by Candice Owen
To Blaine’s way of thinking, he was a pimp. He reached for the bill on the table, looking around as he did so. As he took out the money to pay for the food they had just eaten, he very carefully slid two hundred-dollar bills into his palm.
“Don’t stay here too long, kid.”
She took the money cautiously, as he passed it over. “I just need enough to pay for my room tonight. If I can get a dude that will pay for room for a quickie, it will be the only other trick I turn today.”
Blaine walked out of the little restaurant, and she walked beside him. Felicity was cruising past, her bright red Mustang sticking out in the sea of plain little sedans and minivans; but, he didn’t notice it because he was too busy trying not to notice the way that the girl he had just given the money to was blinking back tears.
***
Felicity saw him though. She saw the both of them. She was stopped at a red light, so she saw Blaine put his hand out on the girl’s arm and say something. Who is that girl? Is that his girlfriend?
Jealousy filled her, and she could feel her teeth clenching together. It was a new sensation for her, an emotion she was not used to, and she didn’t know how to handle it. I don’t even know the guy! It isn’t like we’re dating, and I don’t have any rights to him. So why am I so angry?
She made a circle, coming back around the block in time to see him climbing aboard a motorcycle that she recognized. The bike had belonged to George! What is he doing with it? George had built that bike from the ground up, right there in Daddy’s garage.
George had been an older guy, about forty-eight. He had always been talking about his kids up in Minneapolis and how much he missed them. He said that they had grown up while he was in jail, and there was no sense in trying to talk to them anymore.
Felicity knew that was why he spent so much time talking to her. She reminded him of his daughter. He even had a faded old photograph of his daughter that he kept around, and she had seen it. They did look sort of look a little alike — they both had blonde hair and blue eyes and were built nearly the same way.
Blaine took off and she followed him. Felicity knew she was being silly, she should not be following him at all. Where is he going? Her curiosity was getting the best of her, and that was also something she wasn’t used to.
What if he sees me? What would I say to him? I’m sorry, I just decided to follow you around town because I saw you talking to another girl and I wanted to know why you can talk to her and not me?
It was totally ridiculous. I should just turn around and go home. So haven’t I? She didn’t want to.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Blaine saw her in his mirrors. His heartbeat sped up a little, and he wondered what she was doing out and about. There was a small ice cream stand to the right, and he pulled over to it, thinking he would just get a cone and maybe watch her ride past.
Instead, she pulled in beside him. The top of her Mustang convertible was down, and her hair was blown all over the place. Most girls would’ve been fussing with it, trying to get it out of their face, so they could make sure he got the full effect of their eyes or lips.
“Oh, look! We both seem to have wanted ice cream at the same time.” Felicity smiled at him, wondering if he could tell that she was lying. She had absolutely no interest in ice cream, at least not right then.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Felicity eyed the bike, wondering if he knew it had belonged to George. Before she could ask him that he asked, “What kind are you getting?”
She looked at him blankly. What kind of what? Does he think I’m getting my own motorcycle?
She realized that he meant ice cream, and her face turned scarlet. Felicity was not a good liar, mostly because she didn’t practice at it. “Oh, butter pecan probably. It’s one of my favorites. How about you?”
“I like butter pecan.”
“I guess you don’t get much of it in jail.” Now, why did I say that? It sounds like I’m rubbing it in that he’d been locked up! “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that in a bad way. I guess there’s really no good way to say that? I’m sorry, sometimes my mouth just runs right off on me.”
And the girl he had just left was supposed to get a serious beat down for that very thing. Felicity can excuse hers with words in a flutter of her hands but that girl had to pay for her carelessness with a pound of flesh, or at least she was supposed to. She wasn’t out driving around in a fancy car and stopping for ice cream. She was back on the corner trying to find some guy that would pick her up and fuck her, so she could get a room for the night.
Blaine knew it was irrational. This girl was not her father, and what her father did was not her fault. She didn’t even know what her father did. None of that mattered, at that moment he wanted nothing more than to scream at her to take a good look around herself. Her ice cream was being paid for by some young kid who had just given the money that was supposed to pay for her protection to her mother to keep her even younger sister off the streets.
It was a hard world. Blaine had always known that. Growing up in a rough neighborhood with a mother who was absent and a father who split his time between the drunk tank and a neighborhood bar had given him first-hand knowledge of that fact.
“Enjoy your ice cream.” He cranked the bike back up, enjoying the feeling of the powerful machine below his body. He squealed out of the lot, leaving her there wondering just what she had done wrong.
When Felicity got home, she found her father in the informal living room, his feet up on an ottoman and Netflix on the television. “What are you watching?”
“Oh, just one of those crime movies. You know the kind: gangsters and guns and women in scanty clothing. I don’t know why I watch them.”
It was an old joke between them, but she didn’t feel very much like joking right then. He looked over at her and asked, “Are you okay?”
“Daddy, I thought I saw the new guy riding around on George’s bike. I don’t mean to get him in trouble or anything but… Do you think he stole it from the garage?”
Greg reached out ruffled his daughter’s hair the same way he had been doing ever since she was a two-year-old child. The gesture had been irritating to Felicity for years now, but since he would rarely give her any kind of physical affection, she took what she could get. “No honey, I gave it to Blaine.”
He gave it away? Why would Daddy give away a motorcycle the belonged to George? So, the new guy’s name is Blaine. I like it, it’s a nice name.
She was still confused though and said, “But what if George comes back for it, Daddy? You know how much he loves that thing! It’s not fair to just give it away!”
“George is not coming back, Felicity.” There was a hardness in her father’s voice that Felicity knew better than to try to argue against. When he got that tone in his voice, he meant business.
“Are you sure?”
“I know what he meant to you, Felicity. It was better that he left, and it’s better that he never comes back either.”
“But why, Daddy? I thought he was a good employee.”
“I am not going to discuss this with you. The motorcycle is Blaine’s now, and that is the end of it. Do you understand me?”
She understood him perfectly. She turned her attention to the television, watching as a car careened through darkened streets, narrowly missing dozens of others. She could never understand that. In every single movie that her father liked, all the cars almost crashed into the other cars, or the cop cars all got flipped.
She thought, It’s usually the heroes driving the cars that cause the wrecks, so why is there never any mention of what happened to the people in the other cars? Wouldn’t a true hero go back and help those people?
“I’m having a big party on Friday, Felicity. It’s for all the guys who work for me. I know they’re a rougher crowd than you like, so why don’t you make some plans to go somewhere else that day?”
All the guys that work for him? Does that mean Blaine, too? I bet it does. So, Daddy wants me to ma
ke plans to do something else that day, does he? she thought.
“Sure thing, Daddy. I’m sure I can find something to do,” she said, appearing to be agreeable to his order. She crossed her fingers behind her back as she said it.
I have absolutely no intention of going anywhere that day. When Daddy allows his guys to come to the house, they always bring their girlfriends and wives with them. If Blaine shows up alone — that must mean that the girl who he was with today is neither of those things to him.
She was desperate to figure out whether or not he was single, and whether or not he liked her. Given his behavior at the ice cream stand today, it wouldn’t seem like it. A blush crossed her face, as she considered another possibility. What if he had just seen me following him, and he had pulled over as a polite way of letting me know that he knew I was following him?
That was even worse than the possibility that he just didn’t like her.
CHAPTER NINE
There he is again! Felicity fluffed her long, blonde hair up around her face, as she saw Blaine walking towards her. Well, not really towards her — he was probably headed for the kitchen table, and the beer that sat out on it.
Felicity eyed Blaine’s long, lean body. He was beyond handsome, and he wasn’t like the rest the guys that worked for her dad, either; but, she was not sure what it was about him that made him so different.
It wasn’t just his looks. There were a few good-looking guys who worked for her dad and rode with him, too. It was something else. She could see him looking at her, as he approached.
She knew he was interested, but he didn’t say anything. He just grabbed a beer and one of the sandwiches off the platters that sat about.
“Hi, I see you that you got George’s bike.”
Blaine wanted to stay completely silent. The girl talking to him was young, maybe twenty and the apple of her daddy’s eye. Greg had been very clear that Felicity was entirely off-limits, and by that, he meant entirely.
Felicity had no idea of what her daddy did for a living. She knew he ran the bar, and a few other businesses, but she was utterly in the dark about the shadier and steamier side of his financial endeavors. She was probably the only one who had no idea what her daddy was into, but Blaine knew damn well because he was neck deep in it, too.
“It’s a good bike.” It was as noncommittal a reply as he could manage. The sight of her was driving him crazy. Felicity had a tall, willowy body with natural curves in all the right places. She had full, ripe breasts and hips that belled out over her slim thighs below her taut waistline. Her hair hung almost all the way to her waist, and her eyes were the clear blue of summer sky.
“Yeah, it was weird. I don’t know why George decided to move to Chicago and leave his bike. He loves that thing.”
Blaine could have told her that George had gone nowhere near Chicago. It was not something anybody had talked about, or had to. Nobody left behind a bike like the one he had been given, especially not a hard-core rider like George had been. He didn’t know what George had done or what happened to him, but he was willing to bet that he was either floating in the river on the other side of town or buried somewhere deep out in the desert.
Felicity couldn’t help it. He was so handsome, and he had that air about him. She stepped a little closer, close enough that she could smell his cologne and said, “My favorite song is on. Do you want to dance with me?”
She expected him to say no, so it surprised her when he sat the beer and sandwich down, took a deep breath and muttered, almost below his breath, “Oh, hell. Why not?”
It was a slow song, and he gathered her into his arms. She could feel the tensile strength in his shoulders, as she rested her cheek on his broad strong chest. His arms came around her, pulled her closer — close enough that she could feel the hardness in his jeans prodding against her lower belly.
A delicious little shiver crept up her spine, and her eyes closed involuntarily. She knuckled her face closer into his chest and relaxed into the slow, soft rhythm. The song ended way too soon, and with the end of the music, sanity returned.
Blaine pushed her away, not hard but just enough so that she was not close to him—she was way too tempting. When he spoke his voice was gruff, and he had to turn away slightly to hide the erection beneath his jeans.
“I thought you were going out with your friends today.”
Felicity was flattered. He asked about me! “Who said that?”
“Your Dad. I take it he was none too happy about you staying home.”
“He doesn’t like me around when all of you guys come over.”
“I can’t say I blame him. You don’t belong around a bunch of hard cases and hard riders.”
“He doesn’t think I belong out of a convent.”
“He might be right.”
Felicity glared at him. “Do I look like a nun?”
She most certainly did not look like a nun. She was more like the girl who showed up in the pages of a magazine. A staple neatly placed between her belly button and tits. He said, “No, you don’t. Listen, we both know I can’t talk to you, not if I want to keep my…,” he had almost said balls, “…job. So I’m going to walk out of here now, and we’re going to pretend this never happened.”
“Nothing happened!”
“Exactly, and I plan on keeping it that way.”
Felicity asked, “Why is everyone so afraid of my dad? He’s such a nice guy.”
To you maybe. “Yeah, well, see you around.”
He went to walk out, and as he did her lean, sexy hip touched his. A small spark jumped between them, and it was undeniable. His hand came out and landed on her shoulder. Felicity shivered and thought, He is so strong! She could just imagine him making love to her—his hard strong body taking hers over completely…
Blaine was having many of the same thoughts, but under that he was considering the odds of staying alive if he laid a hand on this girl. Those odds weren’t good, not by a long shot.
He grabbed a sandwich and a beer and walked out, leaving Felicity staring after him with a yearning look on her face and her belly quivering with excitement and fear, too.
The day was too long. Blaine would have given anything just to be able to walk out of the house and go to the little place he had rented over on W Street, not far from the bar. He was tired, and he had been up all night; but, when Greg wanted all of his guys, he wanted all of his guys. And today, he wanted all of his guys.
Something was brewing, but he didn’t know what. He figured that it had something to do with the higher-ups in the club, not him. He was just there because Greg had ordered the guys to come to a party.
He had not ordered them to show up, not exactly. He had just said he wanted them all there. In the organization that was an order though. Blaine was already getting a little tired of the whole thing, if the truth were known. This wasn’t like most biker clubs—this was a bunch of hired thugs riding under a guy who wanted nothing more than to get as much money as he could out of whatever schemes he could.
He missed the camaraderie of the open road, the guys who rode hard and had a good time but had lives to go back to when the road ended. Here, the road ended when it was yanked out from under you. He knew that no matter how good he was at what he did for Greg, eventually he would be just another forgotten member of his so-called club.
He had to get out of there, and soon. Greg would not let him go easily, but he could split if he wanted to. He had been working it out in his head lately. He could head north, go somewhere where nobody had ever heard his name or knew his face and just start all over.
Have a life, a real one.
CHAPTER TEN
Felicity popped into his line of vision. Today she wore a bright red dress that showed off her tanned skin and her beautiful, almost platinum, hair. He had been stupid to dance with her. Now that he had, he could not get her off his mind and that was beyond dangerous
Felicity really was naïve, and if her daddy had anything to say about
it, she would stay that way. How could she not see what her father was? How could she be so blind?
It was mind boggling and yet, in a way, it wasn’t. Greg went to church on Sundays and pretended that he was a businessman giving out second chances to hardened convicts, like doctors gave out lollipops to kids. She bought into it because…well, she was his kid. He could understand it, on that level.
He had to stop thinking about her. She was trouble, and he knew it. Wanting her was asking for trouble, but he did want her and had since the moment he had first seen her.
She was laughing at something somebody said and holding out the platter of sandwiches that had been on the kitchen table, playing the hostess to her father’s criminal cronies.
He thought, I’m no better than they are. So why am I acting so jealous? He had no right to her, and he knew it.
