Biker B*tch

by ANDIE J. CHRISTOPHER

  “And you always do what you’re supposed to?” She faced him with the ghost of a smile curving her mouth, as if his near-failure to take care of her was a good memory.

  “How about we start over and pretend we’ve just met?”

  She snorted. “That wouldn’t help your case.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re still the same. And I’m not.”

  “Then why are you back here?”

  “To make wine.”

  “Are you sure it’s not about something else?” He hoped to hear she was finally ready to come home for good. Ten years was too long for her to be away. Where he could protect her.

  It still made him angry to think that Skyler’s father put her in danger. If Jacob Clark wasn’t living out his dotage courtesy of the California Department of Corrections, Travis would have found a way to put him in the ground.

  He finished the beer and set the bottle on her step so he wouldn’t say what he wanted to do to her father out loud.

  Needing to feel her skin against his, just to be sure she was really here, he moved to touch her then. Even though he was afraid she’d pull away, he couldn’t help but trace the freckles on her jaw. His fingers moved lightly over the silk of her skin. She stiffened for a moment, but leaned her face into his hand as he moved it to cradle the back of her neck. She might not think she wanted him anymore, but her body didn’t lie.

  “You sure?” he repeated.

  “Abner…” She wouldn’t push him away now that her bitchy attitude had made his dick hard. He moved closer, and she pressed her hands against his chest. They were torn up, but her fingers were long and elegant. She pushed him away as her fingertips pulled him in. As if she didn’t know whether she wanted him to stay or go. Taking it as a good sign, he leaned in for a kiss. He could feel her pulse speeding at her throat. Her eyelids lowered to half-mast. Her lips parted and he was close enough to feel puffs of breath against his mouth.

  At the last second, before his lips touched hers, she turned her head away and stepped back. He let out a feral sound, almost a growl.

  “You should go. I’m not doing this with you. Not any of it. Not ever again.”

  She could have punched him in the dick and it would have hurt less than her telling him that he’d never get to taste her mouth again.

  He turned and moved toward his bike.

  “I’m going. But I’ll be back.” He put on his helmet on, started the bike, and rode away.

  Compared to the hotter than hell reception she’d received less than an hour ago from Travis, the frosty one from the Sebastopol Winemakers’ Association surprised Skyler. All the guys who came up here in the sixties and seventies, after getting high in the Haight got boring, had seemingly lost all the insights and love for the universe they’d found while dropping acid.

  “Have you tried revising how you tie off the end of the hoses?” One of Skyler’s neighbors asked another stupid question; clearly, he wanted to die today.

  After all, she wasn’t a tech carpetbagger; she was a local daughter. But then she’d realized that after being gone ten years, she was a stranger. Which, along with her father’s bad acts, put her in the worst of both worlds—she was an interloper with some stinky baggage.

  “Of course, I did. I’m not a hobbyist.” She immediately regretted the words. Several of the people at the meeting were, in fact, enthusiastic hobbyists. Might as well offend damn near everyone else while she was at it. “And I have a double Ph.D. in enology and viticulture. One of my two thesis projects was on irrigation tactics. If there’s no water, it doesn’t matter how how I tie off the hoses.”

  “Roy signed the agreement on behalf of the vineyard. You’ll have to leave it to the lawyers if you want to wriggle your way out of it.” Merle Givens, the owner of the Givens Family Winery and current user of the lion’s share of her water, leveled a hard look at her. Of course, he was going to tell her to get lawyers involved. And, when she did, he’d yap his jaw all over town about what a bitch she was.

  Who did she think she was? As soon as she’d walked into the room, she’d felt about an inch tall. Everyone looked at her like she didn’t belong. Like she was the worst thing you could be. An outsider. Most of the people here—and most of them were guys—she’d known since she was a kid. Her father had treated them and their families. They’d ruffled her hair when leaving his office and gone to her mom’s funeral.

  Now they looked at her like she was an inconvenience.

  “We should move on to planning the Pinot Classic and who’s going to get one of the tasting rooms at the Barlow,” Merle said. So he was just going to pretend he hadn’t told her to shut up and sit down like a good little woman.

  Skyler remained standing. “I don’t think we were done with the last topic.”

  A couple of the members started their own side conversation, as if they knew they were going to be in this for a good, long while.

  “And I said we were.” Merle’s mouth curled into a self-satisfied sneer. Skyler hadn’t wanted to hit someone so much in years, maybe not since slapping Travis across his face.

  And thinking about how angry and vulnerable she’d been then wasn’t going to get the job done here. Thinking about how seeing him again made her feel was going to do nothing but hurt her chances of getting her water back.

  She knew the drought had left everyone in a hard place with water rights. And it wasn’t like she needed much. She actually wanted her vines to struggle. Sweet, coddled grapes wouldn’t work. The kind of wine she wanted to make required grapes like the ones that grew on the Sonoma Coast. Pinot noir grapes that had to work to survive, planted in Sebastopol soil would make the perfect wine.

  Merle Givens knew it, too. And he had more than enough water. She knew he often helped out neighbors. So this wasn’t about the water. Not really. This was about the fact that she needed water.

  Skyler hated feeling like a beggar. She hated having to play the supplicant in front of people who used to come to her parents’ house for dinner.

  “What’s this really about, Merle?”

  “It’s about a contract, being good on your word, and it’s about the fact that I bought those water rights fair and square.”

  “I looked at the contract, and it doesn’t give you permission to drain my creek dry. I know the water table here isn’t as healthy as it ought to be. I understand we’re in a historic drought. But I also noticed that you haven’t revised how you tie off the ends of your irrigation hoses. In fact, walking along your property line, it looks a whole lot like you’re wasting water—given how messy your vine rows are.”

  She took a deep breath, considered for a moment whether to continue. The side conversations all stopped. She hadn’t had this many people staring at her with their mouths as open as fly motels since one frat party a long, long time ago when she stood on a coffee table and took her top off after losing a bet.

  That same sense of “fuck you” came up through her gut right then, and she continued. “If you need help making sure pests don’t get to your vine rows, you should just ask. I’m sure all your buddies will jump to your aid. Hell, I’ll send some of my guys over. You can take Roy.”

  She was pretty sure Roy would just refuse to go, but even a pipe dream of getting rid of him did her mood some good. Roy had a contract with her vineyard that Michael’s lawyers hadn’t found a way to break.

  Skyler made eye contact with every last one of the guys who had nodded along with Merle when he tried to dismiss her. Old hippies. They all claimed to be about love and peace and community, but they were still a goddamned boys’ club. One who held the sins of her father against her.

  Sins she had played a role in.

  A small part of her wanted to sit down at that thought. She was the Devil’s daughter; spawn of the man who had brought drugs and degradation to the trailer park down the street and into their quaint little town. Daughter of the man who’d killed a favorite local son.

  Never mind that drugs
would have found their way in regardless of what her father had done. Never mind that all these dudes probably smoked pot and made one of humanity’s oldest intoxicants. Doc Clark had brought the machinery to town, a group of men who threatened the way of life they fought for. Her father had shattered their illusions; he reminded them what a man could turn into when he was broken.

  And Skyler was the reminder of something they’d had a decade to put behind them. Some of them met her eyes, and she could see how badly they wanted her gone. If Michael lost interest in being a winemaker, none of these men would give her a job. She’d be on her own. Sort of like she’d always been—an exile from her home. A foreigner and a woman who would never have the opportunity to make something no one could take from her. Something lasting.

  If she backed down and lost this small battle, they’d expect her to roll over every damn time. So, she decided to make a point. She reached into her purse and pulled out the contract Merle had cited as the final word on the matter.

  She tore it in half the long way and pushed it toward the middle of the table.

  “I’ll expect you to stop using Blue Sky Cellars’ water immediately. If you have an issue with the terms of our new agreement, I’d be happy to get you my lawyer’s name and number.” Despite the fact that she was about two seconds from throwing up all over the table, mooting her performance, she smiled and looked Merle straight in the eye. “You wanted to talk about the Pinot Classic? Michael’s offered to sponsor four of the tables.”

  Maybe ten thousand dollars would buy her out of the doghouse with these people. She doubted it. Only time and really good wine would do that. And maybe not having another tantrum at a meeting.

  4

  Diving head first into a bottle of Patron was maybe not the best way to deal with the stress of the winemakers’ association meeting—and seeing Travis again. Now that someone was banging the trailer door off its hinges, she realized tequila was definitely not the answer. Tequila was another problem.

  “Go away.”

  She didn’t want to see anyone from town. If Travis came back, she’d have to ignore him for the sake of her sanity and avoidance of hangovers.

  The pounding stopped, and she heard a key turn in the lock. She let out a muffled scream into the pillow. It was even worse than Travis coming back. It was the only other person with a key: Michael. Not only would she have to tell him all about her run-in with Merle Givens and seeing Travis again to explain why she had her first hangover in years, she would have to deal with his flibbity-gibbity, chipper morning personality.

  “Rise and shine, sweetheart.”

  She turned her head away from him and put the pillow back over her face. “That key was only for emergencies.”

  “Oh, this is going to be good.” He put a bag of something that smelled delicious on the small, stainless steel counter and brought over a paper cup that was hopefully full of coffee. “This is the first time you’ve been hungover since you were helping me get over Kevin.”

  She took the pillow off her face and gave him a flattening look. He was ridiculously handsome, with his longish black hair and striking green eyes. And the body—he could have a career as an underwear model, but being able to code made him more money. A lot more money. He had enough cash to bankroll her dream.

  He was really the catch of all catches. He knew it and worked it to his advantage. Fortunately, he wasn’t interested in getting in her knickers. No doubt Michael would understand why she was tortured by thoughts of what Travis was packing if they ever met, though.

  He waved the cup of coffee under her nose for a brief moment before she sat up and snatched it from him. He reached into one of the bags he’d brought and tossed a bottle of water on the bed. Her head swam and her stomach lurched when he flopped down next to her.

  “Spill, bitch.”

  “First I’m your sweetheart, and now I’m a bitch? Not fair.”

  “I don’t like to have to wait for answers.”

  Skyler growled at him. Between the money and the good looks, he always got what he wanted from everyone, including her. She had to at least make a show of hesitating, just to get on his nerves. But the words barely stayed in her mouth as she took a fortifying sip of coffee. The heat and caffeine started to revive her almost instantaneously.

  “I fucked up at the winemakers’ meeting yesterday.”

  He rolled his eyes. “What did you do?”

  “I tore up Givens’ water rights contract in front of everyone.”

  “I knew you were going to be trouble, but I had no idea it would be this bad,” he said with a deep-set frown, but a sinister smirk pulled at his lips. “You have to make nice.”

  “We also have to water the fucking grapes, Michael. And being nice wasn’t going to keep him from using our water.”

  “Do I need to call the lawyer?”

  “No. I think he got my point. And it wasn’t about the water anyway. It was about the fact that I came back to town at all. No one wants me here.”

  “I’m sure you’re exaggerating. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  She didn’t have the energy to have this conversation with him again. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t known what her father was up to. She was an accomplice—a symbol. Everyone wanted her gone for good. Except for one person, and that was something she could talk about.

  “Travis is still in town.” Michael had heard all about Travis the first time they drank a bottle of very cheap wine together in the dorms.

  “The Travis? High-school-crush Travis? The only man on earth who can resist you?”

  She touched the side of her nose with her index finger. “That’s the one.”

  “Still here?”

  “He does something with cars in town. He followed me here yesterday after I ran away from him in the feed store.”

  “You ran away from him? Please tell me you invited him in and did naughty, naked things all night.”

  She giggled despite herself. Of course, he would encourage her to give in and do the hedonistic thing.

  “Get the baked goods, please.”

  With a sigh, he got up and grabbed the good-smelling, grease-stained paper bag from her counter. When he handed it to her, she looked inside and part of her melted when she saw he’d brought her strawberry-cream cheese croissants. The only thing to beat the hungover-very-confused-pussy issues she had going on.

  She pulled the croissant from the bag, took a bite of the flaky confection, and moaned. After she’d chewed a whole bite, she said, “He almost laid a kiss on me outside. I turned my head at the last minute.”

  “Is he fat now? Did he lose his hair?” Michael grabbed a pastry and inhaled half of it.

  “Nope. He looks better than ever.”

  He groaned his displeasure. “Then what the fuck is wrong with you? I swear to God, I’ll never understand women.”

  She chuckled and waved a pastry at him. “Y’all are not simple, either.”

  “Come on, sweetheart. This is tough to understand. Why wouldn’t you—or anyone—take the opportunity to jump on the one person you’ve wanted since your boobies sprouted?”

  Skyler looked down at her chest. “To be fair, I’ve wanted him since before I had these. You’ll remember that I didn’t get them until college.” He goosed her right boob with his greasy fingers. “Stop it.”

  He finally got serious. “Is this about your dad?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What your dad did was not your fault. You have to know that.”

  “People sure acted like it was.”

  “That was a few people. Not everyone.”

  “I left before I could talk to Debbie. Try to apologize for Isaac. If I had been there—” She knew how that sentence ended. If she’d gotten to the house and been with Isaac, she’d probably be dead, too.

  “Maybe she’s still around and you can fix things.” He had a point. If Travis’s mom still lived in town, Skyler would run into her eventually. Damn. She took another sip of coff
ee.

  “Are you going to see him again?”

  Remembering his touch, wondering if he’d touch her again if he did come back made her lower belly clench with want. “He said he’d be back.”

  “Did he now? And what are you going to do when he does?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t really know him. Not now.”

  “You almost knew him biblically.”

  “The operative word is ‘almost.’”

  Michael shrugged. “You know, you didn’t have to come back here. To this vineyard.”

  She rolled her eyes. He had found a reason to nix the equally lovely plots the realtor had shown them in the Willamette Valley and Edna Valley. He wanted her close to him in San Francisco. And he’d been trying to get her to work through her past for years. According to him, and his years and years of therapy, her anger issues, her inability to commit, all came from what had happened here. He’d promised that he would never abandon her, but he wanted her to come home and face her demons, see that not everyone in Sebastopol had turned their backs on her.

  “I know that.”

  “Don’t you think he’s part of the reason why you had to come back here?”

  “I don’t even know how well I knew him when I was a kid. I was a kid, and I had a crush on him. I probably would have been blind to it had he joined the Diablos, even. I thought I loved him, but maybe I just loved the idea of him. Like I thought my father loved me. And that he was just going through a phase after my mom died.”

  “You knew well enough to stay with Travis and his family instead of with your dad most of the time. Even if you weren’t conscious of the fact that your dad was a criminal mastermind, your subconscious knew you were safe here. With him.” Skyler gave her best friend a royal side-eye. “So, are you going to see him again?”

  “Doesn’t seem like I’ll have a choice.”

  “Well, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  Her own laugh caught her off guard and she snorted coffee up her nose. There wasn’t much Michael wouldn’t do.