She still felt a little nervous about the messages he’d left before she’d finally answered his call. He was a hard man, that much was evident, which was a little disturbing. She liked him even if she wasn’t sure about him. They’d talked for nearly two days before she’d finally agreed to go out with him tonight. Her date with Gunner was at five tonight and that meant she needed to get her ass in gear. Scratching another spot on her hip that she thought must have paint on it, she crawled from the bed wearing just her underwear and a tank top.
She stumbled into the bathroom scratching her face and glanced into the mirror. Oh crap, what was that all over her face? Had she gotten a rash from the paint? She hadn’t taken a shower last night but—oh no, no, no, no. She leaned closer to the mirror recognizing that rash. She was suddenly remembering that she hadn’t showered after the picnic because she’d painted that night too. Now she was staring at the swollen red blotches and the hint of blisters all over her face, hoping she wasn’t correct in her assumption. She stripped off her shirt and panties to find red patches everywhere.
Margo went over what had happened at the picnic in her head. She’d hidden in a bush to get away from that creep, Kevin, which is where she’d met Gunner. Then she’d left the picnic with her mother and she’d changed out of that horrid dress the second they arrived at her mother's. She’d then come straight home to paint. No, this couldn’t be happening, it just couldn’t. But the red patches of what she was almost sure she recognized as poison ivy was evident. She recognized the rash from the poison ivy she got when she’d been roped into helping clear the brush from around a playground last year.
Oh, fudge.
This was just fantastic, Margo thought as she remembered the large blisters with little pouches of clear fluid that had developed after three days. She couldn’t go out with Gunner looking like this, he would be disgusted. Last year, once the rash had started, by the end of the day she’d been getting blisters. It had taken a steroid cream and ten days for the rash to clear. She wanted to scream because this sucked. Margo threw on her robe and walked into her bedroom to get her phone. She would call him and let him know she couldn’t go out with him. She’d then go see the doctor and confirm that it was poison ivy and not an allergic reaction to her paint.
“Hello.” Gunner’s husky voice poured through the phone making her want to cry. She’d really been looking forward to going out with him. He made her laugh and he seemed almost normal considering she’d met him at that picnic.
“Umm—Hi, it’s Margo.”
“I knew that babe, what’s up? I can’t wait to see you tonight.”
“About that, I can’t go out with you tonight.” Margo blurted out without any preamble or hesitation; her voice almost panicked.
“What? I—Damn Margo, you just agreed to go out with me yesterday and now you’re saying you can’t? What the hell?” Gunner’s voice held a hard edge that it hadn’t had before she’d just busted out with her panicked denial.
“I just can’t, maybe some other time—like weeks from now I can, but currently I’m sort of—umm busy.” Margo said, trying hard to keep her voice steady. She was so disappointed, but she knew that she couldn’t go out with him looking like a freak.
“Yep, ok then. Got to go,” Gunner grumbled before he hung up on her.
Margo stared at the phone for a long moment after he hung up before letting out a big sigh. Every time she found a guy she liked, something like this happened. Maybe she just wasn’t meant to be in a relationship and that was kind of sad. Shrugging, she called her doctor’s office.
An hour later, Margo was tugging on the edges of her paper gown as she shifted uncomfortably on the table looking around the room. She’d been waiting over twenty minutes while freezing her butt off. She was quite sure that they had cameras that recorded these rooms so they could throw popcorn at the screen and laugh at how uncomfortable everyone was in a paper gown. Okay, so likely not, but it was a thought that had spun through her head as she sat there waiting.
She turned to look at the cat who was hanging onto a railing for dear life with the words ‘Hang in There’ posted above his head. Geez, why did they put up such silly posters like that one? Margo could think of about a thousand images that would engage the mind of a patient as they sat here waiting for the doctor to show up. There was a light knock at the door before Dr. Jacobs entered the room, a smile on her face.
“Hi Margo, I hear we’ve had another possible run in with poison ivy.” Margo wasn’t as happy about this as Dr. Jacobs apparently was because that 100 watt smile was annoying.
“Yes, unfortunately.”
“Well, it’s good that you came for the cream right away instead of waiting till the blisters were bad like last time. I think maybe it won’t be as bad this time. Okay, let’s look at this rash and see if that’s what I think it is.” Dr. Jacobs kept that annoying smile on her face throughout the appointment and when she was finished, Margo walked out with a prescription for steroid cream and headed to the pharmacy.
Sometimes being right about something kind of sucked.
Gunner hung up the phone before he said something he didn’t mean. Margo had just canceled their date without an explanation and it really pissed him off. He slammed his fist into the wall next to him earning a surprised look from Joker who was standing near him.
“Dude, you’re going to break your hand doing that. Fuck, it’s a brick wall.”
“Don’t fucking care,” Gunner growled, his anger too hot to really say much more than that.
“Some chick isn’t worth you breaking a bone, chill out,” Joker said, looking at him with a raised brow.
“She canceled at the last minute for no fucking reason,” Gunner seethed, knowing if anyone would understand, it would be Joker. He’d been a womanizer since a year ago when his girlfriend was found in bed with another man. Since then he’d been hopping from woman to woman like a frog on steroids.
“Ah, then find another one,” Joker shrugged.
“I don’t want to. I just don’t understand it, she was excited about it yesterday and then today she just calls and says she’s just—umm sort of busy. What the fuck?” Gunner hit the wall again, feeling the splitting of his knuckles as pain burst through his hand.
“Like I said dude, not worth a broken bone. Just ask her, go over to her place or call her back and ask for answers. Cause breaking your hand isn’t helping. You need to focus, we are here for a reason and we both need to be ready if this goes sideways. Buck’s handling the details, but we are supposed to be watching to be sure no one double crosses us. Now get your head on straight. I’m not chasing tail, so you can damned well pay attention too,” Joker snarled, shaking his head and glaring at him over his shoulder.
Gunner felt something inside him settle because Joker was right. He would just go over there and find out what the hell was going on and be done with it. Margo was wrong if she thought this was over. His cock had been hard since the moment he’d met her and he wasn’t giving up on getting her into his bed this easily.
“Alright, let’s get to work,” Gunner said as the rightness of his decision settled his raging emotional storm.
He didn’t want to admit that he was slightly disturbed by his reaction. What the hell was going on with him and this chick? He typically didn’t give a shit about any woman enough to be this angry that she was giving him the brush off. They’d talked for a few hours the other night, but he shouldn’t be attached. He liked her and without a doubt. She made his cock harder than a steel rod, but fuck he could get pussy anytime he wanted it, not just from the sweetbutts either. There were plenty of women who came to the clubhouse just for the novelty of being with a biker.
What was it about the sexy blue-haired beauty that made him feel something for the first time in more years than he wanted to admit to? Gunner knew he was distant, it’s what made being a biker work for him. He took care of his brothers and he did what he wanted most days and if you didn’t like it, that was your
issue. Some had called him cold—or a bastard—but to his way of thinking he made his own path. He didn’t care about what other people thought he should do, or be. If his well-meaning mother hadn’t managed to change him, then everyone else in the world was fucked.
Joker shifted beside him, bringing his mind back to the present job. Gunner managed to shake off the melancholy that had gripped him after his call from Margo and focus on getting this shit handled so he could go find out what the hell was up with her canceling their date. He wasn’t leaving her place until he had a solid reason and if that reason was another man, he might find himself in the slammer, because something told him that he wouldn’t react well to that.
Chapter Five
Margo was wearing her comfy yoga pants that made her butt look like it needed its own zip code and a loose tank top with her slipper socks. Yep, she was certainly styling for the pizza man, she giggled as she turned away from the mirror. At least the calamine lotion that was all over her face and body in little patches wouldn’t get rubbed off and that was what mattered. She’d already started to blister even though she’d put on the steroid cream. She headed into her room, stopping to glance at the tracker for her pizza seeing that it had just been pulled from the oven. Yay, ooey--gooey goodness was soon to be on its way.
Her mouth watered as she rubbed her hands together walking into the living room to get a twenty and some ones. Margo liked a hot pie more than she did chocolate or flowers. She’d had quite a few fantasies about a certain underwear model showing up at her door with a hot pizza and a smile. After meeting Gunner however, she’d likely be inserting his image instead of Calvin Klein’s top model. Margo frowned because that was a depressing thought, mostly because she wasn’t likely to see him again after today.
Shrugging, she headed into the kitchen to put a few Cokes in the freezer so they were ice cold when the pizza arrived, her mind already on her painting. She noticed the few dishes in the sink and decided to do them while she waited. She was pacing about ten minutes later when the doorbell rang in her apartment. Assuming it was her dinner, she grabbed the money off the end of the counter and headed to the door. She opened it without checking, so hungry she would swear that her stomach was eating her spine.
“It’s about time you got—eek!” Margo was talking as she opened the door, but it wasn’t the pizza guy who was standing at her door. She stared for a moment, her mind shutting down then she realized that she was letting Gunner see her looking like an escapee from a mental intuition. She slammed the door leaning back against it. What the hell was he doing here? She turned and peeked through the peephole, hoping that she’d imagined him standing there, but nope. He wasn’t a hallucination.
Damn.
Margo felt the door vibrate when Gunner knocked, a little chuckle escaping him. Just kill her now because her humiliation was finally complete.
Gunner rang the bell to Margo’s apartment four hours after they’d brought the guns to the clubhouse. He would have been here sooner, but after he’d talked with Buck and Chaos about the job for thirty minutes, he’d decided he might as well shower and have his hand looked at. He glanced down at his lightly bandaged left hand with a little frown. He really hoped he wasn’t going to have to make some asshole eat his fist tonight after the club doctor had told him to be easy with it because he might have a hairline fracture.
He was scheduled tomorrow for an x-ray. Not that it mattered, if he needed to put some fucker in his place he would. He had to stop himself from hitting the doorbell a second time when Margo didn’t answer right away. He was just about to do it anyway when the door swung open. The object of his obsession was standing in front of him in a baggy tank-top and some tight as hell yoga pants—that made his dick instantly stiffen—wearing calamine lotion all over her face. She let out an eek when she saw him and slammed the door. Gunner couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped him as he knocked on the door hard. He knew why she didn’t want to go out with him now. She’d gotten some poison oak or maybe ivy from her adventures in the bushes the other day.
“I’m not leaving, Margo. You might as well let me in, babe.” Gunner muttered with another light chuckle escaping him. He grinned when a muffled ‘no’ came from the other side in a miserable tone.
“Excuse me, sir,” a male voice said from behind him, making Gunner turn to see a man wearing a pizza delivery uniform looking at him, holding a large square pack. “I think this pizza is for this apartment, but maybe they got the number wrong.”
“You order pizza, babe?” Gunner asked, knocking on the door again. Hearing a little whimper before a pained ‘yes’ came from the other side of the door. “Looks like it’s right. How much?” he asked, digging out his wallet to pay the delivery man. The thin delivery man rattled off an amount and Gunner paid him. After a bit of juggling, the man handed him the pizza, wings, and some kind of cookie before stepping away heading towards the elevator.
Gunner rapped on the door, “You opening the door, babe?”
“No, just set it down and leave. I’ll pay you back later.” Her muffled voice said from the other side of the door.
“Huh, I was hungry anyway,” Gunner declared and turned away from the door with a little grin on his lips as he moved away from the door still holding the pizza. He didn’t get far before he heard her pained groan and some interesting phrases he was sure she meant to be curse words.
“You forgot to leave my pizza!”
“You mean my pizza? ‘cause I paid for it,” he yelled back. Gunner kept walking and he heard more of those colorful phrases before the distinct click of a lock turning. Margo jerked the door open, and her voice wasn’t velvety or sweet when she screeched.
“You bastard, bring me back my dinner!”
Apparently, she’d given up on not cursing him and just went for it. Gunner grinned, he had that effect on people sometimes. He turned to look at her, schooling his expression to hide his amusement. He had a feeling she wouldn’t appreciate it. He looked her up and then back down, taking in the cuteness that was an angry Margo. She really was sexy, he didn’t know how she could pull that look off and still make his cock so fucking hard.
“You going to let me in?” He asked, waiting for her approval.
“Fine, but you can’t have any of my cookie and no hogging the pizza. I eat five slices, you can have what’s left.” Margo muttered petulantly.
“Okay but that means I get all the wings.” Gunner teased, still staying put.
“No, you don’t. I get some wings too, it’s my darn food.”
“I paid.”
“I don’t care if you paid. It’s my dinner and if I’d known you were going to eat it all, I would have ordered more,” Margo growled as her brows furrowed over her eyes as she glared at him. He couldn’t help the burst of laughter that escaped him. She was just too damned cute. Gunner shrugged and starting walking towards the elevator.
“Where are you going with my pizza?” she demanded.
“Home, with my dinner.”
“That’s mine, you big jerk!” Margo came storming down the little hallway and tried to grab the pizza box from his hands, but she was too short to take it when he held it above her head.
“I get all the wings.” He bargained. Margo sighed, her anger evident in the way she huffily crossed her arms and nodded roughly.
“Fine.”
“Okay, then,” Gunner agreed and nodded for her to head back into her apartment. He followed behind her nodding to a nosy neighbor who had poked her head out of her apartment after she’d heard all the yelling.
“Hi, Mrs. Coats. How’s your arthritis?” Margo asked as they went by.
“It’s okay, dear. Everything alright out here?” The elderly Mrs. Coats asked, looking at Gunner suspiciously. Gunner wasn’t stunned when people looked at him with suspicion, but he wasn’t wearing his cut tonight. Which meant he was surprised that he was on the receiving end of that narrowed-eyed look.
“I suppose, he is being a little difficult
but I can handle it.” Margo said not hiding the fact that she was still upset with him. Gunner let a grin slide over his lips and he wished he had a hand free so he could spank her ass for that little comment.
“Well then,” Mrs. Coats said nodding at him, a sparkle entering her eyes as she lost the distrusting look she’d worn a moment ago. She grinned as she cackled, “Give him hell. A man needs a little kick in the ass every now and then.”
Gunner had a feeling Mrs. Coats had been quite the woman when she was younger. It made him wonder about Mr. Coats. He could easily see her as one of the club’s old ladies. She shooed them back to Margo’s place with a quick huff as she meandered back into her own apartment, shutting the door. He entered Margo’s place looking around curiously.
He noted the discarded cups littering the little table to the left of the couch, along with paint rags that were littered around the room on tables and peeking out from under the furniture. The room was painted a cheery orangish pink with white trim that he was sure hadn’t been chosen by the apartment complex. There were paintings everywhere, including some that were stacked against the wall by a room off to the right, and more in a corner by the kitchen. Gunner realized that Margo wasn’t much of a cleaner. He had a little bit of OCD and this place was going to end up making him nuts, but he was used to ignoring the urge to clean up after slobs. Most of his brothers had no cleaning skills at all. At least she had some, which meant that her floors were clean and she didn’t have food containers from the 80’s hanging around.
He was teased about being the mother hen of the group every time he couldn’t ignore the mess and started cleaning. Gunner set the pizza down on the spot she cleared out for him on the little coffee table. Margo whispered something as she headed to the kitchen, sounding like more of those little phrases she used as curse words. Gunner watched her ass while she sauntered away from him, his mouth watering, but not for the pizza. Damn, she had a nice ass.
Caught (Grave Diggers MC Book 2) Page 4