Page 19 of Shep
“What the hell’smade you crankier than usual?” Colt asked.
He’d texted me right after closing that night to meet him for dinner at the Sip N’ Serv, the diner down the street from the sheriff’s department from one direction and also from my shop from the other.
We sat side by side at the counter. Mabel had already brought our drinks–iced tea for me and coffee for Colt–and taken our orders.
He’d just come off shift and had a few hours before Molly, his wife, got done with hers at the hospital as ER Chief. She was six or seven months pregnant. Icouldn’t keep up with all the babies, but she looked like she’d swallowed a basketball the last time I saw her. Not that I was going to tell her that.
I grunted. “Got a new employee.”
He reached for a sugar packet and huffed. “Worse than the last guy?”
I thought of what Frankie accomplished today. Every task, she’d done right. And well. And at a pace that wouldn’t blow my estimates. She was also neat, cleaned up after herself, and as far as I could tell, hadn’t stolen anything.
“Definitely better,” I said.
“Then why isn’t he working out?”
“Becauseheis ashe.Frankie is short for Francesca.”
There was no way news of a woman mechanic wasn’t going to work its way around Devil’s Ditch. I was surprised that Mabel hadn’t said anything when she took our order. Or Ma calling to ask after her. News spread that fast around here.
He swiveled on his stool and cocked his head. Then grinned. “No shit?”
“No shit,” I muttered.
He tipped his voice low even though there was no one sitting along the counter near us. “What is it? You want to fuck her?”
It was a reasonable question. I had seven brothersand the answer was almost always yes. One example of a no was the crazy bitch, Shayna Margensky. She’d been in Hayes’ class at school and the one who’d been obsessed with Bray and hit Ma in the head with a can of beans over the summer.
I was used to sharing shit like this with them. Except I’d done something most likely illegal. Even if both me and Francesca… Frankie consented, exchanging money for sex made her a prostitute and I was a john.
I took a sip of my tea because every time I thought of that, I felt like I wanted to hurl. But then I thought of Frankie, and wanted to have sex with her again. I wanted to give her more than money. I wanted to give her everything.
It figured the brother I was sharing with was a fucking sheriff, so I’d maybe leave some of the details to myself. I doubted Jackson or Cyrus were going to blab. Not if it shut down their access to premium pussy, as Jackson had called it.
“I already did.” There, I admitted it.
His eyes widened and he grinned. “No shit?”
“No shit.”
“Okay, so you had sex.” The Wilder boys might share with each other who they had sex with, but we didn’t kiss and tell, which was to my advantage rightnow in light ofwhereandhowwe’d done it. Besides me not wanting him to know about the whole money exchange thing, I wasn’t thrilled to share that I’d been to the Trout ranch and stooped to their… shenanigans.
Hell, it was possible Rocky might even havemeby the balls.
“What’s the big deal?” Colt asked.
“I want to do it again,” I admitted. “But I’m her boss.”
Mabel came by and slid my burger and fries in front of me, the meatloaf special in front of Colt, then continued down the counter to help someone else.
“She the One?” he asked, using the side of his fork to break off a piece of the meatloaf and shoved it in his mouth.
“Hell, yeah.”
He swallowed, then grinned outright. Then slapped me on the shoulder. “Doing it backward, just like the rest of us.”
His comment surprised me. While no one, not once, mentioned that because I was adopted I was any less a Wilder, I was the one who thought it. Kept it in the back of my mind that I somehow didn’t completely belong. Especially lately. That made his words even more powerful because maybe I was much more like them than I imagined.
