Until There Was You(92)

And now he had his own place, and work was going great. He was even hiring a kid from the vocational school. The bakery women had ordered a matching pair of custom bikes (who knew there was so much money in pastries?). They loved the design he’d made for them; he was just waiting for their down payment to get started. Right here in front of him was Jimmy Spencer’s Harley, which had a burned-out clutch. Liam could fix that in his sleep. Wires, connections, components, all fixable. After that, he had three custom gas tanks to make. He picked up a wrench and got to work on Jimmy’s bike, took off the housing and started disassembling the clutch plates.

Everything was so logical here. If you put something together the right way, it worked. The spark plugs didn’t just decide that the rules of mechanics didn’t apply to them. They didn’t just say, You know what? We’re not firing up today. No, there’s no reason. We just don’t feel like we should have to. Screw the distributor and its stupid wires. We don’t care. Maybe we’ll care tomorrow. Maybe not. We’ll let you know. Or we won’t. We might hate you tomorrow. Count on it, in fact. No, if the spark plugs didn’t work, there was a good reason for that. Not like fatherhood.

And not like marriage.

That was another thing. His wife had left him a long time ago. Long before she got sick. She might’ve lived in the same house and slept in the same bed, but she hadn’t really been there, not when it was just the two of them. He could tell in the way she listened to him, her mind elsewhere even if she made the right response, in the way she distanced herself from him just a little when they were out in public. He could tell in bed. What had once been that kind of soul-to-soul connection dwindled into a pleasant physical exchange, until all Liam had was the mother of his child and the woman who slept on the other side of the bed.

And then she’d died and taken even that and left him with a daughter. A daughter who seemed determined to ruin her life the same way her mother had.

“Damn it!” Liam yelled, throwing a wrench across the garage, where it clattered against the wall.

“Dude, chill,” came a voice.

He straightened up, then closed his eyes. Red-faced Rick Balin. Again. The blowhard came in three times a week at least and thought nothing of wasting Liam’s time.

“What can I do for you, Rick?” he asked. “I’m pretty busy.”

“Dude, I’m ready to make a commitment, right? And nothing but the best, okay? I can afford it.”

“Sure,” Liam said tightly. “Come on into my office.”

Rick wanted the best, all right. He looked through some of Liam’s basic designs, adding features like a kid in a candy store. An S&S motor, Italian leather seat, custom-cut aluminum alloy wheels. Shortened handlebars, which Liam would send out to be chromed, to accommodate Rick’s rather stubby arms. A turn here, a swoop there, more chrome here. He wanted the whole thing to be powder-coated a bright orange.

The price tag would be just over sixty grand.

“Not a problem,” Rick said. He suppressed a burp, then leaned back and gave Liam a self-satisfied grin. “A man’s gotta treat himself right, know what I’m saying, dude? And hey, I work hard. I deserve it.”

Liam looked away, his eyes settling on the Gypsy Tour medallion. There was no doubt about it. He hated Rick Balin. It was more than the fact that the guy was an obnoxious, lazy, entitled pain in the ass…there was something else. Something visceral.

“Get out,” he said.

Rick blinked. “What’s that?”

“Get out, Rick. I’m not selling you anything. There are enough idiots on motorcycles in the world. I’m not gonna add one more to the roster. Buy your midlife crisis somewhere else and get out of my garage.”

“Dude—”

“Now.” He stood up, and Rick shrank back in his seat—well, shrank back as much as a three-hundred-pound man could.

“You’re making a mistake,” Rick said as Liam grabbed his beefy arm and towed him toward the exit.

“Doesn’t feel that way,” Liam said.

“You can’t do this to me! I’m the president of the Downtown Merchants Coun—”

Liam closed the door in his face.

It should’ve felt good. It did feel good, even if he’d just flushed a year’s worth of tuition payments down the toilet. But Rick…he was like that kid who’d called Liam no one from nowhere. Someone who felt entitled to everything.

Something flashed in Liam’s memory…something from high school, something to do with Rick…but then it was gone.

He had the sudden urge to see Cordelia, and without further thought, he flipped the Open sign to Closed.

VERY, VERY CAREFULLY, Posey set the porch railing in place on the model house she was building, then held it as the wood glue set. Of all the models she’d built, The Meadows was most involved—try making stained-glass windows that were half an inch high. But she loved it; it was such a contrast to salvage, where everything was taken apart. Now she was building something. From the tiny slate shingles on the roof to the turned balusters of the porch, the model would be an almost exact replica. Vivian would love it.

She glanced over at Shilo, who happened to be sleeping on a black-and-white cow-skin-covered couch, meaning he was almost invisible. He was snoring, having exhausted himself by hiding from Al the UPS man earlier that morning.