Under Locke(16)

“Just tell me what you fuckin’ said. I’m dyin’ here,” he cursed, the tips of his words sounding more curious than angry.



Well, screw it. If he was going to fire me for making a that's-what-she-said joke, then so be it. If I needed to make dumb jokes to get The Dick to cut me loose from this job, then that was a loss I’d take for Team Iris. I'd just been hoping to have another job before then.



My eyes went up to land on the short, dark scruff on his jawline. From those two seconds I was staring at his face, I’d deduced that his facial hair was the same inky black as his head. Which was nice, until you figured out he was a huge asswad.



“I told Blake that's what she said." He blinked. "You know, about wanting six inches." I breathed out, darting my eyes back over to my redheaded coworker for throwing me under the bus and making me talk to my arch nemesis.



But Dex didn’t say anything in response.



Of course he didn't have a sense of humor. I guess you couldn't have a sense of humor if you were missing a soul. The thought almost made me laugh.



He just stared at me for the longest moment, his gaze intense and disarming. Those blue eyes lingered over my face before he told Slim to go clean up his station so we could get the hell out of there as soon as possible. The minute those words were out of his mouth, I sensed that Blake had walked away too.



Since that little chat, he hadn’t ventured further than four words at a time with me until Friday.



It was a little after five o’clock and the shop was dead. There weren’t any appointments scheduled until eight so I wasn’t expecting any customers to walk in until much later. I started going through the catalogues I'd found in the desk drawers, trying to get familiar with equipment. Who did show up instead, were two bikers that pulled up to the street parking like they owned the boulevard the building was on. Wearing heavily patched-up black leather vests, maybe in their mid-thirties or early forties, and each sporting some serious facial hair, they prowled in through the door looking around immediately.



WMC members.



“Hi,” I called out to them.



One of them, the older looking of the two with a belly that had a monogamous relationship with six-packs of beer, tilted his chin up at me. “Dex here?”



I nodded.



The other biker guy, pretty attractive in his own way with his dark hair pulled back in a short ponytail, winked at me. I had a feeling he was the same guy that Dex had been arguing with at the bar my first day in town. “Get him for us, sweetie?”



I wished that it wasn’t The Dick of all people they were asking for, but I nodded anyway and headed down the hall. When Dex was in, I stuck to the front desk so he could use the office. It was only when he wasn’t around or if he was busy with a customer that I slunk in to do whatever was needed that day in peace and quiet. Meaning that I had no clue what the hell I was doing and tried figuring everything out on the go.



Luckily, Dex was stepping out of his office before I made it all the way.



My focus zoned in on his so-black-it-almost-looked-blue hair that flopped out from beneath the rim of the Rangers cap on his head. “There are two people asking for you in the front.”



“I saw 'em in the camera,” he informed me. I didn’t even know there was a camera out front. Dex handed me a big manila envelope he had under his arm. “Do me a favor. Walk this over to the body shop around the corner, will ya?”



Sonny! I still hadn’t dropped by, then again, neither had he. But it didn’t matter. He still texted me at least once a day to make sure I was alive and hadn’t gotten lost or abducted in my new city.



I must have thought too long about going over to the body shop because Dex cleared his throat, raising a heavy eyebrow. This guy really thought I was an imbecile.



I wasn’t about to let him know I was excited to see Sonny by running the errand, so I nodded at his hair instead. “Sure.”



"You know where it's at?" he asked me.



Anger rose up the vertical muscles in my throat. "Yeah, I know." And then I muttered, "I'm not completely stupid."



He didn't say anything as I took the package from his hand, keeping my eyes everywhere but on his face. Not bothering to say anything else to him, I turned around to walk down the hall.



“Make sure Luther gets it, babe," he called out after me.



Babe. Guh.



It was something so far I’d only heard him call me when he wasn't referring to me as Ritz. In the last two days he’d helped other women who came in but he strictly referred to them by their first name or “sweetheart.” Under normal circumstances, I would have thought that was cute but this was Dex The Dick, so it automatically defaulted to douche-bag language.