautiful tattoo of a single rattlesnake that coiled its way down and around the smooth dark skin of his arm. The snake’s head, fangs showing, red forked tongue flicking, extended beyond his wrist, over the back of his hand.
She reached across the counter and their palms met. “Marnie Jones.”
Gus smiled then, a slow, appreciative smile, displaying even rows of beautiful teeth. Suddenly he looked like a movie star. He could have been anywhere from forty to sixty, his skin was so smooth, with only a few crow’s feet around his eyes. And with a smile like that, a girl would find it very easy to forget that he was probably old enough to be her dad. “Come on in my office,” he said.
She went around the end of the counter and followed him into the small room beyond the door, which held a cluttered desk and a couple of chairs. The single window faced the front and the cinderblock walls were one continuous collage: photos of big bikes, a couple of neon-decked clocks, examples of really fine airbrush art and line drawings of several different chopper designs.
Two pit bulls, one brown and one black, lay on either side of the desk. In unison, the dogs lifted their heads from their paws when Gus led her in. The brown one yawned. Neither got up.
Gus shut the door and folded his long frame into the chair behind the cluttered desk. He indicated the paint-spattered metal chair across from him and she sat in it, sliding her purse off her arm to the floor.
“Here.” He produced an application from the pile of stuff on the desk, and then took a pen from the desk drawer and gave her that as well. “Clear off a space on your side and fill it out. Then we’ll talk.” With that, he put his feet up on the corner of the desk, leaned back, linked his long-fingered hands on his stomach and shut his eyes.
Marnie stared at him for a moment, bemused. Was he asleep?
“Go on, fill it out,” he said, without opening his eyes.
So she did, giving Tessa’s address as her residence and her own cell for a phone number. In the section for previous employment, she put down the payables/receivables job and her father’s garage, lying about the dates a little, extending the time she’d worked at both.
“Done?” He opened his eyes and sat up.
She handed the form across the desk to him.
He leaned back again, hoisted his boots to the desk and stroked his neatly trimmed silver-gray beard as he read. “What area code’s your cell?”
“Santa Barbara.”
“How long you been in town?”
“Since yesterday.”
He slanted her a look. His eyes were a brown so deep they appeared black. They were kind eyes, but she saw doubts in them and had the sinking feeling he wasn’t going to hire her. “This is an Olmos Park address. You got a house in Olmos Park, Marnie Jones?” Meaning what did she need with a temporary job at a motorcycle shop if she lived in a wealthy neighborhood?
“It’s my sister’s house. I’m staying with her.”
“The job is for six weeks, while Desiree’s having that baby you might have noticed she’s about to drop any minute.”
“Six weeks would be great. I’m kind of … open-ended, at the moment.”
He chuckled, a deep, smooth-as-velvet sound. “Open-ended, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Say you decide to head on back to Cali before the six weeks are up. Where does that leave me?”
“But I won’t. That wouldn’t be right. If you hire me, I’m here for as long as I say I’ll be here.”
He tipped his shiny, smooth head and studied her. “You telling me I can count on you?”
“Absolutely.”
“You seem like a nice girl, Marnie.” He definitely had that tone—the one that said he was trying to gently ease her on out the door. “But your office experience is sketchy.”
She was leaning forward by then, willing him to hire her. Strangely, the more certain she became that he would turn her down, the more she wanted the job. “I know all the computer stuff. I learn fast. And I’m no slacker.”
“Let me ask you this. You even know what a chopper is?”
She remembered the bikers she’d met at her dad’s garage and the things they had explained to her about their world. “I do, as a matter fact. It’s a custom-built motorcycle, with radical styling, and a raked front end—longer forks at a greater angle than a standard bike.”
He gave her a slow nod. “Close enough. But I still don’t get it.”
“Don’t get what?”
“Truthfully now, you want to work here, why?”
It was a good question. And she wasn’t sure she had an answer. Probably because it was a damn sight more to her liking than the hamburger place she was heading for next.
Not that she could tell Gus that. “Well, my dad owns a garage in my hometown. It’s on the form there. I always liked it, helping him out, running the office for him. And, also, um …” She blew out a hard breath and brought out the big guns. “Your partner is my brother-in-law.”
Gus’s black Converse high-tops hit the floor. “Jericho?”
She swallowed and nodded.
“His family is rolling in green.”
“So I understand.”
“If you’re married to one of his brothers, you don’t need a temporary job here. We both know that.” He was looking at her like he didn’t believe a word she’d told him.
She suppressed a sigh. “But I’m not married to one of his brothers. His brother, Ash, is married to my sister.”
He smiled again. Slowly. She couldn’t tell whether her being family to his partner made a difference—or he continued to think she was lying through her teeth. “Well, angel. You should have said so upfront.”
“Yeah. Guess so.”
“You talked to Rico about this?”
“The ad said to ask for you,” she offered lamely.
Gus was already on his feet. “He’s in the shop. Wait right here.”
He went out and she waited, eyeing the two pit bulls, both of which seemed to have forgotten she was there.
Gus returned with Jericho in no time. When he led her brother-in-law in, the room seemed cramped, dwarfed by Jericho’s size and his considerable presence—and by Gus, too, who wasn’t as big as Jericho, but had energy and charisma to spare.
Jericho didn’t sit down. Neither did Gus. That couldn’t be good.
“How you doin’, Marnie?” Jericho asked.
“Hey.”
“Gus tells me you’re looking for temporary work.”
“That’s right.”
With a nod, Gus clicked his tongue at the dogs. They followed him out. She was left alone with her huge brother-in-law who did not look especially thrilled to see her.
Jericho hitched a hard thigh up on the edge of Gus’s desk and rested his big tattooed elbow on his knee. “Okay. It’s just us. What’s this about?”
She told the simple truth. “I’m staying in San Antonio for a while. And I need a job while I’m here. I looked in the want ads … and there was Gus’s ad. It seemed kind of …” I don’t know, karmic maybe?”
“Karmic.” He didn’t look amused. He ran a huge hand down his face. “Look, Marnie …”
Everything about him—his voice, his glum expression, the tired way he dragged his hand down his face—it all said that this was not going to happen.
Grabbing her purse, she stood. “Okay. Getting the picture here. Karmic was a really bad word choice—because you have no intention of hiring me, no matter what I say.”
He had the good grace to look pained at least. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Hey. I get it. Can’t have someone working for you who steals the merchandise.”
“It’s not that. We’re past that.”
“Well, I thought we were.”
“It’s … you’re kind of up in the air now, right?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Around here, we gotta have someone we can depend on to handle the front. You could decide tomorrow that you want to work things out with your boyfriend and you have to go.”
“There won’t be any working things out with Mark.”
“You say that now.”
“And I’ll be saying it next week. And every week after that. He ended it with me. There’s no going back.”
“Maybe he’ll snap out of it, realize he made a big mistake.”
“Too late. I’m done.”
“But Marnie, come on. You could always have a change of heart.”
“How much clearer can I be about this? It’s over between me and Mark. Finished. Dead with a stake to the heart. And as far as my just taking off, no. I would never do that. If I give my word that I’ll be here till your regular person comes back, I’ll be here.”
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