Free Phase (Phoebe Reede: The Untold Story #1) by Michelle Irwin Page A

whether I needed to use the country code or not. After I pushed in the number I’d been given, I hoped for the best.
    When he answered, I explained what had happened. He apologised, telling me he’d only got the bike a few weeks ago and hadn’t worked on it. That he was just flipping it because he didn’t have the money or time to do it properly. It was probably exactly the reason had Flynn grabbed it, but it meant I was stuck with a bike that was utterly fucking useless.
    There wasn’t much I could do but wait until Henry came to tow me and the bike back to his shop—and then hope that it wasn’t anything too serious.
    When he turned up, he was still genuinely apologetic. Not that it was his fault really, he was just doing what a hundred other dealers did when they found a semi-decent barn find. It was a risk I’d known could eventuate, even if I’d been hoping for the best.
    “I’ve got other bikes,” he said on the second day. “You can take one of them if you like? Bring it back after you finish your trip.”
    “Nah, Uncle Flynn has this beast booked on a ship in New York the day after I fly out, so I really need to get it fixed.”
    “Okay, let me know what I can do to help.”
    I nodded, secretly hoping the fix would be something small. The last thing I needed was to waste most of my trip on repairs. Especially when I had a few things booked for later.
     
    I’D HAD my bike for almost two weeks but still hadn’t done any cross-country travelling yet. The damned thing had needed more work than any of us had known, so I’d spent the better part of the last ten days working on it at Henry’s garage. Every time I’d diagnosed and fixed one problem, another would crop up.
    At least Henry was a good sort. He let me camp up in the corner and use whatever tools I needed. He’d even gone so far as to order the parts in for me at cost and let me sleep in the sleep-out upstairs.
    Of course, working in the shed left me open to a constant flow of pickup lines from his team of helpers. Each of the attempts consisted of just two unoriginal thoughts. The first was linked to me coming from “down under” and then discussing either their down under or mine, and the second comprised entirely of offers to use their “tools” to help “tune my engine.”
    Suffice to say none of them won my heart or a date. In fact, all their stream of catcalls earned them was my ire. I was already irritated enough because my limited days were ticking away and I hadn’t even seen any other states.
    When I got the word that the new clutch cable had arrived, on my birthday of all days, I was over the fucking moon. It was the last thing—the last piece of the puzzle. Almost every other component of the engine had been stripped down and machined, replaced, or cleaned to within an inch of its life before being ready to return to its rightful position. For some bizarre reason, the clutch cable had been the hardest thing to find.
    I was in the middle of fitting it and putting the finishing touches on the bike, bopping and singing along to a song on the radio—one of my favourite songs by a slightly obscure punk rock band, Robbin’ Blind—when Mike, one of the panel beaters, approached me.
    “You like this song?”
    I grinned. “Yeah, it’s one of my favourites of theirs. Although ‘Take It All’ probably tops the list.”
    “You know they’re playing tonight at Barb’s Shack, don’t you? It’s just a few miles up the road in the hills.”
    “No way!” I wiped my grease-coated hands on a nearby rag.
    He grinned at my enthusiasm. “Yeah. I don’t suppose you want to go?”
    Is this his way of asking me on a date? My excitement dipped a little and I watched him as I said, “I guess. I mean, I’d love to see them live.”
    “They’re so good.”
    The fact that he wasn’t pushing me for an answer left me a little less suspicious. “You’ve seen them before?”
    “Yeah, they play at Barb’s all the