Home > Crank (The Gibson Boys #1)(15)

Crank (The Gibson Boys #1)(15)
Author: Adriana Locke

A ROCK SONG BLARES on the overhead speakers as I fish under a table for a dropped bolt. The tune is one of my favorites, one that I play when I need to zone out and focus on a job. After getting here two hours early and getting nothing accomplished, I tried my luck with music. Turns out, my luck is out.

My hand rolls along the cool concrete floor, grasping wildly for the errant piece. My mind is just as desperate for a resolution of its own.

The lyrics, lines I’ve heard dozens of times over my life, sound brand new this morning. I’ve never picked up on the innuendo or the suggestive undertones before. As the words thump through the room, my mind is drawn further and further away from the broken axel on the pickup in front of me and closer to the blonde who should be walking in the door at any minute.

The truck has been a headache, but Sienna is a fucking migraine. At least with the truck, there are procedures and handbooks and common knowledge that can be applied to solve the riddle. With her? It’s madness. There’s not a handbook besides the back of a whiskey label to fix this.

“Hey,” Peck says, breaking me from my spell. His head is stuck around the door, having just arrived. “Donaldson is in. Where’s his invoice?”

“Fuck if I know,” I grumble. “Sienna filed all that shit.”

“Where?”

“All I know is the folders were all sparkly. There’s still glitter on the floor back there. I’d just follow the glitter trail, Peck.”

“I’d like to follow that glitter trail,” he smirks.

Flashing him a look, my lips pressing together so hard they hurt, I watch as he laughs.

“I heard the guys at Crave talking about her last night. You have three calls on the answering machine right now with men wanting to bring their trucks in for basic shit they usually do themselves. You get what I’m saying?” he asks.

“Charge Donaldson fifty bucks. Get what I’m saying?” I ask, lifting a brow.

Peck laughs again, the sound cut off by the door closing. I go back to the truck and try to ignore the pain across the back of my shoulders. The lug nut is almost tightened when my hand falls from the tool. It dings off the concrete, making a racket, but I stay squatted down and wait. Within a few seconds, her laugh spills from the lobby and floods my ears.

The grin that settles over my lips every morning when I feel her presence does its thing, but because no one is here to see it, I let it go. I let my stupid body react while my brain screams at it to stop. It’s like I’m trapped in a madman’s world where the two parts of me are in a constant battle. My brain is right. My body is wrong. We all know it. It’s common with men. But the override button I can usually press on my physical reactions is broken and that’s why I’m fucked.

Angling my ear so I can hear her better, the faint pitches and dips of her voice as she teases Peck melt away a bit of my stress.

She showed up. Again.

Rocking back on my heels, I let out a breath before standing. As I turn around, the door is opening behind me and Peck’s dumb ass is whistling as he comes in.

“Good Lord almighty,” he cackles. “You need to go see that.”

“See what?”

“See what,” he scoffs. “I don’t know. That ass. Those fucking legs. Hell, even her purple hair is hot. But the best part is, she brought in blueberry muffins.” A hand clamps on my shoulder. “She cooks, Walk. She fucking cooks.”

“So what?” I say, rolling my eyes for his benefit. “I cook. Nana cooks. Veronica at Carlson’s cooks. It’s not a thing.”

“And as much as I love Nana, she doesn’t look like that.”

Heading towards the sink in the back, I use every bit of self-control I have not to look at the lobby window. “Don’t you feel guilty for mentally cheating on Molly McCarter?”

“Ah, don’t bring her up,” he sighs. “I saw her this morning at Goodman’s gas station. She waved at me.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little pathetic you have that look on your face because she waved at you?”

“Don’t you think it’s a little pathetic you have that look on your face because Sienna is standing out there and you’re too chicken shit to go out there and talk to her?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Flipping on the tap with more force than necessary, I rub my hands together beneath the freezing cold water with gusto.

Peck follows me and leans against the wall. “No one is going to think badly of you if you—”

“Is that what you think this is?” The faucet squeals as the water shuts off. “You think I’m worried what any of you will think?”

“Yeah. I do. I think you think we’re gonna judge you.”

A low rumble escapes my throat, the mountain of morning irritability now focused solely on him. “When have I ever given a fuck what anyone thinks of me, Peck? When I walked away from the football scholarship at EIU so I could help Dad out around here? Did I care then? Or when I beat the shit out of Tommy Jones for laying a hand on Blaire? Did I care that some people around here thought I was some kind of barbarian fucking up the golden boy of Linton? Because I don’t remember that.”

“I think this is a little different.”

“You would.”

Stomping across the garage, I glance quickly at the window but don’t see Sienna. A bit of relief runs through me that she can’t see my face. I have no idea how pissed off I look, but it can’t be any match for how pissed off I feel.

Fuck Peck for pushing in places he shouldn’t. To hell with him for insinuating this is anything but me trying not to twist up a girl who clearly doesn’t need wrapped up in my bullshit. As irritating as she is, Sienna doesn’t deserve this. And even if my life wasn’t such a fuck-up, there’s no way that girl, one I can’t figure out for the life of me, would be able to handle all the baggage I come with.

Glaring Peck’s way, I throw it all to the wind and fling open the door to the lobby. I try to ignore the legs and hair and scent of her pineappley perfume that’s as unavoidable as a category five hurricane. Marching around the desk, I fiddle with the mouse and wait for the computer to wake up.

“Good morning,” she chirps. Her voice is sunshine, a bright reprieve to my otherwise bland day. “Sorry I’m a little late.”

“You mean you actually have a starting time?”

She giggles, stepping off the stool she’s perched on, wiping at the window blinds. “I’ve tried to be here when you open every day. Haven’t you noticed?”

I’ve noticed a fuck lot more than that. “Yeah, now that you mention it . . .”

“Aren’t you going to give me a cookie or something?” she sighs. “I hate getting up this early.”

“We open at eight. That’s early?”

“No, but seven is.” She tosses a rag into the bin. “I don’t work on other people’s schedules often. You should be honored.”

“I’ll remember that.”

She hops up on the desk, her ass planting on a calendar I need to see. The way her back arches, her hair spiraling down almost to her waist, has me gulping. Her legs swinging back and forth, she watches me. “So, what’s happening today?”

“Work.”

The door chimes and two boys walk in wearing navy blue t-shirts with white writing on the front. “Hey, Mr. Gibson,” the one on the right says. “We’re here seeing if you’d like to help our science club.”

“What are you raising money for?” I ask.

“We want to go to camp in Houston this winter,” the one on the left says. “It’s an astronaut camp. It’s going to be really cool, but really expensive. That’s why we’re selling these.” He holds out a box of chocolate bars wrapped in gold foil. “They’re really good and they have a coupon on the inside for pizza. You really can’t lose.”

Grabbing at my wallet in my back pocket, I narrow my eyes. “So you want to be astronauts?”

“I do,” the right one says. “But he wants to be an engineer.”

“But camp would help me learn so much to do that,” the left one says earnestly.

“How old are you?” I ask.

“Eleven,” they say in unison.

Sienna watches from the side. She’s itching to interject, opening her mouth a few times, but closing it before she does.

“How many do you have to sell?” I ask, doing a quick perusal of the contents of the box.

“As many as we can,” the left one groans. “We have until Monday to finish selling this box but people don’t want to buy them. It’s chocolate! What’s wrong with chocolate?”

Chuckling, I open my wallet. “How much are they?”

“They’re a dollar a piece.”

“How many do you have?”

“Total?” the right one asks. He does a quick count. “There are twenty-two in here.”

“All I have is two twenties,” I say, fishing out the bills. “I’ll trade you.”

“We don’t have change.” The right one closes the box. “I could ask my mom to bring it by to you tonight.”

“Just use it for astronaut school,” I say, taking the chocolates. “And when you get to the moon someday, do a shout out to Crank for me, okay?”

“Yes, sir,” the right one says, his smile stretching from ear to ear. “Thank you, sir.”

“No problem.”

They skip out the door, high-fiving each other when they hit the parking lot. My eyes drag to Sienna. “What?”

“Nothing. That was just super sweet of you. I didn’t know you had it in ya.”

I shove my wallet back into my pants. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

“Want to tell me?”

“Nope.”

“Can I ask you something? About cars,” she adds.

   
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