HONEY FOR NOTHIN'

by Cathryn Cade

  “Right,” Lindi said, chewing her lip. “Then we need to get you out of sight, and fast. ‘Cause I think your mom and maybe a couple of the Flyers are coming here.”

  “Oh, shit,” Kit mumbled. She waved her hands. “Okay, I’m gone. You don’t know where I went or when I’m coming back. Just tell them that. And call Jack, get him here with you. And tell him to come packing, just in case.”

  She turned and dashed into the back of the café, to the tiny office on one side of the hallway where Lindi had a desk and cabinet. Kit’s purse and duffel were stacked in the corner. She grabbed them.

  If Bouncer thought Lindi was hiding her from him, who knew what he and his brothers might do? He was an old-style biker, one of the one-percenters who considered their fists, knives and guns the tools to get what they wanted. Thank God there were only a few of them left in the club, but they were enough to cause trouble for anyone in their path.

  Remi stood in the office doorway, looking ready for anything. “What’s going on, Kit? You in trouble?”

  Kit blinked—he had one of the kitchen knives in his right hand, and he held it in a way that said he knew how to use it and would do so to protect her and Lindi. She probably should be scared by this, but instead it felt like he’d offered her a bouquet of fancy flowers.

  Yeah, she was that kind of girl.

  “I’m fine, Remi. You can, uh, stand down. I’m gonna take off.”

  He leaned closer, his dark gaze arrowing into hers. “Don’t lie to me, Kit. What’s going on?”

  “You’re taking her up the mountain,” Lindi said behind him. “That’s what’s going on.”

  Remi stepped aside, the knife disappearing somewhere behind his back in a move so smooth Kit was sure Lindi hadn’t even seen it.

  Lindi held out her car keys. “Take my SUV, take Kit up to Keys’ place,” she told him. “She’ll be safe there.”

  “No,” Kit protested. “I don’t want to leave you here alone. And you’ve got hungry customers out there—you can’t send your cook away now. I’ll walk.”

  Although maybe not to Keys’ place. She’d go up the mountain, maybe just hide out in the trees until the Flyers had come and gone. Then ... she didn’t know. And trying to think that far ahead, to make those kind of choices, filled her with suffocating panic.

  Lindi’s phone blared the opening lines of a rock song. She lifted it to her ear, relief sagging her shoulders. “Jack. Honey, I need you to come. Some of the Flyers are on their way here to take Kit and I—” she stopped in mid-word, listening.

  Kit could hear Jack’s deep, rough, attractive voice in a tone that said he was demanding answers, although she couldn’t hear the words.

  “It’s Bouncer,” Lindi said. “All I know is, he and Kit’s mom want her on the back of his bike, and Kit doesn’t want to be there.”

  She listened some more. “Okay. Yes, I hear you, Jack. I will.”

  She lowered her phone. “Jack’s on his way, and he’s close. Remi, he says you should stay, because he wants us to behave normally. And I do need you on the grill.”

  She looked at Kit. “There’s a trail up through the woods from that little stand of pines at the edge of the parking lot. Dave and his family used it to come down to the lake. It will take you right to Keys’ place. I’ll call him, tell him you’re coming.”

  Kit hesitated. “Are you sure that’s okay? I mean, he and Jack are Flyers too.”

  Lindi winced. “I know, and believe me, they’re gonna want answers about how this all blew up.”

  Kit waved her hands and then knotted them in fists. “Shit, I don’t know. My mom thinks I should go with him, and I think she kind of ... told him I was okay with that.”

  “Oh, my God,” Lindi said, her eyes widening. “Deni got you in this mess?”

  “Never mind that now,” Remi said. “We gotta get Kit out of here.”

  “Right,” Lindi agreed. “Go, honey. We’ll talk later.”

  Kit nodded. “Um, okay. Thanks.”

  She and Remi exchanged a look, his turbulent, hers full of silent thanks and apology—for what, she wasn’t sure. Maybe just being so troublesome.

  She touched his arm, warm and strong and he took her hand and pulled her toward the back door. “I’m walking you out, in case anyone’s around.”

  “My stuff.” She dragged her heels as they reached the office doorway. Remi grabbed her duffel, and waited as she looped the long strap of her purse over her head and shoulder.

  He led her out of the back door, alert and watchful. When he paused in front of her to scan the graveled sweep behind the café, showing her his hawk-like profile, a little thrill went through Kit as she pictured him long ago, scanning for enemies of his tribe.

  The afternoon had turned cloudy, as it often did in June. The air was heavy and warm, as if it was going to rain.

  “Here’s the trail.” Remi nodded at steps that had been cut in the steep bank that rose behind the parking lot. He handed her the duffel, but held onto the strap. He searched her face, and then bent and kissed her, a swift buss that landed crooked on her lips, but was warm and reassuring all the same.

  “Be careful,” he said. “And don’t mess around—run. And if there’s anyone but Keys around at his place, hide in the trees till it’s all clear.”

  “I will.” Kit bit back the plea for him to come with her. Instead, she grabbed her duffel and ran.

  The old steps, crafted of railroad ties, were half-full of pine needles and fallen cones, but she jogged lightly up them and along the trail, a narrow track now lined in pine needles, leading up through the brush and into the trees.

  She looked back once before a clump of tall brush. Remi still stood below, watching her, a slim figure against the grey gravel and white café. He raised his hand, she blew him a kiss, which made him smile crookedly.

  Then she hurried on.

  She was breathing hard by the time she reached the cover of the tall pines. Looking over her shoulder, she noted the café was out of sight, but she could still see the highway through a light screen of brush.

  She stopped to rest, turning to look out over the lake. Framed in low, tree-covered mountains, it was a gray-blue expanse under the clouds.

  A speedboat arrowed west toward town and one of the rectangular, double-decker cruise boats from the resort chugged south on an afternoon sight-seeing cruise.

  It was quiet up here, with only the muffled sounds of occasional vehicles on the lake-shore road, and the far-off boat motor cutting the sigh of the afternoon wind through the pines overhead. It was also cooler. Kit shivered as the breeze cut through her thin shirt and shivered over her bare legs,

  She set her duffel on a fallen log, unzipped it and found her hoodie. She pulled on the sweatshirt and then perched on the log and gazed out at the trees and lake. What the heck was she even doing here? She liked the woods, and the lake, but it wasn’t like she was on a fun day-hike here.

  The breeze set off a deeper shiver inside her—this one fear. She was such a mess—she had no job, no prospects, and now she was on the run from her own mother and her biker friends. And the man who was supposedly gonna help her hide from them, was affiliated with them. How screwed up was that?

  Maybe she’d just hang out here for a while, give the Flyers time to come and go, then head back down to the café.

  If only she didn’t feel so damn scared, like a kid abandoned in the woods. She wanted Remi—this sudden yearning startled her. Shouldn’t she have thought of Lindi first? They’d been friends for years, whereas she’d met Remi a couple of months ago when he started working at the BeeHive. In that time, they’d only interacted a few times, when she made it over for brief visits that included a meal at the café.

  The last four days, their relationship had accelerated. Restaurant work left plenty of time in the lulls to chat with co-workers, and she and Remi had talked a lot.

  She now knew he had a room at one of the older motels on East Sherman in downtown Coeur d’Alene. She kn
ew he’d worked before that at a fancy fusion restaurant in Spokane, but quit in a dispute with the owner.

  She knew he was all or mostly Native American and gorgeous, and that he had sexy, soulful eyes and a sudden, radiant smile. That he had no family that he knew of except a mother, who was off somewhere, maybe in jail, which he accepted with a solemn fatalism, because many Native Americans ended up in an out of incarceration through problems with alcohol and drugs.

  That he was quiet, but funny as hell when he wanted to be.

  And that he wasn’t a biker, which jumped him up her list of desirable men a whole bunch of spaces.

  Of course the only other man on the list right now was the biker who’d kissed her behind the café—Keys. Holy wow, she hadn’t been kissed in months and then twice in one day—no, make that in less than an hour by two incredibly hot guys.

  And while Remi made her want to hang onto his hand for companionship and more, Keys made her want to burrow into those strong arms and stay there, safe from her troubles. He radiated laid-back calm like a ... a biker sensei. Plus, Lindi said he sometimes carried a gun in the back of his belt. That sounded good about now, since the biker who was after her would understand only a show of force.

  Unless Keys sided with him, because they were part of the same brotherhood of bikers.

  “Hey, babe.”

  The deep, calm voice from a few yards up the mountain had her leaping from the log. Heart pounding, Kit spun, nearly tripping on a broken branch buried in the tall grass. She looked up into the blue eyes and tanned face of the man she’d just been thinking about.

  “You’re not gonna turn me over to the Flyers, are you?” she blurted.

  Keys’ dark brows shot together, and he cocked his head as if unsure he’d heard her correctly. “You wanna tell me why the fuck you think I’d do that?” he asked. “You steal money from them, or somethin’?”

  “No,” she shot back.

  He walked down the trail toward her. “You murder one of ‘em in his bed?”

  Kit rolled her eyes. “Uh—no.”

  He stopped before her, eyes holding hers. “Then no, Red, I won’t. Now, why’d you think I would?”

  “Because I know how bikers are—the brotherhood comes first. And you and Jack are roving members of the Flyers, right? So why wouldn’t you?”

  His face remained calm, although his blue eyes lost their smile, whereupon Kit discovered his blue eyes could be chilly as the waters in the lake below them. A chill that was as hard to take as her fear.

  “You don’t know me, so I’m gonna lay it out for you in a friendly way,” he said. “Yeah, me and Jack are roving members. We got brothers in the Heights chapter, and in Cali. What we don’t got are the kind of bottom-feeder morals that would lead either of us to hand over a woman to any of ‘em, who isn’t eager to be handed over, unless she deserved it. Also, I don’t know you, but my bro Jack is into your girl Lindi in a way that means he also looks out for people she cares about. And Jack and me aren’t related by blood, but we might as well be—we’re brothers. That means I look out for people he cares about, same as he does mine.”

  He flicked a look around them, then reached for her duffel, pulling it from her hand. “C’mon. It’s not far up my place. I wanna get you in and out of sight. Then you can explain the shit you’ve stirred.”

  He turned and started up the trail. Kit followed him. And despite her resentment at his last words, she could not help admiring the view. His back was a long vee, and he had a truly fine ass, tight and round in his snug, faded Levis. The easy stride of his long legs made her imagine all those muscles used to power him into a woman’s body—specifically, hers.

  Also, she really liked the way his hair lay in a silver braid. It was a lot shorter than Remi’s. Her hands twitched as she imagined comparing the warm silk of both of them in her hands. This made her flush and have to pause to yank her cut-offs away from her suddenly sensitive lady parts. Whoa, she couldn’t even handle one man—two of them, one a biker? No way.

  Except, she might not be able to handle this man, but Lindi and Jack trusted him. And she’d just been damn rude to him. Jink and Bouncer both would’ve back-handed a woman that spoke to them that way.

  “Sorry,” she said to his back. “For saying that and thinking it. Real nice of you to help me.”

  Maybe it was her imagination, but it seemed to her his broad shoulders relaxed. Anyway, the afternoon seemed warmer than it had. Of course, maybe that was because they were climbing steadily uphill. She was puffing, her thighs were beginning to quiver, and not in a good way.

  “Good enough. So you wanna tell me why you’re hidin’ from Bouncer?” her rescuer asked over his shoulder as they rounded a big, lichen-covered boulder. He paused as the trail widened into a small clearing, and reached out his hand to her.

  Kit took it without thinking, and then gave a silent ‘eep’ of pleasure and self-consciousness as he gave her hand a squeeze. It seemed she was forgiven for her lapse in manners.

  “Um ... he sort of thinks I’m set to be his old lady,” she mumbled, her face firing with heat again, this time as much in resentment as embarrassment.

  He gave her a cool look, then turned to walk again, pulling her along with him. “You tell him that, then change your mind?”

  “No!” She wasn’t that stupid. “My mother did.”

  “What the hell?” A peek at Keys’ face showed her he was taken aback by this.

  “She was ... trying to set me up,” Kit explained. “It’s what she knows.”

  “Who’s your mom?”

  “Deni Weeks.”

  “I’ve met her. Looks a little like you. She with Jink?”

  “Was. He kicked her—us out a few days ago.”

  “Is that when the two of you had the bright idea to hook you up with Bouncer?”

  Gah, of course he’d believe it was partly her own idea. After all, she’d just let him kiss her behind the café. Kit tugged at her hand, but he didn’t let go. “It was so not my idea.”

  “You sure about that?” he asked, walking steadily. “Listen, it’s okay to change your mind and realize you’re in over your head. But you gotta level with me, Red. If I’m gonna watch out for you, I ain’t doin’ it blind.”

  She tugged harder on her hand, digging her heels into the duff of fallen pine needles layered on the path.

  “I’m telling the truth,” she bit out, anger flaming so hot she felt as if her head would explode. “I’ve had maybe two conversations with Bouncer—one to say I fell in his lap at a party because he tripped me, not because I wanted to be there, and the last one to say I didn’t want to climb on the back of his bike. It’s not my fault he thinks that’s a woman’s version of ‘Oooh, big guy, come and get me.’“

  Keys stopped in his tracks, and tugged Kit closer. “Red.”

  When she looked up at him, he shook his head. “Don’t go gettin’ pissed at me. Like I said, I’m stepping into the middle of this, I need to know why. But, you say you didn’t lead him on, I’ll accept that. And, Bouncer may be a brother, and a man I’d trust to have my back in a fight, but I also get why a young, gorgeous woman like you would not wanna be tied to him. Hell, you could have your pick of any of those guys—some of ‘em would throw their old ladies aside to get to you.”

  She nodded, but did so staring at his chest, because she was still too pissed off to look him in the eye.

  “Jack will deal with whoever shows up at the BeeHive,” he went on. “An’ I got you safe here. Later on, we’ll talk and figure out how to get Bouncer off your sweet tailpipes. Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” His words and his warm, strong grip eased her anger and the chill of fear. As she’d thought—biker sensei warrior.

  She bit her lip as they walked on. He thought she had sweet tailpipes?

  “You didn’t get that hair from your mama,” he said, and she looked over to find he was studying her, his gaze once again, warm and lazy. “Your dad?”

  “Yeah. I’ve o
nly seen a couple pictures of him, but he definitely had red hair.”

  “He a biker?”

  “Yes, but also a Marine. He found out Mom was pregnant with me while he was in Iraq. He died over there before I was born, so we never even got to see each other.”

  He squeezed her hand again. “Damn, that’s rough, babe. He would’ve been tickled to meet his redheaded baby girl.”

  “I guess.” But she’d never know, and since Deni’s parents had been busy drinking themselves to death in some trailer park in California, and Kit’s father’s parents had wanted nothing to do with the baby-mama that he hadn’t had time to marry, Kit’s only experience with family was her mother.

  “It’s good you got Lindi and—what’s her name—Sandra?”

  “Sara,” Kit corrected him. This time she smiled at him. “You’re right. If you and Jack are brothers, they’re my sisters.” Her big sisters, who were always trying to boss her, but sisters nonetheless.

  He tipped his head, his gaze traveling over her face. “I’m right,” he repeated. “Tell you what, Red--I’m right about a lotta things today.”

  This did not surprise her. What did was that he seemed so pleased by her affirmation.

  Then he grinned down at her, gave her hand a last squeeze, and let her go to gesture toward the big, light gray building now visible through the trees ahead. “Here’s my place. C’mon, I’ll show you around.”

  The gray building, it turned out, was the auto shop. They were approaching from the west, rear corner of the building, around which there was a paved area wide enough to drive a big vehicle. The shop, constructed of heavy, corrugated metal that looked nearly new, was two stories high. Half-way up the back wall was a door with a fire escape leading down to the ground.

  Under this was a metal rack bearing an assortment of automotive parts, most of them rusted.

  “Possibles,” Keys said, waving at the rack. “Shit I found piled out in the woods around the place here. I want these woods safe, and also don’t like stumbling over shit when I take a notion to walk my property.”

  There were also several metal barrels, and some large, mysterious crates stacked nearby.