by Amber Heart
Sometimes looking like a big bad biker paid off. Eli nodded and they waited for her to return. Shane was so tense that Eli could practically feel it radiating off of him.
“She’s a little banged up,” the woman said. “And her blood alcohol is through the roof. They’re going to keep her overnight to be sure that there aren’t any issues, but they think she’ll check out fine. You’ll be able to see her once she’s been transferred to a regular room.”
“So she was drunk?” Shane asked in disbelief.
“Sir, there’s really nothing more I can tell you.”
Eli followed Shane to a secluded corner of the waiting room. He dropped into a chair to wait it out. Shane sat down as well but stood back up within seconds and began to pace. Eli leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees and thought about the texts she’s sent. If he’d heard them, this never would have happened.
But God, what had she been thinking? Especially given what he now knew about her. She wasn’t normally reckless, so why start now? Anger joined the worry and he vowed to give her hell when she woke up.
“Riley’s never had a drinking problem,” Shane said finally, turning to look at Eli. “Do you know anything about this?”
Eli shook his head. “No. I mean...I met her in a bar. And then I picked her up from a bar last Friday night, but I--.”
“And you didn’t think that might be a problem?” Shane demanded. “Why the fuck didn’t you say something?”
Eli winced. “I...I didn’t know who she was the first night,” he said. He knew that even the beer they’d had wouldn’t blunt the news if it was delivered this way, but he’d waited too long and missed his chance to do this right.
“When?” Shane asked suddenly. “What first night?”
“The first night she came back.”
His friend’s eyes widened in sudden comprehension. “So when she didn’t come back that night, when I was worried sick about her, she was with you?”
Eli rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah.”
“Jesus.”
“But I didn’t know who she was,” Eli repeated, wanting to make sure that was clear. “I swear, Shane, I never would have...not if I’d known that she was your--”
“When did you find out?” Shane cut in.
Eli cleared his throat. “The, uh, the next morning.”
Shane scoffed and turned away. Then he turned back. “So when I was telling you that my sister hadn’t showed up, you knew damn good and well where she was?”
Eli looked down at his boots. “Well...yeah.”
“Jesus,” Shane repeated. “And then what? You just walked out on her?”
“No!” Eli said firmly. “She pretty much called me a one night stand and then I didn’t hear from her again till Friday night when she called me and asked me to come pick her up from Lion’s Den.”
“Lion’s Den?” Shane shouted.
A nurse, passing through the waiting room on her way to speak to someone else, stopped and looked at Shane with a severe frown.
“I’m going to have to ask you to keep your voice down,” she said sternly.
Shane muttered an apology and she walked away. He dropped down into a chair across from Eli and looked at him.
“You knew how worried about her I was,” he said. “And you didn’t tell me any of this.”
“There’s not much to it,” Eli said. “It was just--”
“If there’s not much to it, then why is she sitting in a hospital room right now?”
“Shane, I don’t know. I wasn’t with her.”
“Yeah, and maybe if you’d told me what was going on, I could have been.”
Guilt ate away at Eli. “I didn’t think that she had a problem, okay?”
Shane made that scoffing noise again.
“Look, I’ll go if that’s what you want,” Eli began, but Shane held up his hand.
“No. I’ll go. You’re the one she texted.”
“Yeah, but she was drunk. I’m sure she’ll want to see you when--”
“I’ll be back later,” Shane said.
He’d turned and walked out before Eli could speak again. Eli grabbed a magazine. It was going to be a long night and he hated hospitals. And he’d probably just lost the best friend he’d ever had and the woman that he was falling for had been going home with another man before she’d ended up here. Eli rubbed his hands over his face and went to the vending machine. Coffee wouldn’t fix everything, but it was better than nothing.
Chapter 8
“Eli?”
Eli looked up from his phone. He’d been killing time on it since they’d let him into Riley’s room in the early hours of the morning. The battery was nearly dead and he didn’t have any way to charge it, so he sent Shane a text before he answered her.
“She’s awake.”
Then he turned the phone off, shoved the phone into his pocket and looked at her. She looked like hell and she probably felt like it too.
“Yeah,” he said simply.
“So I guess you got my text?” She flashed him a short smile. There was a scrape on her cheek and she put her hand to it quickly. She probably hadn’t realized it was there.
He didn’t return the smile. “Yeah,” he said again. “Why’d you text me, Riley?”
“Well, you did a great job of taking me home last time. I thought I’d just stick with what works.”
“This is funny to you?” he asked.
Eli gestured at the IV drip and the bandages on her arm. She probably had a hell of a case of road rash. She hadn’t been wearing a helmet or any protective clothing and it was only the fact that the driver had been so drunk that they’d basically been going at a snail’s pace that had saved her from much more serious injuries.
Riley shrugged. “Not particularly, no.”
“Who were you with?”
She gave another shrug. “I don’t know. Just some guy.”
“Were you going home with him?” Eli heard the edge in his voice, but it was too late to do anything about it.
“No. We were just going to a different bar. He said the next place was more fun.”
“And after that bar, what were you gonna do?”
Riley smiled again. “Jealous, Eli?”
“I might be,” he admitted, but he didn’t give her a chance to speak before he went on. “If I thought we had any chance at a future, that is. Since I know we don’t, I guess it doesn’t matter much who you go home with.”
Her mouth dropped open and hurt flashed in her expressive eyes. “What do you mean by that?”
“I’ve been down the road you’re on,” Eli said simply. “I don’t plan to make a trip back.”
Riley scoffed. “That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?”
He leaned back in his chair and stared at her. “Almost as dramatic as riding a motorcycle drunk as shit with no helmet.”
“I wasn’t that drunk,” she muttered, dropping her gaze to the bandage on her arm. It was a little bloody.
“Hospital records say different.” Eli contradicted.
“Okay, fine. So I drank a little--”
“You drank a lot.”
“So I drank a lot one time--”
“You drank a lot at least twice.”
“You know what?” she demanded, jerking her head up and narrowing her green eyes at him. “You’re a real asshole, Eli.”
“Yeah? I never said I wasn’t. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re making some fucked up choices here.”
Riley gave a bitter laugh. “It seems like I can’t please the guy I’m sleeping with no matter what I do.”
Eli raised an eyebrow. “How do you figure that?”
“I didn’t do anything right for a year and a half with my ex,” she said, her cheeks flushing with angry color.
“I guess I find that just a little hard to believe,” Eli said. “Nobody can fuck up an entire year and six months. Especially not if you’re really the perfectionist your brother
says you are.”
Riley scoffed bitterly. “Perfectionist? I guess that’s one way to put it. You want to know what Mike said right before he dumped me?” she asked, her hands clenching on the thin hospital blanket. “He said that I was too predictable. That being with me had gotten stale and boring. He wanted some adventure in his life before he hit thirty.” She practically spat out the words. “Nearly ten years! We’d been together nearly ten years, and now suddenly I’m not what he wants?”
“So you left because he thought you were boring?”
She laughed. “I didn’t leave him, Eli. He...he was seeing someone else. Before I even knew that he wanted out.” Her mouth twisted. “She wanted to move in, so I had to go. There wasn’t time to find another place. And if I was going, I figured I’d just go home. He probably expected that too.”
“I’m sorry,” Eli said honestly. He could see the hurt in her eyes when she’d mentioned the other woman. “That’s shitty.”
“I didn’t even get the pleasure of dumping him,” she said. “He said that he was tired of me and I said that I’d work on it, that I’d try to schedule in some time for just us and he...he laughed at me. Then he told me that he was seeing her.” Tears filled her eyes but she blinked them away without letting them spill down her cheeks. “And I told him that I’d change. That I’d be what he wanted.” She shook her head. “I never thought that I’d beg someone to stay with me, but I did. I told him that I’d forgive him for having an affair and he said that he didn’t want my forgiveness. He wanted her.”
“He’s a fucking moron,” Eli said, shoving down the urge to find the guy and beat him to a pulp for hurting Riley like that. It was one thing to leave a relationship because you weren’t happy but it was another to make a woman feel replaceable.
“I wonder who takes care of the bill calendar now that I’m gone,” Riley said. “She didn’t look like the organized type. And Mike can’t keep track of money to save his life. He also can’t remember to buy toilet paper or put his keys by the door. I did all of that.” She looked at Eli. “And now you probably think I’m boring too.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I think you sound pretty responsible.”
She scoffed. “Right. And responsible is what every man is looking for in a woman, I’m sure.”
“I’m serious. It takes a lot to do what you did...carrying the weight for both of you. I’d like to get to know that Riley. She sounds a lot more interesting than the one who can’t even manage to text me unless she’s falling down drunk.”
Riley’s face flushed, but she didn’t respond. There wasn’t much that she could say to that and they both knew it.
Eli stood. Shane would be on his way soon and he had a feeling that he wouldn’t want to see Eli just yet. He brushed his fingers down Riley’s cheek and then smoothed her wildly tangled hair.
“Take care of yourself, Riley. And don’t be too hard on your brother. He loves you like crazy.”
Chapter 1
“Eli.”
Eli carefully set the Superbird’s water pump on the ground and looked at up at Shane. He hadn’t seen him since that Monday night in the hospital and it was Thursday morning now. One of the other guys had told him that Shane had messaged him saying that he was taking a few days off and that Eli was in charge.
Having been given command, Eli switched the other guys to his jobs and began an inventory on everything that the Superbird needed. He’d gotten back to the client with a list on Tuesday and had been given the go ahead to do whatever he needed to do. Today was waterpump day and it was a pain in the ass. He’d spent most of the morning scraping the old gasket away so that no debris could get into the new system.
“Come into the office for a second,” Shane said.
Eli followed him in and sat down in the chair in front of the desk. He took a deep breath and waited for Shane to rip him a new one. He knew that he deserved it.
“Riley’s home,” Shane said instead.
Eli’s breath went out in a whoosh. That wasn’t where he’d expected his friend to start.
“That’s good,” he said cautiously.
“Yeah. Turned out that she had a minor concussion, but as long as she takes it easy for a few days, it won’t be a problem and she’ll be fine. She’s resting up on the couch today.”
“Glad to hear it.” And he was. Some part of him that he hadn’t even known was tense relaxed at the news that she was going to be all right.
Shane took a breath. “Eli, I wouldn’t have cared about you and her if you’d just told me the truth. I don’t get why you lied.”
Eli rubbed the back of his neck. “You don’t? Come on, Shane, how the hell was I supposed to tell you that I had a one night stand with your sister?”
“It’s not like I was gonna ask for details,” Shane said wryly. “But keeping me in the loop would have been nice. What did you think I’d do to you?”
“Fire me,” Eli answered promptly. That was certainly what he’d been expecting when he sat down. “At the very best. At the very worst, I figured you’d try to kick my ass.”
Shane stared at him. “Why the hell would I do that?”
Eli looked at him in confusion. Had Shane not been paying attention? “Because I fucked your sister,” he said slowly. “Back home, that would have gotten me shot.” He wasn’t exaggerating. There were women no one touched and the boss’s sisters were always in that category.
“Yeah? Last time I checked, she was a grown damn woman and you don’t live that kind of life anymore. You know that you can be honest with me.”
Eli sat in silence for a second or two, simply processing things. You don’t live that kind of life anymore. That was true, and he’d been able to feel it when it came to not drinking himself to death and to earning an honest day’s wages. Why hadn’t he thought that when it came to Riley? Maybe things could have been different if he had.
“You’re really not mad about this?” he demanded.
Shane sighed and shook his head. “I’m really not mad. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pissed off that you didn’t tell me, but only because you knew how worried I was about her. But I’m not mad about you two having a...relationship. If that’s what you’re going for.”
“I don’t think it is,” Eli said honestly. “And it’s not because I don’t want to,” he hurried on. “I just think that she needs stronger people than me around right now. And she probably needs some more time to get over the jackass who dumped her.”
“It probably wouldn’t hurt,” Shane agreed. “But...and this is the last time I’ll mention anything to do with the two of you...I think she really cares about you. Just putting that out there.”
Eli didn’t quite manage to hold back a grin at that, but he didn’t ask for more information. The possibility was good enough. “Okay. Thanks.”
“Now let’s talk about why you think I couldn’t kick your ass if I wanted to.”
Eli laughed in relief. “Come on, man. You grew up in the suburbs. I’d own you.”
Shane shook his head. “If you keep up with this disrespect, then maybe I’ll rethink asking you to run the shop for a few weeks.”
“What?”
“I’m gonna take some time off so I can be home with Riley. I thought that you could probably handle everything here.”
Eli blinked in surprise. “Yeah, I’d be happy to.”
****
Three weeks later, Eli looked up from the supply order he was putting in to see Riley Harris standing at the office door.
“Hey there,” he said. “Have a seat.”
She glanced around. “Wow. I think I actually could.”
The teetering stacks of supply orders, work orders, invoices, and general notes were gone. The two chairs across from the desk were cleaned off as well.
“Did you get filing cabinets?” she asked, glancing at the side of the room.
“No,” Eli said. “They were always here, I just excavated them. And then cleaned out ten years of crap
from them.”
He wasn’t sure why he was talking about office work with her, but he was glad that she didn’t want anything too intellectual from him because he couldn’t stop staring at her. Her outfit was simple, jeans with a small hole in the right knee, a plain white tee shirt, and a pair of scuffed sneakers, but it looked damn good on her. She’d left her long curly hair loose and he wanted to twine it around his fingers, bury his face in it, and breathe in her scent.
She started to sit and then pushed her hands down into the pockets of her jeans. “I was wondering if you’d like to get some coffee, actually,” she said. “I know that you’re probably busy, so I won’t keep you long.”
