Doin' a Dime by Vale, Lynn (learn to read activity book .txt) 📕

She’d seen me in my clothes and her eyes had gone electric.

Not that I don’t love your work uniform of sweatpants and a tight white tee, because holy God. But you in jeans and a Henley with a bomber jacket on? My God.

I was grinning over her words when the instructor, as well as the rest of us, heard the man’s reply to the instructor’s earlier question.

“There’s no bylaws in our club that you actually have to learn how to ride a motorcycle,” the man replied. “Not to mention, you’d have to be able to afford a bike, or know someone that has a bike, for you to practice riding. I didn’t have that until I got into the motorcycle club. But by then I realized that it was unsafe for me to just hop on and start riding without a little bit of instruction. So here I am.”

Here he was.

And he had a valid argument under his belt.

I looked at him with new eyes.

Most young guys his age would’ve popped off, gotten hot under the collar, or downright exploded.

Not him.

I was exceptionally surprised.

Over the course of the motorcycle riding instruction, his quick wit, fast thinking, and jokes had me smiling more than once.

And by the time we were done, and I was headed home with the motorcycle Wyett had procured for me, I planned to bring him up to Lynn.

Because holy shit.

After getting to know the kid, I’d realized rather quick that he was someone that Lynn would want on his team.

“Is that smile over the fact that you now know how to ride a motorcycle, or because you’re seeing me?” My wife batted her eyelashes at me as I pulled up to our rented house on the bike and shut it off.

I threw my leg over and immediately got rid of the jacket.

I may look ‘hot’ in it to her, but I was scalding, and really needed a fucking air conditioning break.

The moment it came off, I groaned.

“Hate to break it to you.” I tossed the jacket onto the stairs beside her butt and sat down, my eyes taking in the ocean view with her. “But it was neither of those things. I met someone.”

She stiffened, and I placed my hand over her knee.

“Not that kind of someone.” I soothed my hand up the length of her thigh. “A man. I like him a lot, and I thought that he would be a perfect fit for Lynn.”

“You were the one that brought most of the men in, right?” she asked. “You were the one to do all the research? Recommend which ones?”

“Yes,” I confirmed. “I was. He had a few that he was looking at, sure. But I was the one to do all the research. Present it to him and recommend which ones he take a closer look at.”

She nodded in understanding. “What’s so special about this guy that you met today?”

“Nothing at first.” I paused. “Other than he was in a motorcycle club and didn’t know how to ride a motorcycle.”

She burst out laughing. “Did you tell him that you were in the same boat?”

I shook my head. “I don’t tell anyone anything about me. That’s why I’m able to stay so safe. Everything that I have, I’ve hidden. There are a lot of people out there in cyber world that would love to take my fucking head off. Or, my fictional head, anyway.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“It means that I’ve made a lot of enemies. There was a movie star once that I made sure paid dearly for what he’d done to a friend of a friend. Though, before he hurt that friend of a friend, he’d tried to hurt me. And let’s just say, I don’t take kindly to that. I buried him. And enjoyed doing it. But he has a lot of fans that would just love to make my life a living hell.” I paused. “But that’s just one instance. There are quite a few more that would love to cause me harm. That’s why we’re always going to be careful about who we give information to. And although I liked that guy, I don’t trust him with your life.”

Her face softened even more, and the first rays of the setting sun reflected off of her eyes as she turned to look at me with the sweetest smile on her face.

“As for why I liked him, I don’t know,” I admitted. “Kid was ex-military. Ex-con. Was very free with why he was ex-both. He caught a recruiter trying to molest a young college girl. He stopped it. They buried the case and he was dishonorably discharged. Months after that, the recruiter was caught doing it again to another girl, and this girl just so happened to be the girl he was crushing hard on, and he lost it. Reacted badly. Beat the shit out of the guy with a tire iron. Served six years of a twelve-year sentence. Now he’s with a motorcycle club and trying to make something of himself.”

“Sounds a lot like some of y’all’s stories,” my wife teased as she pressed her hand to my chest.

I grinned. “That’s what I was thinking. I’ll bring him up to Lynn. See what he has to say.”

She yawned loudly.

“What did you do all day?” I asked as I rounded my arm around her waist and pulled her closer to me.

She leaned into me and let her head rest on my shoulder.

“Studied. A lot,” she grumbled. “Right there on the beach under my umbrella. I burned my toes.”

I looked at said toes, and sure enough, all ten were burned.

“Ouch,” I said. “That looks like it hurts.”

She groaned. “It hurts now. Just imagine what it’ll feel like tomorrow.”

The thought of her being hurt, even on her cute little toes, hurt to think about.

“Tomorrow I’ll rub some aloe on it.” I paused. “If we can find some. I drove by the Dollar Store on