Page 2 of My Romeo

She looked around and furrowed her brow. “I only have enough for an oil change.”

I shook my head. “It needs a hell of a lot more than an oil change.” I heard shuffling behind me and saw the camera crew shooting.Jesus Christ.I didn’t think I was ever going to get used to this. “You can set up a payment plan.”

“How much is it going to cost?” she asked.

“We won’t know until we get in there and see what is going on.” Who knew what was making the car sound like an orca whale. “We should be able to tell you what is going on in a couple of hours. Dice is working on the car right now.”

“I have to be at work in an hour. I don’t have time. Please, just do the oil change.” She wrung her hands in front of her and looked around frantically.

“Look, lady,” I started.

“Throttle,” Yarder called from the office. “Fix her car, and I’ll work out a payment plan for her.”

“I need to get to work.”

“And we’ll set you up with a loaner.” Yarder glared at me. “Go help Dice.”

I threw my hands up in the air.What the fuck ever. Yard could deal with her. “I’ll let you know what’s up with the car,” I called to Yarder.

I stalked back into the garage and headed over to Dice.

“Owner have any clue what the hell is wrong with this thing?” Dice asked.

I leaned against the rack that lifted the car and shook my head. “Not a fucking clue. She was insisting on just changing the oil, and that’s it.”

“Dude,” Dice laughed. “She’s just gonna drive around inFree Willylike it’s no big deal?”

I pulled the lever to raise the car into the air. “I’m assuming she doesn’t have the money to fix the car.”

“So what are we doing?”

“Yarder took over. He said to get the car fixed, and he’d work on a payment plan with her. Pretty sure he did it because the camera was there.”

“Oh,” Dice hummed.

“We might be able to use this whole TV show thing to our advantage. We get a shit customer in, and we just let Yarder take care of them.” Sure, none of us wanted to look stupid on this TV show, but I wasn’t going to bend over backward to look and act like someone I wasn’t.Tread: Iron Fiendswas going to get the real me and no one else.

“Yarder has been acting nice the past two days,” Dice agreed. “He even brought in donuts for the waiting room.”

“See,” I replied. “When has he ever done that before?” We were going to have cameras all over, but we were going to have the nicest prez in Texas.

“Never,” Dice agreed. He nodded behind me. “He’s headed over here with the TV crew.”

I glanced over my shoulder. “Jesus,” I mumbled. “How long do we have to deal with this?”

Dice clapped me on my shoulder and chuckled. “Eight more weeks, brother. Eight weeks and then we get a break.”

Yeah, and after that break, we were going to have another eight weeks if the world likedTread: Iron Fiends.

I knew we needed this show if the club was going to survive, but damn if I wasn’t going to hate every second of it.

*

Chapter Two

Dove

“I’m not there.”

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