After that I walked down the block. Something caught my eye at the bike shop, and, even though it wasn’t on my list I turned and went right in.
I did not go back to Rachelle’s except for the occasional coffee, but those were only flybys.
I did not see Raiden Ulysses Miller.
Not for five months.
What I didn’t know was…
He saw me.
Chapter Two
Cat Food
Five months later…
“Voila!” Bodhi shouted.
He shifted back. I saw the results of his ministrations, threw my head back and laughed before I looked back down at my girl. My pink and white daisy Schwinn now had opalescent white and pink streamers mixed with twirly silver ones streaming from the handlebars.
I looked at Bodhi, who had straightened away from my bike. I jumped up and down twice while clapping, and cried, “It’s perfect!”
And it was. It was over the top, cutesie, girlie, perfect.
I loved it.
I loved it so much I rounded my girl, threw myself in Bodhi’s arms and hugged him, exclaiming loudly, “I love it!”
Bodhi hugged me back, giving me a side to side shake.
Since the day I bought my Schwinn five months ago, Bodhi and I had become friends.
Good friends.
He was not like any of my other friends. He was a laidback cycling-slash-boarding dude (definitely a dude) who owned his own bike shop mostly so he could close it whenever he wanted and go biking or snowboarding whenever he wanted, which was often.
When he was working, it was not unusual to walk into his shop, shout his name and have him come out of the side office on a cloud of smoke and whiff of pot fumes. It was so blatant I honestly didn’t know how he didn’t get tagged by the Sheriff. But he didn’t.
It had to be karma. No incarnation of Bodhi would hurt a fly, I didn’t care how many times he thought he’d been reincarnated, and according to Bodhi, there were a lot.
That winter, Bodhi and his girlfriend, Heather, taught me how to board.
I knew how to ski, kind of. I’d been to the slopes with my parents and brother a lot in my life. When I got older, since I didn’t enjoy it, I usually shopped or hung out at a lodge, drank cocoa and read while they hit the slopes.
But snowboarding was a blast. I loved it, and since Bodhi and Heather loved it a whole lot more than me, we had a ball.
So when the snow started melting and I could climb on board my Schwinn, Bodhi and Heather showed me the ropes of getting around. They also let me borrow a used trail bike from the shop and they took me out on trails.
It was amazing. I’d lived in Willow, thus Colorado, all my life but I had never seen the fabulous places and beautiful vistas I saw with Bodhi and Heather.
Mostly because I hadn’t gone out and looked.
Now I did, all the time. Even when Bodhi and Heather weren’t with me, I’d rent a bike from Bodhi and hit the trails.
Heaven.
The last five months I’d also worked hard to expand my business so I could enjoy my new lifestyle that included living, but also included such things as lift tickets, board gear, bike racks and insurance on two vehicles.
Thankfully, my expansion efforts worked so when I needed help with packing and shipping, I’d hired Heather.
She was as laidback as her boyfriend and she took me up on the offer. It was a good fit for both of us. She worked when there was work to do. It could be two hours a week, it could be twenty. She was up for anything and I needed someone who was flexible.
Heather definitely was that.
So I spent a lot of time with them, and Bodhi was helping me trick out my bike. I had a lighted, woven daisy basket. I had a hot pink, retro bike bell. I had a bright headlight and flashing taillight.
And now I had cutesie, girlie streamers on my handlebars.
I had it all.
Bodhi, arms still around me, suddenly whispered in my ear, “Dudette, GI Joe checkin’ you out. Three o’clock.”
It was such a bizarre thing to say, I leaned back in his arms. My face split in a huge smile, and I looked in his eyes.
“What?” I asked.
“Total GI Joe. As in GI Joe, whoa,” he muttered, and we both were wearing shades so he had to jerk his head to his left to indicate what he was referring to.
I looked right.
And saw Raiden Miller standing outside his Jeep, wearing a skintight army green tee that was straining so much at his biceps it looked in danger of ripping. He also had on tan cargo pants, boots, and unbelievably cool gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses which did, indeed, seem to be trained on me.
I felt my breath start burning in my lungs as I mentally rewound the hit-the-town-for-errands preparations I’d done that morning.
Light makeup.
Blown out hair.
Pink, cuffed short-shorts and a white cutesie top that had a little ruffle around the collar and capped sleeves. On my feet were pearlescent pink slim-strapped haviannas.
Oh God, I matched my bike.
No! I matched my bike!
Thank God I’d worn my own fabulous shades, pink on the inside of the arms, black on the outside, but the frames were silver and shaped like cop glasses. They rocked.
“Seriously, they should update the doll to look like him,” Bodhi went on, and I looked back at him to see he was still eyeing Raiden. “Every kid in America would buy that doll.” He turned to me. “Boys and girls.”
He was absolutely not wrong.
I pulled out of his arms, lifting a hand to tuck my hair behind my ear, acutely aware that Raiden Miller might be watching these movements.
In the last five months I’d let my hair grow, and Betsy said if I kept it up with just trims to the flippy layers she’d cut into it that it would be down to my bra strap by the 4th of July. This was because it grew so fast. Now it was halfway there. Long, thick with highlights and lowlights in it that Betsy said, “gives it lift and personality.”
It definitely had that. With its natural health and shine and my being in the sun all the time making the blonde even blonder, even I thought it looked pretty great.
Still, it wasn’t big hair, like Raiden’s cool, pretty skank.
I put Raiden out of my head (kind of) and opened my mouth to ask Bodhi how much for the streamers so I could get the heck out of there when Bodhi kept talking.
“I’m a dude, so even though he’s wearin’ shades, I can tell you, as a dude, you in those shorts, his eyes are aimed at your legs.”
At his words, I wondered if legs could blush. If they could, mine would have done just that, even though it was just coming on June and they were already tan since I was on a bike so much.