Caught (Grave Diggers MC Book 2)

by Michelle Woods

  He felt his veins go cold at the thought of her sitting beside the road in the heat waiting on him. Anyone could have come across her, and it sent chills down his spine as he went over the millions of bad things that could have happened to her as she waited for help. He read the next three texts realizing that the second one was a plea for him to at least answer her and the third was a text that her mother was coming to get her.

  Thank fuck.

  The last text had been sent an hour ago and it said that she’d made it home okay and would talk to him later. It was short and he could read between the lines that his ass was in trouble, fuck. He ran his hand through his hair, feeling like a damned asshole for letting Buck take his phone. He should have told the man to give it back, but fuck, Gunner was making himself crazy checking for a text from her and he’d thought she’d be fine. He would have never let Buck keep his phone if he’d known Margo might need him. He took off his cut, folding it and storing it in his saddle bags earning a raised brow from Buck.

  “Why are you stowing that?” He asked, his head tilting slightly.

  “Because my girlfriend doesn’t know I’m with the club and I don’t think the way to tell her is to show up at her place wearing it,” Gunner answered climbing on his bike.

  “You’ve been dating this chick for over four months and you haven’t told her yet that you’re with the club?” Buck asked, looking shocked.

  “Nope, she’s not ready.”

  “Seems to me that if she isn’t ready, you should cut your losses man. ‘cause you know this is a lifetime gig and you’re not getting out anytime soon unless it’s in a body bag. So, just break it down for her and see if she can handle it. If she can’t, then it’s better to know now, rather than later,” Buck advised as he watched him lift the stand on his bike as he grunted out a reply.

  “It’s not any of your business what I tell her and as long as I don’t talk about club business, you nor anyone else in this club gets a say,” Gunner retorted, starting his bike.

  “True, but I’m thinking you not telling her is a mistake you’re going to come to regret,” Buck yelled as Gunner flipped him off. He climbed on his bike readying himself to face the music because he was damned sure that his ass was in serious trouble, and telling Margo tonight that he was a biker in one of the biggest clubs in Arizona, was a bad idea.

  Margo heard the knock on her door and sighed. If she didn’t already know Gunner well enough to know that he wouldn’t go away, she would’ve ignore him. After three hours with her mother, she wasn’t in the mood for company. She wasn’t feeling very happy at the moment and after five hours and no response to any of her texts, she was honestly a little hurt. He hadn’t even bothered to text her back to say he was busy. She understood that she wasn’t married to him and had no real claim on his time, but she’d at least expected a little concern for her safety. She wasn’t asking for the world, just a message that he couldn’t come to get her, but hoped she stayed safe.

  For all she knew, to him, she was just convenient sex and he didn’t really care about her at all. Now that she thought about it, he hadn’t introduced her to any of his friends, nor had he spoken about introducing her to them. One of the first things she’d done was introduce him to Zoey. Maybe she was just a hook-up that worked for him because she didn’t make too many demands on his time. On top of the really crappy day she’d spent listening to her many flaws according to Helen Dexter, that was a depressing thought. Letting out a loud groan, she headed to the door to let Gunner in. He looked worried when she didn’t speak. She ignored the look and turned away, walking back into the kitchen to get her cup of noodles from the microwave. Margo was starving because all her mother had offered her was salad—which she hated and hadn’t eaten.

  “You okay, babe?” Gunner asked sounding concerned.

  Ha, now he was concerned, not when she was sitting on the side of the road by herself for two hours. Margo closed her eyes as she opened the lid on the soup feeling the heat of the steam as it burned her finger a little, making her hiss and put it in her mouth to soothe the slight pain.

  “Damn, I’ve told you not to open those for a minute because you’ll burn yourself,” Gunner growled, moving up behind her and grabbing her hand from her mouth looking at her red finger before dragging her over to the sink to run cold water over the burn. Margo allowed him to hold her hand under the flow of cold water because she was a little confused. He seemed to be so concerned that she’d burned her finger and yet he’d left her waiting for a response for half an hour before she’d finally given up and called her mother. Granted, he didn’t know she was waiting, but would it have killed him to at least send a response?

  “Now you care?” She snapped, unable to hold back the snarky comeback.

  “I always care, babe.” Gunner said, his voice hard as his eyes went glacial and his body stiffened.

  “I’m thinking maybe you should have cared when I was stranded on the side of the road for an hour, I needed some help. At the very least, would it have killed you to send me a message? I waited for almost an hour on you to at least text me. Do you even realize how dangerous that is for a woman these days? I mean, hell, we live in a state with two biker gangs. You hear about those Tricky Dicks guys doing all kinds of awful things to women,” Margo demanded. Her anger plus the time with her mother had her anger boiling over. Even as she realized she was taking it out on Gunner, but couldn’t seem to stop the flow of words from her mouth.

  “I’m well aware of what the Dicks can do to people, trust me on that one. I didn’t have my phone or I would have texted you back, Margo. And you better not ever wait that long on the side of the road alone again or I will paddle your ass,” Gunner gritted out from between clenched teeth.

  “That’s your response? No, I’m sorry to leave you stranded, or at the very least an explanation as to what you were so damned busy doing that you couldn’t be bothered with your phone?” Margo knew she was being a shrew, but after the day she’d had she wasn’t in the mood to talk rationally about this. She knew she shouldn’t have let him in, but she’d known he wouldn’t go away.

  “I can’t talk about what I was doing today, babe. You should know without me telling you, that I would have come to get you if I’d known you were in trouble. I would never purposely leave you stranded Margo.” Gunner stepped back, his glare hard as he stared down at her. His whole body was filled with a tension she couldn’t name. It wasn’t anger, so much as it was rage maybe. It scared her a bit to see his clenched fists.

  “I couldn’t tell that from today's behavior. Even if you didn’t get my first text, it’s been five hours. You don’t ever take that long to respond to my texts. Is it another woman? Is that what you were too busy doing? Is that what you’ve been disappearing to ‘take care of’, huh? What’s her name, Gunner?” Margo knew she’d just taken her anger a step too far by adding in her slight insecurities that were raised by her mother today while spending hours trapped with her. She closed her eyes, trying to stop the flow of words. Her mother always found a way into Margo’s head somehow, and now she was spewing it out like verbal diarrhea. She should have just gone to bed with her headphones in blaring music and let him bang on the door till he got bored.

  “Is that what you think is going on here?” Gunner demanded, looking grim as he took another step back, his anger burning her it was so potent. Margo twisted away turning off the water, her mind calming some and she realized that she wasn’t going to be rational tonight.

  “Look it’s not a discussion we should have right now, just leave. I’ve had a really crappy day and this conversation shouldn’t have happened.” Margo turned back to look at him leaning her back against the counter as most of the fight left in her escaped.

  “Answer the question… Is that what you think is happening? That I’m fucking around on you?” Gunner asked, sounding angrier than he had a moment ago.

  “I don’t know what to think, Gunner. You say you have to leave and then disappear for
days and give me no explanations. I can’t live like that anymore. If I need you to be there like I did today and you’re off doing something I have no knowledge of, how am I supposed to know you will be there for me?” Margo asked, realizing that what she’d just said was closer to what she felt than the idea of him screwing around on her.

  “You should know I’ll always be there if I can. That’s what you should know, Margo.”

  “Maybe that’s the issue, Gunner. I don’t know that you will be.” Margo ran a hand over her face feeling a heavy weight fall on her shoulders her mind finally reaching its breaking point. She just needed to be done with this conversation tonight. She didn’t want to break up with him, but she also didn’t want a man who couldn’t be there for her when she needed him.

  “You can’t mean that, Margo. Not after only one time of me not having my phone because a friend was holding it for me. I can’t talk about business with you, but I can promise you this, it won’t happen again.” Gunner took a step toward her, his hands reaching for her, but she took a step away from him.

  “I do mean it, Gunner. Either you tell me where you disappear to or this,” she wagged her finger between them, feeling weary all of a sudden. “is over between us. I can’t live this way, I won’t. I deserve better and we both know it.”

  “I—Fuck. This is just—damn. I can’t tell you what you want to know.”

  “Then you should leave. And don’t bother coming back until you can tell me, because I won’t change my mind.” Margo muttered. She felt like her heart was being ripped out as the words flowed from her lips, but she knew they needed to be said.

  “Right, so this is all the past few mother-fucking-months have meant to you then? Because throwing away our relationship over this bullshit is just stupid,” Gunner snarled, his face contorting into a dark scowl. He took a step forward making her retreat a little.

  “Then it’s stupid, I’m not willing to have a relationship with a man who can’t even tell me where he disappears to for days on end. I need honesty and if you can’t offer me that then this isn’t going to work.” Margo felt those words settle inside herself and she realized they were words she should have said sooner. She was worth more than lies and mysteries. He needed to ‘fess up or get out. She might have been blinded by their easy relationship and the awesome sex but she wouldn’t allow it to continue. It would hurt a lot less to end it now than in a few months when he still wouldn’t open up to her.

  “Alright then, have a nice life, babe,” Gunner said before walking away, making sure to slam the door hard enough to rattle the whole building. Dang, her neighbors were going to be pissed about that. Margo left her cup of soup on the counter as she headed into her bathroom, she wasn’t hungry anymore. She climbed in the shower and proceeded to cry her eyes out. Her head knew she’d made the right call, but her heart hated her for it.

  Chapter Eleven

  Gunner moved into the room looking around seeing twelve of his brothers in various positions around the room. Buck was leaning on the bar, his hand on the beer he was drinking. Walking over to stand beside Buck, he tapped the bar and held up two fingers to indicate he wanted two shots of whiskey. Copper nodded and walked over, pouring the shots. Gunner downed them both quickly, nodding when Copper offered a third.

  “Didn’t go well with the chick, huh,” Buck said, standing next to him.

  Gunner wasn’t in the mood to discuss Margo with Buck, even if it had been a week since he left her apartment after she accused him of cheating on her. Not that he’d made any promises not to cheat on her, but he hadn’t been interested in any other woman in the last four months since meeting her. Margo’s accusations had pissed him off enough that he’d almost walked out the moment she’d shrieked that at him. He was glad he had stayed, because despite what she’d said, she was really mad about not knowing where he was when she’d needed his help. She didn’t really think he was messing around on her. It fucked him up that he’d lost her because he couldn’t talk about what the club was doing. Talking club business with anyone who wasn’t involved was a good way to get stuffed into a body bag with rocks and kicked into a river.

  “Don’t want to talk about it,” Gunner grunted, hoping that Buck would let it go at that. He didn’t want to rehash his break-up with anyone, it was still too raw. He was going out of his mind not knowing if Margo was okay.

  “If she couldn’t handle you being in the club then she isn’t worth you brooding like this man.” Buck shook his head as he glanced at him.

  “Never told her about the club. She wanted to know where I was when I couldn’t come help her when she was stranded on the side of the road. When I couldn’t talk about it, she kicked me out after issuing an ultimatum I can’t fight. Tell her where I go—which we both know I can’t do—or we’re done. Now that you know the sad little story, you can leave me the fuck alone.” Gunner barked, slamming the beer Copper had just handed him down on the bar. His shoulders tensed as he looked around the room waiting on the rest of the group to get here so they could start this run.

  “Wait a minute, you never told her you’re with the club?” Buck asked, looking at him with a confused look and a raised brow.

  “Nope, she didn’t give me the chance. Like I said before, she wanted information I couldn’t give her.” Gunner took another long swig of his beer, feeling anger burn inside his guts over his inability to keep Margo happy. He’d been pissed about it all damned week. He was unable to move on which only ticked him off that much more. He’d never had an issue moving on before Margo. He realized yesterday that he’d actually been happy for the short time he was with her. That wasn’t an easy thing for him, he’d never been happy. He was the angry one—the one you didn’t fuck with, nor a cheerleader, not that any of the club members could claim to be a cheerleader. He couldn’t help the amusement he felt at the mental image of Joker in a short skirt and one of those little tops cheerleaders wore, making a grim smile appear on his lips, despite his mood.

  “You’re telling me that you didn’t tell her that you’re with the club and that’s why you can’t talk about where you’re at sometimes?” Buck asked again looking at him with that same confused look.

  “I already told you I didn’t. Why do you keep asking me that?” Gunner snapped, losing patience with this line of questioning. He’d just explained to the big bastard that he hadn’t told Margo about the club. Had Buck hit his head or did he just want to rub salt in Gunner’s wound?

  “I’m waiting for you to realize you’re an idiot,” Buck said, shaking his head as he turned to glance at the door that was opening to admit Topper and Dice.

  “Why am I an idiot, Asshole?” Gunner asked, still not getting it.

  Buck turned to him, his face contorted into its typical permanent scowl while lifting his beer casually to his lips, taking a long swig. He set his empty bottle on the bar taking a step toward the door before answering his question.

  “You’re an idiot because all you have to do is ride over to her place and tell her who you are, like you should have done before you crawled into her bed. You can’t tell her what you’re doing, but you can tell her who you’re with and that it’s not some side chick, as she most likely thinks. Then you can explain that anytime she needs someone to come get her off the side of the road, any man in this fucking club can be there to help her. You should have told her that from the beginning, or at the very least, the second you decided she was a keeper, asshole. Fuck man, use your damned head,” Buck said, making a circling motion to the club telling them to load up because everyone was finally here. Buck didn’t wait for the words to sink in. He just headed to the door behind half the club. Gunner stood beside the bar, a little shocked at the bomb Buck had just slammed down on his head when Buck stopped and added over his shoulder. “Oh yeah, and get your balls from under her bed while you’re there, because you’ve turned into a whiny bitch since she kicked your ass to the curb last week. Now you’re excused from this run, go handle your shit brother and I
’ll see you on the flip side.” With a little wave, he was out the door. Gunner felt like the idiot Buck had just called him, because the thought of telling her he was with the club and seeing if it made any difference hadn’t even occurred to him.

  Margo glanced at the clock when she heard a knock at her door, realizing she’d been painting for three hours and likely would have painted for another two if her food hadn’t arrived. She set down her brushes. Grabbing a rag, she attempted to wipe off some of the paint on her hands. For the past week, she’d been lost in her work, trying not to think about Gunner and their relationship. It didn’t help that his restaurant was still calling every two days to get her order. She’d tried to explain that she and Gunner weren’t seeing each other anymore and they should stop sending the meals over, but every day they brought them anyway. She’d eventually have to call him and tell him about it. She wasn’t ready to talk to him yet because she wasn’t sure she could, at least not without breaking down and crying.

  This week had been depressing as hell. She’d missed sleeping next to him. Margo hated when she’d wake up disoriented and reach over to find his side of the bed empty. She couldn’t believe that she’d become so attached to him in four months. She sighed, deciding as she threw the rag onto the table that her hands were as clean as they were getting without some soap and water being involved. She headed to the door, hearing her stomach growl at the thought of food. She flipped the two locks and opened the door. A shiver of longing ran through her when she realized it was Gunner standing on her Hello Kitty welcome mat, instead of one of his lackeys with her food. Her body flooded with sexual awareness before she kicked herself mentally. Silently she began lecturing her libido about respect and the need to preserve her dignity by not jumping the man the minute she saw him.

  He might not be here to work things out, maybe he just wanted the stuff he’d left at her apartment, or heck to let her know that she wasn’t getting her dinner tonight. Her stomach twisted in protest at that thought. He may even think that he could steamroll his way past this snag in their relationship without having to tell her where he disappeared to all the damned time. None of those things meant her tingling pussy was getting any relief, so she needed to smack that bitch back in line. She eyed the man in her doorway with suspicion, noting that he was wearing tight jeans and a thin blue t-shirt that pulled tightly across his chest. She felt her body clench as memories of him poured through her veins like liquid desire. Crap, she needed to get her runaway libido under control or she was going to be in deep trouble. Gunner was just too sexy for her piece of mind, and him standing here wasn’t helping her to stay strong and resist the temptation to take him back.