by Zoe York
In reality, something didn’t feel quite right—something he couldn’t get a firm grasp on. Maybe because forty was just around the corner.
He didn’t want to be one of those guys who moaned about a milestone birthday or getting old. He was able-bodied, fit as fuck, and his smile still worked when he felt like making a female friend.
He had nothing to complain about.
Nothing to really celebrate, either.
He was definitely melancholy about leaving behind his career in the military. But re-upping for another contract didn’t feel like the right call, either. At his age and rank, he’d be working a desk job anyway.
If he got out, he could do anything he wanted. The problem was, he still didn’t know what exactly that was.
As he climbed out of the small town and headed down the two-lane highway toward Pine Harbour, the wind in his face and the familiar landscape all around him, he knew he was on the right track. Once he got settled here, the restless feeling would go away. Or he’d act on it and do something else.
The possibilities were endless, and maybe that was his issue. He’d been bound by orders for two decades.
Maybe he needed to focus on his other reasons for moving back to Pine Harbour. Family. The year before, Rafe had been shot in the line of duty. Thankfully he survived, and now had a baby on the way with his beautiful wife Olivia. Zander’s only sister, Dani—the baby of the family—was set to get married in a month, on the last weekend of the summer. He’d fly home for that, because he’d only have a few days off.
He’d be home at Christmas as well.
He was going to spend a lot of time in Pine Harbour because of his family over the next few years, so why not set up a home base there?
If wanderlust struck, he could take off.
Not if. When.
It wasn’t in his nature to stick to one place.
It wasn’t even in his nature to set down roots. In all his time in the army, he’d never bought a house, always preferring to live in base housing or rent a room from another guy who could use the cash.
Maybe that was it. Just down the road lay a permanence he’d never let himself sink into before. Renting in Pine Harbour would be foolish, and there was no way in hell he’d live with his parents or mooch off one of his siblings.
He was a grown-ass man, and he’d buy a damn house, even if it killed him a little inside.
Ahead of him, a hatchback with a dizzying array of geek and feminist bumper stickers slowed and signalled a right turn into Greta’s Bakery, the last bit of civilization before the road out of town faded to wilderness, provincial parks and remote cottages. Someone had a craving for something sweet, he thought idly.
Actually, pie didn’t seem like such a bad idea for himself.
He ignored the small stab of guilt. His mother would have pie. And cookies. And squares and lasagna and salad and everything else he might ever want. He could already feel the smothering.
It’s not like she’d ever know. And this might be the last opportunity to be alone with his thoughts for the next week. He needed to sort his shit out and put on his acceptable-for-public-consumption face before he hit his home town.
He parked his bike at the side of the gravel lot and set his helmet on the seat, then rubbed his hands through his hair as he slowly walked toward the glass-fronted building. A warm yellow light spilled out, beckoning him inside. He’d only been here a few times--Greta was a friend of his mother’s, but a competitor as well. Things were complicated in the restaurant game on the peninsula.
The hatchback he’d followed in had parked closer to the building, and as he approached, the driver’s side door swung open. Zander watched with lazy appreciation as a curvy leg emerged first, followed by the rest of an attractive woman with a swinging ponytail and a giant backpack. She wore a faded Star Wars t-shirt and jean shorts that hugged her hips in a way that made his mouth water. Her feet were shoved into flip flops, and her gaze was intently focused on the inside of the bakery.
He hung back, letting her go in first. If she noticed him, she didn’t give any indication, but when she pulled the door open, she held it with her arm extended behind her until he grabbed it.
Which was both polite, and convenient, because it brought him to within a few feet of her.
Maybe it was time to put his smile to good use.
“Thank you,” he said, but she didn’t turn around. Polite, but not social. Okay, noted. Maybe the smile wouldn’t get a chance to come out and play.
At the counter, she ordered a coffee and a cheese Danish, then darted to the corner booth right after paying, before her food was even set onto the self-serve counter. Zander ordered himself a coffee and a slice of apple pie, with ice cream, but his attention was only half on the cashier.
He watched, fascinated, as Ponytail Girl unpacked her bag. A small laptop. A giant textbook. A notepad, pen, highlighter, headphones. Bottle of water.
There was some serious plotting of world domination about to go down in the corner.
He should leave her to it. He would.
But then her order was filled and the cashier called out her name. Faith.
And as Faith looked over at him—well, not him, exactly, but her coffee and Danish, which were right next to his head—Zander felt like he’d been hit by lightning.
It was a complete cliché, and he didn’t care.
She was gorgeous. Pretty wouldn’t do her justice. It wasn’t an interesting enough descriptor, because her mouth was unusually full and her eyes extra piercing. She had a beauty mark to the right of her lips that made him wonder if it would disappear in a dimple if she smiled, and her wavy hair had strands slipping out of her ponytail all over the place, like she’d been busy all day and not noticed her hair-do slowly coming undone.
And she had a youthful glow to her that had nothing to do with her actual age, which he pegged in her thirties, maybe just a few years younger than himself. Whatever it was, it took his breath away.
“Here,” he said, lifting his voice as soon as he could find it. He grabbed her cup and plate before she slid out of the booth. “I’ll bring these over.”
She just stared at him, a strange man with his hands all over her snack, and he tried his making friends smile again.
It didn’t seem to work.
That was unfortunate, because he’d never wanted it to work more than in this moment.
“Don’t worry,” he said after crossing the small eatery section of the bakery and setting her order in front of her. “I grew up waiting on tables. I know better than to bother a customer clearly in the middle of work.”
“Thank you.” She flashed him a quick smile before her mouth twisted back into the concentrating pout from before.
“If you need anything else…” He took two slow steps backward, then glanced over his shoulder. His own order was up. “I’ll be over there, eating apple pie.”
Her lips quirked up, just a hair. It felt good to make her smile, but he didn’t want to distract her, so he turned away.
“Hey, do you know anything about swords?” The sound of her voice behind him did weird, warm, funny things to his insides.
He glanced back at her. “I’m sorry?”
“You look…” she trailed off and waved her hands in the air. Something sparkly glinted in the middle of her face. She had a tiny nose piercing. He tried hard not to stare. “You know. Tough. Like you might know what it’s like to have a sword ripped out of your hands.”
He grinned and flexed his arms, his hands curling into fists. It might be an unconventional way to get a girl to talk to him, but as far as conversation openers went, one that pointed out he looked badass was pretty good—although he’d rather like to think he’d be the one knocking a blade from his opponent’s hands. Of course, he couldn’t say that. Play it cool, man. “Sure. Why do you ask?”
She gave him a wincing look that was halfway between I-don’t-want-to-tell-you and I-can’t-explain-it-in-less-than-a-minute. “Research
?”
That was interestingly vague. He liked it. “I’ll just grab my coffee, and then… can I sit?”
His chest tightened as she stared at him for a beat. Two beats. And when she nodded, a stuttering little jerk of her head that suggested maybe she was as surprised as he was, his heart jumped back to life, giving his ribs a fist bump of the likes he’d never felt before.
— TWO —
THE biker was…well, he was a biker, to start.
So that should also be the end of it. Except she couldn’t stop looking at him and listening to him. He’d not only answered her question about the katana, but also given her a very patient lesson in sawed-off shotguns.
She was fascinated. And if he hadn’t said he was just passing through, she’d have run screaming in the other direction, because this kind of bad boy wasn’t allowed in her life now.
Not anymore.
Fifteen years ago, she’d have been the one to spot him, the one to wink and compliment his ride, his tattoos, or the dirty gleam in his eye, real or imagined. Her younger, more foolish self would have leapt at the first invitation to hop on the back of his bike and take off on an adventure.
Maybe she’d still be like that, if life hadn’t made her a mother at thirty and a widow at thirty-one. The one-two punch of good fortune and tragedy sent her life into a tailspin, and in the four years since, she’d made a set of rules for herself.
No risk-taking.
No adventure-seeking.
No men who…
The last rule was a bit nebulous. No men, basically, just to stay smart and safe. She’d barely dipped her toe into dating before yanking it back out again, not quite sure she wasn’t looking for the exact wrong reasons. And over time, that proved true: she’d stopped yearning for physical connection.
But this guy made her wish that, if just for a night, she was looking for a sexy stranger.
He even had a sexy as sin name. Zander. That one corner of his mouth twisted a little higher as he said it, and his voice got a little huskier, like he knew his name alone was a turn on…
It was sexy enough a girl might just accidentally take off her panties.
Luckily there was zero risk of that happening. For one thing, Faith was wearing utilitarian day-before-the-period-might-arrive safety underwear. And for another, they were in the middle of Greta’s Bakery, where nudity would surely be frowned upon.
She blamed the heat rioting through her body on her mother, for bringing up the idea of Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome. Of course, Miriam wouldn’t have meant a tattooed weapons expert.
And there was no blaming the way she was hanging on his every word, furiously scribbling notes about ammunition size and wound descriptions, on her mother or anyone else. This was Faith being a greedy girl, absolutely. She couldn’t help herself. Zander knew everything she needed to know about weaponry and more. And he wasn’t bad on the eyes, either.
Eyes, ears, brain…he was far too good for far too many of her body parts.
He’s an expert. This is a research interview. And he kept talking, making the lie plausible.
“What kind of mess do you want the blast to make?” he asked, leaning back in the booth.
She snuck a hungry little look at the edge of a tattoo peeking out from the collar of his low-slung t-shirt before re-focusing on the scene, further in her book, where she needed to leave obvious evidence of a shotgun death. “What would happen if he was killed in the middle of the warehouse? Just a massive pile of blood?”
He rocked his jaw from left to right, thinking completely unsqueamishly about her poor character’s guts being blown apart. It turned her on in an unhealthy way. “Better if it was near a wall; that might get a better spray pattern and contain the shell. In the middle of a warehouse it could go skittering anywhere.”
“I can do that.” She tapped her pencil against her forehead. “But they’d probably take the shell with them, right?”
“Yeah, if they were smart. But there’s a lot of adrenaline pumping, and shit happens. Or maybe they pick it up and it leaves an outline. That’s not going to be easily ID’d, but you can play with that a bit, right? Beauty of fiction?”
Beauty of something. She nodded like a freakin’ bobble head and he grinned, all white teeth and deep laugh lines.
But most of the time as he talked he was dark and brooding, heavy eyebrows pulled tight as he described a dozen ways to kill a man. He paused from time to time, tilting his head a bit to the side as if asking, are you sure you want to hear all of this?
She did. She gobbled it up, because she’d been stuck for days, thinking she didn’t quite get the mechanics of the fight scenes, when really, she hadn’t sunk far enough into the mind of a killer.
Not that she thought this guy was a killer, exactly. But he certainly spoke with a certain legitimacy that made her wonder.
How twisted was it that she still wanted to pump him for information, regardless of where his knowledge came from? Because it was a heck of a lot better than watching YouTube videos on repeat, that was for sure.
“Hey, you want more coffee?” he suddenly asked, interrupting himself.
“Sure.” She passed her cup across the table before she could talk herself into saying no.
He got up and stretched, his arms reaching practically to the ceiling. She tried and failed not to notice how his t-shirt rode up, revealing a tanned, muscular stretch of skin above the waistband of his jeans. Her gaze lingered on the narrow line of dark, curly hair that ran south from his flat belly button and disappeared behind his heavy leather belt.
So much for utilitarian underwear protecting her. She was pretty sure they’d just spontaneously combusted.
He might be a hardened criminal, she chastised herself as he grabbed their mugs and sauntered across the eatery. He leaned against the counter, crossing one leg behind the other as he smiled at the cashier, then waved at someone in the back.
Faith sat up a little straighter. She narrowed her eyes. He was laughing at something someone said.
A nervous tremor rippled through her belly.
He leaned back from the counter, his body twisting fluidly. Why did he have to be so beautiful? And dangerous? And obviously, since he knew Greta, not just passing through.
Did it matter?
Part of her wanted to run screaming from the restaurant. She’d shown her hand, and he had to know she was interested—but it wasn’t an interest she could follow up on. This only worked if he would disappear into the night, never to be seen from again.
Disappointment zinged through her gut, and that in turn lit a tiny spark of anxiety.
Because it wasn’t in Faith’s nature to want just a little taste of adventure. She wrote about epic battles between good and evil, about larger than life heroes and kick-ass heroines, for a reason.
Once upon a time, Faith had lived life to its absolute fullest.
So had Greg.
Neither of them ever imagined the price they would pay for that choice.
And here she was again, getting swept away in the imagined romance of a dark, brooding bad boy with an endless capacity to thrill her.
Faith didn’t deserve thrills. More to the point, she had a responsibility to avoid them now.
But she couldn’t bring herself to leave the booth.
Not just yet.
Soon, though…and with that thought, she pulled her gaze away from Zander just as he turned back toward her, coffees in hand.
Ignoring the way his broad shoulders bunched and rolled like a slow-motion Levis commercial—because he didn’t just look like a biker, he looked like a movie star playing a biker, an extra-hot cliché of snug denim and leather-clad masculinity—she looked down at her notes. She hadn’t written any new words tonight, but in the margins she’d sketched another scene. Where her heroine, Vera, duelled it out with a shotgun-carrying mystery man with two days of stubble covering his square jaw and black aviator sunglasses covering his hooded gaze.
Even with her little
trio of question marks next to that note—because how could she know his gaze was hooded behind the sunglasses?—she still knew it would be wicked hot. When she got home, she’d write like the wind.
And then probably delete it all, because it was mostly fantasy fodder and not actually something that would further Vera’s search for her missing father, which was the plot she’d outlined.
Sigh. Faith drew a sad face below the shorthand scene notes. Maybe she’d fit it in.
Now she just needed to find a way to say thank you and goodbye, and get the hell out of there.
“Tell me more about this urban fantasy stuff you write,” he said as he set the coffees down, at the same time as she planted her hands on the table and took a deep breath. He paused, his lower lip caught between his teeth as he gave her the exact same hooded glare she imagined Deacon giving Vera.
Deacon? What the…? No. This guy wasn’t inserting himself into her novel with a character name and everything.
“You’re heading out?” he asked after a beat.
She nodded. “I should.”
He didn’t say anything else, just gave her a slow, understanding half-smile and took up a lot of space.
“Thank you for your help,” she started, then stopped.
“My pleasure.” God, his voice. Rough and low, but kind and interested and…sigh. She didn’t want to stop listening to it.
She reached for her mug. She should at least drink the coffee since he’d gone to the effort of re-filling it.
And then she’d leave.
“Do you come here a lot?”
Her resolve to run away from him fell apart as she jerked her eyes up, meeting his gaze again. “Uh… yeah. A few times a week. For a change of pace. I usually write at home, but when I’ve been trying to do that all day and nothing is clicking, a change of scenery sometimes helps. Occasionally I’ll even write outside…”
She was babbling. She bit her lip.
He laughed. The corners of his eyes tugged into very pleasing lines, and she blushed.
“Yes. The short answer is yes.”
“I liked the long answer.” He kept his attention on her as he lifted his own mug, taking a slow sip. “And this book that you’re writing…you said it’s in a series?”