Lauren dropped everything in her hands to the floor. “You’ve messed with the wrong influencer.”
“I doubt you could influence a burning man to piss on himself,” Cash said, quietly.
“Enjoy failure,” Lauren said, before spinning on her heel and rushing out of the store as Claire called out, “Thank you,don’tcome again!”
Claire met my eyes and burst into giggles. “Oh my god, I love you.”
“Love you back,” I said, setting my items on the counter.
Claire rang me up personally, and I was pretty sure she gave me a little more than the friends and family discount, then Marci handed me a beautiful black and white striped bag with black ribbon handles.
“I put my card in there,” Claire said. “It has my cell on it. Let’s get drinks soon.”
“Girls’ night,” I promised.
“Me too?” Marci begged.
I grinned. “Absolutely.”
Cash took my bags from me and led me out to his truck and then home where we unpacked all the groceries, then made dinner. It was the perfect end to a perfect day.
Teagan
“IWANT TO show you something,” Cash said, motioning for me to follow him.
“Oh, no. I’m not about to fall for the old, ‘I wanna show ya somethin’,’ trick.”
Cash laughed as he led me to the far end of the shop, where the smallest, and least used auto bay was. In the center of the bay was what I assumed to be a motorcycle under a canvas tarp.
“Do you know what’s under that?” Cash asked, motioning to the tarp.
“I’m really hoping it’s a pizza oven because I am starving.”
Cash rolled his eyes. “I’ll give you one more guess.”
“Then I’m gonna have to say a motorcycle. Final answer.”
“Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner,” he said, removing the tarp to reveal a vintage Triumph.
“Ooooh. What a beautiful bike,” I said.
“Every now and then some of the crew will work on a shop project together. We’ll all throw in some money to buy some old hunk of shit and do our best to restore it to its former glory. Then we sell it and split the profit.”
“What’s the story with this bike?”
Cash let out a long whistle. “This here beauty is a nineteen sixty-three Triumph Bonneville TT Special. One of only sixty-seven built in that year. It has a six hundred forty-nine cc parallel twin engine, which produces twelve to one compression ratio, and hits a top speed of one hundred twenty miles per hour. We call her Bombin’ Bonnie.”
I walked around her and let out a quiet hum. “She’s pretty.”
“Alaskan white,” Cash said, running his hand over the gas tank. “And let me tell you, creating a paint color that perfectly matches the ‘fresh off the line’ factory color was way harder than you’d think. We must have gone through eight or nine different samples before we nailed it. I thought Razor was gonna completely lose his shit after all that time in the paint booth.”
“Where did the bike come from?”
“Believe it or not, the bottom of Lake Michigan.”
“What?”
“No joke. The original owner was some guy from Traverse City, Michigan. It was his pride and joy, but he lost it to his wife during a nasty divorce. Apparently, the day she took custody of the bike she paid a couple of guys to dump it into Lake Michigan. She also had them take pictures of the bike sinking to a watery grave, which she sent to her now ex-husband. He got so worked up when he saw the pictures he had a heart attack and died on the spot. So, the bike remained in the shallow depths of Lake Michigan for ten years before a fisherman found it and had it towed to his garage. He put the bike up for sale online and I snatched it for eight grand.”
