Page 21 of Snow in Texas

Ned, who didn’t offer a last name, was a “collector,” according to Candy. He lived in a trailer in a dirt lot with two thirty-year-old Buicks parked under the adjacent carport. He came out to shake their hands, a white-haired, stoop-shouldered man who was approximately a thousand-years-old.

“C’mon back,” he told them, and led them around the side of the trailer…

To a wonderland of shiny steel. A huge metal hangar in back of the trailer housed rows of bikes, a true historical collection. Old Nortons, Indians, and Triumphs. A few army green numbers from the second World War. Several Beamers. And of course, the Harleys: everything from an old Knucklehead without a seat to a late model Night Rod airbrushed with green flames.

Colin traced a finger down the handlebars of a gorgeous old Bobber.

Candy came to stand beside him. “You wanna get something you’ll be comfortable on long distance,” he said quietly. “Go see what he’s got down there on that end.”

When Colin glanced over at him, the man winked.

Down on the end, a Night Train awaited him. Black, sleek, with minimal chrome. A modern day warhorse, begging to be touched.

Colin skimmed his hand down the fuel tank and shook his head. “There’s no way you wanna get this forme.” When there was no answer, he looked over again.

Candy studied him with narrowed blue eyes, his gaze hard to read. A measuring look. “Right now, yeah, I think I do. Just don’t make me regret it.”

Colin swallowed. “I won’t.”

~*~

Jenny

“…he sure as shit likes you.” The words had chased through her dreams last night. Or maybe they were nightmares.

He sure as shit likes you.She’d known that, yes, but hearing her brother say it made it official in a way she wasn’t ready for.

Not that she cared.

She didn’t care about the fact that her brother was buying Colin a bike. Not at all. She cared about the fact that her brother was going to use a shiny new bike as some sort of incentive to keep Colin hard-nosed on the job.

The unhappy tension under her skin had nothing to do with the mental image of six-feet-four-inches of Cajun gator hunter on the back of a black Harley. Nope. Not at all. She didn’t get all female and jittery over boys anymore. Especially not younger boys. Especially not…

“Just shut up,” she told herself, and reached for the next sheet of paper on top of the stack.

“What was that?” Darla asked.

Belatedly, she remembered she wasn’t alone, and her face grew hot with embarrassment. “Oh, nothing. Talking to myself again.”

“Hmm,” Darla said, peering at her own pile of papers over the rims of her reading glasses. “Sometimes that’s the only intelligent conversation a woman can have around here.”

Jenny smiled. “You know, nobody twists your arm to stay around this testosterone pit.”

“Nobody twists yours either, sweetheart.”

“Fair enough.” Jenny sat up from her slouch and took her legs off the arm of the chair, set her boots on the floor. “All the housekeeping stuff looks in order,” she said.

“Kitchen stuff too.” Darla sat back and pushed her glasses up. “You know, if we got us a crew of Lean Bitches like they’ve got in Tennessee, we wouldn’t have to do so much.”

Jenny snorted. “Oh, they might cook and clean. We’d still be going over the books.”

“Too true.”

They had been camped out in the small clubhouse office for the past hour, running through the months’ invoices and bank statements. Candy had returned home to Texas suspicious and untrusting, and he always wanted someone with skin in the game to be in charge of the accounts. He would review what they’d just done, and file it away in the big spiral notebooks lined up on the shelves behind the desk.

“I don’t know about you,” Darla said, “but I need a slice of that chocolate pound cake I made earlier.”

“That sounds like a fabulous idea.”

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