Undaunted: Knights in Black Leather

by Ronnie Douglas

  Chapter 9

  WORK AND SCHOOL continued to be fairly calm. My teachers tried to be interesting. Ellen spent far too many hours trying to get me to let her treat me like a dress-up doll. Noah flirted and tried to get me to go out. Quincy went out of his way to say hello to me, and I went out of my way to ignore him.

  My grandmother tried to keep calm while waiting for the next break-in and ignoring the questions I asked. Zion and I talked about everything from my classes to the people in the bar or random bits of news he brought up. He paid a lot of attention to world politics. It was a bit like talking to my friends back at Reed—except Zion made me have the sort of thoughts that were more vivid than I wanted. He was smart, funny, and gorgeous. It wasn’t fair that the first guy to catch my interest so completely was off-limits for multiple reasons.

  I tried not to obsess over every little word or look Zion spared for me. I mostly failed at that. He filled up a lot of my thoughts.

  On the other hand, while I wouldn’t say I was exceptional at bartending, I’d gotten better. Uncle Karl no longer seemed as worried—a fact I realized only when he stopped coming through the bar flap to make sure I didn’t need any reminders every hour or so. I’d thought that was just how he was, until I noticed him checking in less and less often.

  Today I was experiencing one of the less exciting parts of my job: a shift with too many dead hours. I’d already learned that weekends were amazing but exhausting. Wednesdays and Thursdays were pretty good, and Sundays were unpredictable. Mondays and Tuesdays were quiet. The hours of the day varied too. Daylight was only busy if it was raining—or sometimes on the weekend. The evening and the hour after midnight brought the best tips on busy days. Right-before-closing was stressful.

  Early afternoon and a Tuesday was going down as the most inactive time I’d worked so far. I’d already stocked the coolers, and I’d even dusted the liquor bottles, turned them all face out, and mopped the floor. I was bored.

  Zion was here. He drank very little, but he made his presence known most days. Today, though, he was with a group of bikers. Often during my shifts, he talked to me a bit before wandering over to the pool table. Even more often, he was only here for part of my shift. Either way, I usually got to have some sort of conversation with him. Not today. Today, I had barely received a wave and nod.

  Much like with any group of bikers, I didn’t interrupt when they had discussions in low voices. They liked their privacy, and I liked not knowing what they were discussing. If they needed drinks, they’d come to me or motion me over. It was pretty simple. Since no one was alone or in need of a drink and I’d already done all the cleaning I could stand to do, I pulled out my Am Lit syllabus and course book. Fortunately, we were starting with historical context and parallels with the British Romantics. I wasn’t a fan of Wordsworth’s actual poetry, but his “Preface to Lyrical Ballads,” where he shared his theories, was actually interesting. Give me Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, really any of the first- or second-gen Romantics, and I was dizzy with geeky glee. Wordsworth himself was more useful on the theory than the poetry.

  By the time I’d read a few pages, two men had come and sat at the end of the bar. They were bourbon drinkers. That was easy. So far, I was getting why Mike had snorted when I’d asked about complicated drinks. There was a metal recipe box on the counter for anything I didn’t know, but so far, bikers seemed to be a beer, bourbon, and whiskey crowd. I could handle that.

  Periodically, I glanced up to see if anyone needed a refill or my attention. One of the bikers with Zion looked my way a few too many times, but when he caught Zion glaring at him, he laughed and stopped. I’d met him a couple of times so far, but honestly, their names were so damn weird that I still had a hard time keeping them all straight.

  “Barmaid!” someone called out.

  I tensed as I looked away from Zion and his friends. The new man who’d walked up to the bar—like the two at the end of the bar—wasn’t wearing Wolves colors. We had patrons who weren’t Wolves, and up until now, they’d all been polite. The way this guy stared at me made me feel the same way cockroaches did.

  “Hi,” I said, forcing myself to sound pleasant. “What can I get you?”

  “A Budweiser and your number.” He smiled at his lame joke. That one had gotten absurd by day two at the bar. My job was to serve drinks, nothing more. Even a few of the Wolves had tested the waters with equally weak lines.

  Silently, I got the newcomer a can of beer. He hadn’t asked for draft or longneck, and I didn’t feel like talking to him to ask if he had a preference, so a can was what he got. If I felt bitchier, I would’ve given him a warm one, but I wasn’t quite that irritated by lame lines yet. I put a cold can of Bud in front of him on a bar napkin and told him the price.

  “Can I get some of those nuts?”

  After I got him a bowl of bar nuts, he still hadn’t made any move to pay, so I said, “We don’t run tabs.”

  “What if I want to add to my order?”

  “We don’t serve food.”

  His hand came down on mine. “What about you? What’s your hourly rate?”

  I jerked away and glared at him, unsure whether he was serious. The Wolves and the assorted clientele at the bar might be a little crude and raucous, but they’d never once insulted me. If anything, I’d felt both more protected and more feminine than ever in my life. There was something about fierce tattooed men treating me like a delicate but respected treasure that made me feel both safe and sexy.

  “Well?” the cockroach prompted.

  A chair screeched as it was shoved back quickly, and in what seemed barely a fraction of a second, Zion was standing beside the cockroach. He had one hand on the bar; the other hung loosely at his side. He didn’t even glance at me.

  “Apologize.”

  “Hey, I was just—”

  “Apologize,” Zion interrupted.

  I looked at Zion and told him, “I’m fine. Really.” I reached out and covered his hand with mine. The tension under his skin made his fist feel like a rock. “It’s fine.”

  Zion’s attention stayed riveted on the cockroach. My words weren’t getting through. He simply repeated, “Apologize.”

  “You heard her, man.”

  Zion stepped closer to the cockroach. “Right fucking now.”

  “Sure, whatever.” The cockroach couldn’t have sounded less sincere if he’d tried. He shrugged and looked at me. “Sorry I offended your boyfriend here.”

  The emotionless expression on Zion’s face was unchanged. “Now, walk out. You’re not welcome here.”

  I didn’t know him that well, but even I could tell that Zion wasn’t joking around. There was something in his tone that made me want to shiver. Admittedly, it wasn’t fear that I was feeling because he was defending me, but I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that anger.

  “I have a beer sitting here,” the cockroach protested, reaching out for his can.

  Apparently, that was the end of Zion’s patience. He grabbed the man by the back of the neck and started toward the door. The jackass was struggling and cussing, but he was being towed to the door nonetheless. I wasn’t sure what to do or say, and no one else was reacting. Uncle Karl popped his head out of his office when the guy started yelling.

  “Trouble?”

  “Touched the new barmaid and asked what her hourly rate was,” one of the bikers offered.

  Uncle Karl nodded and returned to his office.

  Zion jerked open the door, shoved the man outside, and followed him.

  “Should someone go after them?” I asked loud enough for everyone there to hear.

  “Nah. Killer’s not going to hurt him, just escort him to his car,” one of the bikers said.

  Should I follow? Should I insist someone else did? I wasn’t sure what to do. I must’ve looked as frustrated as I felt because the biker who had answered me came over to the bar. He stood in front of me as I tried to decide what to do.

  “Aubrey, right?�
� he said after a few seconds.

  I nodded and looked up at him. Now that he was standing at the bar, I realized that he was one of the tallest men I’d ever met, coming in well over six feet in height.

  “It’s okay. We might be loud and rude, but we’re not stupid.”

  “Speak for yourself, Alamo,” another biker called. “I’m stupid right regularly.”

  Gratefully, I grinned at the speaker and said, “I’m sure you’re perfectly lovely.” Several guffaws greeted my words, but I ignored them to tell Alamo, “I just don’t understand why . . . he did that.”

  “We protect our own,” Alamo said. “The jackass made you uncomfortable. Killer decided that wasn’t okay.”

  “Oh.”

  “Grab me a bowl of those peanuts,” Alamo said. “And another round for the table.”

  “I’ll bring it out.” I nodded and went to scoop out a bowl of the nuts.

  I was torn between worry over Zion and gratitude that he’d stepped in when the cockroach was rude. I didn’t particularly like being spoken to as if I were a hooker, but having the kind of curves I had meant that guys said stupid things to me. They’d been doing it since I was fifteen.

  I tossed the cockroach’s Bud and took four cold beers over to the table.

  “Killer doesn’t get one?” asked a biker with the palest blue eyes I’d ever seen.

  “Fuck off, Hershey,” another biker said.

  “Alamo said a round for the table,” I said, feeling stupid. “There are four of you at the table, so . . .”

  Alamo smacked Hershey on the back of the head and told me, “Thank you, darlin’. Killer won’t mind his being kept cold.”

  After giving him a grateful smile for covering for my stupidity, I gathered the empties and returned to the bar. Although I had told the cockroach we didn’t run tabs, that wasn’t completely true. We did, but only for Wolves.

  When Zion walked back in about ten minutes later, I was reading again—or at least pretending to read. He didn’t stop at the table for more than a moment before coming up to the bar.

  I closed my book and set it on one of the coolers as he approached.

  “I hear you kept my beer on ice.”

  “Something like that,” I said. “I was flustered and took four beers to the table instead of five. Alamo covered for my mistake.”

  “Alamo’s good people.” Zion looked at the table. “Theo and Hershey are all right, too, and Big Eddie’s a bit of an ass.”

  I looked at the group of men. I knew who Alamo and Hershey were, but there was no way to know which of the other two was Big Eddie.

  Zion offered quietly, “Big Eddie’s the loud one in the shirt with paint on it.”

  “I’m never sure whether the names are realistic or funny or what they are.”

  “Hershey is from Hershey, Pennsylvania. He claims he’s sweet as chocolate.” Zion sat down on a stool. “Dash is easy. That’s his last name.”

  “What about Skeeter? Alamo? Big Eddie?”

  “Eddie lies about his. That’s all I’m saying.” Zion gave me a look that made quite clear that the origin of Eddie’s name was vulgar. “Later when you hear the story, you just remember that. No idea about Skeeter or Alamo . . .”

  After a moment, I had to ask the obvious question. “And you? What’s your name mean?”

  He shrugged. “Just a name, Red. Not everything is that mysterious.”

  “It is when you avoid my questions.”

  Zion met my gaze; then he lowered his voice as he asked, “So does that mean you have a lot of other questions, then?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Ask one,” he challenged. “Anything you want.”

  “Favorite book?” Maybe it was silly, but I’d always thought that the best way to know a person was to know what books they liked. It could be an English major thing, but that was my “who are you” topic: what the person read.

  Zion smiled before replying, “No one has ever asked me that. It’s either Heart of Darkness, Kerouac’s On the Road, or maybe Kafka’s Metamorphosis.”

  I gaped at him.

  “What? You expected me to say Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? Or maybe a Hunter S. Thompson book?” he teased.

  “I don’t know what I expected,” I admitted.

  “Not a Thompson fan, really.” Zion kept his voice pitched low. “Now, you’re not going to spill my dirty little secret, are you? They thought it was funny as hell that I never went anywhere without a book when I was a kid. I had favorites, though, ones I’ve read a few times.”

  “Oh.”

  “They knew I read, but most of them never bothered to question what I read, so that was handy. Racy romances or King’s horror or classics. It was all the same to them.”

  I laughed. The image was simply too much. “Racy romances?”

  “Hell, yeah! No better way to figure out what women want when you’re fourteen and trying to get a little sympathy.” He offered me one of his panty-dropping smiles. “Want a demonstration of what I’ve learned?”

  And just like that the conversation had gone from surprising to teasing to something dangerous. His gaze dropped to my mouth, and without meaning to, I bit my lip.

  “That’s not a no.”

  “It should be,” I said, then quickly corrected myself. “It is. It has to be.”

  He picked up his beer, studied me for several moments, and pronounced, “No. It’s a ‘not yet.’ It might even be an ‘I can resist,’ but it’s definitely not a no.”

  I didn’t have the words to argue with him. The best I could do was force myself not to stare at him as he walked over to Uncle Karl’s office. Everything illogical in my body screamed that my answer was far from a no, but a tiny logical voice reminded me that I couldn’t let it be anything but a no.

  Chapter 10

  WHEN I LEFT work that night, Zion was sitting on his bike beside my grandmother’s car. Uncle Karl was at my side as I stepped out of the bar, so it wasn’t like I needed an escort.

  “Mind the rules, Killer,” he said tersely, and then spun around and left me standing there with Zion.

  “You were done with your schoolwork earlier,” Zion said. “Mrs. E. has her card night tonight. That leaves you alone for dinner.”

  I stared at him for a moment, wondering how he knew all that. I must’ve looked either alarmed or angry because his posture shifted and he reminded me gently, “You told me about her card night, Red.”

  “Right.”

  I walked closer to him, not so close as to touch him, but near enough that I could hear him when he spoke softly like he just had. That was how he was at the bar too. Sometimes I wasn’t sure whether it was a way to lure me closer or to let him be more open without the other Wolves hearing.

  “And the homework?” I prompted.

  He offered me a grin, the one that made him look less dangerous and more approachable. “I watch you, Red. You closed that textbook with a thump and a smile. That meant you were done.”

  “Maybe I have other homework.” I folded my arms.

  “Do you?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I can’t leave the car here, though. Gran needs it.”

  Zion shrugged. “I’ll follow you home. You can drop it off or we can stay there. I’m a decent cook. I’ll make dinner.”

  “I don’t remember agreeing to go out with you,” I said lightly.

  He laughed. “Dinner. We don’t even need to call it a date, and even if we did, we get three before there’s an issue.”

  I liked talking to him, liked it in a way that was not just about how mouthwateringly gorgeous he was. He was funny and smart, and he loved books. I wanted to be able to be around him, and not just three times.

  When I turned back to him, he was still sitting on his Harley watching me.

  “Dates include kissing,” I said bluntly.

  He stared at me for a long moment before asking, “Is that an invitation?”

  “No.” I folded my arms and met his ga
ze unflinchingly. “It’s a negotiation. You can meet me at the house, and we can get dinner, but it can’t be a date.”

  “Which means no kissing?”

  “It does.”

  Zion shrugged. “I’m not only interested in kissing you.”

  “No sex either,” I added.

  The smile that came over his face was the same one he’d turned on me in the bar. “Well, then, it looks like I’m not the one with the dirty mind here, Red. I meant that I liked talking to you too, not that I was thinking about more than kissing.”

  My face flamed, but he didn’t comment, and I certainly wasn’t going to do so. Instead, I stepped around him and unlocked the car door. I tossed my bag inside and only then did I meet his gaze again. “I’ll meet you at my house.”

  Zion nodded and started his bike.

  I felt almost guilty at how much I wanted to be on his motorcycle. Both the man and the machine tempted me. Steadfastly ignoring the urge to look at him, I slid into the driver’s seat and started the car. It gave a pitiful little rumble, as most cars do, and I sighed.

  Finally I glanced back at Zion, who gestured for me to pull out.

  The drive to the house was a tense one. I had to resist staring in my rearview mirror, and I worried about stopping too suddenly or doing something stupid that endangered him—which was ridiculous. He’d been riding for at least a decade, and most drivers didn’t do everything cautiously to keep bikers safer. It was a cliché, but that was where the “loud pipes save lives” expression came from: most people didn’t pay attention to bikers, not like I had always done. Now I realized why my grandmother had pressed that issue when I was a teenager. A lot of things made more sense now that I saw how integrated the Wolves were into her town.

  I pulled into the drive at the house, but when I got out of the car, Zion was still on the bike.

  “Come on, Red,” he called. “I need to pick up a few things for dinner.”

  “You could’ve gone without me,” I said as I accepted the helmet he held out to me.

  “You looked like you wanted a ride,” Zion said.