Heavy Hogs MC

by Elias Taylor

  “No.” Conviction rang in her voice.

  Brent sighed inwardly. Normally he would tell Natalie to sit down in the lobby and wait or get the hell out of his gym for fifteen minutes, but she looked crazy enough to jump on him like a wildcat if he refused.

  “Give me five minutes?” he asked Grace. “We’ll go for a few minutes past the hour to make up for it.”

  “Sure, no problem.” Grace’s knowing half-smile followed Brent through the door to the employees-only back room.

  “Great, now she thinks you’re my crazy ex.” Brent’s sigh was fully audible this time.

  “She’s not wrong. Or she won’t be wrong soon.” Natalie held up the piece of paper.

  Brent was still annoyed, but he couldn’t help but laugh. “This is what you’re all worked up about?”

  “It’s the certificate.” She shoved the paper against his chest.

  Brent’s laughter faded into confusion. “The what now?”

  “The certificate. That ceremony in Vegas wasn’t just a spirit-bonding thing. It was a marriage ceremony. We’re married. We. Are. Married.”

  Brent had looked up from the document in his hand to look at Natalie, and now he felt like he was stuck with his head cocked in this questioning-dog pose. Part of him wanted to look down and read the certificate. Part of him wanted it to vanish from his hands.

  No part of him moved. He just stood there, staring like he’d never seen anything quite like Natalie before.

  “Hello?” She actually reached out and knocked on the top of his baseball cap. “Anyone home? Are you hearing this insanity?”

  “You look nice today.”

  “I—”

  Brent had never really known what ‘flabbergasted’ meant until he looked at Natalie’s face after that comment. He took Natalie so utterly and completely by surprise that she spent over a minute rapidly changing colors and facial expressions.

  “I look nice today? I literally just jumped on my bike with basically nothing so I could tell your dumb ass what happened and we could figure out what to do!” Her eyes narrowed dangerously when Brent’s lip twitched. “I swear to God, if you laugh at me again—”

  To appease her, Brent finally gave the paper in his hand a proper look. His eyes skimmed over it, but Natalie was still talking and he couldn’t listen to her and understand what he was reading.

  “We need to go to Vegas, like right now. We have to file for divorce—wait, no, an annulment! We should be able to get an annulment, right?”

  Natalie blabbed on and on about the requirements for annulments. Brent caught about half of what she was saying, still trying to read the certificate while listening to her with half an ear.

  In one quick rush, everything hit Brent like a semi-truck. Everything. Everything Natalie had been saying that went in one ear and out the other, everything he hadn’t wanted to believe and everything he had laughed at moments ago struck him with the crazy, unbelievable and insane fact that he was actually married to Natalie.

  Married. Brent was married. All that talk about wanting to spend all his time building his body and his future side by side and staying single to protect himself, and now he was married. Married to—

  “I’m married to you.”

  Natalie stopped mid-rant. “Yes! That’s what I’ve been—”

  “No, I’m married... to you. Of all people.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Okay, that’s just rude. Who would you rather have accidentally married?”

  “Gideon.”

  “I hate you. We have to go to Vegas.”

  “I know.” Brent removed his ball cap long enough to give his head a good hard scratch right where Natalie had knocked on it earlier. “I’ll finish with this client, cancel with the next one and pack a bag, then we can go.”

  “Just come to my house and get me when you’re ready. I’ll be packed—damnit,” she groaned, cutting herself off. “We can’t go today, it’s Saturday. We’ll have to wait until I get off work on Monday.”

  “Until you get off? What about when I get off?”

  “You can cancel on people. I can’t. It’s called common sense.”

  “I wish you’d had some of that when you accidentally married me.”

  “Are you kidding me? This is a two-way street, buddy! You obviously didn’t read what you were signing either.”

  Brent felt himself relaxing slowly with each insult they fired back and forth. He still couldn’t believe he had gone to Vegas and gotten married, but did it matter? They would get an annulment and that would be that. Natalie was taking this way too seriously.

  “Yeah, it was stupid, but as far as mistakes go it really isn’t that bad. That—” Brent pointed at the marriage certificate. “—is just a piece of paper. I just wish we had gotten married in time to do our taxes.”

  Natalie’s mouth fell open. “You’re impossible!”

  Brent stumbled back as she gave him a hard shove in the chest, laughing harder than ever.

  “I’m getting out of here,” she said abruptly. “I’ll call you when I get off work on Monday.”

  “Bye, sweetie!” Brent called, waving after Natalie’s stiff, angry form as she banged through the back room’s door and marched toward the front of the gym.

  The sign on the door with the gym’s hours fell to the ground and shattered when she slammed the door. The sound shocked both of them and Natalie hesitated on the sidewalk, but then she caught a glimpse of Brent’s laughing face and stalked to her bike, flipping him a bird as she zoomed off.

  Brent shut the back room door behind him and went to do damage control on the gym’s sign. It could be worse. The glass encasing the gym’s hours was broken, but the paper itself was laminated and he could just hang it back up for now.

  For now... Why did it feel like there was something else Brent was supposed to be doing right now?

  Brent’s stomach dropped when he realized what he was forgetting. He left the glass half-swept and went back inside to find the client he had completely abandoned.

  “I’m really, really sorry,” Brent apologized to Grace, who was already packing up her gym bag.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she told him. “I just spent the last fifteen minutes running on the treadmill. Was that your girlfriend?”

  “Soon-to-be psycho ex-wife,” Brent corrected her, grinning inwardly at the face Natalie would make at him if she could hear him calling her that. He said a few more parting words to Grace and held the door open for her as she left, telling her to watch out for the glass.

  Determined to finish sweeping up the glass before his next client pulled in, Brent went at it with a broom and dustpan. He was going to have some explaining to do about the broken sign, but that didn’t stop him from chuckling quietly to himself.

  He and Natalie would get this marriage thing sorted out soon, and until then, well—Brent would just use it to mess with her in every possible way.

  Chapter Nine: Natalie

  Being a mechanic was pretty exhausting. It wasn’t always evident what was wrong with a car, and sometimes replacing a part didn’t fix the car and then another part had to be ordered. Sometimes a particular fix was just a really big job, requiring a total dismantling of everything under the hood to do what needed to be done. Other times, customers would even lie about their car’s problem or they wouldn’t know how to describe it in a way that made sense.

  Today, for example. A customer came in an hour ago with the complaint that her car was ‘whistling’.

  Natalie had to stop, wipe her hands on her faded, stained jeans and stare at the woman. “Like a sound a teapot would make?”

  “No...” Several long, wasted seconds passed while the woman thought about the sound. “Well, sort of. I don’t know.”

  Natalie had to take a deep breath to hold onto what remained of her patience. “That’s fine. Have you noticed the sound at any particular time, like when you start up the car?”

  “Uh... I wasn’t really paying attention.�
�

  How can you hear a sound and be worried enough to take your car to a mechanic but not remember when the sound happened? Natalie really didn’t need this right now. She was still reeling over her accidental marriage to Brent. Powering through this Monday of work had been hard enough without having to ask every question imaginable to drag answers out of this woman.

  “That’s fine,” Natalie said again, aware that it sounded less truthful with every iteration. “If you want to leave it here, I can try to figure out what’s wrong with your car.”

  “You can’t tell me now?”

  Oh my God. “No.” Natalie couldn’t manage anything more polite.

  “Okay, I guess.” The woman entered her information into the tablet Natalie brought out of the garage, thanked her and left, presumably to catch a rideshare.

  Natalie groaned as soon as she was out of earshot. If the woman had shown up a couple hours earlier, Natalie would have been way more patient with her. If she’d shown up an hour later, after Natalie had left for the day, Natalie wouldn’t have had to deal with her ignorance at all.

  As it was, Natalie had about another hour on the clock and she couldn’t escape at least attempting to find a mechanical diagnosis for the car’s supposed whistling.

  Matt gave her a sympathetic look. All he had left to do was clean up his section of the garage.

  “Whistling?” Natalie asked.

  “What kind of whistling?”

  “She didn’t know.”

  “Whistling when?”

  “She didn’t know.”

  Matt snorted. “Good luck.”

  It was a long shot anyway. Natalie jumped in the car and started it up. Immediately, a horrendous squealing filled the shop. How is that a whistle?

  She shrugged it off and focused on her job. She needed to get done and get out of here so she could go to Vegas with Brent and sort out this marriage stuff.

  Natalie was last out of the shop, but only by a few minutes. She closed the last garage door behind her and made a beeline for her car, breathing a sigh of relief.

  Whenever Natalie had talked to Brent over the last day and a half about the situation they had gotten themselves into, he had played it down or made jokes about it. She knew he just wanted to piss her off, but she was already stressed about the whole thing, so his teasing meant she hadn’t been able to enjoy her days off.

  But that was okay, because Natalie could go to her best friend for comfort and advice, right?

  Wrong. Natalie hadn’t found an iota of sympathy from Jasmine when she drove back home from her confrontation with Brent at the gym, only more laughter. Jasmine even had the gall to tell Natalie to chill out and not be so uptight.

  Natalie couldn’t just ‘chill out’. The last thing she wanted was a relationship, and here she was, bound into one contractually with Brent. Granted, it wasn’t real in either of their minds, but Natalie couldn’t help but feel uneasy. She had spent so long actively avoiding relationships, knowing that it was pointless sinking precious time and effort into something that was doomed to fail anyway.

  Someone’s having a real good laugh right now, she thought, glaring up through her car’s windshield at the stormy sky. Of course it would also rain so I can’t ride to Vegas.

  Natalie dug her fingers into the steering wheel. Chance, the elements, and Brent were banding together to make Natalie’s life as difficult as possible, but she wouldn’t let them win. Brent would not get to her on this trip.

  Half an hour later, Natalie dropped her phone on the kitchen counter, seething. If Natalie couldn’t ride, she wanted to drive her car at least, but Brent insisted that they take his. After nearly twenty minutes of texting back and forth and making absolutely no headway on packing, Natalie finally agreed—if texting ‘FINE’ in all caps and adding a middle-finger emoji after that could be considered agreeing.

  Playing some music while she tossed clothes, makeup and toiletries into a bag to take to Vegas helped calm her down. By the time she put on the clothes she wanted to wear for the drive and got her makeup sorted out, she had managed to put things into perspective.

  Last time she went to Vegas, something crazy had happened, yes, but she had a lot of fun. Since she and Brent had decided to stay the night in the city, she might as well gear up for some more fun. If she didn’t relax, roll with Brent’s verbal punches and enjoy his company, he would drive her nuts and make this trip totally miserable.

  Three strong, confident knocks rang from the living room door. Natalie opened it and was forced to step back when Brent barged in without waiting for an invitation. She wanted to argue with this rude invasion of privacy, but she couldn’t seem to do anything besides silently admire how incredibly attractive and sharp Brent looked in a suit—particularly this one. Its deep blue color matched his eyes.

  “Cute,” he commented, half-sitting on the back of the couch while adjusting his sleek, fitted blazer and giving her neat and cozy home a once-over. “I guess you’ll be selling it now that we’re married and you can move in with me.”

  Natalie found her voice. “I’ll be selling it right after you give me your bank account information and all your passwords.”

  Brent blinked in surprise, and Natalie congratulated herself. Clearly, he had been expecting her to be flustered and irritated—an easy target for needling.

  One point to Natalie Cramer. “Let me grab my bag and I’ll be ready to go.” She grabbed her phone, keys and wallet, shoving them into various pockets of one of her signature pairs of jean shorts.

  “Are you really going to wear shorts to go to court?” Brent asked from behind her.

  Natalie’s stomach gave a little jump when she realized that he had followed her to her room and had taken up residence in the doorway, lounging there like he owned the place.

  “What should I wear, a bridal gown? We should just be signing some paperwork.”

  “We’re filing for divorce, hons. It’s basically a court date.”

  “Unless we get an annulment,” Natalie muttered. “Fine,” she said louder. “I’ll change. Get out.”

  She closed the door on Brent’s laughing face and went to take stock of her closet. Natalie had a pant suit, a couple dresses, a pencil skirt and a few blouses, but she hadn’t worn any of them in years. Nice clothes tended to get ruined fast when she wore them.

  Her eyes roamed the rack of hangers. She would have to make an exception this once.

  In the very back of the closet, Natalie found a tight black dress with black lace sleeves, a small slit on the side of her left thigh and a neckline that didn’t dip far enough to be considered inappropriate.

  Good enough. She slipped the dress on and fitted her feet into a pair of three-inch platform heels, grabbing her Chuck Taylors and socks before she opened the door.

  “So?” she asked Brent, deciding not to comment when she caught him looking through her kitchen cabinets. “What do you think, hons?”

  “I think you should wear dresses more often. You look amazing.”

  “Uh... thanks.” Natalie hadn’t been expecting an actual compliment. She had to turn away to hide a slight blush while she slipped off her heels and stepped back into her Chuck Taylors for the drive to Vegas. Maybe she should have said something about his suit when he walked in.

  Too late for that now. “Ready to go?”

  “Yep.” Brent held the door open for her. “Where are we going?”

  She stared at him. “Oh yeah, I meant to forward you the text from Jasmine. She found a courthouse in Vegas with a judge that takes cases like ours during after-work hours.”

  “Thank God. Time to get rid of the old ball and chain.”

  “Oh no, I forgot the marriage certificate!”

  Brent slowed the car. “What? Do we need it?”

  “Hm, I don’t know.” Natalie shrugged as she pulled the certificate out of her bag. “Oh look, here it is!”

  “Jerk.”

  “You started it.”

  Just like last time N
atalie and Brent had ended up spending time alone together, she found it surprisingly easy to get along with him. In the past, it felt like all the two did was push each other’s buttons until someone exploded. At Vegas and in the car right now, the teasing was there, but the animosity wasn’t.

  Plus, Natalie was slowly realizing that she enjoyed conversations with Brent, not just his company. She knew that he wanted to open his own business someday. That was a goal she shared, and she surprised herself by talking about her professional plans for the future and listening to Brent’s with just as much interest.

  Generally, Natalie liked to keep her cards close to her chest. Putting herself and her plans out there for others to judge wasn’t easy for her. She knew who she was and what she wanted, and she thought that if Brent was quick to tease, he would be quick to judge.

  Discovering that she was wrong was a welcome surprise.

  The miles along the road to Vegas melted away with Brent driving and chatting to keep Natalie occupied. “Wow, it’s so pretty in the spring,” Natalie observed when they drove through a valley. “Even if it is raining.”

  “Aren’t you glad you let me drive so you can see the sights?”

  Natalie rolled her eyes but laughed at the same time. “I guess. I just like driving.”

  “You mean you like cars,” Brent corrected her.

  “Yeah.” Natalie pulled her gaze from the view to shoot him a smile.

  By the time they pulled into the courthouse parking lot in Las Vegas, the sun had dipped below the horizon. Four hours wasn’t that long of a drive, but she was still glad they decided to stay in Vegas overnight so they wouldn’t have to make it twice in one day. She had gotten a couple funny looks when she asked for Tuesday off at the mechanic shop, but Natalie didn’t bother explaining the situation. They knew she wouldn’t ask unless she needed the day.

  Natalie switched her Chuck Taylors for her heels and let Brent help her out of the car, keeping close to shelter under his umbrella. They headed inside the small courthouse and made a beeline for the reception table.