Letting go of the heady cocktail of emotions she’d managed to pump through her bloodstream in only the last half-hour, Lucy headed for the shower. This bike job was a onetime deal, but she was going to get back under bikes full-time soon. And she was going to do it on her own merits. She was going to get her own gig, period. That’d shut up all the men who didn’t think she had it in her.
* * *
He’d been planning on apologizing. Standing behind the bar for six hours last night, stopping a fight that had been brewing since the morning, in between running around the hotel to check for idiot gang members had given Jake plenty of time to think. And he kept coming back to what he’d said to Lucy. It was a shitty position to be in, some biker dickhead with a vendetta clearly taking the opportunity to accuse her of something. And on top of that she clearly felt uncomfortable in her uniform; her shoulders had been hunched even when she was sitting, and all he’d done was point it out. Nice work. Being a female mechanic, especially a bike mechanic, couldn’t be easy and just when she’d swallowed her pride and let that go to take the housekeeping job, she’d been handed a uniform that made her look like a stripper. The part of himself that was trying to be a good brother to Briony had reared its head and driven him out to the bunkhouse.
But then just when he’d opened his mouth, ready to say all that, she’d been half-naked again, with a guy in her room. Seeing her in her underwear had sent green fingers of . . . something, snaking through his veins. They formed spikes, nasty barbs that had no reason being inside his body. Not when he’d sworn to stop feeling anything after Sarah’s death. Lucy was trouble. Clearly. And trouble was not something he needed in his life, especially when he was supposed to be in charge.
Move on. He was running the hotel for Briony. Taking time off to reassess . . . stuff. He looked down at his hands. They weren’t shaking, weren’t going to shake. He might have gotten the jitters when Lucy cracked her head the night before, but he’d never been a big fan of blood. His hands were fine now. All he had to do was keep them that way.
He headed back to the bar for something to do. Better than hiding in his room pretending to sleep before his night shift. The fight had happened anyway and there was a decent-sized hole in the wall off to the side of the bar. Briony would not be impressed, but apparently one of the Hell’s Boys was a builder and was going to fix it. Jake sighed. Not such a great first night.
The ping of his cell was such an unusual occurrence these days he almost didn’t recognize the sound. “Hello?”
“Iceman? Jake? It’s Javier.”
“Javier?”
“Howland. Your agent gave me your number.”
The reality of who was on the other end of his phone gave Jake a sharp slap in the virtual face. “Hi. Sorry. I should have recognized your voice.”
“Hardly. Not like I do much talking in my scenes.” The model-turned-actor gave a loud laugh. It was true, his action sequences, bicep flexing, and popularity with the ladies definitely got him more play time than any nicely delivered monologue. “Anyway, down to business: I need you.”
“Sorry?”
“For a film. I wouldn’t usually do this, but hell, you’re the Iceman, and you’re the best. And this film needs the best. I’m going to sign on as part of the exec production team so I get to make the call on this one.”
Jake chose his words carefully. “I’m not working at the moment.”
“That’s what your agent said. But I call bullshit on that.”
“No, really. I’m not working; he’s not trying to hide anything.”
“Sure.” Javier paused. “I heard what happened on set. Shit run of luck, man. I’m sorry. I saw some of that girl’s reel, she was the real deal. Would have been great one day. You two were an item?”
So that’s what the industry had decided. Jake almost smiled. It was as good a reason as any for him to have ducked out. Better than him losing his nerve; he could see why his agent didn’t want that sort of story doing the rounds. “No. We weren’t together. But you’re right, she would have been great. Stupid that she went out like that.”
“Stupid, sure. But sounds like she pushed to do the work. You’re okay now, right? You weren’t in the accident?”
“No. I wasn’t.”
“Great.” Javier exhaled audibly. “’Cause what I want is you. My agent is pushing me to sign on for this film, but I only want to do it with you. The script is mad. Mad good, and it’s huge. It needs someone like you to pull it off. You’d run the stunt crew, be in charge of who does what, run the show, and be my on-screen partner. It’s a decent part, juicy scenes. Between the two of us, we could make a smash hit out of it. Seriously.”
“I’m flattered.”
Javier cut in. “Don’t be. You’ve earned this call. You just let me know what you need and I’ll try and make it happen. Personally.”
“Thanks. But I don’t know—”
“Don’t say anything yet. Let me send you the script. Usual confidentiality stuff obviously, you know the drill. Your agent said that if you were okay with it, he’d make sure it was all good on his end. Will you do that? Have a look at the script and then decide? It’s about time you got better billing. Be the action hero your body already knows you are, man.”
The hairs on the back of Jake’s hand stood on end, whether from excitement or fear he couldn’t quite tell, but he nodded before catching himself and saying, “Okay. I’ll look it over, but I can’t promise anything.”
“That’s all I ask. You want this, man.”
Jake hung up, not as sure as Javier was that he wanted to end his hiatus just yet.
When Sarah had come to him with the news that she’d gotten a stunt role in the film he was running stunts on and had an acting roll in, he’d been surprised. But she was young and talented, so why shouldn’t she push herself? In the middle of a shoot, though, he’d seen the fear in her eyes before a tricky suicide burnout. And he hadn’t stopped her. He’d watched her grit her teeth, watched as she revved her bike, once, twice, three times, and then paused. That’s when he should have stepped in. Anyone hesitates like that and they want out. But he hadn’t. He’d let her do it. And then he’d had to help clean up the mess.
Jake tried to shift the vision of blood from in front of his eyes. No one needed to tell him he needed a break. The shakes were a physical symptom, but the mess in his head needed ironing out before he could get back in front of a camera. If he ever got back in front of a camera. Trouble was, working in film was all he knew, all he thought he wanted to know. Action films were his life.
Not at the moment.
No. His life at the moment was looking after his half sister’s hotel and he wasn’t even doing a very good job at that. He was going to build on his relationship with Briony, end of story. He might not have been able to do it for Sarah, but making sure Briony was okay, really okay, might make up for it, a little.
The script would come, he’d read it because he’d said he would, but he didn’t think he was ready to take it on. Not when just thinking about Sarah’s accident made him have visions of the aftermath. There was a loud bang in the bar and instantly he saw Sarah’s body in front of him again, heard the blare of the horn as the bike’s handlebars twisted and locked the noise on, and just like that, the tremble set up in Jake’s fingers and juddered up his arms.
“No. Not now.” He screwed his eyes shut to block out the bar in front of him and clenched his fists. Taking the deep breaths to calm his adrenaline like the counselor had advised him to, Jake stuffed his hands into his pockets. He focused on his breath until the shudders stopped in his hands, then he forced himself to inspect the image his memory had thrown back at him to try to diminish it. Sarah twisted and broken. The smear of blood on the ground. It didn’t work but his hands stayed steady.
Instead his memory rewound and he saw the look in Sarah’s eye. The look that said she’d suddenly realized the enormity of what she was about to do. Last thing a stunty needed was to visualize
the potential carnage of each move. Heck, no one would get out of bed in the morning if they thought through the statistics of getting hit by a car. But with stunt work it was worse, there were too many opportunities for things to go wrong with just a slip of concentration. Once you psyched yourself out, that was it: you needed to walk away. He knew that, and he should have told Sarah.
But he didn’t. Being in charge of another team on Javier’s film? Jake shut his eyes again; it would be like living Sarah’s accident over and over. Wouldn’t it?
He was lost in his thoughts when he heard the familiar laugh sing out as the bar door opened and let in two newcomers.
Man. What was wrong with him today? One night with Lucy Black and his body had become a useless lump of hormones. Just the sound of her laugh put the hairs on the back of his neck on edge. You are a vessel of calm. You breathe air in and tension out. He forced his aikido training to kick in: repeating the mantra his teacher had made him write out as a small boy when all he wanted to do was punch and kick. It had taken a couple of years, but his teacher had been patient and the words helped. At least they had helped, before. Right now, Jake’s hairs were still on edge and his teeth were chewing through the mantra as if they’d like nothing better than to grind up the words and spit them out in a big masticated mess.
“It won’t be long. Hade will win out for sure and they’ll let girls in. At least, they’ll let you in. Everyone wants you, Luce.” The guy—Martinez was his name, Jake remembered—gave Lucy a filthy grin.
Lucy put her hands on the bar, as if getting ready to leave. “Nice of you to say so. But not everyone can have me.”
The man laughed, putting his hand on her knee.
She swatted it off, more quickly than she needed to. “Don’t touch me. You know I don’t like it.”
The dark-haired biker put his hands in the air. “No harm in trying.”
The green, barbed spikes set off through Jake again and he shook his head. What was it about this woman that made him want to pull her out of harm’s way?
“You don’t want to bite off more than you can chew. Got a wrench in my back pocket that might break your teeth if you try too hard.” Lucy’s face was grim but the biker only cackled.
Lucy wasn’t Sarah, and she sure as shit didn’t seem to want saving. In fact, she was wound up tight as a spark plug. Jake shook his head again. What mattered was looking out for his sister and as Lucy’s boss, he owed it to Briony to treat Lucy like any other employee and let her do her job.
5.
Stepping back, Lucy surveyed her handiwork. The bike looked good. Heck, it looked better than good. It looked mint. She’d repaired the gears that had been the problem, and replaced the exhaust as best she could with the tools she had and those she’d found in the workshop. And just because she could, and there was a spray kit at the Reapers of Menace’s shop, she’d done a quick spray job on the tank. The machine gleamed now. Black and gold and battered old chrome. Okay, there’d only been enough paint for a portion of the bike, but it looked a shit-ton better than it had before.
Every part of her ached from racing to the Reapers of Menace’s shop in the dead of night and being under the bike in her short amount of downtime. Using shitty tools made it ten times worse too. Everything took longer, and her back was killing her. But the ache was a good one, the type that sat in your bones and made you glad to be a human. One that made her muscles sing. It also made her realize how much she was quietly dying from cleaning toilets and just “getting through” the days.
The low whistle confirmed her pride. Sly. “Wait ’til they get a load of that. I didn’t know you made ’em pretty too.”
“I haven’t done many spray jobs, but it’s fun. Nothing like making beautiful things more beautiful to give a girl a sense of pride.”
“I bet. And how does she run?”
“Try her out.” She handed him the keys.
“I was serious the other day,” Sly said as he grabbed his helmet and put a hand on the chassis of the bike to stroke it. “You should switch sides. Come work here. For reals. I haven’t said anything, but everyone’s been moaning about the shop being shut. When they see what you’ve done to this little lady and watch me win my race on her when they thought she was deader than roadkill . . .” He grinned. “This could be home, couldn’t it?” He wheeled the bike out and she heard him revving it before screaming off down the road.
Looking around, Lucy wondered if she could work here. For real, as Sly put it.
She was still on the outside with the Raising Hellfire gang, but less on the outside than she would be here, with the Reapers of Menace. And the Hell’s Boys had been her port in a fucked-up storm of emotions when she’d first arrived in LA.
Her mom had tried to tie her down and pour water down her throat to cleanse her of her demonic thoughts the night before she’d left. It had not gone down well. Her ears ringing from her mother’s yelling, Lucy had thrown everything she could think of into a bag, and bailed. Little Katie had been asleep, oblivious. Her kid sister had been the only reason Lucy had stayed in Salt Lake so long. But that night she knew that if she didn’t leave, things would only get worse, for her and Katie.
Katie was a smart kid. A kind kid, and she could cope better with their mother’s manic outbursts. So that winter’s night she left. Drove through the night and the next day she ended up at Wilde’s with Martinez.
Looking around the Reapers’ mechanic shop, Lucy couldn’t quite believe she was even contemplating turning her back on the quasi-family she’d made at Hell’s. The shop had good benches and the spray gun and pump, but they didn’t have the good tools she was missing and she didn’t spot any paperwork in any of the drawers she’d gone through that might give her the contacts to get parts and get things working properly. But she could figure that out, couldn’t she? If she came and worked for the Reapers of Menace, it would be a slap in the face to Briony and Hade, who had gotten rid of the private investigator her mom had hired to come looking for her. Yet working here would give her everything she wanted. Wouldn’t it?
Sly roared back up to the shop and she went outside to meet him.
“It flies! Seriously, if you don’t come and work here, once I tell the boys who turned this heap of junk into a flying machine they’ll come and drag you down here.”
Lucy laughed, but looked sharply at Sly for any truth to his threat. Working for another gang on her own terms was one thing, doing it under duress, well, that would suck balls. His face was open—no threat there—and when he saw her looking at him like that, he slapped her on the shoulder. “Wouldn’t let ’em do that to you, Luce. Don’t worry.”
“So where’s the rest of the stuff? Tools. The paperwork. Contacts, suppliers, and stuff?”
“That was part of the bust-up with the last guy. He never had parts come in on time and it turned out he’d burned bridges with all the suppliers in town. Kept ordering things, charging the boys, but not coming through. What you see in here is what you get. They bring the bikes, you fix them. You’d need to be able to start on your own. Except, fuck it, Luce, you’re a magician, getting a crap-box like this bike to hum, now that’s special.”
Letting the praise slide over her skin, Lucy nodded, not wanting to let on how much having her work appreciated meant to her. But inside, every part of her swelled. This was it. What she wanted. Working with bikes was what made her heart happy. If she could look after Katie at the same time, she was done. Exactly where she wanted to be. The world would be a good place. The problem was making sure all the other stuff didn’t get in the way.
“Think about it,” Sly said as he walked her to her bike and she pulled on her helmet.
As the buildings flicked passed her, she thought about changing things up. Again. The more she remembered how happy working with engines made her, the more she wanted in on the Reapers of Menace’s shop. So what if they were a rival club to the Hell’s Boys? It wasn’t like Hade and Rocco were going to let her work on their bikes anytim
e soon. History was just that, history; it didn’t count for anything if you couldn’t rely on it to help you make it in the world. Sure, she was working at Wilde’s now, mostly because of that history, but cleaning toilets for too much longer would strip her soul bare. And yet . . . the thought of coming out here, not knowing anyone, having to prove herself all over again. It would be hard. The Menace were wild, harder to get into than the Hell’s Boys. Both of them were dangerous, but Hade would never kill someone just for the fun of it, and that’s the reputation the Menace had, she’d seen the fallout at Wilde’s. Maybe there were other reasons the Hell’s Boys weren’t ready to open a bike shop and she just needed to be patient a bit longer.
Thinking about Wilde’s led her mind back to Jake Slade. He’d been avoiding her this past week. Fair enough. But every time she heard his name she turned, expecting him to walk into the room after it, only to be disappointed when she never got a glimpse of him. What he’d done to her with his tongue had settled like a cloying mist over her skin and she couldn’t shake the sensation that it wasn’t over. Too bad. It was over, he’d made that pretty clear when he accused her of stealing, and she needed more emotionally screwed-up people in her life like she needed a hole in her exhaust.
The rumor mill had finally caught up with Jake Slade though and she’d heard about the accident that had taken the life of his co-worker. It was no wonder the guy was icy after something like that. Thank goodness it had been a closed set or else some sick fuck would have found a way to post the whole thing on YouTube. Lucy revved her bike to take the next corner and saw the lights of Wilde’s up ahead. A couple spilled out the door, clutched to each other, oblivious to the night or spectators. The sight of them sent a pang of lust through Lucy. She could have had that with Jake, she was sure of it. Their interrupted night had been insane, and someone that attentive was going to be doubly insane in the sack. Except that he could crush your only current source of income in a second if it went wrong. She shook her head. Exactly. Why was she even still thinking about him?
Ride Me Right Page 6
