by Anna Lewis
* * *
“Why are we walking so fast Josh?” Maddy asked me for the hundredth time.
“I don’t want to miss the fireworks is all…” I said.
“But you can see them all over the park,” Maddy’s confusion turned into disgruntlement. She wasn’t exactly as happy as Gio and I were all day, she didn’t get to ride as many of the attractions because of the baby.
“But this is the best view, come on…” I tugged on her hand a bit and Gio began to jump and point.
“Look, look!” I glanced up and saw that we’d made it. Thank goodness we came at such a perfect time. Most people were with their families for Thanksgiving and there were nothing but a few tourists still strolling by. There was plenty of space for me to do this.
“Wow…” Maddy looked up at the Magic Kingdom Castle with eyes as awed as Gio’s. I pulled the carefully picked out ring from my back pocket and got down on one knee.
“Oh look he’s proposing!” an onlooker alerted Maddy to what was going on and her eyes met mine in shock.
“Joshua…” her voice was only a little puzzled, but already getting choked up.
“Maddy…” I paused to take her hand and a deep breath. Gio was watching attentively from beside her. “I remember how you told me you wanted to be proposed to when we were ten years old. You said you wouldn’t say yes unless it was in front of the Cinderella Castle at sunset…” Cue the chuckles and ooh’s and ahh’s from the peanut gallery. But the look in Maddy’s eyes, the love and joy blocked all of that out. It was just she and I on her front stoop in Long Island New York.
“I don’t know how to express in words what I feel for you, but I think you know just how far my love for you and Gio goes. I’ve said it before that I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and I do. I love you Maddy, will you marry me?”
A tear fell down Maddy’s cheek, but she nodded, a huge grin spreading across her face as she gave a soft, ‘yes.’ Joy soared in my chest as I put the classic diamond ring on her finger and got to my feet to take her up in a huge sweeping kiss.
“Finally!” Gio said, making everyone laugh and clap just as the first of the fireworks went off behind the castle.
“You’re really somethin’ you know that?” Maddy said, her voice still had tears in it. I laughed and kissed her again.
“So are you darlin’, so are you.”
THE END
= Bonus Book 9 of 20 =
Bad Boy Daddy
Cherise Clayton knew that she should have flown from San Francisco.
When she was assigned to interview a new dating app developer in Omaha, Nebraska, she’d been encouraged to fly, or take a train or simply interview the guy via Skype or FaceTime, but Cherise had firmly insisted that she could drive herself. She needed a break from San Francisco and a cross-country drive seemed like a peaceful way to escape the madness of the Bay Area and maybe, just maybe, get her own head in a better place.
So, Cherise loaded her little SUV with luggage, snacks, loaded plenty of playlists on her phone and headed out for a two-day journey across half the country to scenic Omaha, Nebraska.
Now, as she pulled her car into the parking lot of the Camelot Inn—a rundown motel just off the interstate whose fizzling neon sign declared, “Vacancy!” in buzzing pink letters—she was really beginning to regret her stubbornness. The Camelot Inn was in Left Fork, Nebraska, still a day’s drive away from Omaha and, judging by the looks she was getting as she unloaded her suitcase from the trunk of her little SUV, the residents weren’t used to seeing black women travelling alone.
Or any black people at all, she thought, as she entered the hot, non-airconditioned lobby of the little motel. The teenaged girl at the counter gaped at Cherise, her hands poised with her phone in mid-air, as if she were about to send a text but was distracted by the sight of a black women walking into her place of business.
The counter-girl—Ashlee, according to her nametag—was blonde-haired and blue eyed, and just about the most all-American kid anyone could imagine. Cherise peeked around the lobby. A young, tired looking couple with a baby were checking out with another clerk and, yep, all of them were white.
Cherise straightened her shoulders and smiled brightly as the clerk, Ashlee, checked her in and pointed her in the direction of her guest room. It wasn’t until Cherise had firmly shut and bolted the flimsy motel room door behind her that she collapsed on the bed and released a series of slow, shuddering breaths.
The road trip to Nebraska had seemed like a good, brilliant, wonderful idea at the time.
Back in San Francisco, Cherise had just been dumped yet again, one more in a series of unfortunate, short-term relationships that were beginning to be horribly laughable, considering that Cherise was technically employed as a dating/relationship blogger.
“A dating blogger who can’t seem to find a date,” she said aloud to the lonely, dim motel room, flopping down flat on her back onto the musty comforter, a gold and rust-colored relic that was probably older than Cherise herself.
That statement wasn’t exactly true. She could find a date, thank you very much, but she just couldn’t seem to make any of those dates turn into a relationship. She’d tried everything: apps, websites, meet-ups, social clubs, even speed-dating. But every guy she met ended up fizzling out after one or two dates. They all claimed that it wasn’t her, it was them. Cherise was inclined to agree. It was them: they were all terribly boring and completely intimidated by her career, striking good looks and bold self-confidence.
They weren’t bad guys, they weren’t pathetic losers, they were just so…boring.
Cherise’s mother had always told her to find herself a nice guy with a good job but, now that Cherise had dated a parade of such men, that advice seemed dreadful.
“For once, I just want to meet someone interesting,” Cherise said again, this time to the water-stained motel room ceiling directly above her tired head.
Minutes later, she was bounding down the motel stairs and bursting into the reception office, once again startling young Ashlee away from her texting.
“Where’s the most interesting place to go in this town?” she asked the young clerk, who seemed to have recovered from the shock of having a black woman in her motel but was now wide-eyed with surprise from Cherise’s unexpected question.
“Um, I don’t really go out much,” the girl began tentatively, her cornflower blue eyes wide. “Some kids from the school like to go to the Sonic Drive-In up in Williamstown on the weekends?”
Cherise tried not to roll her eyes at the girl’s answer. She knew that Left Fork was a small town—it was barely a speck on her map app and featured only one lodging option—but she didn’t realize how small it actually was.
“Are there any, I don’t know, bars in town?” she tried again, hopefully. “I mean, no offense to drive-in burger joints or anything, but I was hoping to go somewhere a little more…adult.”
The girl’s jaw dropped. “There is one bar, but I wouldn’t go there, ma’am,” she told Cherise, who just so happened to absolutely hate being called “ma’am.”
“Tell me about this bar, Ashlee, sweetie,” Cherise pressed. Ashlee took a deep breath and started to tell Cherise some details.
Cherise cocked one dark, perfectly sculpted eyebrow and nodded as the girl began to describe the town’s one bar.
“It’s called the Olde Glory Inn,” said the counter girl, “but no one from town ever goes, not even adults, not even my dad. My mom said she’d ground me for a year if I ever set foot in there, and my dad says it’s chock full of guys who are nothing but trouble…”
“Nothing but trouble?” That sounds perfect, Cherise thought, smiling to herself.
“Ashlee?” Cherise asked sweetly. “How exactly do I get to this bar?”
***
The tavern or bar is a staple in almost every American city and town, and Cherise, whose career kept her constantly on the move, thought she had seen every kind. She’d been in hip, big-cit
y clubs, tiny dive bars in college towns, upscale wine bars overlooking the ocean and tacky chain-restaurant bars in strip malls. Cherise had visited old pubs in London and gone dancing in dimly lit gay bars in the Castro. She’d been everywhere.
Cherise Clayton thought she had seen them all but nothing, nothing, she’d seen in her entire career prepared her for the Olde Glory Inn in North Fork, Nebraska.
The building was plain and simple—a low rectangle, small and squat and built from what appeared to be unpainted cinderblocks—and dimly lit on the outside. One florescent spotlight crackled near the establishment’s single door, sporadically illuminating a hand-stenciled sign on the chipped, sand-colored cinderblock wall of the building. “The Olde Glory Inn: Members Only,” it read.
“Never judge a book by its cover,” Cherise muttered as she pulled her SUV into the parking lot next to a long line of gleaming motorcycles, all parked neatly in a row. She glanced quickly around and realized that her car was the only car in the entire lot. The rest of the vehicles were only one kind: Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
She hesitated for a brief moment before removing her key from the ignition. Maybe the girl, Ashlee, at the motel was right, this place looked like nothing but trouble. Cherise briefly considered turning around, going back to the motel, and calling it a night, but then her defiant streak kicked in. And Cherise Clayton had a defiant streak a mile wide.
Cherise had never been one to back down from a challenge and the Olde Glory Inn, squatting in front of her in all its shabby, shady glory, was one of the biggest challenges she’d faced.
“Let’s do this, girl,” she said to herself, sliding the key from the ignition and striding across the cracked and pot-hole filled parking lot.
The moment she stepped through the entrance of the Olde Glory Inn, however, the entire bar screeched to a halt. The music, some twang-y tune about the hard realities of life on the road, was still blaring from the tinny jukebox, but not one person spoke. Every mouth in the place was agape, astonished at the strange patron who’d just entered. Cherise had never felt more like an outsider in her thirty-two years of life.
“Hello,” Cherise said, giving a weak wave to the silent, hostile crowd.
No one said anything back, but every single pair of eyes in the house narrowed. Every mouth hardened into an angry line. Cherise could hear the men begin to whisper to each other, their ugly voices harsh and hushed.
Men. The entire bar was filled with nothing but men, she suddenly realized. There wasn’t a woman in the place. She looked around, peered into the dimly lit booths in the back behind the pool table, but couldn’t spot anyone of the female persuasion.
Shit, she thought, but pushed her panic down. She could do this—just grab a quick beer to show that she wasn’t scared—and get the hell out of this frightening dump.
But as Cherise headed over to the old, linoleum-covered bar to place her order, the grizzled old bartender just crossed his arms and shook his head in an unspoken no.
Nevertheless, she persisted. “I’d like a Miller High Life, please,” she asked politely, hoping her sunny smile could penetrate the bartender’s surly attitude.
It didn’t.
“Nope,” he told her, glaring down meanly at her. Cherise wasn’t a large woman—she was petite and curvy—and he towered over her with his thick, ropy frame and stringy grey hair.
“Can’t you just—” Cherise began, but the bartender firmly cut her off.
“No. What I “can do” is let you walk outta here on your own two legs, girl, but that offer is about to expire,” he growled. “Your ass is gonna be out that door in about ten seconds, and I don’t much care if you walk out or you’re thrown out. Your choice.”
A thick hand gripped Cherise’s right bicep, hard. The hand tightened, viselike, until she was positive that it was going to leave bruises.
“You heard Zeke, bitch,” a voice growled, deep, ugly, and full of menace. Cherise looked over at the giant man holding onto her. He was large, bigger than the bartender even, and looked like he was roughly hewn out of solid granite. His features were harsh and deeply lined, and his long black hair was tied back in a greasy ponytail. A series of tattoos were visible on his bare chest and arms, some disappearing below the grimy black leather vest that covered his thick, barrel-shaped torso.
“You tell her, J.P.!” a thin voice shouted out of nowhere, hollering encouragement at Cherise’s mountainous assailant
“How dare you touch me—” Cherise fumed, but the man, J.P., grabbed her by the other arm and lifted her roughly off the ground as if she was a rag doll.
“You’re a little pain-in-the-ass, aren’t you,” he said, roughly dragging Cherise to the establishment’s only door. “Maybe you need to be taught a lesson. What do you think about that idea, girlie?”
Cherise was about to snap back again at the horrible man, but she was beaten to the punch by a new voice coming from behind J.P.
“Put the lady down, asshole.”
Surprisingly enough, J.P. did just that, unceremoniously dropping Cherise onto her own two feet and turning to face the interloper.
Cherise, who knew that she should get the hell out of there, let her curiosity get the better of her and peered around J.P.’s thick bulk to get a slight glimpse of her savior.
There, standing in the center of grimy biker bar, surrounded by a group of dangerous, leather-clad thugs, was the most beautiful man Cherise had ever seen in her entire life.
***
It took Cherise a while to understand what J.P. and the newcomer were saying, she could barely pay any attention to anything apart from the fact that she’d just been saved by a supermodel.
Well, he wasn’t exactly a supermodel. Cherise doubted that his unconventional looks—tattoo sleeves covering both arms, chin-length, sandy blond hair, rough stubble covering his chiseled jaw-line—were much in demand in the high-fashion industry. Perhaps he was more akin to a Viking warrior than a supermodel.
The new man was tall, matching J.P.’s enormous height, and his broad shoulders and wide chest were muscled and strong. The sandy blond stranger was dressed much more simply than most of the weathered old bikers in the bar. While they were all clad almost completely in leather, this man simply wore a white tank top over his rippling pectorals. The rest of his ensemble consisted of jeans and a thick pair of black motorcycle boots.
That can’t offer much protection on the road, Cherise thought for a moment, before her attention was pulled back to J.P. and her savior, who were starting to inch closer together, standing toe-to-toe and nose-to-nose.
J.P. was screaming something into the stranger’s face, but the stranger remained cool and collected, arms crossed over his broad chest and wearing a slightly bemused expression on his handsome face.
“You can’t just stroll in here after a couple of years and act like you own the place, Lynx,” J.P. shouted, finally snapping and planting a rough shove against the man’s, Lynx’s, wide, strong chest. “So go fuck right off.”
Lynx did not shove the man back or raise his voice in anger. He simply cocked one light blond eyebrow in J.P.’s general direction and smirked. “You want to show me who’s the boss, J.P.?” he drawled. “Then come at me, dick.”
With a sudden roar of rage, J.P. lunged at Lynx, who ducked the punch with ease and sent J.P. crashing in to the nearby pool table. The big, ugly man skidded down the green felt and crashed against the bumper, swearing wildly.
A strong hand wrapped around Cherise’s thin arm and pulled her toward the door. “Time to go, lady,” Lynx whispered, his voice a cigarette roughened rasp in her ear.
The other patrons of the bar were beginning to rise to their feet, their various weathered faces wearing ugly scowls of rage and violence. Cherise didn’t pause to argue, she simply let herself be tugged out of the tiny bar without a moment of hesitation.
Once they were outside, she started to head to her little SUV, the lone automobile in the parking lot full of motorcycles, but Lyn
x stopped her.
“That’s not gonna work, lady,” he shouted, and pulled her toward his own bike, lifting her up easily and depositing her on the back of the seat. “Come on, we need to get the hell out of here and we need to get out of here fast.”
There was a single helmet for the motorcycle and Lynx handed it to Cherise without even a moment’s hesitation. She pulled it down tightly—it was a snug fit over her twisted hair—and then secured the chin strap with a firm tug.
“Where are we going?” she shouted over the roar as Lynx revved the engine.
He glanced across the parking lot toward the bar, where piles of angry bikers were pouring out of the small entrance. “Anywhere but here, I guess. Hold on!”
The motorcycle lurched beneath them and leapt down the road, forcing Cherise to involuntarily tighten her arms around Lynx’s waist and bury her head against his strong shoulder blades. Cherise wasn’t scared of many things but motorcycles, especially ones roaring at top speed down a narrow, dimly lit country road, made her a teeny-tiny bit nervous.
She hazarded a quick glance backward, and shuddered when she saw a pack of headlights right on their tail.
“They’re still behind us!” she screamed up at Lynx, hoping that she could be heard over the roaring wind. “They’re still behind us, Lynx!”
His sandy blond hair whipped around his face and Cherise could glimpse the slightest bit of his handsome, chiseled profile as he turned his head ever so slightly to check his rearview mirror.
“Shit,” Lynx muttered. Then, just as they came around a sharp bend and the gang was out of sight for the briefest of moments, he yelled a quick bit of instruction back to Cherise. “Hang on back there, lady! Hang on tight!”