“Hey, Peter,” they say in unison.
The one fitting the new exhaust pipe pauses to say, “Numbnuts over there says that a Camaro SS would beat a Mustang GT in a quarter mile.”
His brother points a wrench—not my missing wrench, I notice—in his direction. “If they’re both stock? Absofuckinglutely. Now if you’re talking aftermarket mods, that might be a different story.”
“What do you think, Peter?” they ask.
The creepy twin thing is something they do often, but I guess when two people are inseparable, it’s bound to happen. They do everything together—including women, which is about the only thing they don’t argue about. And they can easily turn around a job that has multiple issues in half the time with their tag-team approach, so I’ve never made them split up. We don’t have enough bays for all of us to work separately, anyway. Carlos and Thomas share a bay and switch off with front desk duties since they’re the best at customer service.
“Well, in my humble opinion—” There’s nothing humble about it because I know everything there is to know about cars. “If you’re talking stock and you’re driving a Mustang GT, you might get him off the line, but his SS would smoke your ass before you get halfway down the track. So…” I glance at the embroidered name patch on the coveralls of the twin on the left. I wish one of them would dye their hair a different color for chrissake. “Tobias is right this time. Sorry, Tyler.”
“Aha! Told you, asshole!” Tobias continues to rub his victory in a grumbling Ty’s face as I move onto the last bay in our shop.
A pair of shapely legs in jean cutoffs sticks out from underneath the front of a Dodge Challenger, one black combat boot tapping along to the heavy beat of the music.
“Tink, you wouldn’t happen to know what happened to my 7/16ths, would you?”
She rolls out from under the car, a huge smile on her face and a familiar wrench in her hand. “You mean this 7/16ths?”
I arch a brow down at her. “That’d be the one, yeah.”
She raises her free hand up to me, and I help pull her up to her feet. She’s wearing a tank top with a chopped-off bottom, leaving her stomach bare except for the grease smudges. I gave up telling her to wear a pair of coveralls years ago. She claims she can’t work in restrictive clothing, and honestly, it doesn’t hurt business when guys bring their cars in for unnecessary oil changes or diagnostic checks just to get a chance to chat up Tink. It’s not like her Daisy Dukes and crop tops are distracting any of us. Tink’s always been a non-sexual entity in our group, though we stopped referring to her as one of the boys after she nailed Si in the balls for it when she was twelve.
“Sorry, Peter, I couldn’t find mine,” she says, looking up at me.
“You need glasses, Tink?”
She furrows her brow under the longer fall of her blond pixie cut. “No, why?”
“Because yours is right there on your workbench.”
She follows to where I’m pointing. Her skin flushes as she bites on the inside of her cheek, making the thin gold nose-ring glint in the light. “Well, would you look at that,” she says with an embarrassed chuckle. “I swear it wasn’t there earlier. But now that I’ve got you here, Peter, I wanted to ask you—”
“Boss!”
I turn to see Carlos gesturing wildly at me like it’s a life or death situation. Shit, I hope the computer isn’t on the fritz again. We can’t afford to replace it. “Sorry, Tink, hold that thought.”
“That’s okay, I’ll walk and talk,” she says, falling into line as I make my way back across the bays, the bell she keeps on a long chain around her neck tinkling with every step. “I was wondering if you wanted to go to the Pitt County car show next weekend and pick out a custom project we could work on together. You know, to sell afterward as another way of bringing in money.”
“We don’t have the time or space to devote to a project like that right now. We need all our bays operational for the daily stuff that’s paying the bills.”
“No, I know. But we could make space for it in the pole barn and then after work—”
“Tink, what have I always said about after work?”
She sighs. “When work is done the fun’s begun.”
“Exactly. We only work as much as we have to, and after that, we work hard at having fun,” I say, dropping my wrench off in my bay as we pass. “Which, correct me if I’m wrong, makes me the best boss on the planet.”
“You’re absolutely the best boss, Peter. You’re the best at everything.”
I smile down at her. “Won’t get an argument from me on that one.” We stop in front of Carlos, and I put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “It’s a good idea, Tink, just not for right now. Someday, we’ll be able to do stuff like that without pulling overtime hours. Until then, let’s keep doing what we’re doing.”
“Boss.”
Carlos is practically bouncing in place as I finally turn my attention to him. “What is it?”
“There’s someone who wants to talk to you about a custom rebuild.”
I arch a brow in Tink’s direction, but she holds her hands up. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t talk to anyone but you about that.”
“Tell him we don’t do custom rebuilds right now, but we can refer him to someone who does. Hold on, I think I have a number for J.R. at the Toy Shop in London…” I fish my phone out of the pocket of my coveralls and pull up my contacts.
“It’s a her, boss,” Carlos corrects. “And trust me, you’re gonna want to talk to her.”
“Trust me,” I say, scrolling through the names in my phone. Did I save it under the J’s or
