by Zoey Parker
“Great. What do they want now?” I stood, stretching, groaning as my muscles protested.
“It’s not them. You have a visitor. He wouldn’t leave. I told him to leave, but he wouldn’t.”
My stomach turned to ice when I realized who she meant. “Why is he here? Did he say?”
She shook her head, biting her lip. Jimmy stepped forward. “You want me to take care of this?”
I gave him a grateful smile but put a hand on his arm to stop him. “No way. And risk having this place closed down? You know he has connections all over town. You’d be dead in a day. No, thank you. I couldn’t ask either of you to put yourselves in his way for me.” I tried to look and sound more confident than I was, but deep inside I quaked like a scared little girl. What on earth could he possibly want?
The other door swung open, leaving me face-to-face with my ex-husband. I raised my chin. “Connor. You know you’re not supposed to be back here.”
He sneered. How many times had I seen that sneer over the years of our marriage? Mostly when he looked down at me while I cowered in fear.
“I can be wherever I wanna be, babe. You know, too. I need to talk to you. Now.”
Chapter 2
Parker
“So I said to her, while you’re down there, why don’t you suck me off?”
Eight men roared with laughter, with Hook being one of them, even though he had told the story. I turned to the side to roll my eyes, pretending to look at something on the other side of the diner. Hook wasn’t a bad guy, but I didn’t believe half the shit that came out of his mouth. He wanted us to believe a woman measured him for pants, and he had gotten away with saying something like that. I bit my tongue rather than ask him where he had gone for the fitting and why he needed the pants. The most dressed up I’d ever seen him was the time he wore a clean button-down with his jeans and riding boots.
Ryder caught my eye, where he sat to my left. He had a smile on his face that told me he didn’t believe the story either. He had a way of seeing the things I did even when I thought nobody could. He had an eye on everything behind those aviators. When I first got to know him, I wondered why he wore them all the time. Over the years it became clear he didn’t want anybody knowing where he looked from minute to minute.
I took a bite of my grilled cheese. Buttery and crispy on the outside, just like I liked it. The place looked like a real shit hole, but they had decent food.
Everybody agreed with me. “Good idea, coming here,” Mason said from the other side of the table.
“Yeah, this is awesome. I think there’s a whole pig in this omelet,” Jeff agreed.
“You’ve known enough pigs, haven’t you?” That was Ryder, and we all laughed together. Jeff wasn’t known for having great taste in women. As long as they were over eighteen and breathing, he didn’t care.
“I used to come here all the time with my mom,” I said once the laughter died down. “I was sure it would have been closed by the Board of Health a long time ago.”
“Oh great. He tells us to go somewhere we might die from, just so he can walk down Memory Lane.” I wasn’t sure who said it since everybody started laughing before the sentence was finished. I laughed with them—I wasn’t too big to have a sense of humor about myself. If anybody outside the club ever dared fuck around with me like that, it would be another story.
“You not man enough to deal with a little food poisoning?” Ryder asked. That started even more laughter. “Remind me not to ride next to you when we’re in a tough spot. You might puss out on me.”
“Aw, come on!” We laughed at Tiger’s reaction. “Sorry if I don’t like pissing outta my ass, Ryder. Jesus.”
“Baby.” Ryder smirked.
“Whatever,” Mason said, looking in the direction of the kitchen. “I’d piss outta my ass for days if that little cutie would take care of me. You think she’d take care of me if she felt bad ’cause her food got me sick?”
I snorted. “Yeah, ’cause men with food poisoning are so hot. You’re not man enough to get a woman like her now, while you’re healthy.” She was the hottest thing I’d seen in a long time. The way she filled out that uniform was a crime. And I hated the others talking about her like that, but I couldn’t overplay my hand. They’d start thinking I liked her or something.
“It was a good run tonight, boys.” Ryder lifted his coffee cup, and we all joined him. “You all did good for the club.” We toasted to that. It hadn’t been easy, convincing our connections to bring in a shipment of drugs twice the usual amount, but they had come through. We’d gotten the shipment into the hands of our distributors with no problems or setbacks. It didn’t always go so well—there were greedy people in our world, people who wanted what we had. Ryder was a good leader and a fair man. He made sure he protected us and our interests.
Hook stole a handful of my fries, and I pushed him away. We were all in a good mood, a little high off our big run. It was the only kind of high I cared about. I was never into drugs—I had seen what they did to people from the time I was pretty small. I tried not to think about the way we ran drugs to make money, and the way my mom’s addiction had ruined both our lives. Sometimes it bothered me, though. Wondering if there was another kid out there just like I used to be, wishing his mom would stop using.
Ryder saw the way my mood sank. “You okay?”
I tried to smile and enjoy the night. “Yeah, sure. Just don’t know if I want any more fries after this asshole stuck his nasty hand in them.”
“Don’t you wish you knew where this hand has been?” Hook asked, laughing as he tried to stick it in my face.
I shrugged him off, chuckling.
“You’re sure?” Ryder asked. He wasn’t fooled the way the rest of them were. It was his job to pay attention. Always watching.
“Yeah, really. Just tired. It’s been a long night.”
“You should find something to help you sleep once you get home.” He nodded back toward the kitchen with a grin. “I bet she’d do the trick.”
“What are you, a matchmaker now? Or a pimp?”
He laughed. “Neither. I saw the way you looked at her is all. You don’t ever tell the guys to shut the hell up when they’re messing around with a chick. What gives?”
“I don’t know. I felt sorry for her.” I shrugged. Why did he have to bring it up? I glanced around the table, making sure nobody was listening in.
“Since when? She’s just a chick. So what? You know how these guys have fun. Why don’t you admit you want her?”
“Because I don’t wanna hear it from the rest of them.”
“They all miss your girl, Parker.”
I bristled when he mentioned her. “I don’t wanna talk about her.”
“I know, but maybe you have to. It’s been long enough, son.”
“I’m not your son.” I didn’t mean to come off like an asshole, but I couldn’t help it. Why couldn’t he see I wasn’t up to talking about Kelly? She was off-limits to everyone, including Ryder. It didn’t matter that he was club president or that I was supposedly next in line. It didn’t give him the right.
“Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to rub you the wrong way. I just hate to see you pushing other things away is all.”
“I don’t have any trouble finding women, thanks.” I smirked.
“Yeah, I know. There oughta be a turnstile outside your bedroom. But that ain’t the same as having a good old lady. The kind you need when you take control of the club.”
His words weighed on my mind. It wasn’t like I never thought about that. I thought about it all the time, actually. Ryder had a great old lady, the kind who made a man feel like a king. The way a man in that position needed to feel if he was going to be a leader—especially in a dangerous world like ours.
I couldn’t make myself go through it all again. Certain things in a man’s life changed him forever. I would never be the man I used to be before that night.
“Do you blame me for what happened?” My blood ra
n cold as Ryder’s eyes bored holes into me from behind the dark lenses.
“Never. I never have.” I was totally honest. I had never once thought about him in connection with that night.
“I sometimes do,” he admitted. “I made a mistake, and I’ll never not be sorry. I don’t know…I guess it would just make me happy if I saw you happy. That’s all.”
Or it would make you feel less guilty. I wished he would say what he really felt. He was all broken up inside after what happened. He could join the club.
He looked over the table. Nobody even listened to us, which wasn’t a bad thing at all. “You ready for all this?” he asked.
“I won’t have to be for a long time,” I joked. “So I don’t think too much about it.”
“Liar.” He smirked. “You know the time’s gonna come.” It wasn’t the first time he’d made a crack like that. It was enough to make me wonder if he wasn’t in bad health or something. Did he know something I didn’t? Ryder was only in his mid-fifties. Hardly ancient. “You’ve got what it takes,” he said, nodding. “You’re a born leader, just like me. You think about everybody else first, then yourself. That’s the kind of person you need to be.” He took a sip from his coffee, nodding toward the other guys. “They’re all good men. Your brothers. But none of them have that special something. You do. You’ll make a good president one day.”
“You’re freaking me out,” I admitted.
“Sorry.” He grinned. “I don’t mean to. I guess I start thinking about my mortality on nights like this. I’ve had a lotta good nights, and a lotta bad nights. Nights when I made it out by the skin of my teeth. I know how lucky I’ve been. There are times like right now when I wonder how much longer that luck’s gonna last is all.”
So that was it. That was why he thought about Kelly, too. What happened that night was an example of a bad night. Shit went south real fast, worse than anything I’d ever seen before or since. He wondered how many more nights like that were to come, and which side he’d end up on when they did. So far he’d been on the living side.
I clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ve got a lot more good nights ahead of ya. You’d better, because I don’t feel like settling down into your job anytime soon. I have a lot more whoring and partying to do before that time comes.” I grinned.
“Bringing us back to our delicious waitress. What do you think about her? Just come out and say it. You want her. It’s okay. The rest of ’em will back off, just like they did when you told them to lay off. I know you didn’t like them thinking about her that way because you wanted her for yourself. Why not just say that? You would any other time. Why not now?”
“I don’t know.” I really didn’t. I did want her, more than anything I had wanted in a long time. It wasn’t just physical—I’d had physical stuff with plenty of women in the last two years. I didn’t just wanna fuck her. I wanted to take her home and keep her there, just for me. The thought of other men walking into the diner and saying the sort of shit my friends did made me want to put somebody’s head through a wall. I hated knowing anybody else might talk to her that way. It freaked me out a little bit, how strongly I felt.
She was just my type, for sure. The curves on her, the full tits. I wanted to bury my face in them just like I wanted to bury my cock in her sweetness. I wanted to take her and make her mine, make her scream for me. I saw the way she looked at us, like we were garbage, and I wanted to wipe that look off her face.
I looked around, realizing I hadn’t seen her in a while. “Where’d she go?” I muttered.
Hook heard me. “Yeah, I want some more coffee.”
I picked up the carafe, handing it to him without saying anything. The weight of it in my hand told me there was plenty left inside. That wasn’t good enough, though. We were finishing up. I knew I felt like a thick slice of pie from the dessert case, too. I wasn’t alone.
“She sorta disappeared, didn’t she?” Mason asked. “A shame. I liked looking at her ass. And those tits. Jesus Christ.”
“Shut up about her,” I warned. “I want her for myself.”
I sensed the pride Ryder felt. Mason stepped down. “Hey, brother, whatever you say. You’ll make a cute couple.”
“Shut the fuck up.” I grinned, showing him there weren’t any hard feelings. He smiled back. Ryder was right. I had to take what I wanted. I wanted her, if only for the night. It wasn’t like I was looking for anything long-term…even though I wondered before I ever touched her if just one night would be enough. From what I’d already experienced with women, it was the ones who pretended they weren’t into the motorcycle club life who had the best time in bed.
There was only one waitress on the floor, the older chick who had seated us. I went over to her, catching her eye. “We were looking for our waitress. What’s her name again?”
“Ellie.” She looked scared. Why did she look scared?
“Right. Ellie. Where is she? We wanted dessert, and our table needs clearing.”
“I can help you with that. She’s busy at the moment.” Her nametag said Sandy. I wondered what Sandy wasn’t telling me. She had no way of knowing I’d worked my way up in the club by finding people and asking them questions until they finally answered. I had ways of knowing who was lying and who wasn’t.
“Is she all right?”
Sandy frowned. “Why do you ask? What do you care?” She didn’t look offended, more like surprised.
“I don’t know. You look like you’re pretty shaken up.”
She looked at me, like she tried to figure out if she should tell me the truth or not. “Did you see that man who came in a little while ago? The one in the suit and trench coat?”
“Oh, yeah, I did. He looked like a smug bastard.”
She snickered. “You got the bastard part right. He needed to talk to her, and I don’t think it was such a good idea.” She looked at the kitchen doors again, chewing on her lip. I put two and two together pretty fast.
“Who is he?”
“Her ex.” Just then, as she said those very words, there was a crash from the kitchen. I acted before I thought, pushing my way through the swinging doors to see what the hell was happening.
Chapter 3
Ellie
My blood ran cold when Connor followed me to the back of the kitchen, where I had just been sitting and relaxing. Relaxation was the last thing on my mind thanks to his presence. It had been weeks since I’d last seen him, glorious weeks. There was always the threat of him showing up, however. The shoe had to drop sometime.
I turned to face him, putting on my bravest attitude. “What is it?” I asked. “I have a table full of people out there, and there’s a pretty big tip riding on it. I don’t want to make them upset.”
He snickered. “A tip. That’s what you care about now? Look how low you’ve fallen. When we were together, you didn’t have to worry about things like that. You had everything you could’ve ever wanted, didn’t you?”
Yes. Everything. Except for a loving, respectful husband who didn’t hit me and hurt me whenever he had a bad day. Except for a husband who did his share around the house, his share with the baby. “Monetarily, yes.”
“Yes. You didn’t have to work then, did you? I provided everything. I made life easy for you. All you had to do was sit on your ass all day and let other people do the work for you.”
That old argument again. “Connor, I don’t know how you think the cooking and cleaning got done around the house. I really don’t.”
“The housekeeper.”
“Who only came in three days a week. I kept it spotless for you because it was how you wanted it. I cooked your favorite foods every day because that was how you wanted it, too. I raised our daughter virtually alone. Do you think it’s easy wrangling a toddler and keeping the house clean when she was hell-bent on destruction all the time? Yes, you made it so I could stay home with our daughter, and I’m grateful. But there was a lot more to it than that, and you can’t keep using that old argument ove
r and over.”
He bristled. “No court will ever believe you left for no reason. And they won’t award full custody to a woman who relies on tips from bikers to support her daughter.”
I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself as if for protection. “There’s no way I’ll let you twist this around,” I whispered.
“I don’t have to. The facts are plain. You ran off, took my daughter, and you can’t support her as well as I can. I mean, come on, Ellie. Everybody in town knows me. Hell, I have lunch scheduled with the district attorney next week. You don’t have a chance.”
He was right. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I had no way of winning against him if he took me to court. I was barely able to keep a roof over our heads and food in our mouths, but I was determined. I’d work twenty-four hours a day if it meant my daughter could be out of the clutches of an abusive narcissist like her father.
