Undaunted: Knights in Black Leather

by Ronnie Douglas

  “Thank you.”

  He watched me while I put on the helmet, fumbling a little with the chinstrap but doing it myself this time. “Climb on.”

  I climbed on the bike behind him. Gingerly, I put my hands on his sides and my feet on the pegs. “You need to carry a second one of these.”

  “Haven’t needed a spare helmet until this month.”

  While I was still trying to figure out what that meant, he grabbed my hands and pulled them forward so I was hugging him from behind like I had the night he carried me home on the bike. I sighed. He glanced back briefly and grinned. Then the Harley roared to life, and Zion eased us into the street.

  Riding this time was even more exciting than the first night I’d been on the bike. That night, I was tired and drunk. Now, I was wide-awake. Every nerve in my body was almost painfully alert. Both the thrill of the machine and the man in front of me were overwhelming. Maybe it wasn’t a date, but it was already more fun than any actual dates I’d had.

  We picked up a few things at the store and went back to the house. It was an odd realization that all we had for carrying supplies were two small saddlebags, which weren’t usually on his bike. When I pointed that out, Zion shrugged.

  “You planned this,” I accused.

  “Maybe it was a coincidence that I put the bags on the bike today and they came in handy tonight,” he said.

  “Uh-huh.” I opened the door so he could carry the groceries inside.

  “Or maybe I was being an optimist,” he added as he stepped into the kitchen and looked around. “It’s been a while since I was in here.”

  He looked a little uncomfortable, but it wasn’t something I wanted to ask about just then, and even if I had, he put the bags on the counter and said, “Skillet?”

  And somehow in the next twenty minutes, I had become his sous chef. After I’d washed up, we worked in companionable quiet. I’d never made jambalaya or cornbread, and Zion was aghast at the “shortcomings in my education.”

  By the time he was putting the cornbread in the oven, it was hard to believe we didn’t know each other well.

  “So tell me about Aubrey Evans,” Zion prompted as he set the timer. “You know my reading taste. What about you?”

  “I like Chaucer, Flaubert, a little bit of Eliot.” I went over to the fridge and got the sweet tea. “Tea?”

  He nodded. “What about your family? I know Mrs. E., obviously, but what about your parents? Are they still in Oregon?”

  “More or less,” I hedged. My father was a criminal. I didn’t think his crimes were any less awful because they were “white collar.”

  “Tell me what I’m missing,” he prompted after a few more moments of silence.

  I didn’t know what I was doing here with him, but I did know that I wanted him to stay. So I answered him. I told him about my parents, about my father embezzling and my parents turning on each other, about the divorce and the fact that I had no money for tuition. I explained how college loans were based on the taxes of the person who claimed you as a dependent, so I was basically unable to get any money for tuition for a full year—and then only if my parents cooperated on the tax thing. I told him that my home was gone and my parents were so caught up in their drama that I wasn’t sure if I could handle Reed right now even if I did have tuition money. It was the first time I’d admitted that to anyone—including myself—and I felt somewhere between embarrassed and weak. I’d spent so much effort trying to pretend I had it all together that being honest was terrifying.

  “So, ‘stronger than she looks’ and ‘has trust issues’ go on my list of reasons to like you,” Zion said gently.

  I felt tears gather in my eyes, but I didn’t deny the trust issues. I wasn’t sure about the strength part, but I hoped he was right. He saw me. I didn’t know why, but he did. I hoped he saw the real me, not the scared version or the confused version that I felt like most days.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “Unloading all that.” I sipped my tea and tried to pretend I wasn’t shaking. I hadn’t talked about most of what I’d just told him with anyone. It left me feeling vulnerable, but the way Zion looked at me went a long way toward making me okay with that too. “I don’t usually do that.”

  “Admit to being badass?” he teased. Once I smiled, he added in a more serious tone, “You can trust me, Red. Whether we end up just friends or something else, I can promise you that.”

  I nodded.

  “I can also promise you that this is some of the best cornbread you’ll ever have,” he said lightly as the timer went off. “Meals like this aren’t what you’ll find just anywhere.”

  “So you’re going to get me hooked on Southern food?”

  He grinned at me before picking up the oven mitts. “I didn’t say I would play fair in my pursuit of you.”

  I paused and met his eyes. “Are you pursuing me, then?”

  He didn’t answer as he pulled out the cornbread. Once it was out to cool, he met my gaze, leaned in so his lips almost touched my ear, and told me, “The better question is, what are you going to do if I am?”

  Chapter 11

  OVER THE NEXT two days, I only had two class sessions and one short shift at the bar.

  Oddly, Quincy stopped by the house before I left for class the second day. I wasn’t even sure how he knew where I lived, but it was a small town, so I couldn’t be too surprised.

  “I thought you might want to carpool,” he said when I stepped outside and found him approaching the porch. He motioned to a glossy red pickup truck with oversize tires. If I were the sort of girl to care about vehicles, I might’ve been impressed, but all I could think was that it wasn’t a Harley.

  “I have work after class,” I said.

  Quincy shook his head. “Out there at the bar, right? I could help you get a safer job. Between living here where you’ve got all these troubles lately and working out there, you’re not safe.”

  My temper spiked. Sure, bartending wasn’t exactly the long-term career I aimed to have, but I certainly didn’t feel unsafe there. “I like Wolves,” I said.

  “The bar or the bikers?”

  For a moment, I almost answered that I’d meant the bar, but I wasn’t going to deny liking the people. I hadn’t intended a double meaning, but it was true all the same. I folded my arms over my chest and asked, “How is that any of your business? I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. You couldn’t even get my name right the night we met.”

  “And I’d like to make that up to you,” he said, his voice slightly less friendly but not angry. “You seem like a nice girl, Aubrey, and we had fun, so—”

  “We didn’t. I didn’t.” I felt guilty about being blunt, but he seemed to think we had a connection that didn’t exist. “We drank, and we kissed, and it was a mistake . . . and not fun.”

  “So that’s it? If I’d been sober, Killer wouldn’t have had—”

  “Stop, please,” I interrupted. “It’s not because of him or anything else. I’m just not interested.”

  Quincy shook his head. “Your loss, then, if you’d rather spend your time with bikers than someone with a real future.”

  He turned and left, and I pushed down the urge to call him back and try to rephrase what I’d said in some way he didn’t take as an insult. I’d never had to refuse a guy before. Men didn’t ask me out much, and the ones who did were so sweet that it wasn’t a big deal if I misunderstood—on purpose or accidentally. They usually gave up before it got to overt questions like this. Until I’d moved to Tennessee, I’d never had to flat-out reject someone.

  I watched Quincy tear off down the road, driving like he thought he was being chased, and sighed. It hadn’t gone gracefully, but at least it was done. I got into the car and headed off to class.

  Two days later, the surprise outside my door was a lot worse. I had neither class nor work, so I was planning on a leisurely day of doing nothing—until I went outside and saw the vandal
ism and graffiti on my grandmother’s house. Her porch swing was dangling from only one chain, and two of the hanging planters were ripped down.

  Grandma Maureen had gone with her friends on some sort of bus trip early that morning, so I hoped that it had been dark enough when she left that she hadn’t seen the spray-painted words on the house. I couldn’t imagine she missed the swing, but I hoped so . . . or maybe it had been done after she left.

  I didn’t think it was Quincy. We’d had enough trouble around the neighborhood that I was all but positive that this was more of the same. I’d mentioned my argument with him to Grandma Maureen, and she’d told me he was harmless. Since she’d taught almost everyone in town, I trusted her judgment.

  That left me dealing with another case in the growing list of neighborhood dramas. I wasn’t sure what to do about it, though. What was the right step when people vandalize a house? Did I call the sheriff or not?

  I sipped a cup of coffee while I thought about it and settled on taking pictures. I didn’t call the sheriff. Grandma Maureen had nothing nice to say about Sheriff Patterson, and goodness knew that his son was a jerk.

  After I changed into a pair of cutoff jeans and a paint-stained tank top, I went out to the shed. Inside was a massive extending ladder, but I couldn’t even move it. There was no way I could carry it to the porch.

  Plan B, then. I went back to the house and grabbed a chair from the kitchen. That, I could move. I brought the chair out onto the porch, careful not to step on anything sharp. Shards of flower pots littered the edge of the porch and the yard. The soil and red blooms looked wrong on the white boards. I shoved some of the mess aside with the side of my foot and focused on the swing for now.

  With my improvised ladder, I climbed up and looked at where the hook had been ripped out. The chain was intact, so the fix was a simple one. I just had to drill a hole and put in a new screw eye. I could do that—assuming I could stretch that far. The downside of my height was that simple tasks grew complicated sometimes. Putting away dishes often required a step stool. Drilling a hole in the ceiling boards of the porch might be a bit of a challenge.

  A few minutes later, I’d found the cordless drill and a screw eye and was on tiptoe on the chair drilling into the porch beam when I heard a Harley roar by. I resisted the urge to look. I needed to stop craning my neck every time I heard the growl of pipes. In a town with a sizable biker population, I’d spend half my time staring at the street.

  I concentrated on trying to reach the ceiling without tumbling from my makeshift ladder. It wasn’t happening. Being short sucked sometimes.

  “The ladder’s too heavy, and the chair’s too low,” I muttered.

  I pondered other possibilities. There was an actual phone book in the house, which had seemed odd to me when I’d seen it. I was so used to everything being digital. Right now, though, that phone book sounded downright useful.

  “What are you doing?” a voice asked.

  The drill slipped out of my hand as I startled. I glanced over my shoulder to find Zion at the edge of the porch.

  “Yoga,” I said with an eye roll. I looked down, hoping I hadn’t broken the drill. It had landed on the chair and looked fine. I bent over to grab it.

  Zion groaned.

  I straightened and looked at him questioningly.

  “A sight like that’s better than coffee at waking a person.” He gestured to my cutoff jean shorts.

  Hearing him flirt was growing easier every shift at the bar. I didn’t feel like the same quiet girl who had lived in Oregon only a couple of months ago. The new me, the bolder me, looked at Zion and grinned. “Thanks.”

  He did another of those toes-to-top stares and made an appreciative noise. “Anytime, Red. Anytime.”

  Before I could reply, he’d put both hands on my waist and lowered me to the ground. He held out a hand. “Drill.”

  As much as I wanted to claim that I didn’t need help, I wasn’t going to deny the obvious. It wasn’t because I was a girl; it was because I was short. If he’d been a taller woman, I’d have had no hesitation. That was one of the lessons I’d been trying to sit with since moving to Tennessee and starting at the bar: I had my own gender biases. I wouldn’t say they weren’t legitimately caused, but I also couldn’t say they were fair.

  I handed him the drill and said, “Thank you.”

  In a few short minutes, he’d repaired the porch swing. Once he was satisfied that it was straight and steady, he motioned to the house. “Where’s Mrs. E.?”

  “Out with her friends on a seniors’ bus trip,” I said as I sat on the newly repaired swing and pushed with my feet. “Nashville, I think.”

  Zion didn’t pretend not to look at my legs before he pointed at the rude words on the house. “Do you have anything to remove that?”

  “I wasn’t sure what to use. Would turpentine or something work?”

  “Maybe. There’s a couple things that work: Goof Off and Lift Off. We can run over to the hardware store to get them.”

  I paused, hating that I felt like I had to ask, but not wanting to break any of the rules that would result in problems at the bar. “Will you get in trouble with Uncle Karl?”

  “No.”

  “Will I? This would be the second time we were somewhere alone. Well, third if you count the fair, but . . .” My words faded as he shook his head.

  Zion held a hand out to me. “If the hardware store is your idea of a date, Red, we need to talk.”

  After a brief pause, I took his hand and let him pull me to my feet. I didn’t want to comment on the fact that our dinner had been a date. My attraction to Zion made me break rules, mine as well as the bar’s.

  “As much as it pains me to say this, you need to put on some jeans.” He opened the door to the house and ushered me inside. He stayed on the porch as he said, “You can’t get on the bike dressed like that. If we laid the bike down, you’d have a nasty road rash.”

  I paused. “You’re awfully sweet for someone who goes by a name like Killer.”

  He smiled but didn’t say anything.

  “There’s coffee if you want a cup,” I offered.

  “I’m good.” He stepped back farther from the house, refusing to cross the threshold. “Go get dressed, Red.”

  I turned to go, then glanced back at him as I heard the clomp of his boots crossing the porch. He was confusing. He flirted, but it was casual. I wondered if that was because of the rules at the bar, or because he was just being polite and I’d misread the signs I thought showed a real interest in me, or because of something else entirely. It didn’t really matter, I supposed. Even if the bar rules were changed, I still intended to get out of Williamsville as soon as I could.

  I quickly shucked my shorts and changed into something more appropriate for being on a bike. It amused me a little that I now knew what that meant. The things I’d learned at work weren’t limited to what it meant when a patron asked for a “generous pour” or the signs that someone needed to be cut off.

  When I came back outside, my legs covered by jeans and short ankle boots, Zion had gathered up the broken flower pots and hanging baskets. He was sitting on the porch, surrounded by shards and flowers. His legs were stretched out, boots resting on the steps in front of him, and a cigarette burned in his hand. His ever-present gun was visible. In Tennessee, gun laws allowed him to carry it openly. None of the other bikers seemed to do so, though.

  I tried not to wrinkle my nose at the cigarette smoke. Being around the Wolves, I was getting used to the nasty things, but I still thought the smell was gross. It clung to everything too.

  Zion pinched it off and stood. “What happened anyhow?”

  I shrugged. “Same thing that’s been happening the past month or so, I guess.”

  He frowned. “Anyone hurt this time?”

  “No.”

  “Mrs. E. have any weapons in there?”

  I almost laughed out loud, but then I realized that the image of my grandmother armed and chasing off t
he vandals wasn’t truly that out of character. “No weapons that I’m aware of,” I said finally.

  Zion frowned again. “I don’t like the idea of anyone messing with you or her. She told me it was under control when we came around a while back, and you didn’t mention it.”

  “We’re fine,” I said. “It’s a hassle, but that’s all it is.” When he didn’t respond, I motioned to the Harley parked in front of the house. “Are you sure you don’t mind? I can take Grandma Maureen’s car.”

  He gave me a disbelieving look, and then he walked to the bike. “Come on, Red.”

  I followed him to the street and paused to examine his bike up close. The tank wasn’t simply black. It was a flat black paint that made the red and glossy black of the wolf stand out even more. I reached out to touch the painting before I could stop myself. I traced down the wolf’s throat with one finger. “This is gorgeous.”

  “Thanks,” he said quietly.

  Something in the tone of his voice made me look away from the painting and study him. He didn’t look embarrassed, but he seemed uncomfortable.

  “You painted this,” I half asked, half declared.

  He stared at me for several heartbeats before he nodded once.

  I thought back to the wolves painted on other bikes in the parking lot of the bar; there were wolves prowling, resting, or howling. They were all stylistically similar in some way. “Do you do all of them?”

  “Yeah . . . but no one outside the club knows that, so . . .” He shrugged. “It’s just a thing I do when I’m thinking or whatever.”

  “You’re good.” I looked back at the painting. “Really good.”

  He cleared his throat, obviously not at ease with the direction of the conversation. He handed me a helmet, new from the look of it. “Here.”

  I held it, trying to decide if I should comment. He slung a leg over the bike and looked back at me. “It’s yours. Won’t no one else be wearing it either.”

  “Oh.” I touched my hand to the helmet, smiling broadly. It wasn’t a romantic gift in the traditional sense of the word, but I’d learned enough to realize that it was a statement—one that was dangerous to my resolve.