“What do you mean? When I stopped on the road to help you? How the hell would I have known that?” The impatience in his voice was only too clear. Of course he was right, but his tone only served to irritate me, making me respond in kind.
“I don’t know what you know,” I snapped back. “Why the hell did you suggest I go to Cooper’s then? Am I supposed to believe that was just coincidence?”
“Uh, considering it’s the only garage in Cheyenne, yeah, I think that’s a reasonable assumption,” he retorted, his tone mocking.
God, he was infuriating. I fumed for a moment, not finding anything withering to shoot back, and then tried another subject. “So, how long have you been VP?”
“About a year and a half.”
“What happened to Scully?”
“Killed in a gun battle.”
That brought me up short. Scully had always been really kind to me. “Oh,” I murmured, my eyes pricking a little bit. “That’s terrible.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Now shut up and let me drive.”
I rolled my eyes and shot him a look of disgust, but his gaze remained fixed on the road and he didn’t notice. After a few minutes, we turned onto the small street my house was on. Ryker slowed up to the shake shingled house and pulled into the driveway. Before I knew it, he was out of the cab and collecting my bags. I leaped out of the cab and slammed the door. “I can get...,” I began.
“Leave it.” He grabbed my duffel and my day pack and turned toward the house. I jogged after him and watched him open the front door, noting with interest that he had a key. The screen door slammed shut behind him, and I rolled my eyes again as I opened it and stepped inside.
The living room was almost completely different from how I remembered it. The walls were painted a light sage green now, and the furniture was all new, probably chosen by Randi. To the back, the dining room table was the same, but the chairs had been replaced. A large, cumbersome chandelier was gone, and in its place was more modern track lighting. The effect was disconcerting, but I had to admit, it looked better than the worn, antiquated look that the space had when I lived there.
While I was taking stock of all the changes, Ryker had gone to my room and dumped my stuff. I continued down the hall after him and found him standing in the center of it, next to a queen-sized bed with a patterned comforter that was also new. I looked around my former room. All of the marks of my teenaged self had been removed. There were no more posters of boy bands, no more pictures of adolescent me with friends, no more stuffed animals. A wave of sadness washed over me. “It all looks so different,” I said in a small voice.
For the first time, Ryker’s tone seemed to soften. “Yeah, I imagine it must be strange being back and seeing things change.” His eyes flicked away, as if acknowledging that he was one of the changes.
“It really is. Seven years... is a long time, I guess. I don’t know what I expected,” I admitted. “It’s all just a little... overwhelming.”
“You really haven’t been back here at all in seven years?” Ryker mused. He turned and looked at me curiously. I shook my head. “Why not?” His voice was inquisitive, but not harsh.
I considered trying to explain, but the thought just made me tired. “Long story,” I said. “The short version is, Dad sent me away because he didn’t think the club was a good place for a teenage girl. And I was so mad that he sent me away to live with my aunt, that I decided to punish him for it.”
“Until now,” Ryker added.
“Until now,” I agreed.
“And you really didn’t know he and Randi had gotten married.” It was a statement rather than a question.
“No. I really didn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
“Don’t be,” I replied. “It’s not your fault. And it’s not so much that he’s remarried... It’s just...” I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“One more big change from how it used to be,” he offered.
“Yeah,” I smiled sadly. “But I guess I’ll just have to get used to it. Having a stepmom.”
“And a stepbrother,” he muttered with a short, dry laugh.
I looked and his gaze locked on mine. His eyes, at first sympathetic, seemed to change in an instant. His pupils grew large, and his brows knit into a frown. Suddenly, the heat that had been there between us back in the desert flashed again like a lightning bolt, and my breath hitched in my throat. A flame seemed to erupt inside me, burning from my chest down to lick between my legs. My lips parted involuntarily; my breathing shallowed and sped up. Ryker’s eyes widened, and then I saw them grow dark with desire. He raked them up and down my body, and suddenly I was acutely aware that we were completely alone in my bedroom. Alone in the house. Somehow I knew, looking at the naked lust in his eyes and the large bulge in his jeans, that one move would be all it would take. One small move, from either of us, and it would be all over. And God, how I wanted to make that move.
After a long, tense moment, Ryker tore his eyes from mine. “I’m in the apartment downstairs,” he said gruffly, turning away. “Let me know if you need anything.” He left the room, and I listened to the heavy steps of his boots retreating down the hallway.
Forcing myself to take a deep breath, I realized I was trembling. Shakily, I sat down on the bed and contemplated what had suddenly become my own private version of hell. So, Ryker lived downstairs. Shit. Many years ago, my father had had the lower level of the house renovated and a separate entrance built, so that it could serve as an apartment. He had been intending to take in renters, he said, but had eventually decided against it. Mostly, the apartment had served as a temporary living arrangement for club members who needed to lie low for a while. And now, apparently, Ryker called the place home. Which meant there would be no way to avoid my stepbrother. At home or at the club.
Chapter Six
Ryker
I slammed the door and stalked through my apartment to the bathroom. Turning on the water as hot as I could stand it, I stripped off my clothes, and for the second time that day, closed my eyes and thought about what it would be like to sink my aching cock deep inside Hadley’s softness. Apparently, Sherilyn’s expert ministrations had not been nearly enough. Then again, I hadn’t anticipated having to suffer through being alone with Hadley in her childhood bedroom, with nothing between us but air and tension so thick you could cut it with a goddamn knife.
I stepped under the pounding stream and took hold of my throbbing dick, stroking myself as slowly as I could stand it. Before long it was too much for me to take and I sped up, grunting loudly as I released my load against the wall in hot, thick spurts. I leaned back against the wall, panting, and let the shower stream rinse me off. Jesus Christ, this woman was going to be the end of me. But as much as I wanted her, as much as she wanted me – and I could tell she wanted me just as bad – there was not one goddamn thing I could do about it.
As my breath slowly returned to normal, I had to burst out laughing at how fate seemed to have a perpetually cruel sense of humor where I was concerned. No sooner had I decided to prospect with The Throttle, than Randi and Lon strike up a relationship. Not that that was bad in and of itself, but I knew that there would always be club members who assumed that my rise to the position of VP happened only because my ma was the president’s old lady.
Then, just as I had started working on getting Lon to start seriously considering moving the club away from meth distribution and toward more legitimate business, fuckin’ Jimmy Stocker starts making it clear he’s gunning for the VP position himself. Oh, not openly or anything, but his intentions were clear enough to me, anyway. I knew he was whispering in some of the men’s ears that I wanted to take the club’s main source of revenue and throw it away to the Chrome Warriors. It was only a matter of time before it came up at chapel. And then we’d see where the lines had been drawn.
And now, fate puts the hottest damn piece of ass I’ve ever seen right in front of me, and then makes her my stepsister s
o I can’t even fucking touch her.
I’ve never been a lucky man. In fact, until I found The Throttle, I’d say it’s pretty likely I was gonna end up dead or in jail by the time I was twenty-five. But finding the club was arguably the best thing that could have happened to me. It gave me a sense of purpose. Something to strive for. Something to fight for. As a member of The Throttle, I had a family. A life. Men who had my back, and whose backs I had. Now, as VP, my main purpose was to protect the club, to make it the best it could be.
After Scully died, Lon decided the club needed younger blood in its leadership, to help take it into the future. The other brothers had agreed. Well, most of them, anyway. I knew that there were at least a few who hadn’t been 100% behind Lon’s choice. I thought I’d changed a few of their minds since I took over as VP, but Jimmy and Stick weren’t completely on board, I knew. I figured I could handle one or two dissenting voices, though.
One of the main reasons I had wanted the VP position was that the club had been getting into some pretty hot water lately. The Throttle had a variety of ways of making money, some legit, some less so. One of the less legit ways was a little meth trade. It had started out as just a side thing – moving it around in exchange for a cut of the profits – but in the last year or two, we had been getting in deeper and deeper, until we were the main supply line for meth in the area. Trouble was, the Chrome Warriors ran a meth ring, as well, and their territory butted up against ours. A shitstorm was brewing, and we all knew it.
I was hoping that I could influence Lon to step away from the meth before it destroyed us. It wasn’t just the blowout with the Warriors I was hoping to avoid. Shit, we’d been in wars before, and I knew we could handle it. But I had seen what meth did to people. One of my best friends from when I was a kid, Nate Fortner, had gotten into the stuff when we were in high school. Hell, we both had. But whereas I had somehow had sense enough to back away before it took me, Nate hadn’t. The last I’d heard or seen of him, he was living in a burned-out trailer the next town over, cooking his own and smoking up most of the profits. I knew he wasn’t long for this world.
I didn’t want the club involved in shit like that. Guns, I could handle. Other contraband, too. But we didn’t need to be dealing in meth. And I was hoping I could convince Lon of that.
But now, right in the middle of all these goddamn plans, drops Hadley Cooper.
I shut off the water and stepped out of the shower. Grabbing the towel off its nearby hook, I wrapped it around my waist and went out to the kitchen to grab a beer, which I drank sitting on the couch and staring into space. Fuckin’ rotten luck. When I had left Hadley on the side of the road, I had been hoping she would come to the garage so I could finish what I’d started. Well, I got part of my wish, anyway, in the worst possible way. My fuckin’ stepsister. Unbelievable. Still, it wasn’t like we were actually related by blood or anything. Would it really be such a bad thing, if she and I...?
I snorted and took another swig of beer. Of course it would. That we weren’t actually related didn’t matter. Even if I wasn’t trying to get Lon to trust my judgment enough to turn the club in another direction, I still couldn’t betray him like that. I knew from the other brothers that part of the reason Lon had sent her away in the first place is that he didn’t want her around a bunch of horny bikers as she grew into an adult. And I could completely understand that. Hadley was amazing: drop-dead gorgeous, and obviously smart. She was too good for the likes of a dirtbag like me.
If I wanted to do what I knew was best for the club, I had to decide once and for all that Hadley was off limits.
As I sat there on the couch, watching the afternoon sun begin to dip down toward the horizon through the sliding glass window, I heard a knock on my door. “Yeah?” I called.
The door opened a crack and my mom’s head peeked through. “Ryker, your dad wanted me to make a family dinner for the four of us tonight. You wanna come up around seven?”
Shit. About the last thing I wanted to do was participate in a goddamn family dinner right now. But I knew that if I was gonna live in the same house as Hadley, I would have to suck it up and pretend that my feelings for her were nothing but fraternal. “Sure, Randi. I’ll be up.”
As she closed the door, I finished my beer and stood up to get dressed.
I would just have to ignore Hadley Cooper as much as possible.
Chapter Seven
Hadley
I woke up the next morning still fuming from the experience of dinner the night before. Randi had insisted on making a “family dinner” for us all, so I got to spend my very first evening sitting around the table with my father, my new stepmother, and my new stepbrother.
Yup. One big happy family.
I sat across from Ryker over a meal of fettucine and garlic bread, trying to act normal. Ryker picked at his food and didn’t say much. My dad beamed like a patriarch at the head of his table. Randi had an onslaught of questions for me about school, what I had majored in, and what I wanted to do next. I tried my best to give answers that were as vague as possible, since in reality, I had no idea what I would do next. And sitting there, across from my new stepbrother, I had no idea what I was doing there anymore, either.
When dinner was over, I got up to help Randi clear the table, and the men moved into the living room. In the kitchen, Randi took dishes from me with a look in her eye as though she was trying to think of how to say something. Finally, she cleared her throat and said, “You know, your dad is really glad you’re back.”
“I’m not back. I’m just here for a visit,” I corrected.
“Sorry, I know,” she nodded, and looked down pensively. “It’s just... I know that he’s regretted the decision to send you away. He was afraid he’d never see you again. He’s just... really glad you’re here.”
“Did he actually say that? That he was sorry he sent me away?” I asked her pointedly. Randi’s face fell at my words, and I felt a little bad about my tone. I hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings. But I knew my dad.
“Not... not in so many words,” she admitted. “But he talks about you, Hadley. Not to the men. But he talks about you to me. How proud he always was of you. How smart you are.” She turned on the water in the sink and tipped some dishwashing liquid into the water. “He kept tabs on you, you know. He knew you were getting close to graduating. I know he wished he could have been there to see you walk across that stage.”
I snorted softly to myself. I hadn’t walked across the stage at all. There wasn’t anyone to see me do it, so it seemed pointless. The only celebrating I had done was to crack open a beer for myself the day I got my diploma in the mail.
This line of conversation was making me uncomfortable, so I decided to change the subject. “You and Dad seem happy together,” I said. “I’m glad.”
Randi looked up at me with a smile, her eyes shining bright. “We are. He’s a good man, Hadley. A good husband.” She turned off the water and put her hands on her hips. “Now, you go out there and get caught up with your father. I don’t need any help with these dishes.”
Randi hustled me out of the kitchen, but when I went into the living room, there was no sign of my dad. Ryker was sitting on the couch, flipping channels with the remote.
“Where’s Lon?” I asked him.
Without looking at me, he muttered, “Left. Club business.” Ryker stood and turned off the television. “I gotta go, too. Tell Randi thanks for dinner.” And with that, he turned and strode out the front door. A few seconds later, the engine on his Harley started, and I heard the bike pull away, accelerating into the night.
I should have been relieved. I know I should have. But what I felt instead was a mixture of disappointment and fury. “Asshole,” I seethed.
“What?” Randi said, poking her head through the kitchen door. “Where are the men?”
“Club business,” I said tonelessly.
She laughed like someone who was used to it. “It’s always club business.”
&nb
sp; “Yeah,” I nodded. “Always club business.”
I spent that night tossing and turning in the unfamiliar queen-sized bed, trying as hard as I could to get Ryker Stone out of my mind. Finally, I managed to fall into a fitful, dreamless sleep. The next morning, Randi was off to work early and I had the house to myself. I was still replaying the previous night’s dinner in my head and trying to decide what to make of it all when my cell phone rang. Lon was calling from the garage to tell me my car was ready.
“Just had to replace the worn seals. Should be fine now,” he told me.
“Thanks, Dad,” I said sincerely. It was funny; after so many years of being on my own, having someone take care of me felt unexpectedly comforting. I felt a small lump form in my throat, and swallowed it back.
“No problem, baby girl,” he replied. “Just one of the perks of having an old man with a garage. I called Ryker and asked him to bring you in to the garage to pick the car up whenever you’re ready.”
Great. Well, at least once my car was back, I wouldn’t be trapped here with no wheels. “Okay, thanks, Dad. I appreciate it.”
“See you later, baby girl.” I heard the click as he hung up. I threw my phone on the bed and decided to get started with my day.
I went to the kitchen, rummaged around for a bag of coffee grounds, and started up the maker. While I waited for it to be ready, I headed into the bathroom to take a quick shower. Back in my bedroom, I towel-dried my hair, slipped on a pair of cotton sleep shorts and a tank top, then went back out to the kitchen to grab my coffee. I had just finished pouring myself a cup when a deep voice behind me murmured, “Good morning.”
I shrieked in shock and turned to see Ryker sitting at the kitchen table.
“Oh, my God!” I cried, my face flushing. “You scared the life out of me! I almost dropped my coffee! Don’t you know how to knock?”
Throttle MC: A Stepbrother Romance Page 4
