As I guided the big chromed-out bike to the curb in front of the brick apartment building I had to admit that it felt a little like I was poking fate with a stick by heading down south. Things weren’t exactly sunshine and roses after I left but no one else had been taken from this Earth too soon while I was overseas. Jules didn’t have to put another woman he loved in the ground and my younger brother didn’t have to weep over the loss of another mother while I was away. Things were good for them, and then they weren’t. It logically couldn’t be tied to my return from the desert but man, it sure felt like someone out there really had it in for me and those that cared the most about me. Six months after my boots hit American soil the woman who was our de facto matriarch, who was our guiding light, and who took care of all the Churchill men when we were unwilling and unable to care for ourselves, had gone down when nothing else in this life had been able to level her. I wouldn’t say I was a superstitious man, but I had to wonder if that was some kind of cosmic reminder of how drastically I managed to fuck things up. I got a little bit of good and I destroyed it effortlessly. It kind of felt like the universe was warning my family of how destructive love could be when I was around. That also didn’t bode well for the perky redhead that was standing on the edge of the curb tapping her booted toe as she talked to another young woman I vaguely recognized from my nights watching over the bar.
The young Hispanic woman was probably the most objectively beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on. Everything about her seemed like it had been handpicked by the keepers of beauty and grace. The long waves of her caramel hair belonged in a frilly shampoo commercial and her skin was perfectly golden and so flawless that she almost looked like she couldn’t be real. She was too skinny and way too fragile for my particular taste. She looked like she was ready to bolt back into the building the second I turned the engine off and leaned the bike to the side on its stand. She had to know there was no way I would hurt her, I’d spent the last several months making sure any female that crossed the threshold of the Bar knew they were coming into a safe space, but her eyes still got big and her hands still fluttered like nervous birds. Some of that gold went white in her face and I could see it was an actual struggle for her to stay where she was next to Dixie’s side as I approached.
Dixie gave me a lopsided smile and handed the leash she was holding over to the other woman. She crouched down in front of the big pit and gave the animal a kiss right in the center of its furry forehead. The dog looked up at her with sad eyes, like it knew she was getting ready to leave it behind, and I felt the beast’s pain. When Dixie got on a plane back to Denver I knew it was going to be the last time I saw her face always smiling, always laughing, always looking at me like I was something more than I was. It hurt. The good things in my life always seemed to.
“So Wheeler is going to be in my apartment for a few days until he figures out what to do with my sister. For now, he’s letting her stay at his house because he doesn’t want to fight. If your boss doesn’t want you to bring Dolly with you during your shift you can just leave her with him. If you need anything just hop next door and Wheeler can help you out.” Dixie rose to her feet and reached out a hand and put it on the younger woman’s shoulder. I watched as she flinched at the touch. It made my back teeth grind together. No one as soft and as dainty as she was should have that reaction from a simple touch. It made me want to injure whoever had made her afraid.
The pretty brunette slipped away from Dixie and laid a hand on the top of the big dog’s head. “Other vet techs bring their pets in all the time. As long as Dolly doesn’t get aggressive with the other animals or the staff it will be fine.” She shifted her feet nervously and darted her tongue out to lick across her bottom lip. She was so pretty it was impossible not to stare at her but I could tell the attention made her even more anxious than she already was so I reached for the bag at Dixie’s feet and turned back towards the bike without a word. “I shouldn’t have to bother . . . Wheeler.” Her already quiet tone went even softer when she mentioned Dixie’s couch surfer.
Dixie let out a soft sigh and shrugged. “Well, if you do need him he won’t bite. He’s actually one of the best men I’ve ever met in my entire life and my sister is a complete jackass for royally screwing things up with him. Speaking of which, don’t be surprised if a tall blonde shows up creating a racket. I know you hate other people’s drama but Wheeler pulling out of the wedding is going to make Kallie lose her damn mind. Call me if she won’t take the hint or better yet call the cops. Maybe a night in jail will finally force her to grow the hell up.” Dixie sighed and bent to pet the dog one last time. “Thanks again for offering to take Dolly. I’ll shoot you a text when I’m on my way home.”
The soft-spoken woman tucked a piece of that honeyed hair behind her ear and forced a smile. It was obvious she wanted to mean it, she just wasn’t in a place where she could yet. I really wanted to do some physical damage to the person responsible for stomping all over such gorgeous terrain.
Dixie made a move like she was going to try to hug the other woman but thought better of it when the brunette tugged the leash so that Dolly was placed firmly between them. With a strained good-bye and one last reminder to call if she needed anything, my traveling companion finally turned to me with cocoa-colored eyes filled with obvious sadness for her friend.
I tilted my chin in the direction the woman and the dog had taken down the block. “The person responsible for making her so twitchy still in the picture?” Dixie sighed again and took her bag from me.
“No, he’s dead. Took his own life right in front of her after kidnapping her and torturing her for two days.” She stiffened as the words rushed out. “The worst part is I don’t think he was the first person to knock her around, he was simply the one that made her determined to keep everyone at an arm’s length. If you can’t get close enough to touch her then there is no way you’re close enough to hurt her. That’s a lonely way to live.”
It was. I knew that intimately because I was living pretty much exactly the same way. I cleared my throat and gave my head a little shake to get my thoughts out of that particular gutter and back into the one that involved Dixie dressed in leather and wrapped around me pretty much nonstop for the next few days.
“You ever been on a bike before?” She was dressed like she was ready to ride. She had on jeans that were tucked into the tops of black boots that had heavy soles and laced up to right below her knees. She was also wearing a fitted plaid shirt with a white tank peeking out the top under a lightweight denim jacket that had shearling at the collar. Her mass of bright curls was tamed in a poofy ponytail at the back of her head and it made my fingers itch to set them free. I liked her wild and uncontrollable hair. It made her look like a pussycat with a lion’s mane as she gave me attitude and promised me everything I didn’t deserve with nothing more than a look. Keeping her tresses tied as we screamed down the asphalt made sense but I knew without a doubt before the day was over I was releasing them from their little rubber captor. That was absolutely not a friendly thought to have but I had it anyways.
Dixie rolled her dark eyes at me and reached for the helmet that I held out to her. “Of course I’ve been on a bike. Do you think Brite would have hired me back in the day if I couldn’t talk shop with his clientele? The bar used to be one of the biggest baddest biker hangouts in all of Denver. I think that was the first question he asked in the interview. Darcy made him clean the place up when Avett started getting old enough to come hang out in the kitchen with her.” She smirked at me and slapped the borrowed helmet onto the top of her head. I knew the history of the place that Rome now called his but I guess I never really stopped to think about the integral part this little spitfire had played in all of it before now. “Plus, before the accident my dad used to ride. Not a Harley, but still. I was on the back of a motorcycle a lot when I was younger.”
She strapped the chin strap in place and hefted the backpack that was loaded down with whatever she had packed for
the week over her shoulders. She was so goddamn cute it made everything inside my chest feel too tight and had all those naughty thoughts about what could happen once it was just me and her and the road roaring back to the forefront. It also made my blood heat up and dick twitch in a way she was bound to notice if she bothered to look in that direction.
I cleared my throat and reached for my own helmet as we moved to the bike. “Your dad was in an accident?” That was the thing about separating yourself from the people around you, they didn’t get to know me, but I also missed out on really knowing anything about them. Typically, I thought that distance and indifference were for the best but as I swung a leg over the bike and settled in, waiting for Dixie to climb on behind me, I really started to resent the fact I didn’t know anything beyond the superficial where she was concerned.
The leather creaked as she wiggled into place with her legs clamped around the outside of mine and the soft press of her breasts into my back. Her hands slipped around my waist like she had held on to me a thousand times before when in reality today was the most we had ever touched. I knew why I was compelled to keep my distance. Once her palms flattened onto my abs under the material of my open leather jacket and the soft whoosh of her exhaled breath hit the back of my neck I knew I would never be able to sit on this bike again and not feel her there behind me. She was going to be a memory I couldn’t shake.
“Yeah.” She breathed deep and low, her chest rising and falling where it pressed into me. I had to bite back a groan as her fingers curled into my tense stomach muscles. “The summer right before I started high school he got into an accident on his motorcycle. A truck changed lanes and didn’t see him. He was thrown over a hundred yards and had to be airlifted to Denver General. He was fortunate he had his helmet on or else he wouldn’t have made it.”
I could feel a tremor move throughout her tiny frame as she recounted the story. I turned to look at her over my shoulder and noticed the corners of her mouth pulled into a frown. “He’s lucky, then.”
She lifted a shoulder and let if fall. “He survived, but he’s been in a wheelchair ever since. So yes, he’s lucky, we all were because he’s a great dad, he was before and he continued to be after the accident, but our family was changed forever.”
We stared at each other for a long, silent moment. Sometimes it felt like it was easier to communicate with her through a look than it was through words. It wasn’t lost on me that she had survived something horrifying and life changing at the hands of the very machine she was currently propped up on. The amount of trust and faith she had to have in me in order for her to agree to ride for days on the back of something that had almost taken a parent from her was humbling and terrifying. I hadn’t done anything to earn that kind of conviction from her but now that I knew I had it I was going to do everything in my power to live up to it.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you on this trip, Dixie. I promise that you will be safe with me.” I meant it. I would keep her safe from everything, including me and the way it was impossible to ignore the heat of her pressed against the plane of my back.
“I wouldn’t have agreed to go with you if I didn’t believe that you would take care of both of us, Church.” Her voice was quiet but I heard the truth in her words loud and clear.
I cranked the key in the ignition and let the growl of the V-twin motor drown out the sound of the taunting voice in the back of my head chanting the word “friend” over and over again. I might have to tattoo the damn reminder on my forehead before we crossed the state line.
She was cute. She was curvy. She was sweet and sunny . . . What she wasn’t was a chick I could take to bed and walk away from no harm no foul, and I needed to keep that in mind even as she flipped me a nervous grin in one of the mirrors that jutted off the handlebars. Everything about Dixie Carmichael screamed forever, and I knew probably better than anyone on this planet that forever wasn’t something that was real, no matter how good you had it. Forever was an illusion that soft hearts and warm brown eyes built dreams around. It wasn’t something a man that knew how quickly everything could be ripped away and shredded to pieces put much stock in.
It also surprised me that Dixie had been through something that very easily could have crippled someone else and she was still nothing but sunshine and roses. I on the other hand took life’s unexpected misfortunes and let them mold me into a man I could hardly stand to face most days.
I wanted her because she was Dixie and there was something about her that shed light on all the dark places I’d been living in for so long, but I knew with every fiber of my being I didn’t deserve her and that if I wanted what was best for her I wouldn’t let either of us believe for a single second that I could keep her.
Chapter 5
Dixie
It was late afternoon by the time we got on the road. The fall sky went dark early as we headed out of the city and into the endlessly flat landscape that was everything east of the Rockies. When the sun went all the way down Church stopped at a truck stop a few hundred miles from the Kansas border and ordered me to put on a pair of leather riding chaps that zipped up the outside of my legs and buckled around my waist. It wasn’t that cold, but there was definitely a nip in the air as the wind rushed past us on the highway. I didn’t think I needed the leathers but there was something about the look in his eyes as he ordered me to go put the stiff garment on that made me swallow any argument I was going to give him. The blue in his eyes burned and there was heat in his eyes that wasn’t from the air slapping across his stern face. I never considered myself a leather kind of girl but apparently Church had different ideas about that.
I took the leathers from him as he turned to top off the tank. The truck stop was busy enough that it took me a few minutes to maneuver my way across the parking lot and around to the side of the building where the sign indicated that the restrooms were. I found myself quickening my pace as a couple of truckers leaning against the side of the building tracked me under the bills of their stained hats. I didn’t like the way they looked at me and I really didn’t like the way they looked over at Church.
I could have pulled the chaps on while standing in the parking lot but all that vibration and rumble underneath my backside meant Church was going to have to get used to stopping every few hours so I could use the restroom, just like I was going to have to get used to the questioning and not altogether friendly looks that were being fired his way. If he was one of those guys that was determined to make the best time from point A to point B with as few stops in between as possible, he was in for a rude awakening. And I may have stretched the truth a little bit about how recently I had had my rear end planted on the back of a motorcycle.
In high school I’d dated a wannabe rebel without a cause that rode a busted up Victory that he swore would be worth a fortune when he fixed it up. It hardly ever ran and when it did it crawled rather than roared, but other than that I tended to avoid anything that drove on two wheels instead of four. I’d let Brite take me home after work a few times when my car was in the shop and I’d ridden with Rome a time or two when he wanted me to go with him for stuff related to the bar. My dad’s accident hadn’t exactly put me off of motorcycles, but I was very cautious and careful about getting on one, and my willingness to do so was directly related to who was driving the machine. I had never done a long road trip on the back of a bike before and so far I was a fan, but that might have been directly related to the fact that I got to spend hours upon hours clutching Church like my life depended on it, because it kind of did.
I’d wanted to have my hands on the man in a totally inappropriate way since the first time I laid eyes on him, so there was no way in hell I was going to squander the opportunity to touch all the places that I was supposed to be touching as I curled into him and held on for dear life. He felt just as hard, just as hot, just as heavenly as I always figured he would, and I was really starting to resent the soft cotton of the long-sleeved T-shirt he had on for keeping
all that golden skin from my fingertips. I wanted to scratch my initials into his abs and rub my palms all over the carved ridges that flexed and bunched under my hands every time he changed lanes or looked over his shoulder to check on me. I already knew Church was built like a mythical deity, but having the fact confirmed for hours upon hours as muscle moved against me was making me twitchy and damp in places that weren’t exactly comfortable against rough denim.
The truck stop bathroom wasn’t the worst I’d ever seen but it was far from the best. It was obvious women’s comfort was low on the priority list as I took in the cracked mirror and hanging door on one of the two stalls. I gingerly picked my way across the stained laminate floor, careful not to step in any of the unidentified puddles of liquid marring my path, and slipped into the stall with the working door.
I handled my business while reading the endless amount of graffiti carved on the wall—apparently there were a lot of women available for a good time if called—and used my foot to flush because there was no way I was touching anything more in this bathroom than I had to. I found a relatively clean spot in front of the mirror to wiggle into the leathers and wasn’t surprised at all when I went to wash my hands that there was no soap and barely a trickle of water leaking out of the faucet. Thankful I never went anywhere without a stash of hand sanitizer, I gave myself one last once-over, decided that I might be able to pull off a little bit of badass biker babe after all, and made my way to the door.
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