by Cathryn Cade
He led the way around the corner, revealing a wide, graveled sweep of drive. On the north side of the clearing sat a new cement foundation, oddly in the midst of old shrubbery and the remains of what looked like a lawn. Keys pointed. “Old Gaspard cabin sat there. We tore it down, had it hauled away, but I like the spot for a house. So that’s where it’ll stay.”
Kit knew nothing about homes, old or new or in-progress. “Oh. So, you’re building a house?”
“Nope. Don’t mind fix-it chores, but I got no interest in building. Havin’ one built.”
“Oh, right.”
“Yep. Crews come back in the morning to frame in the walls. I’ll show you some pictures later of what it’s gonna look like. For now, come on in the shop. That’s where I’ve been stayin’.”
Kit looked at the woods around them and gave a shiver. “Sounds like the right idea to me.”
He chuckled, a deep, nice sound. “You don’t like the woods?”
“In daylight, sure,” she said. “And I’ve camped a little. It’s all right in a campground with lots of other people, but this is North Idaho. There are bears.”
“Yep, some,” he agreed. “A few cougars too.”
“Not to mention moose are scary-looking as shit,” she tagged on. “And they’ll charge if you surprise one with a baby.”
“Seen a few moose around, over at the east end of the lake, near the big slough, although they will range this high, even go into town on occasion. But they mostly just ignore us humans.”
They’d reached the front of the shop. Here a cement apron spread out to meet the pavement skirting the building.
At the far side of the clearing, a graveled drive disappeared into the tall trees to the east. It led, Kit knew, down to the county road that ran along the creek bottom, and thus down to the lake-shore highway.
The front of the shop had a huge garage door, closed, and a small entry door with a keypad beside it. Keys stopped here, tapped in a series of numbers, and then opened the door.
He beckoned to her to follow, and disappeared into the shadowed interior of the shop.
Taking a breath, Kit followed him into his domain.
Chapter Four
Remington Red Hawk was not happy. In fact, he was sizzling as hot as the big grill he was scraping after the quartet of cheeseburgers he’d just dished up.
He dug at the crispy remnants of beef and bacon with hard, vicious strokes, sending them flying into the grease trough that ran along the front of the grill. Slamming the scraper back into its place to one side, he grabbed the frozen patties of four more burgers and rasher of bacon and slapped them out on the grill with the swift precision of long practice.
He dumped a new batch of fries in one of the waiting metal baskets and lowered it into the deep fryer.
His boss hustled away with the full cheeseburger platters and he heard her cheery voice as she delivered them to a table of customers.
Two-thirty, and the BeeHive lunch rush had slowed to a trickle, which was a good thing, because over the rush of the big grill fan and the sizzle of meat, Remi heard the deep rumble of motorcycles. The Devil’s Flyers were here.
He turned far enough to glare out through the open order window and the plate glass windows fronting the café, as three big, gleaming Harleys rolled into the parking area in front of the café and stopped.
One took the rear, waiting for the other two to claim a place to park their bikes. A woman hopped off the rear bike, adjusting her short jacket and pulling a scarf from her hair, then fluffed it with her fingers as the men backed their bikes into position, back tires on the walk in front of the café so everyone who exited would have to walk out and around them.
All three of the men wore nearly identical black leather vests. On the back, a cackling devil rode an old-fashioned airplane down, smoke billowing from the tail, guns firing from the nose. The top rocker read ‘DEVIL’S FLYERS MC’ the bottom on two of them, ‘WASHINGTON’. The third man’s read CALIFORNIA.
The biker who sauntered into the café first was big, well over six feet of muscle and cold, bearded Russian ice. He wore a faded black bandanna tied over long blond hair and a beard. Ivan ‘Joystick’ Vanko; according to the patch on the front of his vest, the President of the Flyers. A scary mother with whom Remi hoped he did not have to tangle.
The second man, patched as his sergeant-at-arms, Remi knew only as Bouncer—which was more than enough. Broad and beer-bellied, with a mullet and a face that might’ve been handsome if it weren’t so beefy and stamped with years of hard living and hard drinking.
This was the fucker who wanted Kit, and who thought he could just ride over here and grab her.
He wouldn’t get her. Remi not only knew how to use every knife around him in this kitchen to do a lot more than carve vegetables and chicken, he had a baby Glock in the back of his belt, hidden by the old, brown vest he’d found in a thrift shop and wore under his apron.
And as for the woman strutting in beside the last biker, that bitch wasn’t gonna get close enough to Kit to try and talk her into anything either. The brunette was clearly Kit’s mom, but to Remi’s eyes she lacked her daughter’s beauty and class. The smile on her face was as fake as her leather jacket, her gaze darting about warily.
“Stick,” called a deep, rough voice. “Welcome to the BeeHive.”
Remi relaxed a bit as a tall, broad man with sandy hair moved forward to greet the new arrivals. Jack Moran, Lindi’s man, and a man who would not allow anyone to be messed with on these premises. He wouldn’t give up Kit’s location, either. And behind him if needed, would come Remi and Keys.
“Jack,” the tall biker said, his voice deep and cold. The two men gripped hands. “So, this your new bitch’s place?” He had a faint accent, so it sounded more like ‘beech’s plaze’.
“This is my old lady’s place,” Jack agreed, his voice pleasant but with emphasis on the substituted term that the biker leader couldn’t miss.
“Lindi, babe,” Jack called. “Come and meet Stick and some of the boys.”
“Be right there,” Lindi called from the far end of the little café. Her voice softened as she spoke to some customers, then laughed.
She’d relaxed when Jack walked in. That was good—Remi liked Lindi a lot, and enjoyed working with her. She fussed at times, but he could usually calm her down with a joke or the reassurance that they were on track.
She just wanted her business to succeed, and Remi wanted to help her. He liked working here. The BeeHive wasn’t fancy, it was retro Americana, which was real popular now. With his help the place was gonna be a real success.
“Sit,” Jack said, gesturing at an empty booth by the windows. “We’ll get you some lunch. Food’s fuckin’ great here, though I’m kinda surprised word’s spread far as Airway Heights.”
“It has,” the biker leader said. He cast an assessing look into the kitchen, his light eyes narrowing on Remi’s face before flicking away. He moved toward the booth Jack indicated. “The food, and the pretty women who work here.”
He sprawled into one side of the booth, and Bouncer took the other side. The third biker took the next booth with the woman, sitting so he faced the others, the woman across from him.
“Welcome to the BeeHive,” Lindi said, moving to Jack’s side and tipping her head to smile at the quartet, although it was guarded, not open and sparkling the way she could smile.”Anything to drink?”
“You got a liquor license?” Bouncer demanded, giving a disparaging look around him.
“Nope,” Lindi said. “I can offer you soda, iced tea or coffee.”
The smell of browned burgers caught Remi’s attention, so he turned back to his grill, flipping patties and bacon.
The sound of sizzling meat cut off the rest of the conversation. He slapped cheese on each patty to melt, grabbed four buns, brushed their open faces with melted butter and set them on the warming shelf built in over the back of the grill, then dealt out four plates on the prep counter opposite
the grill and pulled out the plastic-wrapped trays of lettuce, tomato, onion and dill pickle. The fries came out of their cooking oil to drain.
He filled the plates with the hot food, balanced two plates in his left hand, a third atop them, picked up the fourth in his right hand and carried them out. Luckily, these customers were a quartet of local retired men in cycling clothes who didn’t look too concerned about sharing the café with the Flyers. Remi refilled their iced teas, grabbed an extra ketchup and left them to their meal.
Then he glided back into the kitchen, ready for anything.
“Your cook is good?” he heard Stick ask.
“Remi? Best short-order cook in Coeur d’Alene,” Jack replied. “Have to eat his bacon-cheeseburgers to believe ‘em.”
“Then I’d best do that.”
A moment later, Lindi walked into the kitchen. “Two double bacon-cheeseburgers with fries,” she told Remi. “And two regular cheese, one with fries and one with a salad, thousand island.”
Remi turned back to his grill. No mention of Kit yet--but it would come. Remi could feel the tension in the air, thick enough to cut with one of his knives.
* * *
Although Lindi had never met Kit’s mother before, she already knew she was fated to dislike a woman who tried to hook her own daughter up with a mulleted biker with mean eyes and a beer gut.
Deni Weeks had the biker bitch strut down, that was for sure—swinging her hips in too-tight jeans like she was all that, yet nervously attending to the men she was with, smiling when they laughed, sobering when they frowned, tossing her hair when she wasn’t sure what to do.
Lindi could see Kit in her mom’s green eyes, and high, rounded cheekbones, but other than that, Kit had gotten her looks and evidently her height from her father.
And thank God Kit didn’t fawn over men this way, or at least not that Lindi had witnessed. If she ever started, Lindi would be tempted to slap her. She rubbed her palm briskly on her apron to dispel the itch that had settled there.
Deni looked Lindi over and then smiled. “Hi, Lindi. Nice little place you’ve got here, hon.” She tossed her hair, which looked to Lindi like it could use a good shampoo and condition--and made big eyes at the man across from her.
“Bullet, this is one of my daughter’s friends. Lindi, this is Bullet.” She said the man’s name with a reverence Lindi hadn’t heard since her grandma showed her a framed, wrinkled handkerchief that Elvis had used to wipe his brow during a Vegas show.
“Nice to meet you,” Lindi said to him.
He gave her a chin lift.
“Bullet’s up from the Tri-Cities,” Deni informed her proudly.
Lindi glimpsed a twinkle in the biker’s eyes. She grinned at him. “Welcome to the lake. Hope you brought your swim trunks.”
His lips twitched under his droopy mustache. He shook his head once.
Deni chuckled. She had Kit’s laugh, all husky and kind of naughty. Now how was Lindi supposed to hate her?
Jack was chatting with the High Flyers’ officers about the supper club he was planning to build just east of the café, but Lindi was certain she heard a subtext.
Stick, his deep smooth voice with slight Russian accent cool as vodka sliding over ice, said, “A supper club. You’ll have to let our brewery supply your beer,” meaning ‘So, Jack. You’re setting up over here in Coeur d’Alene, but you do recall I’m the big boss with arms long enough to reach over here, right?’
Jack, his deep, rough voice easy and friendly, “You bet, along with some of the other local brews. Gotta give my customers a variety.” meaning ‘Stick, you may be the club pres, and I may respect you, but I’m my own man. And you’re in my place here, not yours, so I don’t gotta do nothin’.’
And Lindi supposed she should be annoyed that Jack’s stance, sprawled on one of her counter stools with his elbows back on the counter, said ‘This is my place’, when really it was her place, she was not. Instead she was utterly grateful that he was here to shelter her and the BeeHive under his protection. He could piss on every outside corner of the café like a big dog marking his territory, as far as she was concerned.
She pictured herself working the café while wearing an apron that read ‘Property of Jack’ instead of her name embroidered with two cheerful honeybees, and had to quell a snicker. She might have one made up just to mess with him.
Right, and if she did, he’d have her wearing it naked to fix him supper at home. Which could be fun too ...
“Order up,” Remi called from the kitchen, and she snapped out of it, hurrying to serve her customers. The faster they ate, the faster she could get them back on the road—she hoped.
Remi served up his usual outstanding fare, big juicy burgers dripping with cheese, layered with condiments fresh and crisp, and huge piles of crisp shoestring fries.
Lindi watched with a smug smile as Stick took his first bite and chewed, then shot her a look that was considerably warmer than earlier. Of course, then he ruined it.
“Good,” he approved. “Tell your cook I’ll pay him double to come and work for me.”
Lindi widened her eyes at Jack, who grinned at her.
“I’ll pass on your offer,” she told Stick. “But I doubt he’ll take it.”
“Nope,” Remi called from the kitchen, although his back was turned as he scraped the grill down, something he did a lot of, and which Lindi appreciated. “I’m gonna be manager here.”
“He is,” Lindi agreed. She and Jack exchanged a look, one that made her cheeks flush and her pussy clench. One of these days when they decided to unleash Jack’s boys into her womb, and she was big with his baby, she’d have to slow down. She just hoped her man still found her attractive when she was waddling like a mama penguin. She was pretty sure he’d be so proud of his handiwork, he’d be smug as a bear in honey.
The table of bicyclists paid and left, thanking her and Remi for an excellent lunch. They pedaled out of the parking lot and headed west toward Coeur d’Alene along the bike path.
Stick wasn’t done with Lindi. He pointed a fry at her. “You’re hot, you come work for me. You can cook at the clubhouse or bartend, you choose. Then when Jack gets tired of you, you’ll have all his brothers to pick from.”
His sergeant was shaking with silent laughter. Deni was watching with her burger in midair, mouth open, eyes wide, expecting trouble. Bullet continued to swab fries in ketchup and eat them.
Jack sighed. “Fuck, Stick. You always did have lousy timing.” Straightening just enough, Jack shoved his hand in the pocket of his faded jeans, and then crooked his fingers at Lindi. “C’mere, baby.”
Her heart beginning to pound for some reason, Lindi went to him. Jack pulled her between his brawny thighs and looked into her face, brushing his thumb over her lower lip and then holding out his hand for hers, palm up. When she lifted her right hand, he shook his head.
She lifted her left hand and laid it on his big, rough palm. Oh, my God. Was he going to ...?
Yes, he was.
“Baby,” Jack said, looking into her eyes. “Was gonna do this later, down by the lake. But since I can’t have you around my goddamn wild-ass biker bros without my marker, gotta tighten up the time-line.”
Stick and Bouncer laughed. Deni gasped.
Lindi may have gasped herself, as Jack pushed a ring onto the appropriate finger of her left hand. It was a diamond—a really big one—set in a graceful gold setting. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, and it was on her finger.
Jack leaned close, tipping his head as if they were alone. “Marry me, Lindi. You’re mine, I’m yours—let’s make it official.”
She looked into his eyes and smiled, even as his gorgeous, rugged face blurred in a wash of tears. “Oh, Jack. Yes.”
Then she couldn’t talk, because he was hauling her close, his powerful arms tight around her, and his mouth covering hers in a long, deep kiss.
Stick whistled through his teeth, and Remi let out a war whoop from the door of t
he kitchen, grinning and giving her a thumbs up. Lindi heard and saw this peripherally, a backdrop for Jack’s handsome, rugged face and his beautiful hazel eyes so full of heat and promise.
“I love you,” she whispered, for his ears alone.
“Love you too, baby,” he murmured. He gave her a squeeze, and Lindi would have given today’s till if they were somewhere alone with a big bed. But since they were not, she gave him one last kiss, and pulled away. He let her go enough that she could turn in his arm.
“Sorry,” she said to Stick with faux regret. “Guess I’ll have to turn down your generous offer.”
To her astonishment, the ice-cold mountain of bearded, biker president winked at her. “Guess so. You can still come party with us, though.”
Now that might be fun, to witness biker craziness from the safe haven of Jack’s side. “Okay.”
Jack sighed. “Great, now I’m gonna have to patch you up, baby. ‘Property of Jack Moran’, right here.” He patted her back.
Lindi smiled wickedly. “Okay.” If he only knew—she was so going to have that apron made.
Then, when his brows were up and his grip slackened with surprise at her ready agreement—they’d had prior conversations about women being labeled as property—she scooted away and grabbed Stick and Bouncer’s empty glasses to refill them, because even though she hoped the repellent Bouncer at least never came back, for now he was her customer. And customers at the BeeHive received great food and friendly smiles.
Even if they rode their Harleys right through the middle of her big romantic moment.
* * *
Stick accepted another Coke and sat back, pushing his empty plate away. Then he looked up at Jack. “So, word is you have two pretty women here. Where’s the other one?”
“My daughter,” Deni piped up from the table behind him, waving her hand at Jack like she was afraid he wouldn’t know who Stick meant. He was getting the sense that Deni Weeks wasn’t the brightest bulb in the pack. She looked good for being old enough to have a daughter in her twenties, but then she’d probably popped Kit out when she was sixteen.