by Paula Cox
“Careful, brother,” I say. Slowly, I stand up, looming over him.
I think that’s it. He keeps his gaze on the dew-flecked grass, shaking his head, biting his lip. But when I’m about to sit down, he lurches to his feet and pulls his pistol from his waistband.
“I’m taking care of this,” he hisses. “I’ll get us a better deal for taking care of the husband. We’ll ride out tonight and sort it.”
He begins to walk toward the house.
Anger flares in me, a pulsing in my head. My hands ache and my muscles tense, becoming tight, screaming at me to use them.
“Gunny,” I say, voice shaking.
“Boss?”
“When he wakes up, make sure he stays quiet.”
Gunny tilts his head at me. “Wakes up, boss?”
I ignore him and march after Patrick.
“Brother,” I grunt.
He turns. “If you try and stop me, I’ll go crazy. I’m just warning you. Maybe you’ve all gotten soft, but I—”
When I reach him, I right hook him across the jaw. A well-judged hook, just strong enough to send him cold, but weak enough not to do any real damage.
He collapses onto the grass, his eyes closing.
I walk back to the table, running my fingers over my grazed knuckles.
Then I nod at my passed-out brother. “Get him in his seat,” I say.
“Boss,” Gunny, Max, and Craig say at the same time, rising to their feet.
Patrick got over it when he opened his pay packet. A right hook here and there doesn’t mean much when you’re a violent man working with violent men.
But, hell, I just wish he could go back to the way he was. Patrick before prison would’ve just done his job, nothing more. Just done his job and got his pay and left the place. None of this gun-hoe stuff. None of this tough man routine.
But maybe it got to me. Maybe it’s why I wasn’t able to enjoy the party. You don’t expect to have to knock out your older brother the week after he’s released from prison. As I sat there, all of them cheering and drinking and laughing around me, the only bright spot in the whole place I could find was that waitress.
I couldn’t take my eyes from her. Those breasts, squeezed into that shirt; those well-shaped legs in tights; that big, round ass just begging to be grabbed. Yeah, the party was made bearable just by checking her out.
But if it was just checking her out, why the hell did I give her the cash? I don’t know where that came from. I can’t even begin to guess why I did it.
Then again, I’ve always been impulsive, and doubly as impulsive around women.
But the money . . . that means more than just wanting a quick lay, doesn’t it? Women have always been easy to get into bed for me. You ride up on your bike and show them the leathers and then you take them. Easy. No cash gifts required. I sigh and stand up, pacing up and down beside Sapphire Lake.
There was something in her youthful elf’s face, something vulnerable and innocent. Like she was waiting for someone to protect her, maybe.
But that shouldn’t be me. The Satan’s Martyrs are making boatloads of cash. I’m wealthy. I’m a leader. I have a lot of stuff to keep me busy. No need adding a woman to that. A woman for the night, maybe. But not a woman. Not a girlfriend, the kind of relationship other men get into. Relationships make you weak. That’s the problem. They make you soft and weak, until you’re a weak, soft man who other men are looking to take advantage of. The moment you’re on a job thinking about a woman is the moment you’ve lost your fight and might as well put a .38 in between your eyes. Relationships get your buried, quick. That’s the cold fact of it.
And yet . . .
Maybe it’d be good to have a woman who didn’t treat me like a toy she just plucked from the shelf of a motorbike novelty store. I swear, the morning after I take a woman, it’s like she thinks she’s become my partner in crime. The night before she’s just a regular girl; the morning after she’s chewing gum and calling me babe and acting like she’s an outlaw’s wife. Makes me queasy. Maybe the stark truth is that women don’t want Killian O’Connor. They just want the leader of the Satan’s Martyrs. They just want to feel like somebody.
Hypocrite, a voice whispers. Can’t tell if it’s my subconscious or Patrick or my dad or what.
Whoever it is, they’re right. If women treat me like toys, I do the same ten times over. The only time I give a damn about a woman is when she’s bent over in front of me and begging me to drill her. When all the frills have been removed and she’s nothing more than a sexy piece of flesh to satisfy my body. None of this kissing and hugging stuff. None of this, “Hold me, babe.” Screw that. A nice ass and bouncy lay and a woman who really knows how to take it from a man.
But wouldn’t it be good, for once, to have a woman with some brains? Just for once?
I sigh. I’m going around in circles.
Hope, that’s her name, according to her name tag.
Maybe that’s what it is. She’s just an emerald, a precious stone that I can’t take my eyes away from. She’s just a tempting thing.
Maybe, but still, I wish I could’ve been there to watch her open that money. That would’ve been something worth seeing.
I sit on my bike, thoughts whirring.
Patrick is my biggest problem. Patrick should be person I can’t stop thinking about. I need to figure out how to control him, how to make him see that he’s not in prison anymore. But even as I start down this line of thought, it is drawn to Hope, with her perfect, tight body, her cute face, her vulnerable dark eyes. There’s no doubt that she’s a woman I want to take, a woman I want to make mine, a woman I want to drill, hard. There’s no doubt she’s a woman I’d bend over my bike in a second, without thought.
I tell myself it’s just that. Just the idea of having sex with her. Just the idea of taking her. Just the idea of doing with her what I’ve done with countless other women. A quick bang, and then see you later. Nothing more. Yeah, I tell myself all of that, but the fact is that I’ve never given any other woman over $2,000 in cash just for the sake of it. I’ve never put myself out there like that.
“Dammit,” I grunt, kicking my bike into life.
It growls and grumbles, and soon I am riding away from Sapphire Lake alongside the Darkwood, back to Rocky Cove.
I want her, I want her, I want her.
My mind goes on. I can’t stop it.
Images flash through my head as I ride:
Hope bending over in that waitress’s dress, her panties visible through the thin tights, moaning for me to take her.
Hope sitting on top of me, facing away, her big, beautiful ass bouncing as I reach around and sink my hands into those perfect breasts.
But then another image comes to mind:
Hope putting her arms around me, resting her head on my chest—
I kill it. It’s not sexual. It’s . . . what? Emotional?
“Screw that,” I growl, going one sixty through the night, the air whipping at my hair, the engine of my bike a lion’s roar . . .
Going fast as if I can outride my thoughts.
Chapter Three
Hope
I’m about to settle down for the night—a glass of wine, thick socks, and some garbage DVD sounds like a good plan—when my cell buzzes from my handbag. When I see that it’s the restaurant, I think about ignoring it. But just because a handsome biker gave me some cash, it doesn’t mean I can suddenly start ignoring my workplace. This is what you get for living two minutes from the restaurant, I think.
“Yes?” I answer.
“It’s me.” Alex sounds out of breath. “I’m really, really sorry, Hope. But I’m here on my own packing up. It’s going to take forever. I called Lucca on his cell and he said I could call you. He’ll give you an hour’s overtime for it.”
I sigh, but quietly so it doesn’t travel down the phone. The clock tells me it’s just gone midnight, but Alex has one of those soft, innocent voices and the thought of him there alone doesn’t
thrill me.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll be there in five.”
I go into the living room and slip into my shoes. I haven’t even changed out of my work clothes yet. Dawn is asleep in the armchair, moaning softly to herself. Every so often, her head moves from one shoulder to the other, as though something in her dream is chasing her. Probably all her demons: drugs and the quests to get drugs; the things she did when she didn’t have drugs; the men she went with to secure a steady supply of drugs.
I take the blanket from the couch and drape it over her. Then I lean in and kiss her on the forehead. My little sister, all snuggled up, beads of sweat sliding down her forehead as the drugs ooze out of her system.
“You’ll feel better soon,” I whisper.
I wouldn’t say that to her when she’s awake, though, because I have no clue if it’s true.
I lock the front door behind me and leave for the restaurant, my eyes heavy with sleep, but my step oddly light, springy.
The memory of the money, hidden underneath my mattress, is like a tonic against the thought of working past midnight.
The only problem is the thought that accompanies the reassurance: I’ll have to thank him in some way.
How does one thank the leader of an outlaw biker gang?
“You can go now, Alex,” I say, rubbing down the table.
His shaggy-haired head snaps up. “But we still have to do the rest of the cutlery. And arrange the glasses for the morning. And—”
“I’ll do it,” I say. “You’ve been on your feet for too long.”
“So have you,” he mutters.
“Yes, but I’m twenty-four. I have age on my side, young man.”
He grins at me, all teeth. “Are you sure?” he asks uncertainly.
“I’m sure. Go on now. Don’t make me ask again.”
I’m on one side of the table, Alex’s on the other, a rag in his hand. His polo shirt is stained with water and sweat and grease and beer, and his eyes are bloodshot with tiredness. “Will you get home on your own? I mean, will you be okay? It’s dark.”
“I can take care of myself. I have a tube of mace in my handbag.”
He laughs. “Seriously?”
I nod. “Seriously.”
“Oh.”
“Go on.” I wave my rag in his direction; the smell of the cleaning product rises into the air. “Don’t make me chase you out!”
He laughs again. “You’re the best, Hope, you know that?”
“Oh, yeah, kid. Look at me.” I wave a hand over the restaurant. “I’m the best there is.”
I am all but done with the packing away when I walk into the kitchen and turn on the lights.
The knives are pristine and neatly slotted into their transparent holder, so that I can see the glimmering steel. The wooden chopping board—scratched with use—lies beside them. The kitchen is all steel surfaces, gleaming, shiny, as alluring to me as diamonds are to other women.
Without thinking about what I am doing, I skip over to the knives and the chopping board. I pick up a small slicing knife and chop-chop-chop an imaginary onion. “Five salads on the way,” I mutter, my voice strangely loud in the silence of the kitchen, the only other noise the ka-ka-ka of the knife on the wood.
“Get me that lettuce,” I say to my make-believe sous chef.
“Fresh-grilled chicken.”
“Slice it thinly.”
“Present it like a work of art.”
Ka-ka-ka.
“I’ll add the finishing touches.”
“Like a picture in a cook book.”
“I want them to stop for a second before eating just to admire the plate. That’s what I want.”
Then I stop, giggling softly to myself.
Even pretending to be in a busy kitchen is more fun than waiting tables.
Maybe one day, I think, sliding the knife back into its place.
The restaurant—the sign above it reading ‘Gourmet Hollow’—sits at the end of Main Street. Across the road is the attorney’s office which has grown large over the past few years, to the point where it has its own car park built next to it. Streetlamps illumine the car park. Usually, if I leave the restaurant late, it’s empty.
But when I leave tonight, at half past one o’clock, a man on a Harley Davidson is watching me.
My heart lurches, my reflexive thought that the man is a threat making me clutch my handbag to my chest. But then I lower my hands. Squinting, I see that it’s Killian O’Connor, his messy blonde hair and his muscular build and leather jacket and scuffed blue jeans making it impossible to mistake him for anybody else.
I stand outside the restaurant doors, watching him for a few moments. He stares at me openly. It’s too dark and I’m too far away to see his face clearly, but I imagine he’s smirking. There’s something in his posture which is smirk-like, almost like he can tell how scared I am—and it amuses him.
I know I should walk home, pretend I didn’t see him. Just because he gave me money—money I did not ask for—doesn’t mean he can wait for me in the middle of the night.
“Come say hi,” he calls across the road. “You’re safe with me. Don’t worry.”
Is that true? I wonder. Or am I in more danger with you than I would be alone?
“You don’t need to be nervous.”
He swings his legs over his bike, so that he is no longer mounting it but leaning against it.
I know I should just walk home. But then my legs begin to move. I have no choice in the matter, I tell myself. My legs are moving against my will. It’s easier to tell myself that than admit the truth: that I may want to see what this biker wants; that I may be just a tad curious about him.
I walk into the car park, close enough to see that I was right. He is smirking.
“I’m Killian O’Connor,” he says, when I’m even closer, when I can smell the gas of his bike and his cologne, musky and manly. “You probably already know that. But what’s a man if he doesn’t introduce himself to a pretty lady?” He smiles, his wolfish eyes trained on me like he’s hunting.
Just like Lucca’s eyes, I think.
But Lucca’s eyes make me want to scream in fear, disgust, repulsion.
Killian’s eyes make me want to scream in a whole other way.
“You’re right,” I say. “I know you.”
He nods. Everything about him is so cocky. Even when he nods, it’s a nod that says, Of course you know me. But there’s something different about his cockiness. It’s not off-putting, as it would be with other men. It’s not cocky like he’s trying to prove something. It’s cocky like he’s already proved himself a hundred times before.
He watches me quietly.
“See anything you like?” I shoot at him. “My phone has a pretty decent camera. Maybe I should let you use it?”
His grin widens. “You’re a feisty lady, aren’t you?”
“Maybe I just don’t appreciate being gawked at,” I reply, my voice sarcastic.
“I don’t know,” he says.
He pushes away from the Harley and takes a few steps forward. We’re almost face to face. If I reach out, I could grab his arm, his shoulder, his muscles. Muscles which bulge from the leather of his jacket. Muscles which seem fit to burst from it.
“What don’t you know?” I say.
My voice is steady. Perhaps he thinks that because he gave me money, because he is the leader of the Satan’s Martyrs, I will tremble before him. That I will turn into some kind of sniveling, nervous creature. If he does think that, he’s wrong. I’ve dealt with worse than this. Dawn and my dead parents come to mind.
“If you don’t like me staring at you. I’m not sure it makes you uncomfortable.”
“Oh, right,” and I roll my eyes, “because you know me so well. Tell me, Killian O’Connor, what is my second name?”
He shrugs. “I have no idea. I never noticed you before tonight. But let me tell you, Hope, you were the one bright spot at that meal.”
A hole has appeared
in his armor, I sense. He’s just admitted something about himself. I pounce on it. “What was wrong with you tonight, then, Killian? The others looked like they were having the time of their life. You didn’t, not even close. In fact, every time I turned around you were staring at me. Not laughing or drinking or cheering, just staring.”
His jaws clench, his cocky smile faltering for a moment—and then it returns in a rictus. “I don’t want to bore a pretty lady like you with all that.”