Raid (Unfinished Hero #3)(4)

Thankfully, my expansion efforts worked so when I needed help with packing and shipping, I’d hired Heather.

She was as laidback as her boyfriend and she took me up on the offer. It was a good fit for both of us. She worked when there was work to do. It could be two hours a week, it could be twenty. She was up for anything and I needed someone who was flexible.

Heather definitely was that.

So I spent a lot of time with them, and Bodhi was helping me trick out my bike. I had a lighted, woven daisy basket. I had a hot pink, retro bike bell. I had a bright headlight and flashing taillight.

And now I had cutesie, girlie streamers on my handlebars.

I had it all.

Bodhi, arms still around me, suddenly whispered in my ear, “Dudette, GI Joe checkin’ you out. Three o’clock.”

It was such a bizarre thing to say, I leaned back in his arms. My face split in a huge smile, and I looked in his eyes.

“What?” I asked.

“Total GI Joe. As in GI Joe, whoa,” he muttered, and we both were wearing shades so he had to jerk his head to his left to indicate what he was referring to.

I looked right.

And saw Raiden Miller standing outside his Jeep, wearing a skintight army green tee that was straining so much at his biceps it looked in danger of ripping. He also had on tan cargo pants, boots, and unbelievably cool gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses which did, indeed, seem to be trained on me.

I felt my breath start burning in my lungs as I mentally rewound the hit-the-town-for-errands preparations I’d done that morning.

Light makeup.

Blown out hair.

Pink, cuffed short-shorts and a white cutesie top that had a little ruffle around the collar and capped sleeves. On my feet were pearlescent pink slim-strapped haviannas.

Oh God, I matched my bike.

No! I matched my bike!

Thank God I’d worn my own fabulous shades, pink on the inside of the arms, black on the outside, but the frames were silver and shaped like cop glasses. They rocked.

“Seriously, they should update the doll to look like him,” Bodhi went on, and I looked back at him to see he was still eyeing Raiden. “Every kid in America would buy that doll.” He turned to me. “Boys and girls.”

He was absolutely not wrong.

I pulled out of his arms, lifting a hand to tuck my hair behind my ear, acutely aware that Raiden Miller might be watching these movements.

In the last five months I’d let my hair grow, and Betsy said if I kept it up with just trims to the flippy layers she’d cut into it that it would be down to my bra strap by the 4th of July. This was because it grew so fast. Now it was halfway there. Long, thick with highlights and lowlights in it that Betsy said, “gives it lift and personality.”

It definitely had that. With its natural health and shine and my being in the sun all the time making the blonde even blonder, even I thought it looked pretty great.

Still, it wasn’t big hair, like Raiden’s cool, pretty skank.

I put Raiden out of my head (kind of) and opened my mouth to ask Bodhi how much for the streamers so I could get the heck out of there when Bodhi kept talking.

“I’m a dude, so even though he’s wearin’ shades, I can tell you, as a dude, you in those shorts, his eyes are aimed at your legs.”

At his words, I wondered if legs could blush. If they could, mine would have done just that, even though it was just coming on June and they were already tan since I was on a bike so much.

“I also know this seein’ as he’s lookin’ down… at your legs,” Bodhi finished.

Okay, definitely, legs could blush. I knew this when I felt the heat hit them.

“How much do I owe you?” I asked, taking Bodhi off the subject of Raiden and my legs. Moving to my basket, I was wishing for the first time I didn’t have a daisy basket that any six year old girl would be in throes of ecstasy over, but, suddenly I was realizing, any twenty-nine year old woman should think twice about.

“Was fifteen, seein’ as they’re custom-made by Heatherita, but since you gave me a hug, and I give discounts for hugs, we’ll call it square at ten,” Bodhi answered.

I grabbed my wallet. A long, Coach slimline pocket wallet that was made of a silvery champagne leather that I had to have the minute I saw it, but right then I worried was glitzy and ostentatious. I pulled out a ten and a five and extended the bills to Bodhi.

“Girl, I said ten,” he told me, but I shook my head and my hand.

“Take it,” I urged.

He had a bike shop to keep open, a pot habit, expensive hobbies and a questionable work ethic.

He needed the five bucks.

His shades held mine, then he took the money because he knew better than me that he needed it.

“You rock,” he said quietly.

“So do these.” I ran my finger through the streamers, something else I now had second thoughts about. Then I thought… forget it. I liked them. So Raiden saw me on a cutesie, girlie bike wearing a cutesie, girlie outfit that matched it.

I had my cop glasses.

I had a groovy friend who made me laugh and taught me to snowboard.

And I probably wouldn’t see Raiden for another five months.

So what did I care?

I mounted the bike, wishing I was pedaling home instead of pedaling further into town to run some errands for Grams. Raiden was parked, and thus obviously in town for a reason, and that reason might mean I’d run into him again. I turned around to face town.