Both Phoebe and Vin laughed.
“Thank you,” Vin replied. “Glad you like it.”
“You see why I keep him around,” Phoebe teased, turning a snarky look on her friend. Vin simply nodded and dug into his plate.
The ice fully broken, they chatted about incidental stuff at first. Vin talked about his way of making eggs and complained lightly about being ‘gimped up’ by an infection in his stump. Usually he wore a prosthetic and got around just about normally. Phoebe described Smoky’s condition this morning and their ranch hand’s enthusiasm for their new rescue. Then Vin asked about last night, and Duncan and Phoebe told the story in turns.
“Well, that was a helluva night,” Vin observed when the story wound to a close.
Phoebe sighed and stabbed at her pancakes.
“You give any thought to what you’ll do about the truck?” Duncan asked, because he had given it some thought.
Phoebe shuddered. “I know I need to, but I get a big black spot in my head when I try to think how to fix that problem, so I’ve been kicking it down the road this morning. But I promise I won’t abandon it at your station.”
“That’s not why I asked. I’m not worried about that. But I had a thought. I didn’t see a lot of damage to the chassis last night. I’ll know better this afternoon, when I can get a look in the daylight, but I think the rod must’ve blown out downward, or jammed up in the engine. There might be a divot in the expressway somewhere, but maybe nothing on your truck but the engine is fucked.”
Without looking up from her plate, Phoebe made a dejected sound that might have been intended as laugh. “The engine is a pretty crucial part of the truck, though, and I’m sure a whole new engine is way above my price range. My price range is right around a tank of gas. Barely.”
“Yeah, but does it need to be a brand-new engine? The truck’s, what, early-mid 2000s? Close to twenty years old?”
She perked up a bit as hope sparked in her hazel eyes. “It’s a 2002. More than twenty years old. How much would a used engine cost?”
“That depends. Refurbished and sold by a used-parts dealer, probably around fifteen hundred to two grand.”
Vin whistled and Phoebe barked a laugh. “Yeah, no. That is somewhat higher than my full-tank price range.”
Duncan was not dissuaded. “I get that. But there’s a pick-and-pay scrapyard not far from the station, and I could probably find you a decent engine in a wreck there and pull it for about five hundred. The owner is a friend of the club, and we buy shit there all the time, so I could probably get him down even lower. I’d install it for you and fix up anything on it that needs work, no charge.”
“The club?” Vin asked before Phoebe could react to Duncan’s offer.
Duncan faced him directly, ready for an array of reactions. “I’m a member of the Brazen Bulls.”
At first, Vin didn’t react at all. He met Duncan’s gaze steadily, then shifted his attention to Phoebe. She smiled, and Vin finally nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “So you think you can work a deal for a cheap engine? One that’ll be solid?”
“I do, yeah.” Duncan turned to Phoebe. “And like I said, installation’s on me.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she protested halfheartedly.
“I know—I want to. I kinda feel invested in the situation.”
That made her smile. The rosy chill had faded from her cheeks, but something warmer pinked them up now. “Thank you. I don’t want to impose, but I won’t turn down good help. Looks like you’re still rescuing me.”
“Knight in shining armor, at your service,” he said with a smirk he hoped was intimate and gently teasing. Their first private joke.
Vin cleared his throat loudly and rhetorically. “Anybody want more bacon?”
Duncan and Phoebe both took more bacon, and the trio got back to breakfast. Duncan was about to ask Phoebe if she’d show him around the place when his phone buzzed in his jeans. He pulled it out and tapped the preview of a text from his dad.
Eight wants us in the chapel at 11.
Might be some changes to the plan for
the run. We all need to talk it out.
The run was coming up awfully soon for big changes to be made in their first-tier plan. Duncan had a suspicion this was about Dex’s idea to leave the Young Guns home.
He checked the time: quarter to ten. If he was going to be in his seat in the chapel at eleven, he needed to be rolling in the next few minutes.
“I’m real sorry about this, but I gotta get moving.” Fuck. Goddammit, Dex. What was the guy’s damage?
The answer to that question was long, dark, and bloody as fuck.
Phoebe’s expression showed surprise and disappointment. But then she smiled and said, a little too brightly, “Of course. You gotta get back to your life.”
Standing, Dex said, “I really am sorry to stuff my face and bail. Vin”—he offered his hand to the seated man, who clasped it with the same strength as earlier—“this breakfast slapped. Thank you. Phoebe, will you walk out to my truck with me?”
She wiped her mouth with a paper napkin and stood.
~oOo~
They got their coats on, Phoebe slipped into her beat-up cowboy boots, and they headed out of the house without talking. On the walk to his truck, Duncan wanted to take her hand, but the impulse was stilled by her silence. There was a new distance between them, one that hadn’t been there even last night, when they were strangers to each other.
At his truck, though, he couldn’t take it anymore. He caught her arm, put her against the fender and leaned in. As she looked up at him, her eyes round with wondering, he said, “I want to see you again.”
She smiled. “You’re helping me with my truck, right? It’ll be hard to do that without coming into contact again. Plus, I still owe you pie.”
“You know what I mean. I want more of you. Thoughts?”
Her hands came up and grabbed the plackets of his coat. “I don’t think I’d hate that.”
“If you were trying to be encouraging, you should try a little harder.”
She pulled harder on his coat, until he bent down and kissed her.
Their first kiss of this new day. To Duncan, it seemed like the first kiss of something else as well. Last night had been a thing with a boundary around it, but this morning the world spread out in every direction.
He folded her up tightly and deepened this kiss, hoping she felt the same way. If her tightening hold on him was any indication, she did.
When he set her back, he brushed loose tendrils of gold from her face. “I need your number.”
“I don’t have a phone right now, remember? Except the landline inside. But I’m going to try to get into town for a replacement this afternoon. Do you have something to write with?”
He pulled his phone out and opened his notes app. “Do you one better,” he said and handed his phone over.
She keyed in two numbers: for the phantom cell phone and the might-as-well-have-been-a-ghost landline. Then she handed him his phone.
“I don’t have your number, though.”
He returned his phone to his pocket. “I don’t think I’ve got a pen in the truck. But I’ll call your landline and leave it on a message. You got one of those old answering machines in there somewhere?”