Heavy Hogs MC

by Elias Taylor

  “Ooh, that’ll be fun. Just don’t drink too much.”

  “I always drink too much.” Natalie turned to the mirror to divest herself of the jewelry in her three ear piercings and her nose ring.

  “I know, and it always bites you in the ass. Remember that time you wanted to save your leftovers so you put them in your helmet and forgot about them?”

  “Remember when you went into the bathroom at that club and traded clothes with some girl you’d never met?” Natalie countered. “And the dress she gave you was too small so you kept flashing everyone with your panties all night?”

  They both giggled over the memories, and Jasmine gave up on trying to one-up Natalie. “I’m just saying, don’t accidentally get married or something. You can be a crazy bitch.”

  Natalie snorted so hard that the shower curtain in her bathroom stirred. “No chance in hell I’ll ever get drunk enough to get anywhere near a chapel. Besides, I’ll be hanging with Gideon and a bunch of guys and gals from the Warriors. I’d be lucky to accidentally get laid.”

  “You want something bad enough, you’ll find a way,” Jasmine proclaimed. “Anyway, I gotta go. I need to figure out who’s going to the beach with me.”

  “And I’m naked about to jump in the shower, so bye.”

  “Yeah, didn’t need that first detail. Bye.”

  Natalie snickered as she hung up, and not just at her parting words. Her, get married? Weird shit always went down in Vegas, but not that weird. Not for Natalie. As she had said, no chance in hell, and she had used the words hell and chapel in the same sentence.

  If that didn’t prove the impossibility of an accidental marriage, well—she didn’t know what would.

  Chapter Two: Brent

  Brent knew. He knew the crippling exhaustion weakening Jameson’s arms, the stinging sweat rolling down his client’s forehead into his eyes and the tiny voice in the back of his mind chanting ‘can’t-can’t-can’t’ on repeat.

  Brent Cooke had fought through all those things before and come out stronger and healthier. Every time he helped a client do the same was a win in his book.

  “Two more reps,” Brent urged, crouching down beside Jameson, tensing his own arms as if he could help his client finish his pushups through sheer power of will. “Two more reps feels twice as good after you let yourself relax. One,” he counted for Jameson as the man bent wobbly elbows and managed a decent pushup. “Nice, come on, just one more, then we’re done for the day.”

  Jameson stared at the gym floor, which must seem miles away to him. Brent realized that his client wasn’t going to do this on his own and dropped from a crouch into a pushup position. “Ready? Last one. Three, two, one—”

  Together, the two men completed Jameson’s last pushup. Jameson collapsed into a heap and Brent sat on the mat beside him, giving him a moment to recover.

  “Thanks.” Jameson grinned despite his heaving chest. “You’re right. It is more satisfying.”

  “Don’t let anyone tell you that pain can’t be pleasure.” Brent hopped up and grabbed both their water bottles from where they’d set them near the wall at the start of the session.

  “I wish I’d started coming here sooner,” Jameson said, his tone regretful. “The wedding’s only two months away.”

  “Hey, don’t sweat it. You’re going to look great in that tux.” Brent held out one of the water bottles to Jameson.

  The man took it, eyeing Brent’s bulging arms and shoulders. “It just takes longer than I expected to get fit.”

  “Everyone’s body is different and there are no wrong fitness regimens. It’s my job to help you figure out what works best for you based on what you want.” Brent grinned. “And what you want is to look like a handsome son of a gun on your wedding day.”

  Jameson’s smile told Brent he had succeeded in knocking comparisons between the two men out of his client’s mind. Nothing was more detrimental to fitness and health than constantly comparing yourself to someone else, especially someone who did this for both a living and a hobby.

  “So let’s talk nutrition,” Brent suggested. “What you ingest is just as important as how you exercise.” Brent launched into an explanation of different training regimens and diets, keeping to the stuff that wouldn’t intrude too much upon Jameson’s habits. Brent loved working toward his own fitness goals, but he knew that he couldn’t set unrealistic expectations for people taking that first tentative step toward a healthier lifestyle.

  So, he started with the easy suggestions. A low-carb diet with plenty of proteins, fat and veggies, a calorie goal that was likely below Jameson’s normal intake but not uncomfortably so and a list of easy exercises to do at home in between their personal sessions here at Perfect Fit.

  “Are you sure I don’t need to get up at the crack of dawn and run five miles every morning?” Jameson asked with a nervous laugh.

  “To get where you want to be? Definitely not,” Brent chuckled. “Trust me. Just follow the low-carb diet and keep coming here to hang out with me.”

  “My fiancee’s gotten me pretty good at following instructions.” This time, Jameson’s joke was much more at ease.

  The two men talked for a few more minutes, then Jameson grabbed his water bottle and took his leave.

  Brent watched him go, confident that this particular client would put the effort into keeping up the diet and the exercise outside of their twice-weekly sessions. This was what Brent was good at—pushing people to do the best they could within their means and wants. He knew exactly how to toe that line between encouragement and pushing too hard, and one day he would put his people, nutrition, and fitness skills to work in his own training and dietary health facility.

  Something about the hour-long session made Brent shake his head though. As much as he believed that any reason was a good one to get out and get in shape—a woman, really? Brent had been there, done that. He’d gone through the whole several-year process of dating, falling in love and wanting to impress. Then the bitch had tossed him aside like a used tissue.

  Not even for another man, either. For a woman. A woman who also happened to be her best friend and whom Brent had even got along with quite well.

  Another person was always a bad motivator. Imagine if Caroline had been Brent’s motivator to work out—wait, in a way, she had. When Brent found out that Caroline was sleeping with her best friend, he cut all ties and poured his heart into working out and learning everything he could about fitness.

  People aren’t bad motivators, he amended. But the reason I stay fit needs to be me. I can’t live my life wanting to impress people who can’t be trusted.

  Jameson would figure that out for himself one day. That didn’t change Brent’s job, though. He needed all the experience he could get, if he wanted to open his own business someday.

  Music chimed from somewhere, soft at first but growing louder and harsher with every passing second. Brent jogged to the cubbies where he had set his gym bag and searched through it until he found his phone. The name on the screen had him grinning before he even answered.

  “Hey, man,” he greeted his best friend Gideon Cramer.

  “Hey, Brent. What are you up to this weekend?”

  “The whole weekend?” Brent took Gideon’s silence as confirmation. “Working out.”

  “But no clients?”

  “No.” What was Gideon getting at?

  “How do you feel about a weekend Vegas trip? If you think your calorie-count can handle a few beers.”

  “Oh, I can still handle beer.” Come to think of it, when had Brent last let himself loose to just have fun? Probably last time Gideon had coaxed him on a trip. Brent had a bike of his own, but it hadn’t left his garage in—hell, ages. Work kept him too busy to ride often enough for him to feel justified in joining the Road Warriors, despite knowing multiple members of the biker group.

  Speaking of bikers... “Is this a Road Warriors thing?” Brent asked, giving his backward-turned baseball cap a tug and cradling the phon
e between his ear and shoulder.

  “Yeah?” Now it was Gideon’s turn to sound questioning.

  “So... Natalie’s going?”

  “You two seriously need to get over yourselves. Yes, Natalie’s going.”

  “Ugh. I have to deal with your baby sister for a whole weekend?” Brent punctuated his words with a deep sigh.

  “Call her my baby sister to her face and see what happens. It’s going to be fun listening to you two bicker all weekend.”

  “I have no intention of hanging around her all weekend. I plan to bug her until she leaves me alone and I can go find some girls who are actually fun to be around—hopefully, drunk hot ones with low standards.” Brent knew Gideon couldn’t see him, but he winked anyway.

  “Sounds good minus the low standards part. What’s the point in being a tall, handsome fitness junkie if you can’t get the hard-to-gets?”

  “I mean, if I was looking for a relationship, yeah. But it’s a hookup. Who gives a shit?”

  “True. But hookups are all you do in Thousand Oaks too.”

  Suddenly in a hurry to get out of the gym, Brent tossed his water bottle in his bag and shouldered it. Sara at the front desk waved at him, but he didn’t feel cheerful enough to give her one in return. “Hookups are one and done. It doesn’t matter what the girl wants if I’m never going to see her again, and believe me, they all want something.”

  “Should people go into a relationship not wanting anything?” Gideon pointed out.

  “Probably, unless they want to get disappointed. I’m just saying that hookups are drama-free and that’s what I’m sticking with. Focusing on my career is more important than adding to my list of exes.” Actually, that list was pretty short. He and Caroline spent years together before he discovered all the lies and the cheating. If he couldn’t trust someone he spent years thinking he knew better than anyone else, he couldn’t trust some woman he picked up at a bar. He couldn’t trust any woman.

  “I guess,” Gideon agreed, understanding as Brent had expected. Gideon had started his own video game business in Los Angeles when he was just eighteen, and Brent had watched his best friend struggle through the ups and downs of running a business. Recently, Gideon had worked with a team of trusted developers and friends to create an online game that had since become a sensation worldwide. He knew the importance of working toward a future and pushing distractions away.

  “So are you coming or not?” Gideon asked, bringing the conversation back to the reason he called.

  “Sure, sounds like fun,” Brent sighed. It would be more fun just the two of them, but Brent wasn’t going to turn down this opportunity. If he did, word would reach Natalie and she would laugh at him and joke about him being scared of her next time he saw her next door.

  “Great. Restaurants, bars, clubs and hookups only, okay? I promise I won’t make you go anywhere near a relationship. No flower shops or wedding chapels.”

  Brent chuckled. “You’d better be a good wingman.”

  “Right back at you. See you tomorrow.”

  Chapter Three: Natalie

  A piece of balled-up paper hit Natalie’s arm. She glanced down at it where it lay on the polished floors of the big Vegas hotel, recognized it as part of a tissue and immediately wrinkled her nose. “Gross, Brent.”

  “Better pick that up,” he observed, feigning innocence.

  “Pick it up yourself.” Expertly, she aimed a kick with her Chuck Taylors and launched the ball right into his shin.

  “That wasn’t very nice.”

  “It’s not very nice to throw tissues at people.”

  “I didn’t use it.”

  “Maybe you should have, Snot-Nose,” she fired back.

  “Snot-Nose, really?” Brent’s amusement set Natalie’s teeth on edge. “How old are you?”

  “Old enough to see the family with children right behind you.” She straightened her cut-off jean shorts as one of those children ran into the back of Brent’s knees. “You deserved that.”

  “I can’t believe you two made it all the way here without knocking each other off your bikes,” Gideon commented with a shake of his head.

  Natalie wasn’t. Brent’s sarcastic, teasing attitude infuriated her sometimes, but she would never do something dangerous on her beloved Valkyrie. That would be a new level of irresponsibility that she knew she and Brent would never reach no matter how much they picked on each other.

  “I can’t believe we made it here without Natalie falling off her bike. She’s kind of like one of those shaggy dogs that can’t see through all their hair.”

  Never mind. Natalie was going to push Brent off his bike the next chance she got. “At least I’m not one of those idiots who don’t wear helmets because they can’t stand not to wear backwards caps.”

  “That was one time,” Brent insisted. “And there was no one on the road, and I rode like one mile.”

  “And you could have had a mile-deep crack in your head if you laid down your bike.”

  “You guys,” Gideon sighed. “Let’s do something. Why don’t we play the slots while we wait?”

  Natalie, Gideon and Brent had ended up ahead of the Road Warriors, most of whom had opted to stop along the way at Road Rage, a famous biker’s bar and restaurant. All three of them had agreed that they would prefer to keep riding and save the drinking for later.

  Well, later was now and Natalie didn’t care to sit around the hotel while the boys played the slots. “Let’s go out and do Vegas stuff, not throw away our money. We don’t need to wait for the Warriors. We’ll catch them later.”

  Gideon shrugged. “I’m down. At least you two won’t go stir-crazy.” He started to walk toward the lobby doors, but he looked back to see Natalie standing with her feet planted, her arms crossed and her anger palpable. “What?”

  “You.” She pointed at Brent. “Pick that up.” She pointed at the ball of tissue.

  “Oh my God.” Brent stopped, grabbed the paper and tossed it with unnecessary force into the trash. “Happy?”

  “Yup.”

  Both were thoroughly annoyed with each other—and not in a good way—so they allowed Gideon to walk between them with unspoken agreement. Natalie gave a quiet sigh that had Gideon giving her a sideways glance, but Brent didn’t hear. This was going to be a long weekend, but she intended to have fun anyway.

  The fun started with a search for somewhere to grab a bite to eat that led them to a street with tons of different shops and vendors. Natalie could look around and find anything imaginable on a cart or in a window, and she found herself skipping along like a kid in a candy shop, eyeing things she could add to her collection of clothing or accessories. At the same time, she didn’t want to buy too many things—giving into impulse-buying meant more money spent and more things to carry around until she ended up back at the hotel.

  With that in mind, she limited her purchasing to a new pair of stud earrings that she could slip neatly into the tiny often-useless mini-pocket nestled in the front-right pocket of her shorts.

  “What, nothing for me?” Brent feigned hurt.

  “Yeah, sure, let me just get you a pair of cute shiny studs.” Natalie couldn’t stop her eyes from rolling. “They’ll go great with your hat.”

  “Maybe you need a cap.” Brent stepped back to size her up. “Yep. How much are these caps?” Brent asked a vendor lounging behind several rows of baseball caps with various Vegas-themed sayings and pictures.

  “Fifteen dollars apiece. Twenty-five for two.”

  “Perfect, I’ll take two.” As Natalie watched in open-mouthed silence, Brent swept up two caps and dropped a couple bills on the vendor’s table. “You want the Vegas skyline or ‘The Marriage Capital of the World’?”

  “T-the... marriage?” Natalie spluttered.

  “Perfect,” Brent said briskly, taking the hat by the brim and pulling it down over Natalie’s eyes. “See? It suits you. The cap and the words.”

  Brent took off as Natalie sprinted at him with the
hat raised high for smacking. Their wild chase ended with both of them laughing and making ridiculous play-slapping motions with their hands.

  “Okay, quit it. Thanks for the hat. I guess.” Natalie could see her reflection in a shop window, and honestly, she didn’t hate the look. She wouldn’t be wearing the cap backward and she wished it didn’t have the word ‘marriage’ on it in big white letters, but whatever.

  “I need a drink,” Gideon said, finally catching up to them and walking straight past them toward a drugstore with a large sign reading ‘$4 Beers’ in the window.

  Natalie and Brent were in full agreement and the three of them walked out of the drugstore carrying one twenty-four ounce can apiece. As long as they didn’t leave the Strip, they could openly carry the cans around and take in the sights.

  They started to walk past an enormous fountain, but Brent stopped. “Hold my beer?” he asked, pressing his can into Natalie’s hand.

  She had already grabbed it by reflex, and she felt her eyes rolling to the skies again as Brent jogged toward the stone wall surrounding the fountain. Her judgemental glare died as the late-afternoon sun caught the tanned bulges of his muscles when he placed his hands-on top of the wall and hopped up with the ease and lithe grace of someone who knew his body well.

  “Take a picture?” he asked Gideon, striking an unconcerned pose with one hand in the pocket of his shorts.

  Natalie hardly noticed when Gideon pressed his beer into her arms so he could get out his phone. Was Brent flexing or was he that ripped? Suddenly, in the rays of the setting sun, she could see all sorts of little details about Brent she had never noticed before. Tanned, even skin, a strong jawline, thick and expressive eyebrows, a jaunty, carefree attitude, and eyes as blue as the spring sky?

  Damn. Natalie didn’t remember her older brother’s obnoxious best friend being this deliciously hot. When had she last looked at Brent as more than an obnoxious fly that wouldn’t buzz off? This beer must have hit her hard—or not hard enough.