Straddling the Line - By Sarah M. Anderson Page 0,22

would have let him take her.

Not a mistake.

Was it?

“What are you doing here?” Ben’s head shot up to find his older brother, Billy, standing in the middle of the shop, a muffler in his hand.

“I went for a ride today. She was pulling a little to the left.” Ben rolled his bike into an open bay. “Been a while since I took her apart and put her back together.”

So he hadn’t consciously come back here. He normally changed the oil at his place. But getting his hands dirty and shooting the breeze with Billy was just what he needed to get that woman—that kiss—out of his system.

Billy shot Ben one of those looks and then smiled. It was probably a damn good thing the big man never shaved. No woman would ever look at Ben—or even Bobby-the-playboy—if Billy bothered to clean up. God only knew why he didn’t. “Who is she?”

He ground his teeth. Was it that damn obvious? He stripped off his nylon jacket and dug out his coveralls. “No one. I just need to take better care of my bike.”

Billy laughed at him. “Yeah. Right.” But he had the decency not to press the issue. Instead, he turned back to the bike he was working on.

Zipping into his coveralls, Ben did a double take. The chassis of the machine Billy was working on was three-pronged. “I didn’t think we made trikes.”

Billy’s normal glower settled back over his face. “We don’t.”

“So what are you doing?”

“We don’t. I’m doing this on my own time.” Before Ben could ask the most important question, Billy added, “And my own money, too. This has nothing to do with the company.”

Ben didn’t get anything else, and he didn’t push. If he wasn’t shouting at Dad, Billy rarely talked. Now that Ben thought about it, this was the longest yell-free conversation he’d had with his big brother in years.

Ben got to work. He’d built this bike with his own hands back in high school. He didn’t care if the money was in wild choppers with crazy handlebars or Batman rip-offs with ultralow-profile tires. This bike was his and his alone. He knew exactly how fast it accelerated and decelerated, and exactly how fast he could bank a corner before he lost control. He had the scars to prove it.

He started with the oil while Billy worked in the next bay on his trike. “Who’s the trike for?”

“What’s her name?” Billy shot back a few minutes later.

“None of your damn business.”

“Typical.”

Ben ignored him as he took the carburetor apart. It was some time before he said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Silence.

This was the difference between talking to Billy and talking to Bobby. Bobby slung words around like bullets and he had stocked up on ammo. So what if a few ricocheted away from him and he drew blood? So what if he never listened? Words were disposable. Meaningless.

Billy, on the other hand, hoarded words like they were gold coins. He could say three sentences in three hours and consider that a conversation. He thought about each and every thing he said, and he didn’t say something he didn’t mean.

True to form, it was another twenty minutes before Billy answered him. “The only time you come down out of your little cave up there and actually get your hands dirty, you’ve got woman problems.”

Ben bristled. Maybe today, he liked Bobby better, because even though the little jerk said crap like this all the time, Ben knew he didn’t mean it. “It’s called an office. You have one, too. You should check it out sometime.” Billy used his office for storage and sleeping. The shop was his office and everyone knew it. “You know you’re behind schedule. Why the hell are you wasting time on that?”

Billy couldn’t be goaded into a fight as easily as Bobby, though. He merely snorted in amusement and kept working. Slow. Methodical.

“You remember Cal Horton?”

The silence had gone on so long that Ben had half forgotten Billy was still there. “Horton? The shop teacher in high school?”

“Yeah.” Billy sighed as he wiped his hands on a rag. “He was like…the anti-Dad, remember?”

Ben nodded. Billy had lived in the shop class. If it hadn’t been for shop, Ben didn’t doubt that his brother wouldn’t have graduated from high school. And Mr. Horton—Mr. Who, the kids had all called him behind his back—had been a scrawny guy with big ears, buck teeth and a voice that never shouted. Ben had taken shop for a while,