Burning to Ride

by Michele De Winton

  “Shit.”

  At least the Hell’s Boys were her sort of men. Punching the last guy who didn’t understand no meant no had gotten the message across, and most of the gang gave her a nod rather than a leer now.

  “Screw it.” The thought of Briony being at the bar gave Lucy the impulse she needed. If there wasn’t mechanic work, then Briony might have something she could do for some cash to tide her over till she found other work. Putting her helmet back on, she drove into the parking lot, dismounted, and started toward the bar.

  It was cool and still in the hotel with only a few committed, quiet drinkers propping up the long wooden bar. Running her hands through her helmet-mussed hair and patting her bangs back into place, Lucy felt the noise and dust of the hot day fall away. Or maybe that was the whiskey hitting her system. Sliding into a barstool, she motioned for a shot. Just one.

  Kelsey, the Friday night bartender, nodded and lined it up for her. Resisting the urge to knock the whole thing back in one go, Lucy took a dainty sip, and the bartender raised an eyebrow. “Don’t see anyone with lady manners like that around here much.”

  “Lady manners? Must have me mixed up with someone else,” Lucy spat out.

  “Must have.” Kelsey raised her hands and took a step back.

  Good one. “Sorry. Crap day. Lost my job. And no cash means no rent, so I got kicked out of my place this morning. Didn’t mean to be a bitch.”

  “Pretty solid bad-luck cocktail, that one.”

  Lucy nodded. “Briony back yet?”

  “Nope. Still honeymooning.”

  “Damn.” Looking around the bar, it was clear there wasn’t any mechanic work going either. “Are there any openings at Wilde’s? I’m sorta desperate.”

  “Not in the bar. Maybe in the hotel now that the renovations are done. Need manners that last longer than one drink to work there, though.”

  The shrug belied just how close to the surface her panic was, but damned if she was ready to let it out yet. “Yeah. Sure.”

  Kelsey left to pour someone a beer then returned. With hardly anyone else in the bar, there wasn’t much for her to do. “Thought you were a mechanic. Don’t really need one of those in a hotel.”

  “I am. But there’s no mech jobs anywhere at the moment—I’ve asked everyone—and I need work now. Can’t wait around forever for Rocco to make up his mind to give me the gig working for Hell’s.” Lucy knocked back the rest of the shot. Might as well make it count. A thought struck her. “The housekeepers sometimes live onsite right?”

  “That bad, huh?”

  The sigh came from some place deep and dark, and Lucy wished her hipflask hadn’t run dry. As if she read Lucy’s mind, the bartender looked around the bar, then filled up her shot glass. “On the house. Just don’t tell anyone.”

  “Thanks.”

  “That all you got with you?” Kelsey nodded at Lucy’s small bag.

  “Personal policy: travel light. Just in case. Tools fit under the seat of my bike. And who needs more than two pairs of jeans and a couple of shirts? Really.”

  Kelsey smiled but didn’t look convinced.

  Ten bikers crashed into the bar. One of them held his face, a smear of blood visible through his fingers. He slumped onto a stool next to her. “You all right?” she asked him.

  “Fucking Menace. Tried to shake down my brother’s place. Got there just in time.”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “Nah. Just a scratch. The ride did it good. It’ll stop in a sec.”

  The smell of the road was on him, its heady mix of gravel, exhaust fumes, and hot tarmac tripping Lucy’s senses into overdrive. That was all she wanted to do, really. Let people ride. Get their bikes into perfect condition. Make engines purr like a tiger with a fat, juicy steak. That and make sure her little sister, Katie, didn’t follow in her footsteps. She wanted her to go to college, and every spare penny she got, she sent back home to Katie to try to make that happen.

  The bartender must have seen the slump of despondency in her features. “I’ll serve this crew, then ask about housekeeping. Get ready to find your lady manners and put them on display. You could wait out by the pool if you want some peace and quiet.”

  “Thanks. I owe you one.”

  Out by the pool, Lucy stripped off her bike leathers and flopped down in one of the deck chairs. It had been a long, hot day, but the guests had been and gone at the pool.

  Lucy pulled her hip flask out again just to check, but it was still empty. Shame. Even as the evening approached she was cooking in her black jeans and T-shirt. She’d had more than enough to drink, but without anywhere to stay it wasn’t like she’d be getting in trouble for drunk driving. Park bench would do fine tonight. It was warm enough. She let out the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. What the hell had happened that she’d ended up here?

  “Begging for a house keeper’s gig?” she shook her head. “You opened your mouth one too many times, girl.”

  “Maybe.” Kelsey’s voice came from behind her, and Lucy spun around. “But this time it’s gotten you a job. You start tomorrow, and you can crash in the bunk house if you need to. There’s no one else in there at the moment. Everyone knows you know Bri, so it’s no biggie.” The bartender handed her the key to the bunk house. “But she’ll be the first to throw you out if you mess around. My advice? If you need this job like you say you do, don’t screw it up.” She turned and left.

  Starting to stand, Lucy wavered, almost falling as the world swayed. The cumulative effect of the whiskey, the stress of the day, and the relief of having a job and somewhere to stay for now, suddenly hit her, and hit her hard. Blood pounding, eyes blinking to make sense of the whirl of color around her, Lucy put her hand on the back of the deck chair, missed, and ended up on her ass. It should have hurt her pride at least. But there was no one around to see, and instead she burst out laughing. Nothing else can happen. This is it. Where the desperate and depressed live. The laughter became overcooked, slightly manic, and a part of her knew she needed to stand up and suck it up. Now. Before she turned into the messy blob she’d so far avoided.

  Heaving herself back onto the deck chair, she sat with her eyes closed, letting the last of the sun ease her face of its frown. It felt like five minutes, but she must have nodded off, because when she opened her eyes again, the day was at its end and an almost full moon was rising.

  She had nowhere to be, and no one to report to. Pulling herself back up using the deck chair, Lucy went to check out the bunk house. Her heart sank as the door opened to a musty-smelling room. Bare wood on the walls and four sets of bunks. No way would she want to be sleeping in there with seven others. Especially Hell’s Boys. The snoring would rattle the windows. Suck it up. Right. There wasn’t anyone else in there at the moment. And she wasn’t going to be living there forever.

  She slumped into the bed for a moment and let herself sag. Being in there was an echo of when she’d first gotten to LA. Martinez had brought her back to the hotel, and she’d been drunk enough to tell him everything. Every. Thing. He’d let her get it all out, and then she’d screwed him and felt better. He was a pretty good listener, and he helped her put together a kind of life in LA: introducing her to another mechanic, taking her riding, taking her phone off her when her mom tried to call and demand she go home before she dissolved into impurity. Between him, Hade, and Briony, Lucy’d given the private investigator her mom had hired the slip, too. It had felt like the biggest victory she’d ever managed.

  But back then, Lucy still had a future as a mechanic ahead of her. Back then, she hadn’t known Martinez was the biggest player this side of Canada. Back then, she had hope.

  “Back then, you were a kid. Stop wallowing. You don’t have the time.” She stood, threw her bag and helmet on one of the bottom bunks, then locked the door again and headed back to the pool.

  With the sun gone, the moonlight was just starting to make a trail over the still water. It was a mirror, calm, sliver and serene.
“The opposite of me.”

  Now that her bloodstream was comfortably saturated with alcohol, Lucy’s shoulders relaxed. The moon would give her a new start. That’s what it did, wasn’t it? Bathed women in magic or some crap like that? She struggled to remember the gentle hippy women’s circle meetings her mom had attended before she went to the complete other end of the spectrum and shut out anything that didn’t conform to her cult-leader’s puritanical ways.

  “Fuck that.” Lucy relished the freedom of swearing whenever and at whatever she could after her non-swearing, Utah upbringing in Bountiful. If she never heard another person say shiz, shivers, shingaling, S-bomb, or any of the other made-up cusses of her childhood, it would be too soon, and it gave her a petty sense of revenge against the restrictions her mom had imposed on every part of her life for her own good.

  “She should have gotten more in touch with her inner goddess,” Lucy muttered. Even chanting under the moonlight would have been preferable to her mom’s extreme version of buttoned-up puritanical fervor. If she’d been there, her mom would have encouraged her into the pool, sure, but she would have held Lucy under till her lungs screamed and she promised to ask for forgiveness and to join the side of light by giving up her bike, booze, and, well, sharing her boobs with anyone other than the cult leader. It was a man’s world, according to her mother. Lucy needed to accept that and hide herself from its temptations from now until the world was “healed.”

  Screw that. It might well have been a man’s world, but the moon ran by different rules. Her moon goddess rode a Harley and was shit-hot at using a wrench.

  “Show me some light I can actually use, baby,” she called up to the silvery disk in the sky. Stripping down to her cotton halter top and panties, she all but fell into the pool, letting the silvered water wash away her day.

  “Cold, cold, cold.” Okay, maybe not wash away her day. More like rip it off. The pool was not goddess-temperature. Unless goddesses liked water a frigid Neptune’s-cold-emaciated-heart temperature. But after she’d floundered around for a minute, the chill dulled and she did feel refreshed. Buoyant. Floating on her back, Lucy gazed up at the sky and made a promise to the moon high poo-bah or whoever else was watching.

  “No more taking shit. Harden up and take it on the chin.” She laughed up at the sky. That was the best defense, right? Laugh it off and show everyone else up? “I’m going to be the best mechanic this town has seen, period. I’m going to get a new gig, and then the Hell’s Boys will beg me to work on their bikes. Work the phones. Phft. Screw ’em.” And if she was going to make it happen she couldn’t take offense every time some idiot decided to open his trap and vomit his misogynist, misguided crap all over her. She was just going to demonstrate they were wrong. Very wrong.

  It was restful, floating there, and she closed her eyes and drifted, pleasantly drunk and allowing her brain to switch off for a rare moment. On a whim, she flipped over onto her front to watch the ripple of moonlight on the bottom of the pool, and her breath come out in silver-coated bubbles. Pretty. Soon, her lungs started to burn, and she thought lazily about flipping back over when she felt, rather than heard, a splash at the edge of the pool.

  Then something grabbed hold of her leg. Wait! What? Some sort of animal was dragging her backward toward the edge of the pool. Kicking out to get away, she found herself pinned and screamed through the water, which only sent it up her nose and down her throat. Coughing, spluttering, half choking, she was pulled into a bear hug by the carnivorous beast. A carnivorous beast with abs, and hands, and opposable thumbs. Firm opposable thumbs, which were wrapped around her waist and sending her goose bumps into a total frenzy, not sure whether to break out in a hot screaming mess all over her skin, or give up from overstimulation and run the heck away.

  She looked up into the face of her captor and, bam, her hot-o-meter broke. The animal was taller, broader, and darker than her, in every possible way. Holding her tight as he stood, fully clothed in the water, teeth bared a little, he seemed like he might eat her if she gave him the chance. His white T-shirt was practically transparent, and she tried not to stare as his chest rose and fell, his pecs better defined than Iron Man’s armor. Caramel-skinned, clean-shaven, and with black eyes that promised escape as much as gazing at the moon had, the guy was a picture of what her mother hated about the world. Although right now those gloriously dark-dirty eyes were creased around the edges, tight with worry. That didn’t fit. Lucy shook her head and looked away, only to find herself drawn back to his eyes again a moment later. Really? Yes, really. Even someone with a heart of stone would get lost in those eyes. Still, no reason to let him try to drown you.

  He gripped her waist harder and, in one swift movement, lifted her up and deposited her on the side of the pool before clambering out himself.

  The two of them stood dripping, his wet jeans molded outlandishly to his butt, and Lucy surrendered to a fresh bout of coughing. When she could catch a breath she managed, “What the actual fuck?”

  “I would have thought thank you was the usual response.” His voice got her right in the ovaries before she’d finished her staggering breath. Deep and husky, his voice could have sold ice to polar bears. But he was no ordinary bear, not even close. He was Justin Gaston mixed with Jesse Williams mixed with something Marvel comics hadn’t released yet.

  Be still, my stupid heart. He’s a dude. Doesn’t give a shit about me. She shook her head to snap herself back to reality. “Thank you? Why the heck would I thank you for trying to drown me?”

  “You were doing a plenty good job of drowning yourself.”

  “I was not.”

  “Really?” He pointed at her discarded hipflask of bourbon, and her clothes in a pile. “So you’re not drunk and practically naked in a pool? Floating on your front?”

  “I was watching the moon.”

  “That one?” He pointed up to the sky.

  “Yes, that one,” she said. “The reflection on the bottom of the pool is . . . well, it looked cool,” she finished, suddenly aware she sounded as crazy as her mom.

  “Sure. Well, if you’ve finished moon gazing, upside down, perhaps you’d think about wrapping yourself in a towel at the very least? There is a dress code for the pool. Underwear doesn’t cut it.” He pointed to a sign that said bathing suits were to be worn at all times.

  “I don’t have a towel.”

  “Of course you don’t. Come on, then. And for fuck’s sake, don’t leave that empty flask there. Someone might stand on it.”

  Lucy stood up, wavered a little, then stood solidly on two feet. “Really?” Trying to make her voice firm was hard when she was hammered, her hair was dripping in her face, and she was standing in nothing but a white cotton halter top and panties. She tried to cover what she could of the now-see-through fabric with her hands, then gave up. “Who died and made you the boss of the world?”

  Those black eyes tracked her up and down before flicking back to her face. “No one. But you might find yourself biting off more than you can chew around here, dressed like that, drunk and dripping. I, on the other hand, not only saved your ass, but am offering you a towel. Come on, before I change my mind and call the bastards in from the bar to have a good look.”

  Not a bad point. Still, neither of them moved, and Lucy wondered whether he felt it, too. The moon; the night; the hot, hard, heady threat of something about to explode. Her skin prickled with more than the cold, and her blood charged around her body, making her heart beat so loudly that for a moment she thought it might be audible. He didn’t look away but held her gaze in a long, hard stare. It wasn’t possible, but she almost fell into that stare. Felt herself slipping into the darkness of a welcoming, hot oblivion. Earlier she would have said it was her, she was close to exploding, but now, with him standing there, all solid and stern, it seemed like something else. Like there was something bigger. Something louder hammering in her head, telling her something important. Only she couldn’t quite hear it.

  Maybe it’s
because you’ve drunk a lot of whiskey. Maybe, but it didn’t feel like that. The cold pool and then the shock of being hauled out had sobered her up a fair bit. No, she felt . . . connected to the guy in front of her. She opened her mouth to try to say that. But he turned and started off. His stride was long, but only a little longer than hers, and Lucy kept up with him as he strode inside and up the stairs to the guest rooms. He had a towel, and she needed one: that much he was right about.

  2.

  Looking after his half-sister Briony’s hotel was supposed to be time out. Time away from doing the high-octane bike stunts that directors liked to pack in these days, like racing bikes over speeding cars. And leaping into pools to stop women from drowning? Yep, and that. This was time away from rescuing anyone, not that he’d done a very good job of that recently.

  “Here.” Jake Slade grabbed two towels from his bathroom and, after peeling off his wet jeans and T-shirt and tossing them in the tub, wrapped himself in one and handed the other to the woman from the pool, who was still dripping. She took it and draped the towel rather ineffectively around her waist. “That’s not going to do much,” he said as he rubbed himself down.

  “You’re going to tell me how to use a towel? Now I’ve heard everything.”

  “I’m not telling you how to use a towel, just how not to make a mess of the carpet.” Okay, so his charm was a little rusty. It shouldn’t have been; working in film meant he’d heard some of the best chat-up lines in the business. The Hollywood types he worked with sure knew how to get laid. And his transition from stuntman to actor over the past few years meant he got recognized enough to keep him in women as often as he wanted. But after the accident . . . well, for a good six months he’d been happy if he got through a night alone, without any women, alive or dead, paying his dreams a visit.