Big Bad Neighbor: A Single Dad Next Door Romance

by Tia Siren

  “Can we hurry with it?” She regretted her use of modern terms. She wasn’t talking like Helen did, that much was for sure. She was glad they were both from Virginia so that her accent would be much the same.

  “Yes, madam, if you would like to. I can try to hurry. Put a rush on it.” He grinned slightly, enjoying the new phrase. “However, if you want quality work, it will take at least five sessions.”

  She sighed. “All right. You may do whatever suits you, Sir Anthony.”

  “Please call me Eric.”

  “All right, Eric.”

  “Stand here.” He came over to her and adjusted her as if she was a mannequin, being careful not to touch her too frequently and cautious about where he put his hands.

  For the next few hours, she stood listening to him. Whenever she wanted to speak, he would shush her abruptly. “You must not move!” He would say in a firm voice. She resisted grinning whenever he said it, mostly because he had usually just asked a question and she was trying to answer.

  “How am I supposed to answer your question if you keep yelling at me not to move?” She asked at one point.

  “I guess you will not be able to answer my questions then.” He looked around the canvas at her to see if she could tell he was joking with her. She could see it and it warmed her heart. He talked to her about his family, how they had immigrated from France originally but that he had no ties to the country and couldn’t speak the language. She found out he was born and raised here in Virginia, he had two sisters and a brother, whom he adored and that his favorite animal was the horse.

  “Such majestic creatures they are, you know,” he said. “They have minds of their own. They will do what they want to do whenever they want to do it. They are free spirits, roaming the mountains around us.”

  “I agree.”

  “Do you?”

  She nodded. “Yes, I do.”

  “You mustn’t move.” This time, he said it very gently.

  Five days later, after hours of standing for the portrait, Eve was relieved to hear he was finished.

  “Come and take a look,” he said, standing back. “I hope for your approval.”

  When she moved around to see the front of the painting, she felt a wave of emotion. It was exactly as she remembered. She would surely be able to get back now.

  The problem was that she had come to think of this as her home, this time as her own. There had been no more dances or balls, only standing for the portrait being created with strong hands by a handsome man she had come to adore. His voice was deep and gentle. His words were always encouraging and positive. He held an outlook on life that matched hers, in a way, at least, how she felt when she wasn’t constantly being questioned by a negative, angry man.

  “Do you approve?” He asked in a gentle voice.

  She looked at him and then back at the painting. “I do.” She breathed.

  “I am happy to hear that. Will you be giving it to your father for his birthday?”

  She wondered how he knew about that little joke she had shared with her father earlier that week. She laughed softly. “It was never really intended for that but…I might.”

  She had been waiting so long for the portrait. But in the meantime, she had fallen in love. The look in Eric’s eyes when she looked at him made her feel as if perhaps the feeling was mutual. She wasn’t sure she could leave now.

  “How…did you know I was thinking of giving it to him?” She asked.

  He lifted one hand and brushed a lock of her hair back from her cheek. The slight touch sent chills over Eve’s body.

  “I talked with him this morning before coming in to finish the portrait.”

  “Oh?” She gazed at him, biting her lower lip.

  “Yes. I…I also asked him a very important question.”

  She felt her heart thumping when she gazed up at him. She wanted to grab him and plant a huge kiss on his soft-looking lips. But she couldn’t do that. How inappropriate would that be!

  “I asked him for your hand in marriage, Helen.”

  She almost fainted but held her own. “Oh?” The question came out shaky. She cleared her throat.

  “Would you like to go for a walk with me sometime? Perhaps we could get to know each other better before taking a step that large?”

  “What did my father say?”

  Eric smiled. “He gave his approval.”

  She chewed on her bottom lip. She was supposed to go home. She thought about her grandmother.

  When she looked back up at Eric, she knew what her decision would be.

  “Will I be able to talk on this walk?” She asked.

  He laughed. “You will be able to talk all you like, my lady.”

  “Then yes. I will stay with you.”

  “Stay?” He tilted his head.

  “Yes. A walk would be lovely. So very lovely.”

  He took her hand and brought it to his lips, kissing it softly. “That makes me very happy.”

  She could only smile at him. She was about to change her family’s history books.

  *****

  THE END

  MC Romance Collection

  MOTORCYCLE CLUB Romance – Bad Boy Biker’s Baby

  1

  Sherry Loveland hated her new job, but at least it was paying the bills. And it was a good starting point, with a lot of opportunities to move up within the company. She lived in Texas, near the border, in a small town called Happy. Happy, Texas, was anything but, with dusty roads and small squat homes and shops along Main Street.

  Sherry had always been good with numbers, and she had found a job as an accountant for a small company that sold plastic to larger companies who then molded the plastic into something. Water bottles mostly. It was boring work in a boring building with boring people. But, maybe, boring was exactly what Sherry needed.

  Growing up most of her friends had called her Love, a play on her name and the fact that she burned through men the way other people burned through underwear. Sherry was short with round hips and big breasts, and she had long blond hair that men loved to take hold of while they were in bed.

  Sherry had grown up in Oklahoma, and it was right after high school that she met Randy, a tall, athletic man a few years older who played minor league baseball. He had swept her off her feet and then revealed his true colors. He was, to put it quite frankly, the way Sherry had said to her best friend, Sue, an asshole. The relationship had lasted two years; the whole time Sherry had been telling herself to leave. Finally, she did. And when she did something, she did it right. She didn’t just leave Randy; she left Oklahoma.

  And she ended up in Happy and got her boring job. She had been there a little over three months, and the only thing in Happy, Texas, that she found made her happy was Earl’s, a shady biker bar on the outskirts of town. It was filled with rough men, loose women, and a blaring jukebox that hadn’t been updated since the eighties. It was exactly the kind of place Sherry had always loved.

  It was Friday night when Sherry met him, the man who would change her life. She left work and headed straight for Earl’s. She had worked late, trying to win favor from her boss, an old man named Michael who was stingy with money. She could use a raise; the small apartment she rented near the center of town had a bug problem and an obnoxious neighbor problem as well. There were a number of nice little homes in town, empty and waiting for her. On her salary, though, she couldn’t afford one.

  One step at a time; that was what Sherry kept telling herself. She was young still, just twenty-one, and she had just left a horrible man who didn’t deserve her. She had left everything behind in Oklahoma—her friends, her family, the stupid nickname. She wasn’t Love anymore; she was herself. Sherry. She just needed her job, and Earl’s, and she would make it.

  Earl’s was a wooden building that seemed as though it might fall over in a stiff breeze. The parking lot was gravel, and there were always a few cars in it, and a long line of Harley’s at the entrance. Sherry pulled into a spot near the door
and headed for the bar.

  She was a bit overdressed, she knew; most of the women in the bar would be dressed like the men: blue jeans, T-shirts, leather vests. Biker chicks. Sherry was attracted to bad boys, but she would never call herself a biker chick. She was dressed for work, with a short skirt and heels and a tight-fitting blouse. She knew her boss, Michael, had hired her for her big tits more than her way with numbers, though her way with numbers was just as impressive as her bust, so she played up her good looks in hopes that the man would want to keep her around. Sherry was smart, and she had no problem playing to any strengths she had, including the looks she had been blessed with.

  She had worked late enough that, as she stepped into the bar, the sky outside was rather dark, the sun just a bright line on the western horizon. Heads turned as she made for the bar, sitting on a stool there and folding one hosed leg over the other.

  She had come to recognize some of the faces, older men and women who came every day, or at least every Friday and Saturday like Sherry.

  But there was a new group now, in the corner, seven or so men and a few women. One man seemed to be holding court, sitting at the head of the long table and downing beer from a massive glass stein. He was relatively young. Sherry wouldn’t put him past thirty, while a lot of the men in Earl’s had thick gray beards that put them near fifty or even sixty. This man was clean shaven, or at least for a biker, which he clearly was; stubble grew on his chin and upper lip, dark like his hair. He wore a black vest with nothing underneath, and as Sherry sipped at a beer and watched him, he turned, and she saw a coiled snake sitting atop a skull on the back of his vest. Other men at the table wore the same symbol, as well as one of the women, a thick girl with red hair.

  The man saw Sherry and kept glancing in her direction, and Sherry was sure he was going to come up to her. But before he ever could, the night wore on and a fight broke out.

  There had been scuffles at Earl’s almost every night Sherry had been there, but this one was something more. A man in a vest with a different insignia came up to speak with the young man with the stubble. Their voices grew louder, and then fists were flying. Other men came to join them, and then the whole place was nothing but yelling and fighting and punching.

  A switchblade came out and one man was stabbed. He fell back on wild feet, knocking into the bar, shaking it so violently that Sherry had to reach forward and steady her beer. Earl himself was behind the bar most nights, and he was a big man with a beard that fell almost to his belly button.

  “Enough!” he roared. “No stabbing in here, you idiots.”

  The fight stopped for a moment, and then one man yelled for everyone to go outside, and they did. Sherry had always been drawn to excitement, so she followed the brawl outside and stood near the front door with the other women. Almost every man in the bar had chosen a side and was fighting, and Sherry saw that even the man who had been stabbed was fighting once more, a hand clamped determinedly over his bleeding gut. The bikers were all careful to keep away from the row of motorcycles; that much was plain. But they paid no such respect to the cars in the parking lot. And as Sherry watched on in horror, the handsome man with the chin stubble lifted a fat guy into the air and slammed him onto her car. Her car. The windshield shattered.

  Without thought, Sherry marched into the midst of the fighting and tapped the man with the stubble on the shoulder. He spun around, his fist raised as if to strike her. But when he saw it was a woman, he put his hand down.

  “What do you want?” he snarled. “I’m busy here.”

  Sherry saw that his name was sewn onto the lapel of his leather vest, or at least a nickname: Colt.

  “That’s my damned car!” Sherry shouted. She had been with an abusive man for too long to be afraid of Colt.

  “Get out of here. You’re going to get hurt,” Colt said, and he took her by the arm and led her back to the entrance of Earl’s.

  “What about my car?”

  “Why don’t you go order us a couple of beers, sweet thing, and when I’m done kicking ass out here, we can talk it over.”

  And with that, he turned and dove back into the ruckus. Sherry fumed, but she did as the man had asked. She went in and claimed a small table after ordering two beers, and twenty minutes later the cops had been called, the fight had broken up, and a few men had been carted off to jail. Colt wasn’t one of them—even though the fight had started with him and the other man—and he came in and sat across from Sherry. She waited for him to speak, but first he took his beer and downed the whole thing.

  “You only got me one?” he asked, smiling across the table.

  “You broke my windshield. I can’t drive like that. I can’t afford to fix it.”

  “Well shit, if it’s all just money,” Colt said, and he pulled out a thick wallet and tossed a couple of hundred dollar bills in front of her. “That should cover it. And I can give you a ride tonight.”

  Sherry didn’t know what to say. Colt grinned and held out his hand. “I’m Colt,” he said. Sherry shook it.

  “That’s a stupid name,” she said, and Colt laughed.

  “It’s not my real name. It’s like the gun. Big, powerful.”

  “You aren’t that big,” Sherry said. She was annoyed by the man’s bravado, and she was even more annoyed that she felt a strong attraction to him.

  Colt just laughed, but Sherry was pretty sure he flexed his muscles a bit as he did so. She couldn’t help but smile.

  “You new here?” he asked her then. “I ain’t never seen you before.”

  “Moved her a couple of months ago. I’ve been here every weekend. Where you been?”

  “I like to ride,” he said, and he didn’t elaborate.

  “That’s a fancy vest,” Sherry said.

  Colt frowned as he looked at her, trying to decide if she was making fun of him or not. “You heard of the Vipers?”

  “No. Is that your club?”

  “Yeah. My daddy started it. I run it now.”

  “I don’t know much about motorcycles,” Sherry said truthfully.

  “Then why you hanging out in a biker bar?”

  “Cheapest beer,” the she said with a grin, and Colt couldn’t help but return it.

  “You want another one?” Colt asked as he stood, and in answer, Sherry slammed her head back and downed her beer.

  They had a few more drinks. Time passed and soon it was after midnight. When Sherry and Colt stepped out of the bar, the sky was as black as pitch, except for the millions of stars shining among thick gray clouds.

  Colt led the way to his bike, a monstrous thing made of chrome and metal, and offered her a helmet he had sitting on the back of the bike. He didn’t put one on himself. Sherry slid the helmet over her head and then climbed on behind him, having to forgo modesty in her short skirt.

  The handsome, muscular man backed the bike out of its spot and then kicked the engine on. The thing roared like an animal, and they were off.

  Sherry had never been on a motorcycle before, and she found the whole thing exciting and liberating. Colt was practiced and the ride was smooth, but he twisted the handlebars back far and they flew down the empty streets. She had told him where she lived before they had started riding, and she realized he had asked her then because everything was so damn loud that he never would have heard her while they were riding, even if she yelled in his year.

  Her arms were around his waist, and she was worried for a moment that she was holding on too tight, but she didn’t dare lessen her grip. Her long hair, which stuck out from under the helmet, whipped in every direction in the wind, and the ten-minute drive back home became a five-minute one on the back of Colt’s bike. He pulled up in front of the two-story apartment building, one foot on the curb as he cut the engine. Sherry climbed off the bike and handed Colt her helmet. He put it behind him, using a strap or two to keep it in place.

  “You going to invite me in?” he asked, grinning. She noticed his teeth were as perfect as any she had seen before, w
hite and straight. Holding on to him had been intoxicating, even more so than the beers she had drunk. He smelled like a man should: He was clean, a hint of soap, but there had been stale sweat, beer, and cigarette smoke mixed into his musk as well. The bike had been roaring and vibrating, and Sherry had enjoyed the sensation between her legs. She very much wanted to invite Colt in, but she knew she shouldn't. She had left Oklahoma to get away from a man; she didn’t need to come to Happy, Texas, and find another one so quickly.

  “Invite you in? For coffee?” she asked, a playful smirk spreading across her plump lips.

  “Do I look like the kind of guy who drinks coffee?”

  “Then what do you want to come in for?”

  “I want to fuck you,” Colt said, and she appreciated that he wasn’t the kind of guy who beat around the bush. But still, she wasn’t going to give in to him, and certainly not that easily.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Thanks for the ride.”

  And with that, she turned and headed inside. As she unlocked her apartment door, she heard Colt’s motorcycle roar to life, and then it screamed as he sped away.

  Inside, Sherry undressed and climbed into bed. She stared up at the ceiling, thinking about Colt, and before she knew what she was doing, she was imagining him there with her, naked in her bed, a throbbing cock jutting out from his pelvis. She thought of him taking her, and her hand snaked between her thighs.

  2

  The morning after Sherry had met Colt, she used his money to have her car towed to the local body shop and a new windshield put in. The body shop was only a few dusty blocks from her apartment, so she walked down to pick her car up when they called her to tell her it was ready.

  It was Saturday, and Sherry busied herself during the day with running errands. She stocked her fridge and pantry and then bought a few new blouses for work. The whole day she only had one thing on her mind, though. Colt.

  She managed to wait until seven at night before she rushed over to Earl’s, hoping the man would be there. She wasn’t disappointed. He was sitting in the corner once again, with the same group of men with the same insignia on their backs. The Vipers.