by Debra Kayn
Burning Hot Rumors
Choices: Tarkio MC series, Book 2
By
Debra Kayn
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Burning Hot Rumors
Choices: Tarkio MC series, Book 2
1st release: Copyright© 2020 Debra Kayn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser ONLY. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Debra Kayn. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Part One | Chapter 1 | Callie | 1985
Chapter 2 | Kent
Chapter 3 | Callie
Chapter 4 | Kent
Chapter 5 | Callie
Chapter 6 | Kent
Chapter 7 | Kent
Chapter 8 | Callie
Chapter 9 | Kent
Chapter 10 | Kent
Chapter 11 | Callie
Chapter 12 | Kent
Chapter 13 | Callie
Chapter 14 | Kent
Chapter 15 | Callie
Chapter 16 | Kent
Chapter 17 | Callie
Chapter 18 | Kent
Chapter 19 | Kent
Chapter 20 | Kent
Chapter 21 | Callie
Part Two | Chapter 22 | Callie | 1986
Chapter 23 | Kent
Chapter 24 | Kent
Chapter 25 | Callie
Chapter 26 | Kent
Chapter 27 | Callie
Chapter 28 | Kent
Chapter 29 | Callie
Chapter 30 | Kent
Chapter 31 | Callie
Chapter 32 | Callie
Chapter 33 | Callie
Chapter 34 | Kent
Chapter 35 | Callie
Chapter 36 | Kent
Chapter 37 | Callie
Chapter 38 | Kent
Epilogue | Kent
Author Bio
Debra Kayn's Backlist
Sneak Peek | The Sandbar saga
Prologue
Part One | Katie | Chapter 1
Dedication
To Wheels — I dedicate this book to you because in 1989, our waterbed caught on fire. Literally, it caught on fire. And if that's not a good reason for a dedication, I don't know what is. Love you!
Everyone has a reason why they joined a motorcycle club.
This is Kent and Callie's story.
Part One
Chapter 1
Callie
1985
THE BELL JINGLED ABOVE the door at Moore's Gas Station. Callie put the last case of beer on the frigerated shelf and pushed the dolly to the front of the store.
"Callie, cover the register," yelled her dad from the storage room.
"I've got it." She moved the stool from behind the counter and spotted a male customer, scrutinizing the candy aisle.
Having worked at her dad's gas station and convenience store since she was old enough to pump gas, she knew every local. She sucked in her stomach and looked away. The man wasn't from around here.
She glanced at him again. He was a big, gruff-looking guy.
He wore his long black hair tied behind his neck and had a full, scruffy beard. That wasn't what marked him as a stranger to the area. Half the men in Montana preferred to wear their hair long and not shave unless they were required to wear a business suit or worked for the county.
The customer picked up a pack of Red Vine and carried it to the counter. She rang him up without saying a word. He'd be in and out, getting what he needed, and an unnecessary conversation would only slow him down.
He looked down the length of the counter. "Do you sell hot coffee?"
"By the door." She pointed the other way. "Twenty cents a cup."
"Go ahead and add it to the total, plus a pack of Marlboro." He tossed a ten-dollar bill down in front of her.
She set his change on the counter in front of him and closed the drawer. "Are you getting gas?"
He stepped back, looked through the doors. "Yeah. Take it out of the change."
She muffled her sigh. Only her dad was working today, and he was busy in the back of the building unboxing stock. She'd need to go outside and help the customer.
"I'll pump the gas." She locked the register drawer and glanced at him again. "After you get your coffee."
She wasn't going to leave the man inside by himself to steal from them. That's how the last two kids that worked the pump outside got fired. They thought they could take a candy bar or grab a pop whenever no one was looking.
"Appreciate it." He walked to the coffee pot.
She stayed back, waiting for him. From her view, she could look at the tattoos going down both arms without him noticing. None of the markings made any sense to her. Usually, men had anchors, ships, or pinup girls drawn on their forearms or the front of their chests.
His tattoos looked like random green doodles.
The bell above the door jingled again. Harvey Cramer entered the gas station, and she folded her arms in front of her and glanced away.
The hair prickled at the back of her neck in warning. No amount of preparing herself for one of her ex-husband's friends coming in could stop her stomach from rebelling. Josh had turned the whole town against her.
"Scoping out someone new, Callie?" Harvey chuckled, shaking his head while looking at the other customer. "Your daddy must be gone for you to be on the prowl."
Ignoring Harvey, she walked outside, following the customer. When he stopped, she found herself beside a black Harley Davidson.
"Your motorcycle won't take the amount of gas you paid for. You'll get change back," she said.
A car zoomed past, the driver blasted his horn and kept going. She squinted, trying to see who it was making a scene. It looked like Toby McKinnon's truck, except the tailgate was all dented as if it'd been in an accident.
She turned around and found the customer filling his tank. A lot of people from out of state often tried to self-serve, but at Moore's Gas Station, full-service was a given, even in the dead of winter when all she wanted to do was stay inside and huddle beside a woodstove.
She watched the meter shut off at eighty-six cents. The man played with the nozzle until he got a full dollar's worth of gas.
"You can keep the change," he said.
"Are you sure?" She rubbed her arm. "You have enough to get a candy bar or another pack of cigarettes."
He lifted his head, his gaze piercing her. It was the first eye contact she'd made with him, and she wasn't prepared for the cobalt blue eyes coming from a man with such dark hair. The striking combination unsettled her as if he could see all her faults, in which she had many.
"Do you know of anyone hiring around here? Somewhere I can work outside and put some money in my pocket?" His mouth barely moved when he talked until she realized his beard and mustache hid most of his upper lip.
Caught trying to figure out what he was asking and escape those eyes, her throat spasmed, and she couldn't form a reply.
Harvey
walked out the door, further distracting her. "I left money on your nightstand, Callie. I mean, on the counter."
His roar of amusement followed him all the way to his pickup. Her face heated. She hated everyone in town.
"Miss?" said the man in front of her.
She pried her tongue off the roof of her dry mouth. "Yes?"
"A job?"
She nodded, letting him know she'd heard the question the first time. "The car dealership down on Monroe Street might be hiring. Benny Lyle is the manager there."
He dipped his chin and turned away from her. She stayed watching him. Was he a drifter?
If he was looking for a job, that meant he planned to stay in Missoula.
"Callie?" yelled her dad.
She startled, turned, and stopped when her dad pushed his way out the front doors. A light sheen of sweat covered her dad's flushed face. Lately, she'd noticed him having a harder time doing the routine tasks around the gas station.
His breathing seemed louder, more difficult. Lately, he got tired faster. Some of the boxes that he'd normally have no problem lifting, he now used a dolly or asked her to help move.
"You can cover the inside now." Her dad removed his handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face. "I'll handle the pump."
"What about the...?" She clamped her mouth shut, knowing it was no use to question her dad.
If he wanted to work outside, she'd need to stay after the station closed and finish stocking the shelves, he'd started that morning. She nodded and walked back inside. It wasn't like she had a life away from the garage anymore.
She lived behind the gas station in a single-wide trailer with her dad. The same place she'd grown up. Except back then, she and her dad had lived in a ranch-style home. While she'd been married to Josh, the house had burnt down. The fire department believed the fire had started from a space heater her dad had by his favorite recliner.
Luckily, her dad had decided to wax the floor at the gas station that evening and wasn't inside the house.
Instead of rebuilding, her dad had taken the insurance money and bought a cheap mobile home. Then, he'd put the payout money from the fire into remodeling the gas station and added the convenience store. At the time, she could see his reasoning.
He lived alone. His needs were simple. Expanding brought more money in, and he planned to retire at sixty-eight years old. He still had three years to go until then, and she wondered if his body would allow him to keep working that long.
What her father hadn't planned on was having his grown daughter move back in with him when she got divorced and had nowhere else to go, except to run back to her daddy.
At thirty-four years old, she had nothing. No husband. No children. No impressive career.
She walked inside. A beer bottle sat atop two dollars Harvey had left behind. She hadn't even noticed what he'd bought when he'd left because of his rude comments, damn him.
Opening the register, she put the money in the drawer. Knowing Harvey, he probably took a couple of forty ouncers and ripped her off.
When it came to her ex-husband and his friends, their whole lives revolved around the next party. It was amazing that any of them could hold down a job for how much time they spent having a good time.
She slammed the drawer closed. Bitterness consumed her. Every day someone or something reminded her of the humiliation Josh Hill caused her.
For five years, she'd loved him. He'd dated her for two years, flirting and spoiling her with gifts, parties, and attention. When he'd asked her to marry him on bended knee, she'd said yes.
Almost instantly, he'd changed. Or, maybe she'd changed. He no longer wanted to spend time with her, preferring to stay away from the house. She became more needy as a result until she stopped asking for his attention.
Three years of trying to make their marriage work seemed like a lifetime when she was miserable and lonely. At her lowest, she could finally see past the hurt to the truth of what happened in their marriage.
She'd put her own happiness to the back burner to try and make their commitment to each other work through Josh's affairs, his lies, his disrespect, until divorcing him was her only option if she ever planned to be happy.
Signing the papers to dissolve her marriage and going back to her maiden name should've ended her pain. But, Josh had to crush her by spreading vicious rumors. False stories that his wide-set of friends helped spread until she'd lost everyone around her, except her dad.
For months after the divorce, she tried to defend herself against the lies. Then, tired of the backlash and the way the stories grew, she'd ignored them, hoping they'd go away when someone else became the topic of conversation in Missoula.
Harvey's harassment during his visit to the gas station today proved that three years after her divorce, nobody had forgotten the lies Josh spread around.
She knew deep in her heart that the only way the fires of a rumor could continue to burn was if someone still fed fuel to the flame. Why Josh continued to hurt her when he'd moved on with his life and was in an assumed committed relationship was beyond her understanding.
Too many times, she'd wished to go back to before she'd met Josh and redo her adult life. To meet a different man or not even get married. Maybe go to college or become a flight attendant.
Instead, it felt like she'd dug a hole that she couldn't get out of. She wasn't a skinny cheerleader anymore. She rarely wore makeup. Nobody but herself had cut her hair in six years.
She dragged the stool back to the counter and plopped her butt down. Her hairstyle was one length and simple—she trimmed the ends of her hair every six months. Her clothes—fit her two sizes ago when she cared about how others viewed her.
She blew out her breath. Tomorrow she'd start taking better care of herself. For herself. No one else.
Looking out the glass door, she sighed. Her father continued to talk with the man on the motorcycle.
If she couldn't do better for herself, she'd do it for her dad. He was getting up there in years, and with his health, he needed to rely on her more. Every day, he walked home exhausted. The triple by-pass surgery he had last year was a temporary fix on top of his Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. Most of the time, his COPD caused him to huff and puff with any little movement.
His stubbornness about never going to the doctor had let the heart attack sneak in. Thank God, he was in too bad of shape to argue about having the surgery.
She would've thought her dad had learned his lesson about taking care of himself, but he was strong-willed. No amount of cajoling, begging and yelling made him eat better, rest more, or see a doctor about his new complaints.
Outside, the drifter shook her dad's hand and got on his motorcycle. She reached over and turned the dial on the radio, changing the station. It would be a slow day until three o'clock when people would start getting off work and stop to get gas. The afternoon hours until seven o'clock, when they closed the doors, were always the busiest.
Her dad walked inside and stopped in front of the counter. "I hired him."
"Who?" She turned the radio down.
"The man that was just here. His name's Kent Calder. He'll be manning the pump and taking care of the deliveries." Her dad leaned against the counter. "I told him to come in at six o'clock in the morning. That gives you an hour to show him around before we open."
Her neck stiffened. "You hired the guy on the motorcycle?"
"That's what I said."
"He's not from around here."
"Probably not, but that's none of my business. He promised to stick around as long as he's being paid, and he looked like a man of his word. He's a big guy, used to the outdoors, and the harsh winters. He'll do the work if he wants to be paid." Her dad pushed himself straight, his face flushing. "I need to go back and work on the boxes. Yell if someone pulls up to the pump and then tell 'em to hold on."
Tension pounded in her head. "Are you okay?"
He waved her concern away. "Got work to do."
/> She needed to get him to agree to see the doctor. What if he had more blockage in his arteries?
He kept telling her he was fine, and his energy level and lack of strength had more to do with old age than anything. At sixty-five years old, her dad deserved to slow down.
The heaviness of responsibility settled on her shoulders. One of the reasons her dad hung on to the gas station was because of her. He wanted to pass her the business when he retired, allowing her to support herself. While she tried to run the place and take the workload off her dad, it took more than one person to keep the shelves stocked, and the customers served.
Maybe it was a good decision to hire the man on the motorcycle to work for them. Her dad needed help.
Chapter 2
Kent
KENT PUSHED THE DOLLY loaded with bags of ice around the building and tossed them into the freezer to the right of the front door of the gas station. Working here was honest work, if not repetitive, and so far, he was able to set his own pace.
Nothing like his last job working in the oil fields of North Dakota where dust coating his sweaty skin became a way of life, and his muscles reminded him of how much physical work it took to walk to his motorcycle after a ten-hour shift.
A two-door Plymouth pulled up to the pump. He set the dolly against the building and approached the driver's side door. "What can I do you for?"
"Three dollars." A man held out the cash.
"Coming right up." He set the pump, put the nozzle in the tank, and while the gas flowed, he picked up the squeegee.
Scrubbing the bugs off the front windshield, he made each stroke across the glass without missing a spot, wiping the rubber blade off with the paper towel after each swipe to make sure he left no streaks.
"Can I check your oil today?" he said, putting the squeegee in the bucket of soapy water.
"No, I take care of the maintenance on my car." The older man swiped the dash of the car with his handkerchief.
The pump clicked off. Kent stepped around the pump and removed the nozzle, hanging it back on the hook.
