Page 5 of Grab The Bull
“It’ll be faster if I do it myself,” she grumbled.
“Uh-huh, remind me again, yer a mechanic?” He cocked a brow.
Her soured face snapped up toward his and the sun was filtered through her hair. It made her pink skin a little less bubblegum and more rouge, her fins a darker dusty rose as he realized she was blushing. With a hard huff, she shook her head. “No, I’m a pilot.”
“Right, and so you weren’t considerin’ waltzin’ out there and using rubberbands to put that old bird back together, were you? Cause that would be laughable.”
“Oh, would it?” she sneered, stomping faster. Her boots crunched over the dying, winter grass. It was already a burnt orange color. The new blades would poke through the melting snow in a few months, but they’d lost all their color.
“I mean outside of the fact it would take an army of yous just to move one piece of that junk,” he added, seeing her flinch. Ryzer took a long sip of his coffee before continuing. “Second being you ain’t got any tools to melt the fucking walls back together—”
“Look, I get it! Alright!” She flung her one arm out to her side, smacking his arm. Spinning to face him, he dug his hooves into the ground. Her nostrils flared and if it were a few degrees colder, steam might trickle out of her adorable ears. Instead, he stared at her. One fist rattling with rage, nose scrunched, and shoulders squared. “I just want to see what shape it’s in. If it can even be salvaged.”
“It can’t.” he snapped.
“You’re saying that because your mechanics saw an old model and called it junk.”
“That buck o’ bolts is a death trap!” he roared, watching her deflate. “Was…a death trap. You recall how you crashed into the planet? How if I’d not been beneath you, that yous be a pancake in my outfield?”
“I can still probably—”
“There is no ‘probably’!” The world grew very quiet. Instead of chickens crowing, goats bleating, cows mooing, and the sound of wind whipping through his tall crops, there was dead silence. Like if he breathed a little too heavy, it might burst a bubble wrapped around him. He stared down at the woman suddenly clutching her thermos to her chest. The desperation was in her eyes and he realized he’d bulldozed her. Way to go, ya ole’ bovine. With a sigh, he raked his free hand through the mop of hair on his head. “Look, let’s just go see for ourselves, huh? We’ll go scope it out, you snag anything valuable you need in the meantime, and we can work out everything later.”
“I still can’t pay you,” she muttered, taking a slow, steady sip of her coffee.
“Yeah, well, I’m always needing hands around here. If you can pilot a class 4 freighter by yer lonesome, I imagine yer plenty capable of using our equipment. Or I can always make you milk goats.”
It was the first time he saw light come back to her face. A broad grin filled her features and Ryzer did his best, he truly did, not to feel it nudge something in his chest. Damn, she’s real pretty when she smiles.
Not that she wasn’t pretty regardless, but when she showed off them pearly things, he could see why her parents named her after a flower. She was positively lovely as she spun on her heels. Sauntering ahead of him in blue jeans and one of Dee-Dee’s flannel jackets, she looked the part. Ryzer just hoped that she wasn’t all talk, and that under that bubblegum was a whole lot of gumption.
