“Silence.”
She laughed, a light bubbly sound that made him smile. “Your buddies want you to go on a ride with them?”
“They aren’t exactly buddies, and they were here to pick up a bike.”
“You all seemed tight at the bar.”
“Work acquaintances.” He glanced at her shiny black Lexus coupe, pimped to the gills. “Nice ride.”
She lifted her shoulder with a smirk. “For a car, right?”
“For a car,” he agreed with a reluctant grin.
He didn’t like the Warriors knowing she was here. Hated knowing other members had an interest in her. Loathed the fact he didn’t own her as he’d led Grim to believe. She was free to go back to Grind and get it on with any dirty biker she chose.
Forcing that from his mind, he offered an easy “Thanks for helping out. You saved my ass.”
“Business is good.”
“It would be better if I could clone myself. Any decent candidates?”
“For cloning? Hardly. As a receptionist?” She made a noncommittal sound in her throat. “They were all pleasant. They all seemed to have good intentions and good hearts.”
“But…?”
“I guess it depends on what you need and how badly you need it.”
All Isaac needed right now was Ava. And he needed her badly.
“I met with Charlotte, Jaime, Trixie, Lola, and Becky Rae while you were in the office,” Ava told him. “Charlotte is a single mom. She can only work from the time she drops her last kid at school until she picks the first one up, which totals about four hours a day.”
“I’m pretty needy. Four hours isn’t going to work.”
“Needy.” She grinned, and her tone teased. “That wasn’t exactly the description I would use.”
“What would you use?”
She met his gaze directly. “Demanding.”
Flashes of their sex by the lake clicked through his head. Ava naked, on her back, stretched out on his bike. Isaac driving his hips between her spread thighs, his hands covering hers on the handlebars above her head, his sweat dripping on her chest.
The whole atmosphere shifted. The air sizzled between them.
Her face flushed, and she looked away, fanning her cheeks with a weak laugh. “Wow, heat rush.”
“I’ll say,” he muttered, shifting on his feet to relieve the pressure on his cock’s growing girth.
“Jaime doesn’t have a car,” she continued, “so she depends on the bus. As she tells it, the bus schedule changes on a whim and depends on staffing. Your shop happens to be on one of the more obscure routes the city shuts down at the mere threat of snow or employee illness.”
“Lucky me.”
“Trixie is seven months pregnant—with her fourth child. And she was very open about future plans of getting pregnant again, as soon as this baby pops out. See, her baby daddy—of child two and child four—wants a baseball team of kids, and he, evidently, doesn’t particularly care who participates in creating that team. She also wants to know about health insurance, on accounta the maternity care she gets in the hospital on welfare ain’t fit for chickens.”
Isaac laughed. “She did not say that.”
“Swear on my momma’s grave.” Ava made the sign of the cross.
“Your momma’s not dead.”