Survivor: Steel Jockeys MC Read Online Free PDF Page A

like a lamb after its mother, and ten minutes later, he walked out with the keys swinging from his fingers, a dazed expression still on his face. Ruby followed him to the door, hands on hips. "How--?" Chace came up behind her. "I wouldn't have pegged that guy for a tree hugger."
     
    "It was obvious. Didn't you notice how his thin his hair was up there?" She pointed to her forehead.
     
    Chace frowned. "So what? He wouldn't be the first. Mid-life crises almost single-handedly keep us in business."
     
    "Right," said Ruby. "But it wasn't standard male-pattern baldness. It was the kind of thinness right above the forehead," she pointed, "that comes after years of wearing a too-tight ponytail."
     
    "In other words, up until quite recently, he was a long-haired, tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, granola-eating hippie," Fox's voice broke in. Ruby laughed.
     
    “Even the most liberal among us aren't immune to mid-life crises." Ruby went on. "I'd bet you a shot he's recently divorced."
     
    "There was no wedding ring line," pointed out Chace.
     
    "Maybe he thought a ring was too square?" Ruby suggested. "In any case, I figure he's dating someone new, who wasn't down with the ponytail. Bottom line is, he may not be hugging trees anymore, but that doesn't mean he's not concerned about the size of his..." Chace raised his eyebrows. "Carbon footprint." She jumped up to sit on the desk, arms crossed modestly.
     
    "Ruby, you amaze me," said Fox, high-fiving her. As their hands met mid-air, Fox clutched her small, olive-toned hand in his for a second longer than normal. Ruby looked down at her shoes.
     
    Earlier at her desk, idly flipping through a spreadsheet but really listening to Fox go around in circles, it had only taken her a split-second to recognize his special signal: asking "What can we do for you?" instead of "What can I do for you?". He couldn't straight-out announce that he was handing the sale over to Ruby, because that would represent a lack of confidence. Instead, the key was for her to just casually step into the conversation.
     
    Since she'd first started working at Fox Keene Harley-Davidson, she couldn't have imagined being so bold. Even back at the candle store, when a customer had asked her a question she couldn't answer, even one as simple as, "Does this come in French vanilla?" she'd usually turn it over to her boss. But that had been before she had met Fox, who seemed to not only recognize the dynamo that lurked within Ruby, but to open her up, scoop it out, and light the fuse.
     
    It was the first thing she'd noticed about him when she’d finally come out of her daze of grief long enough to form an opinion of the man into whose care she’d entrusted herself after Kyle’s death. He was confident and cool, never hesitating for a second, but he didn't drip smarm the way Ruby had assumed all salesmen needed to. He never insulted his customers' manhood by implying they needed a Harley to pick up chicks or compensate for their obviously smaller-than-average genitalia. He simply was himself. Customers liked him because he was likeable. They laughed at his jokes because he was funny. They looked up to him because he was smart. They trusted him because, underneath it all, they knew he could be trusted. And all of that translated into sales. Even better, he didn't jealously guard his customers the way Chace did, clawing and scraping for every sale; he had a fundamentally generous soul. He never made anyone feel like they owed him--even when a customer was writing him a check for a quarter of a million dollars for a brand-new bike.
     
    Ruby, for her part, wasn't a saleswoman; it wasn't in her job description, and she'd initially resisted the idea that she could do anything else for the dealership but file and answer the phone. Besides, her talent didn't necessarily lie in sales. It lay in reading people. At figuring out their motivations, fears, insecurities, and their deepest desires. She’d always had that