“Enjoying the show?” he asked and held the door open for me.
“Hell, yeah.” I stepped inside the cool interior of the fast food joint and hoped the air conditioning would cool the internal flames licking up my body. I went straight to the counter, ignoring the surreptitious glances toward my nose then toward Cooper, and ordered my food to distract myself from Cooper’s sexy side glances. The thousand bucks in my bra helped foot the bill, but I didn’t know how long it’d be before I saw more cash. I had to watch what I spent.
They called my number. I got my food and went directly into the play area. As desolate as Pahrump was, I’d expected there to be at least one child running around. The place was empty. I didn’t mind, though. Just meant I could do whatever I wanted in here. A naughty thought crossed my mind. Cooper could join me in the multi-colored ball pen.
He sat down across from me as I nibbled on an over-salted fry. I didn’t normally allow myself such unhealthy luxuries, but couldn’t argue with my stomach or the hamburger begging me to take a bite. “You know, usually on a first date, you offer to pay for the lady’s meal.”
“Good thing this isn’t a date.” He took a bite of burger, talking around it. “And you’re not a lady.”
I feigned insult, gasping and throwing my hand to my chest. I made sure my voice turned whiney and British, classic Victorian era. “My word, what makes you say that?”
Cooper smiled through the pickles and mayonnaise then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Drops of ketchup landed in his lap, but he didn’t seem to notice. “You eat like a pig for one.”
I shoved the rest of my hamburger in my mouth as fast as I could. I liked this banter between us. Made me think we could really have something in common. You know, besides both our clubs wanting to kill us. “At least I can keep it in my mouth.”
“That’s ʼcause you have a big mouth.” He laughed then, a deep rumble reverberating in my lower belly.
The teasing and joking felt good. Right. Of course my life had been changed by a single stupid decision. Okay, maybe a couple stupid decisions, but Cooper gave me hope that I could start over. Have a fresh start. As frightening as it sounded, I needed this like I’d never needed anything before in my life. I needed someone I could share my stupid jokes with and who could meet me head on, mentally and physically. Cooper met the specs, at least so far. But if life treated everyone fair, I wouldn’t be in a McDonald’s dreaming of a future with a man who wasn’t the type to give up freedom for commitment. In my experience, aside from Ryder and Amelia, biker boys chose the road over love. My father had done it. All my brothers in the club had done it. I guess what it came down to was, I was ready to give up this life, but was he?
What the hell was I thinking? I’d known the man for three days and I’d literally just lumped us together like we were in love. “How’s Plan B coming along?” I asked, more to distract myself from my traitorous thoughts than to really know.
Cooper took another swipe at his face with the back of his hand then met my gaze. With a serious expression and low voice, he said, “I’m going to hand you over to your club.”
My breath hitched. Well, that changed things.
****
I chuckled. Again, an inappropriate time, but I couldn’t help it. “That’s your plan?” I couldn’t let his words sink in. Despite my willingness to travel all over the state from warehouse to warehouse with him, I wouldn’t go back to my club quietly. If it came down to it, I’d sabotage his bike. The thought made me wince. I had such respect for a beautiful piece of machinery like his, but if it saved my life, I’d rip that sucker apart. I even knew how.
“You know what I want. How else am I going to get it?” Cooper finished his food then crumbled up the wax paper it’d been wrapped in. Tossing it into a nearby trash bin, he refused to meet my gaze. “Turning you in is logical.”
“Okay, Mr. Spock, but tell me this. What happens when I don’t go willingly? You going to tie me up and throw me over your bike?” I should have kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to give him any ideas.
“Do you even know who Mr. Spock is?”
Completely off topic.
“Don’t try to change the subject and yes, I do. I know every episode of Star Trek, and all spinoffs, forward and backward.” Not something I normally admitted out loud, but there it was: I am a sexy nerd. I crossed my arms across my chest. It could have been the environment or the simple fact he’d ruined my fantasy that made me so belligerent. “Come up with another plan.”
Cooper leaned back in his chair. “If I turn you in to the Outriggers, I have leverage to campaign for president of Satan’s Army.”
“But you said Vasquez allied with Outriggers against club vote, so aren’t you really just supporting him after everything is over and done with?” I kept going, accentuating every point by stabbing my index finger into the table. “By turning me over to my club, you’re fueling Vasquez’s agenda. Your club obviously doesn’t want to do business with mine. Appeasing the Outriggers will cost you more votes than it will gain.”
“You’ve thought this through.”
I leaned back in my chair. I didn’t know whether to be amazed by his downright disregard for my life or his blatant stupidity. “And you haven’t.”
“So where does that leave us?”
Tension built between us, the easy-going banter I’d cherished, gone. I wasn’t sure if he actually believed what I’d said or if he’d already set up the dominos for his own plan. The blank expression on his face hid my fate. He calmly took a swig of his soda, aggravating me further. How could he just sit there and pretend he wasn’t willing to serve me up like a pig at a Hawaiian Luau?
I exhaled in rush. This whole covert affair had taken all my energy and my patience. “Right now, I just want to play with balls.”
The soda shot from his mouth and directly onto my shirt. Cooper’s hand shot to his mouth in what I assumed was an attempt to keep the rest from spewing at me, but how could there be anything left? He tried to hide a smile behind that hand, but the laughter and crinkling of the skin around his eyes gave him away. His face sobered instantly as I glared at him in annoyance. He set his drink down. “I don’t think now is the time—”
I motioned with a jerk of my arm toward the pen of colorful spheres. The cold soda seeped through my shirt and against my skin. I shivered reluctantly and ground my teeth together. “Balls.”
I stood without giving him the chance to answer and stalked toward the small entrance of the giant jungle gym. The sign beside the entrance told me I was too tall to play, but it’d never stopped me before. I took my sandals off, tossed them in a cubbyhole and climbed inside.
The smell of disinfected plastic calmed my irritation and made my heart beat faster. I loved racing down the brightly-colored tubes and spying on people from thirty feet in the air through bubbled windows, but the ball pen had claimed my heart the second we pulled into the parking lot. I hesitated on the edge of the pen’s entrance. The blue, red and yellow balls stared at me expectantly.
After the past couple days I’d had, I deserved this.
I launched face first into the orgy of balls, the low rumble of plastic-on-plastic melting my stress. It was childish, and a completely awkward way to show off my playful side, but I didn’t care. After a few laps around the pen, I stilled, lying face up, and stared up at the netting above me.
“Have you ever wished you could feel the way you did as a kid? No stress. No guns or politics.” I didn’t really know if Cooper had heard me, but it didn’t matter. It’d been so long since I felt this kind of peace. The balls pressed into me from every side as I remembered flashes of my childhood. “My dad would let me stay in jungle gyms like this for hours. Said it was good to enjoy the small things.”
Movement from the corner of my eye caught my attention. A second body launched into the pit and I moved just in time to avoid a head-on collision with Cooper’s elbow. He fought his way on top of the balls then smiled, almost to
himself. “Haven’t done that since I was a kid.” Turning his cocky grin in my direction, he stopped my heart for a split second. “That was fun.”
To see him so carefree and happy did wonders to my body. I wanted to stretch out like a cat, basking in his radiance. “You need to lighten up. Enjoy the small things.” I laid my head back and closed my eyes.
The plastic spheres rumbled again as Cooper shifted for what seemed like forever.
“Can’t you sit still?” I tried to keep my eyes closed, to live in the moment and enjoy the peace, but when he didn’t answer, my curiosity got the better of me. I opened my eyes to find Cooper’s body much closer than it’d been a moment before.
“I like watching you sleep,” he said. Whispers of his breath drifted across my neck and face. Warm, potato-ish from the fries and soft, they sent a shiver down to my toes. Poised above me, Cooper brushed a stray piece of hair out of my face. The zing that followed his touch went straight to my ladyparts.
“I’m not as—”
His lips silenced me, but I didn’t mind. Not at all. Wrapping a hand around my midsection, he pulled me into him, deepening the kiss as if he were a starved man hoping to siphon air from my lungs. Our tongues slid over each other in a loving caress and the world disappeared.
Nothing but Cooper held me to the earth.
Chapter Seven
I pulled away first. Not by choice exactly. A nagging sensation forced me to end the kiss. I’d always ridiculed people who claimed, “The devil made me do it!”, but right now, I fit right in with them. Although, the devil didn’t make me ask, “Does this mean you’re not handing me over to my club?”
The peaceful and benevolent mood we’d established disappeared.
“Hey!”
I flinched, suddenly remembering where Cooper and I had decided to make out. I sat bolt upright and sunk deeper into the pit of balls. “Oh, my God.” I laughed then covered my eyes to avoid looking at the stern and very flamboyant manager.
With multi-colored feathers hanging from his earrings and sticking out between layers on his medium-length black hair, he resembled a giant peacock. I cleared my throat, putting on my best serious face and turned my gaze on him. I kept my stare on his face rather than the pink suspenders that must have belonged to some local clown college and the knee-high lace-up boots. “Is there a problem?”
“I think it’s time you and your hooker left, sir,” he said to Cooper. “And you might want to get a refund from the looks of her. This is a family restaurant.” He made a generalized motion with both hands outstretched. “The patrons are starting to complain.”
I searched the restaurant for whom he might be referring to and found the perpetrator. In his forties, the guy with the black eyeliner, tattoos, and spikes smiled at me. “Actually, I think he likes it.” I tried to ignore his lingering gaze as Cooper spoke up.
“She’s not a hooker.” Cooper stood facing me and the manager, one leg planted on each side of me. I had an excellent view of the bulge in his jeans from this angle. “She’s just horny.”
I tried not to laugh, but honestly couldn’t hold it in. Count on me to laugh at being called horny. It was a funny word. I rolled over, burying my face in the multi-colored, germ-covered orbs and giggled until I cried.
A calloused hand wrapped around my upper arm, opposite the bullet wound, and helped me to my feet. “We were just leaving,” Cooper said.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand. “That’s right, honey. You got to get me back to the whore house.” Another round of giggles shook my shoulders.
“Did someone mix your medicine?” the manager asked as Cooper shoved me through the small opening of the jungle gym.
I slowly crawled out, refusing to think about what exactly my hand had just gotten stuck to on the floor and glanced up at him from all fours. “No. But do you have any?” I pulled my sandals on and waited for Cooper to lace his work boots. Damn, even putting on a pair of shoes he kicked my motor into overdrive.
Once we’d made it outside in one piece, no thanks to me, sobriety took hold. Exhaustion weighed me down. I leaned onto the bike, partially seated, and looked in the direction of Sin City. While I didn’t relish going back, Las Vegas had been my home for as long as I could remember. My birth certificate said State of California, but my dad had obviously grown tired of the golden state and shipped us out here. Mom had already run off by then. I didn’t even remember her. The sun had already begun its descent, streaking the sky with purple, pink, and gray. No matter where I went, it wouldn’t have Nevadan sunsets.
“Either you’re thinking about getting a colonoscopy or something worse.” Cooper’s voice relaxed the tension in my neck and shoulders. Nobody had been able to do that before. He stood in front of me, hands in his pockets, but kept his distance. I had an effect on people like that.
“Wondering where I’d go after all this is over,” I admitted. I tore my gaze away from the vibrant colors in the sky and focused on him. Straightening, I squinted up at him. “I won’t go back, Cooper.” I continued when he didn’t respond. “Handing me over won’t solve anything.”
“You don’t know that.”
His words stung. He’d already made his decision and I hated the idea of hurting him to get away. It wasn’t me, but I’d do what I had to in order to survive. “Why is the president’s seat so important to you? Satan’s Army isn’t even an established chapter. There are better choices out there.” I stepped into him, tugging on the edges of his club cut. “I have no doubt in my mind you’d move up—”
“Stop,” he interrupted and brushed my hands aside. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” Cooper turned his back on me. He gazed out at the same sunset I’d lost my thoughts in.
“Considering this has to do with my life, I think I deserve to know. Is it personal? More than some power struggle?” I stared at his back, watching his shoulders rise and fall evenly.
He left only half his face visible, but I saw the struggle in his eyes.
I had a bad feeling about that look. With an all too familiar experience of fighting inner demons, I recognized the war raging across Cooper’s face. So many possibilities were the cause of such agony and confusion, but my mind automatically went to the worst case scenario: a hit had been taken out on my life as well. In the back of my mind I wondered if he’d spared me for the same reason I hadn’t told him about the hit on his life, but my reasoning seemed irrational now. “Just tell me. Please.”
Cooper didn’t answer for the space of three inhales and I thought I might explode. Finally, when I couldn’t take any more, his eyes dropped to the pavement in defeat. He spoke to me over his shoulder. “I’m CIA, Cherry.” Cooper faced me fully, no signs of deception evident in his expression. “And my orders to take control of Satan’s Army were very clear.”
****
I didn’t even have the ability to snap my mouth closed.
“Does that satisfy your curiosity?” Cooper mounted his Harley and threw back the kickstand. Starting the machine, he gave me an expectant expression.
I didn’t know if I wanted to climb on or run as fast as I could. “What the hell does the CIA want with Satan’s Army?”
“Cocaine. The same thing your dad was after.”
“What did you just say?” My temper swelled in the center of my chest and I couldn’t think of a single exercise to cool off. I took a step closer, ready to wipe that smirk off his face. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Kenyon Williams was one of the best agents we had in our unit. He trained me personally. I got involved in Satan’s Army because of him.”
His explanation was simple, but brought even more questions to my lips. Only one stood out from all the others, however. “So it was all a lie?” I waited for him to answer, but the possibility of him targeting me for his own purposes kept me going. “That night we slept together. Did you single me out?”
Cooper wouldn’t meet my gaze, his shoulders sinking slightly. �
�Yes, but—”
My whole body went numb. I turned my back on him, heading back toward the restaurant’s side door. Footsteps followed me, but I didn’t care.
“Cherry, wait.” His calloused hand wrapped around my arm. “Let me explain.”
I put all my weight behind the punch to his face and Cooper dropped like a bag of concrete. If the situation hadn’t been so serious, I’d have congratulated myself for cold-clocking a man twice my size. I stared down at him, trying not to break down into sobs. The pain in my knuckles alone made me want to cry, but the betrayal made it nearly impossible to hold back the heartache.
“I’m not some tool you can manipulate, Cooper.” Suddenly my shock and anger transformed into a vengeful, living thing. He thought he could use me? Well, maybe he could rely on the person who’d have to give him a ride back to the city to help him from now on.
I sauntered up to the bike, mounted and shoved on Cooper’s helmet. Pain radiated throughout my face from my broken nose, but I turned the key and squeezed the throttle. Movement on my right side told me Cooper had made it to his feet. I let go of the break and sped off with a lingering gaze in his direction. Ripping out of the parking lot with Cooper’s bike, I let the wind dry the tears streaking down my face.
As I ripped my way down I-95, I tried not to let his betrayal go straight to my heart, but the waterworks gave me away. He’d picked me out of that bar. He’d made me think he cared for me, that he’d saved my life because he liked me. Turned out he just didn’t want his asset to die. God, I’d even considered something permanent with him.
But I guess that was my problem to begin with: I’d assumed too much.
Bastard.
In an hour, I ended up at my apartment.
Returning to Vegas wasn’t my brightest idea, but if home was ever where my heart was, I wanted to find it after Cooper cut it out. There were other reasons, too. Cooper’s claim that my father was involved in the CIA weighed heavily on my mind. I’d taken over my old man’s apartment when he’d died, but none of his personal items had given me the idea he’d been anything but a member of the Outriggers. Certainly not a rat for the CIA.
Sour Cherry Page 5