by Reid, Ruby
The tall man he had seen in the bar with the woman looked up at him from the passenger seat, his right hand still clamped over the woman’s mouth. His left hand was resting almost casually on her breast. If Alex thought he might have made some mistake and interrupted a very strange masochistic foreplay, the horror in the woman’s eyes told him otherwise.
“Who the hell are you?” the man asked.
The guilt in his voice was as clear as a bell, and that was all Alex needed. He reached into the car, grabbed the man by his left shoulder, and dragged him out. He threw the tall man to the ground hard and looked into the car to the woman.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Y-yes,” she said, beginning to cry. She was slapping at the door handle, but her nerves were too frazzled to open the door.
“Do you know him? Did you want him doing that to you?”
She couldn’t even speak; she continued crying and simply shook her head. Her right hand still fumbled for the door handle.
Alex heard the man getting to his feet and rushing at him from behind. He wheeled around and saw that the man was in the midst of delivering a kick that had been meant for his legs. Alex sidestepped it as if it were nothing, almost like a matador dodging a bull. He then turned quickly and caught the man as he missed, placing his hands on the man’s shoulders and pushing him hard into the car. The man cried out and stumbled back a step on the rebound. Alex met him with a hard right handed blow to his kidneys.
The man dropped to one knee and let out a groan. Alex could have let it go then, but there were few things he hated to see more than a man being rough with a woman. He looked to the woman, now getting out of the car and facing away from them for the moment. Alex took that split second to deliver a hammering right hook to the man’s face.
That was all it took. Alex saw the exact moment when the man’s lights went out. He collapsed over onto his side, his head striking the pavement. It was perhaps the easiest bar-related fight Alex had ever been involved in. Of course, this tall drink of water pales in comparison to some of the unsavory characters he had taken down before.
Alex walked to the other side of the car and saw that the woman was stumbling as she tried to walk away, having finally managed to get the door open. She was still crying and she was walking as if she were drunk. But Alex recalled the punching sounds he had heard as he had come away from the dumpsters. She’d been punched at least twice in the stomach by a man that was easily twice her size. That’s why she was stumbling.
“Are you okay?” he asked her.
He kept his distance, standing three feet away from her. A stranger had just tried to rape her or kidnap her and he was sure she wasn’t in the mood to trust another stranger. It was odd to him how quickly this sort of caution popped up into his head. He was not accustomed to understanding the fragility of people in such a way.
She only nodded but finally looked at him. Alex could see no signs that the man had punched her in the face. The way she was partially doubled over, Alex assumed the punches had been to her stomach.
“Do you need a doctor?” Alex asked.
She seemed to think about this for a moment and then shook her head again. She was trying not to cry and was doing a decent job. But Alex could see the shudders tearing through her.
“Is there anything I can do?” he asked. “Do you need to call someone? Do you have a ride?”
“My car,” she said, nodding towards the other end of the lot. “I’m okay. I can drive. I can…,” and then she started crying. More than that, she was weeping with full force.
It was the most awkward ten seconds Alex could remember experiencing in his adult life. He was attracted to her—he had known that from the moment he had first seen her inside—and he wanted to do something to help. But what could he do other than offer assistance and ask her simple questions?
“Do you have a cell phone on you?” he asked.
“Yes. In my purse. In his car.”
“Wait here,” he said.
He walked back to the car and found her purse on the floorboard of the passenger seat. He grabbed it and took it to her. She took it slowly, looking from it and then to him as if they were both to oddest things she’d ever seen. Alex thought she might be very close to being in shock.
“Do you want to call the cops?” he asked.
She again slipped into a fugue-sort of concentration but then shook her again. “No. It was just a mistake on my part. I don’t…”
She almost started crying again but was able to stop it this time. She looked to him and gave a thin smile. It was clear that she was thankful but there was still fear in her eyes. Alex understood completely.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Of course.”
“I saw you inside,” she said, as if it were a casual conversation. Alex didn’t hear any accusation in her statement. If she had caught him checking her out, she was choosing not to say anything.
“Yeah. I saw you, too,” he said. He suddenly felt very out of place. He was usually in control of any conversation with a woman. But he was at a loss here and had no idea how to get to the next stage. If there was a next stage. She had just been assaulted, so there was no way in hell she’d take kindly to a stranger trying to hit on her.
Well then don’t hit on her, some smaller voice inside of him said.
“I’m Amanda,” she said. She looked like she wanted to extend her hand for a shake but kept it by her side.
“I’m Alex. It’s nice to meet you, but I wish it were under different circumstances.”
She rolled her eyes and gave him that thin grin of hers again. Seeing this, Alex thought she was going to be okay.
“How is he?” she asked, nodding to the car she’d just come out of.
“He’ll be out for a while. Did you know him well?”
“No,” she said. “God…it sounds awful. I just met him tonight. He seemed like a good enough guy and—well, he turned out not to be.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“A little. He hit me in the stomach twice. He nearly missed one time, though.”
“Do you…” he stopped, embarrassed at how uncomfortable this was making him.
“Do I what?” she asked. She seemed interested and was very aware of his discomfort. Somehow, she was now taking the role of the one being cautious.
“Do you need to talk about it or something?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so. This just sucks. I think I just need to get home and take a bath. I need to forget this ever happened.”
“Yeah, that might be for the best,” Alex said.
The parking lot seemed quiet as she gave him another smile. She then cocked her head, as if sizing him up, and stepped forward. She wrapped her arms carefully around him and gave him a hug.
“Thank you,” she said. “I have no idea what he would have done to me if you hadn’t shown up.”
“Sure thing,” he said, suddenly glad the restroom had been locked.
She broke the hug and looked up to him earnestly. Her eyes were brimming with the tears she had been trying to hold back over the last few moments.
“I feel like I need to ask if you need anything,” she said. “It might sound dramatic, but you might have very well saved my life. I have no idea what that asshole was capable of.”
“A cup of coffee, maybe?” he asked. And as soon as it left his mouth, he snapped it shut. Where the hell did that come from? I don’t even like coffee all that much.
She looked at him, perplexed. But her gaze wasn’t one of annoyance or fear; instead, it seemed like bewilderment. She looked him over and he knew she was analyzing him based on the motorcycle jacket he was wearing and likely his windblown hair.
“Where?” she asked.
The look on her face made Alex think she was just as surprised at her answer as he had been by the question he had asked. The entire scene continued to get weirder and weirder.
“Wherever’s close,” Alex sai
d. “I’m pretty sure you don’t want to go back in there, right?” he asked, hitching a thumb to the restaurant.
As if on cue, the front door opened and Slim stepped out. He looked up and down the parking lot, stopping when his eyes landed on Alex and Amanda.
“I thought you got lost,” Slim said. He didn’t come forward though. He simply called across the lot, not wanting to interfere in whatever situation Alex had found himself in. “You done for the night?”
Alex shrugged. And before he could answer, Amanda answered for him. When she did, it was with a confidence and humor he had not expected from her. It was the sort of thing that made him suddenly realize if he spent any amount of time with this woman, he might get himself into some trouble…the sort of trouble that those really bad chick flicks were made of.
“In there, he is,” she said. “He was just on his way to grab a cup of coffee, though.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Everything after that happened quickly and in a way that hot summer days on vacation tend to pass by. It happened fast but in a blur of dizzy happiness that made you already anxious for next summer.
Amanda had no idea what the hell she had been thinking agreeing to have coffee with this man. She was ten minutes removed from being on the brink of being raped or murdered by a strange man she had just met and now she was driving to a coffee shop down the road with yet another strange man in her passenger seat. Granted, this man had saved her from one hell of an ordeal, but still…
The first thing that had happened after they had gotten into her car was that she had changed her mind about the cops. She had called the police and given them her story. She simply gave them the make, model, and license plate number of the car. She also gave them Mark’s name and where he would be, probably still knocked out. She hung up not knowing if the police would actually do anything since she had said she wouldn’t be pressing charges, but it felt good to feel like she was taking some sort of action.
With all of that done, there was, of course, the strange man in her passenger seat. Had she not been nearly traumatized from her experience with Mark, she would have been painfully attracted to him. But in her current state, attraction simply wasn’t something in the cards for her.
But maybe…maybe there was something. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye as she neared the coffee shop at the end of the block. He had gotten a phone call just as she had been wrapping up her call with the police. He was speaking into it right now, his face not showing any real expression.
She hated that she felt there was something about him. Hell, maybe any woman would be interested in a man that saved her from a maniac. But she thought it was more than that. She had no idea what it was about Alex, but she was suddenly very sure she wanted to find out.
***
Alex couldn’t help but smile as he ended the call and slid the phone back into his coat pocket. Slim had been on the other end and while he already had the wrong idea about this situation and was giving him hell, his attitude reminded Alex why the two of them were such good friends.
“Was that your friend?” Amanda asked him from behind the wheel.
“Yeah.”
“Is he mad that you ditched him?”
“Not at all. He just wanted to make sure I’d pay him for my part of the tab.”
“You’re both bikers?”
“Yeah.”
Amanda had figured this out when they had decided to leave for coffee. When she had seen that his ride was a motorcycle, she had gladly volunteered to drive.
“Are you locals?” she asked.
“No. We’re on our way through to Chicago.”
“Oh,” she said.
And that had been their first conversation. The weight of it clung to them as she found the coffee shop, pulled into the lot and got out. It was heavier still, punctuated by their silence, when they ordered their coffee and took a seat in the otherwise dead little coffee shop.
“So for real,” Alex asked. “Are you okay?”
“I think so. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s…well…it’s been a while since I put myself on the scene, you know? It’s a long depressing story, but I just wanted to meet someone. Not to sound easy or anything…I just wanted a man to talk to. Someone to spend time with. Does that make sense?”
Alex nodded, although it didn’t make much sense to him. Outside of sex and the comfort of knowing there might be someone to come home to, if only for a few weeks, was the only thing he had known of a relationship since the age of seventeen or so.
“Sounds like you’re coming off of a bad break up or something,” he said.
She hesitated here, running her finger along the edge of her coffee cup. “Something like that,” she said. And although it was a simple statement, Alex could tell that it was not only a lie, but there was an immeasurable amount of pain behind it.
“So what’s your story?” Amanda asked. “Why Chicago?”
“Oh,” he said, not sure if he wanted to get into that. He felt certain Amanda was the sort of woman that might not appreciate the fact that he was in a motorcycle club. What bothered him more than that, though, was that he was actually worried what she might think. That was something he usually didn’t care much about one way or the other…not even when it came to a pretty woman.
Why is she different? He wondered.
He realized he had been quiet for a good fifteen seconds. She was looking at him strangely, surely sizing him up.
“It’s sort of like a work opportunity,” he said.
“That feels pretty thin,” she said.
“It is.”
“Is it something you don’t really want to talk about?” she asked.
“Bingo.”
“I understand that,” she said. “But I’ll make a deal with you.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll tell you something that I never want to talk about if you’ll tell me what’s really going on in Chicago.”
Alex felt himself wanting to get instantly defensive, but he reined it in. What was the harm in telling her the bare bones of what was going on? After they finished their coffee, he’d be on his way to the hotel and then, tomorrow, to Chicago. He’d never see Amanda or this small town again.
“I’m in a mototcycle club,” he said.
“Like a gang?” she asked, with just a bit of humor.
“No,” he said, again having to ward off the defensiveness. “Like a club. We have business interests that will serve us better in Chicago. Plus, there are a lot of policemen from where we’re originally from that would cause us a lot of trouble if we stuck around.”
Amanda looked a bit hesitant, but not scared. This struck Alex as monumental because she could have very well scooted her chair back and ran for the door. But there was actual interest in her face and the hint of a smile.
“Business?” she asked. “Like illegal stuff?”
“I won’t lie…some of it is, yes. But the majority of it isn’t. Bike clubs aren’t all like what you see on TV. I mean…there’s some of that, yeah. But for the most part, we’re harmless.”
“The way you beat up Mark makes me think you’re used to fighting, though.”
“Was that his name?”
“Yeah.”
Alex shrugged. “I suppose I am used to fighting. But that came long before I joined the club.”
“And the entire club is just going to move to Chicago, just like that?”
“Not the whole club. Just a few of us. I think we’re leaving behind about a dozen of our twenty-two members. No hard feelings or anything. They have families and good jobs. But guys like me…no roots, no commitments. So it sort of works.”
“Oh.”
She seemed to think about it all for a moment, marveling at the sort of lifestyle he lived. If she was in any way disgusted or offended by it, she made no clear sign. In fact, she smiled at him and looked shyly to the table.
“Okay,” Alex said. “Your turn.”
“So, to
night was the first time I ever met Mark,” she said quickly, as if she might change her mind about telling him anything if she didn’t get it out right away. “I haven’t had a date in two years and I decided I was going to make myself meet someone. So I sat there for about an hour or so and Mark just happened to be the first man that approached me.”
“I find that very hard to believe,” Alex said. He meant it, and she could tell. The slight rosy color that rose into her cheeks was evidence of that. “Not just that he was the first one to come by,” Alex added, “but that you hadn’t had a date in two years.”
