Sold to the Biker: A Dark MC Romance

by Bella Rose

  She left the cookbooks on the counter and headed toward the back door of the trailer. Pushing it open, she stepped out onto the equally rickety back porch. A gust of desert wind took the door and slammed it shut. She let it go. It didn’t matter anyway.

  Down the steps she went, heading for the dunes. There was a little trail. Had someone else come out here too? She saw a flat rock halfway up the hill. The sun was scorching hot on her back. Her T-shirt was doing nothing to protect her arms from the brutal desert sunshine. The wind blew her hair into a tangled mess about her face. She shoved it unceremoniously behind her ears. She had forgotten her tiny stash of ponytail holders back in the Airstream.

  It took her only a few minutes to trudge up the narrow winding trail toward the flat rock. When she reached the marker, she turned and stared back down at the little cluster of trailers. The place looked even more pathetic from this vantage point. There were so few trees or any kind of vegetation to break the monotony of the scenery. The red sand and rocks formed a small depression in the desert floor. The Road Rasher’s community was tucked into that depression as though it was made of some kind of sediment that had run off from the surrounding communities.

  Lena snorted a bit at her fanciful notions. Taking a seat on the rock, she put her hands on the worn surface. It felt like someone else sat here regularly. She looked down to see if there was honestly a butt print in the porous rock and realized that she could see a little edge of something sticking out from underneath the rock.

  Leaning over, she peered closely at the space. Lena was very aware of how stupid it was to stick her hands in a hole beneath a rock in the desert. That was a fantastic way to encounter a critter that didn’t care to be bothered. But her fingers brushed paper. She worked it loose and found herself holding a notebook.

  Lena slowly opened the front cover. She felt oddly like she was violating someone’s privacy. Especially when the first two paragraphs made it obvious that she had somehow run across Rocko Trapp’s journal.

  “Oh. My. God,” she whispered.

  Rocko had told her “mama had run away.” Within four pages she discovered that was a lie. Six pages later she knew beyond doubt that Rocko’s father had murdered his mother in a drunken rage and forced young Rocko to help him bury the body.

  ***

  Rocko and his men entered the casino with more swagger than sense. As far as Rocko was concerned, that was the only way to strut around town and make sure people knew to stay out of his business and keep out of his way.

  “Hey boss!” One of his gang members gestured to the stage. “Check out that chick dancing!”

  “Nice rack,” Rocko commented. Of course, he could never say what he was really thinking, which was that the woman was nothing when compared to Lena. He could not let his men think that he’d become some addle-brained idiot who was stuck on one woman. His reputation wouldn’t be able to sustain that kind of hit.

  A few of the other men bellied up to the bar. “Let’s drink!” someone yelled.

  There was a shout from the men, and Rocko gestured to the bartender. “Let’s get a round for the boys, Mike!”

  Mike nodded and started pouring shots of whiskey.

  Rocko perched on a barstool and rested his elbows on the bar. He gazed at the bustling room and enjoyed the knowledge that every time someone bought a drink or put a coin in a slot machine, they were lining his pockets.

  “Afternoon, Rocko.” Sergeant Beau Cooper of the county sheriff’s office leaned against the bar to Rocko’s right. “I hear you’ve had some excitement.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Chester Kramer was in my office first thing this morning hopping mad because he claims you accepted his daughter as payment for a debt.” Beau pushed his cowboy hat up on his head and gave Rocko a long, assessing gaze. “You can’t take people as payment. That’s a bit illegal.”

  “First of all,” Rocko drawled. “I didn’t take the woman anywhere. She came willingly. Just ask her. Secondly, she offered to work on our property in order to reduce her father’s debt and pay it off.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ll let me have a look around your property to see that you’re telling the truth?” Sergeant Cooper looked annoyed. “Considering how irritated Chester was, I have to investigate something.”

  “How about you come out tomorrow?” Rocko tried to look completely nonchalant. But if the cop was coming around, Rocko and his boys needed to make the place look a little less illegal. Not to mention he needed some time to explain to Lena why it was in her best interest to cooperate.

  “Tomorrow?” Beau seemed satisfied. “Will do.”

  “And Beau,” Rocko could not help but add. “That rat bastard Chester owes me over six grand in back rent on that building I own.”

  “He’s not paying his rent?” Beau frowned. “He didn’t mention that.”

  “Because he’s a freaking gambler. He couldn’t hang onto a quarter long enough to buy food with it if he was starving to death.”

  “Sounds like your father, doesn’t he?” Beau shot Rocko a pointed look. “How is old Ralph Trapp these days?”

  “Fine.” Rocko felt his mood plummet faster than a roller coaster down that first big hill.

  Beau wasn’t done poking at Rocko. “He still lives in town, don’t he?”

  “Same house,” Rocko muttered. “He knows I don’t talk to him, and he doesn’t talk to me because he knows I’d rather kick his ass than help him out.”

  “Sounds kind of adversarial.” Beau started gazing around the interior of the casino. “You know, I was a mite surprised when you managed to get the permits for this place. Nobody expected the county council to give a liquor license to a criminal like you.”

  “A criminal like me,” Rocko mused. He turned to Beau and lifted his shot glass. “I had no idea you guys had actually found enough evidence to say that for sure.”

  “Sometimes circumstantial evidence is enough,” Beau blustered. “You’re guilty as the day is long, Trapp. Someday you’re going to have to pay the price for the things you’ve done.” Beau’s expression turned distinctly suspicious. “The missing persons file is still open on your mama, you know. Nobody ever did figure out why she would leave her precious little boy behind.”

  “Probably because I was never precious.” Rocko snorted. “You’ve made it pretty clear how you feel about that yourself.”

  Rocko thought of everything that Beau did not know. The man would have pounced if he’d had any notion. Then there would have been no way for Rocko to save himself from jail time. Not with his background and the deck so obviously stacked against him.

  So Rocko gave Beau a long, slow smile. “Have you ever known me to do anything against the law? The county council sure didn’t think so. They were just happy to give me that liquor license for the bar, the gambling and liquor licenses for the casino, and all in exchange for the big fat tax checks I write to them every single month.”

  Beau snorted. Poking at the sheriff’s inherent dislike for what he considered an injustice pretty much always worked to get him thinking about something other than the mysterious disappearance of Rocko’s mother.

  “It ain’t right!” Beau burst out. “Money should never come before what’s right.”

  Rocko jerked his chin at Mike. “Give this man a drink! But you better make it something nonalcoholic since he’s on duty and never breaks the rules.”

  “You can’t bribe me, either,” Beau snapped suspiciously. “You should know that by now.”

  “I wasn’t bribing you,” Rocko told the officer. “I was just offering to reward that sense of fair play that seems to make you so damn cranky all the time.”

  “Fair,” Beau snorted derisively. “You wouldn’t know fair if it bit you in the ass.”

  “You’ve got that wrong.” Rocko lifted the fresh shot that Mike had just poured him. Saluting Beau, Rocko searched for exactly the right words. “Trying to be fair is what got me tangled up with Chester Kramer’s daughter. I
f he comes in and bitches about me taking his daughter, remind that old bastard that it wasn’t fair of him to let his daughter try and work off his debts.”

  Chapter Ten

  Rocko stretched as he dismounted from his motorcycle in front of his house. He could hear the low voices of his gang calling to each other. There was good natured ribbing, bets being made, and plans to go out drinking bouncing from member to member. It was all good. This was why he had suggested a nice long ride. Sometimes it was the only way to smooth out the rough patches and remind everyone why they wanted to be a Road Rasher to begin with.

  Then Rocko cast a glance over to the shack on the fringe of Rasher property. Stone sat out front with three or four of his cronies. The easy way he propped himself on the chair’s rear legs with his feet up on the porch railing bespoke of comfort and ease. Stone sure didn’t look like a man who had fallen from grace.

  Rocko pursed his lips. That irritated the shit out of him. Stone had been banished. Sure, Rocko had suspended the punishment because some gang members in good standing had vouched for him. That put Rocko in a tricky position. He didn’t care to have Stone around stirring up trouble. Yet it was hard as hell to believe that Stone would stab Rocko in the back after everything he and Stone had been through together.

  With a heavy feeling in his gut, Rocko trudged through his yard. He put his hand out and gently brushed the top of Cruiser’s silky head with his fingers. The dog whined a bit and then trotted off to explore the far corner of the yard. Rocko paused at the top of the steps and reached into a plastic tub stored in the corner of the tiny landing. He got a scoop of dog food and dumped it into Cruiser’s bowl.

  As Cruiser started chowing down on his meal, Rocko wondered what he was going to be eating tonight. He wasn’t really in the mood to cook. Unfortunately, if Lena wasn’t inclined to cook, there wasn’t much in the way of choices about dinner.

  Rocko pushed his way through the ruined front door. He was really going to need to fix that.

  The first thing he noticed was that the house was cleaner. Not that the place had been a total pigsty, but Stone and Lena’s fight the night before had made quite a mess. Then there was just the general amount of filth usually coating the contents of the trailer.

  All of that was gone. But all of that was secondary to the mouth-watering smell wafting out of the kitchen. Rocko walked toward the scent. He leaned against the cabinets and watched Lena moving back and forth from one side of the small kitchen area to the other. She would stir something on the stove, walk back over to the counter and consult her cookbook, and then go right back to whatever was cooking on the stove.

  “You just going to stand there?” Lena bent over and opened the oven. “I think dinner will be ready in ten minutes or less. That’s just my best guess though.”

  “I was admiring the cook,” Rocko teased. “Looks like you found the cookbooks.”

  “Yeah.” She wiped her hands on a towel. “I have to admit being a little surprised that a tough guy like you has cookbooks in the cabinet.”

  He shrugged. He really didn’t want to talk about his mother’s cookbooks. He didn’t want to talk about her at all.

  “What? No comment?” Lena raised an eyebrow. “I saw your mother’s name in the books.”

  Great. He hadn’t thought about that possibility. It had been long years since he had looked at the damn things.

  “I didn’t get a lot of her stuff,” Rocko muttered. “But those were part of what I did.”

  “How was your ride?”

  Rocko blinked in surprise. She was just going to let it go? How odd. He had to scramble for an answer to her new line of questioning. “It was good. We had a great time, and I think the guys are calming down after everything that happened between Stone and I.”

  “That’s good.” She leaned over again and took a glass dish out of the oven. Moments later she turned off the stove’s burner and stirred the contents of the pot. “I made something your mother had flagged in her book as being really easy.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Again, something he had not considered. Was he trying to spill his secrets to this woman? What was wrong with him? He knew how to be more careful than this!

  She turned and grabbed two plates and glasses. Setting them on the bar, she tossed him a smile. “I figured we could just eat up at the counter since there’s no real dining table to speak of. Is that all right?”

  “Yes,” Rocko forced himself to respond. He needed a distraction, and eating seemed like the perfect thing.

  ***

  Lena watched Rocko carefully from the corner of her eye. The recipe had actually been flagged as “Rocko’s favorite.” She was trying to push him a little. It might not be advisable, but at the moment she wasn’t entirely certain that any of this was advisable. She had promised herself to this man for thirty days—twenty-nine now. She had no idea what to think about him.

  Staring at Rocko, it was almost impossible to imagine him as a little boy helping his father bury his mother. She had teased him just the day before about how he had turned out much better than many children who had dealt with the sort of situations that he had.

  All things considered, it was shocking that he hadn’t turned into a sociopath.

  Lena’s hand shook as she dished up the Spicy Mac n Cheese. There had been uncooked pasta in a cabinet and bacon in the freezer. Along with the slightly overripe carrots she had found in the bottom drawer of the fridge, she had been able to put together what she hoped was a passable meal.

  “Is that Spicy Mac n Cheese?” Rocko actually sounded hopeful.

  “Yes it is.” Lena set the plates on the counter and then reached into the fridge for two sodas.

  He sat down and dug in with gusto. Lena added a spoonful of carrots to his plate. She saw him pause for a moment. It looked as if he were contemplating saying something. Then he gestured to the other barstool.

  “Are you going to sit down?” He gave her a smile.

  Lena took her seat on the stool and began carefully eating her pasta. The flavor was pretty good. She had been half afraid she wouldn’t get the pasta to cook properly. She snorted as she recalled the last time she had cooked pasta.

  “What?” Rocko raised an eyebrow. “You did good. I see nothing worth laughing about.” He stabbed a carrot as though making a point.

  “I was just remembering the last time I tried to cook pasta. It wound up as a big, hard lump in the bottom of the pan. Total fail. Then it got scorched on the bottom. My father laughed for hours about that.”

  Rocko made a face. “Like good ole Chester could do better. I bet he never tried to cook a thing in his life.”

  “Actually, my dad did some cooking when I was little,” Lena remembered. “How about yours?”

  “It was all my mom.”

  “I know.” She went for broke. “She labeled this recipe as your favorite.”

  “It was.” Rocko shoveled another bite into his mouth. “I haven’t had it since she—uh—died.”

  “I thought you said she ran away.”

  “I’ve just always assumed that she was dead.” He shrugged. “It makes the idea that she never came back for me much easier to deal with.”

  “I’m sorry.” Lena hadn’t even thought about what she might be bringing up with her poking and prodding at Rocko’s past. “I didn’t mean to dredge up bad memories.”

  “They aren’t bad.” He frowned. “Lena, I loved my mom. I was sad to see her go, but I never hated her for it. I understood. Just like anyone who had any idea about what was going on in your household with Chester would understand if you left.”

  “You can’t mean that!” Now Lena was on the defensive. This had completely turned around on her. “My father took care of me! He didn’t beat me. He didn’t abuse me.”

  “He used you,” Rocko said roughly. “And using you, keeping you there under his thumb with no hope of ever having a life of your own is abuse, Lena. It’s neglect! He neglected your needs. That should be the first priority
of any parent, much less a single father with a daughter to raise!”

  “I—I—wasn’t neglected! My needs were met,” Lena protested.

  “Which ones?” Rocko pointed his fork at her. “Your need for affection? How about your need to find a fulfilling career of your own? Did you have your educational needs met, or did Chester prevent you from going to college? Did you want to go, Lena?”

  She bit her lip. She didn’t want to think about that. The memory was a bitter one. She could still remember reading that scholarship offer. She could recall the bubble of hope in her heart and the thought of leaving the desert forever. She would have gone to Colorado. She would have seen new places and met new people. It would have been amazing.

  “I’m sorry,” Rocko whispered. “I really am.”

  “Wanting to keep a daughter at home doesn’t make a father wrong, Rocko,” Lena murmured. “It means he loves me.”

  “Tell yourself that.” He stood up, shaking his head, and she fancied she could feel his judgment. Rocko headed for the back door of the trailer. “Maybe someday you’ll be willing to see that your father is using you as a crutch because he’s too much of a coward to deal with the consequences of his own choices.”

  Rocko exited the trailer, and Lena was alone once again. She gazed at the remains of dinner on the counter and felt as though she had somehow failed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rocko’s feet found the path to his thinking rock without much input from his brain. He’d been coming up here for years. Ever since he’d taken up the position of leader of the Road Rashers, he had sought solace out here in the desert. None of the others ever left the safety of the compound on foot, so he had the whole desert to himself out here. And sometimes being alone was imperative if he intended to keep his sanity.