by Bijou Hunter
I don’t wait for him to speak, not that I sense he plans to. Quaid from the Reapers’ Shasta chapter got what he wanted, and I suspect he isn’t the type of man to waste words.
QUAID, AKA THE OUTSIDER
Idon’t believe in love at first sight. How can you love a person you’ve never spoken to? You can’t. That’s just a damn fact.
However, you can get a strong feeling about someone from across a room—or in my case, across a massive yard during a biker BBQ. You can be drawn to a person, preferring them to others in the same way you find one car model more appealing than another. My club brother’s wife is obsessed with cottage-style homes. No reason beyond she feels in her gut they suit her better than any other kind of house style does.
That’s how I felt when I saw Miranda trying to feed potato salad to a group of squawking geese. She caught my eye and kept my interest while her sisters didn’t. No objective reason why, but I’ve been thinking about her for months now.
In a roundabout way, her father is my boss, and no way does he want me sniffing around his gorgeous oddball daughter. I’m too old and rough around the edges. Plus, what made me a solid recruit—my experience killing—won’t put me at the top of his list of suitable suitors for his eccentric princess.
Hours after Miranda rides away on her silly pale green scooter, I arrive at Pickles in Paradise. The restaurant is located in a former VFW, and the letters remain faded on the side of the building. When I open the door, I’m not met by the chill of air-conditioning as in most businesses during the summer. I walk into the muggy restaurant to find folding tables arranged haphazardly around the room. The menu is printed on a large dry-erase board hanging precariously over the cashier station. A cook stands behind a counter while nearby is a waitress so old I’d guess one of her feet is already solidly in the grave.
Miranda sits at a table near the back. She sees me before I do her. Despite her gaze locked on me, her face reveals no emotion. I’ve known a whole lot of cold fuckers over my lifetime, but few have the poker face of the sexy brunette waiting for me to join her. I am dying to hear what comes out of her mouth next.
“You’re not wearing a hat,” she says once I sit across from her.
“Is that a problem?”
“I’ve only ever seen you in a hat.”
“I was raised to think wearing hats inside was rude.”
“That guy is wearing a hat,” she mutters while gesturing to a farmer at a table near the door.
Her reaction to my arrival is so far from what I expected that I’m at a loss for words, but if she wants a fucking hat, I can go get my hat. “Do you want me to get my hat from my saddlebag?”
“I feel like we're saying the word ‘hat’ too much.”
“Then do you want me to get my cap out of the saddlebag?”
“No, I can get used to you without a ha—” Miranda pauses to correct herself. “You don’t need to wear a cap.”
Sitting across from her in a folding chair, I pretend to study the menu when I really just want to bask in how Miranda Johansson is mere feet from me. For months, I’ve wondered about this woman. Hell, I hadn’t even heard her voice that day. So many questions ran through my mind over the last few months. Now she’s sharing a meal with me, and I can finally learn the answers.
“What’s good here?”
“I normally order the chicken strips and deep-fried pretzels.”
Fuck, if I know why I laugh at her words, but I just do. Miranda doesn’t even seem to notice. Her gaze studies my face, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she’s still thinking about my hat.
“Did you get the waves in your hair from your mom or your pop?” she asks after I stroll over to the counter, order the same as Miranda, and return with her meal.
“Neither. Rumor has it my granddad had a full head of wavy hair, and that's where I got it. Never met the man or saw any pics of him. Could be my mother slept with a fella looking real similar to me, and my pop was never the wiser.”
“Or he lacked the balls to mention the truth in front of others.”
“My father had a big mouth and a bigger ego. If he knew, he’d have told every fucking person he met.”
“He sounds like a piece of shit,” Miranda says and tucks her hair behind both ears. “If you and I marry, I don’t want him coming to the wedding and talking shit.”
The casual way she mentions marriage to a strange man ought to startle me. But with Miranda, I look forward to her oddities.
“Not a worry,” I say and rest my hand flat on the table. “I haven’t seen the man in twenty-plus years. Don’t even think he’s alive.”
“Do you care if he is?” she asks with a chicken finger hanging from her lips like a greasy cigar.
“Not in the least,” I say, and then hear my number yelled from the counter. Standing, I smile at Miranda who stares up at me with the smokiest brown eyes I’ve ever seen on anyone. “He stopped mattering to me a long time ago,” I add before walking over to get my food.
Miranda watches me go, never trying to hide her interest. She stares at me walking to the counter and back.
“I figure you like your parents if you’re still living in their house,” I say while dumping ketchup onto my paper plate.
“I don’t live in their house anymore, but not because I don’t like them. I just wanted my space, and Colton was always busting through my bedroom lock.”
“So where are you living now?”
“In an RV in their driveway.”
“An RV, huh? I remember hearing you Johanssons like your RVing.”
“My cousin Buzz got me a good deal on my used R-pod camper. He even offered to let me have it without paying his commission, but I don’t have a kid, and he has an ugly one. I thought he should keep the money for when that freak grows up and needs plastic surgery.”
“Brutal,” I say, loving every word coming out of her delicious mouth.
“I’m not lying, though. Buzz fell in love with an ugly woman he met in Hungary. She has a horrible overbite and a nose too big for her face. Her hair is the absolute fucking worst, and I think she might have four chins. Despite all that, he loves her something fierce. When you love someone enough, I guess you don’t care about surface things. Unfortunately, she didn’t bring great genetics into the mix, and their son’s got ugly in his blood. He seems like a sweet kid, but I can’t really tell. All kids are the same to me.”
“Don’t like them?”
With her mouth full of chicken, she says, “They’re tiny adults who poop their pants and can’t pronounce anything correctly. I have no interest in them, which might change now that my sister Audrey is pregnant.”
“Are you excited about being an aunt?”
“Excited isn’t the word I’d use, though I am mildly curious if the baby will be gigantic like its father. I also wonder how they’ll get it out of her. Those surgery births sound horrifying. Her whole life makes no sense to me. She was a kid a few months ago. Now she’s married and having a baby and living in a town that smells like peanuts.”
“Peanuts?”
“It’s possible I remember wrong. Colton ate peanuts a lot around me the last weekend we were in Tennessee. He also kept using my hair as a napkin.”
“Your brother is very young,” I say, rather than calling him a turd.
“No, he’s not.”
“I meant in the head.”
Miranda leans closer and narrows her dark eyes. “Are you scared to talk shit about him because he’ll run the club one day and get revenge on you?”
“No, I’m scared talking shit about your brother will offend you when we’re having such a fine conversation.”
“I don’t care what you say about Colton,” she says, leaning back and smirking. “He’s a swamp whore. I used to want to kill him, but I doubt I ever would. People say he looks like Pop, but he has Mom’s eyes. I couldn’t look in them and take his life. It’d be like killing my mom, and she’s the sweetest person I know. Well, I did see h
er kick a dog once after it went rabid on Lily. Mom turned into Sarah Connor and got all ‘get away from her, you bitch.’”
My brain immediately corrects her movie references, but I don’t dare say anything. Why do anything to stop her from talking up a storm?
“So I can talk shit about Colton then?”
“Sure. You don’t care that he has my mom’s eyes.”
“I don’t know your mom’s face well enough to know if he has her eyes.”
“Good. Don’t be staring at Mom or Pop will bust you in half. I’ve seen him go insane on men before when they eyeballed his woman,” Miranda says and then smiles. “Pop’s caveman crap is funny.”
“I admit I don’t know much about your pop or the Ellsberg chapter. I joined the Reapers a year and a half ago and remained in our territory.”
“River is a weenie too,” she says, mentioning my club president. “When he was little, he peed his pants once during a thunderstorm. You should remember that when he acts tough.”
Miranda sighs loudly and rests her head against the wall. “I feel like I’ve messed up by making you think Colton is weak. What if you disrespect him and he punishes you. That’ll be my fault for not respecting his authority even though he doesn’t have any authority over me like he might have over you.”
Swallowing my fry, I say quickly, “I know how to obey a man I don’t like or respect.”
“Did you learn that in prison?”
“The military.”
Miranda sizes me up again. “For how long?”
“Ten-plus years. I served in the middle east, a few places in Africa that you’ve probably never heard of, and finished up with time in Colombia.”
“Did you like it?”
“Would I have stayed in so long if I didn’t?” I ask in a tone too sharp for the mood we’re in, but my time in the military isn’t something I chat about.
Miranda either doesn’t notice or care about the harsh manner of my response. “Sure. People with few options will put up with all kinds of shit. Do you think Tipsy Tara over there enjoys her job?” she asks, gesturing toward the woman at the front counter. “I doubt she’s drunk day and night because she’s living the dream.”
Studying the woman, I want to prove Miranda wrong. “Tara could love her job but have a bad man at home. Or she might be suffering from a chronic illness.”
“No. I asked,” Miranda says without missing a beat. “She never married and has no kids. When she talks about being alone, she smiles. Her job is shit, though. I asked why didn’t she get another job. She claimed she tried, but she’s bad at everything. She even got fired from the slaughterhouse and, according to her, that’s really hard to do.”
Smiling softly, I study Miranda’s face. “I don’t know why, but the fact that you know her life story makes me want you more.”
“I don’t know why either.”
“Some things don’t need to be understood. They just are what they are.”
Miranda gives me a half smile. “I like that. Life shouldn’t be complicated.”
My earlier tension fades at the sight of her grin. “In the end, the essence of a good life comes down to very few important things. The rest is noise. That’s my thinking anyway.”
“Mine too,” she says, granting me another smile. “Was it hard to be in the military?”
“Some of the training wore me down in the beginning.”
“What kind of training?”
I keep my mouth shut about the specifics of my training, just as I plan to avoid sharing the dirty details of my assignments overseas. Miranda is too young and sheltered to understand the battlefields I saw half a world away.
“Nothing interesting.”
“Colton can do a hundred push-ups,” she says, pulling a random nugget of information from her head. “Can you?”
“At one time or over the course of a week?”
Miranda laughs at my question, and I’m startled by her childlike laughter—an uncontrol, rolling chuckle without any self-conscious thought. She’s a woman unrestrained by expectations. This certainly explains why she thinks nothing of cleaning dead animals from the side of the road.
“I could do ten probably,” she says once her laughter peters out. “I used to run but not anymore.”
“Run how?”
“Well, it’s a long story,” she says and gnaws off a piece of her deep-fried pretzel.
“I have nowhere to be.”
Miranda blinks a few times as if realizing we aren’t on a clock. “Where are you staying in Ellsberg?”
“River set it up with his folks to let me bunk in their backyard.”
“Vaughn’s hogs will kill you in your sleep.”
“I’m aware.”
Miranda studies me unblinking for a long damn time. “Don’t kill his hogs.”
“I don’t plan to.”
“What if they try to kill you?”
“I’ll tell them to stop. Might even say please.”
Miranda smirks. “They’ll appreciate your manners.”
“Now tell me about your running days.”
“I wasn’t running for me but for Lily who was on a sports team. I can’t remember what it’s called. Umm, the one with the net where they hit the ball over with their hands. Not tennis but the other one.”
“Volleyball?”
“Yeah. I don’t know why I always forget what it’s called. So Lily’s coach told her that she had too much junk in her trunk. Since my sister is easily distracted by life’s noise, she reacted to his comment by running every day at the school’s track. Her friends were all the popular girl types who starved themselves into thinness. Lily couldn’t do the anorexic or bulimic thing because our mom is very focused on feeding us because food wasn’t always available when Mom was a kid. Poor people really care about making sure everyone is fed, I guess. So since dieting wasn’t an option, Lily had to exercise to lose her trunk’s junk.”
Miranda pauses to wipe her greasy fingers on a napkin before noticing the old man leaving. Returning her gaze to me, she continues, “I only agreed to run with her because I’d recently watched those ‘Wrong Turn’ movies. Have you seen those where the inbred hillbillies eat and hump their victims?” she asks me. When I shake my head, she goes on, “Once I saw those films, I got to thinking about how we have so many woods in Kentucky. I wouldn’t be surprised to know all kinds of inbred hillbillies live around here. I started worrying they could show up to eat and hump me. In those movies, the girls always ran badly and would trip over nothing. I figured I better work on my running skills.”
“Makes sense.”
Miranda nods because why wouldn’t I agree with her logic? “Colton said they wouldn’t catch him because he was so fast. He is a fast runner, and I planned to get fast too. So I ran with Lily every day even though I hated running.”
“When did you stop?”
“After a few weeks when Pop took me out shooting for the first time. Turns out it’s a whole lot easier to shoot a horny inbred hillbilly than to outrun him. Plus, I’m also a better shot than I am a runner.”
“So Lily ran alone?”
“Of course not. I’m not a bad sister,” Miranda grumbles, revealing a flash of genuine rage in her smoky eyes. “I handled her coach problem.”
“How?”
“See, I’d promised Lily I wouldn’t tell our parents about the coach, and I kept my word. However, I never promised I wouldn’t tell my aunt. Tawny has junk in her trunk, and she was outraged someone might want Lily to reduce hers. She told Mom, and you can bet the coach minded his P’s and Q’s after that. Pop also bought a treadmill so Lily could run at the house where she’d be safe. Pop always claims everything is unsafe. School. The pharmacy. Walmart. Burger King. Everywhere needs to be monitored. It’s his excuse for having us followed. Club guys always come along on our dates.”
“Are they watching now?” I ask, surveying the nearly empty gravel parking lot.
“I thought you didn’t want Pop kn
owing.”
“I don’t yet.”
“Ah, so your plan is to win me over before you have to win him over, huh?”
“So are they watching?”
“No, Jim-Bean and his idiot son are sitting at the movie theater I’m supposed to be at.”
“Don’t like being followed, I assume.”
“No, I just don’t like them. Some club people are cool like family. Some are horrible like family. Jim-Bean called Raven a baby factory. I don’t like that, so I don’t like him. He says things he thinks are funny, but they’re not. Uncle Tucker’s like that, but he’s real family, and I can’t hate him like I can Jim-Bean.”
“And why do you hate his son?”
“Because he said Lily was stuck-up. He spoke those words in Ellsberg but not in his house which is the only place in Ellsberg where he could be certain no one was listening. He said it in a pharmacy, and I heard him in the aisle over. No one should be talking shit about my sister in public. My pop said people can respect you, or they can fear you, but they’ve got to do one. Jim-Bean’s loser spawn clearly doesn’t respect Lily, and he didn’t respect me when I said he needed to apologize. That’s why I ratted him out to Pop or Colton.”
“Is this little loser in the club?” I ask, smiling at how protective she is of her family.
“He wants to be, and Jim-Bean plans for him to be patched in, but I’ll never let it happen. Once I don’t like someone, I never like them. Maybe my grudges are only noise, but I don’t forgive.”
“The guy sounds like scum. Why show him mercy?”
Miranda smiles at me. “What do you want to happen between us? Is it sex because I don’t know if I’m interested in doing that again?”
“I can get sex in Shasta.”
“Not with me,” she says, finishing her food and stretching.
“True.”
“I tried having sex twice, and it’s just lame. I don’t get why people want to do it when masturbating is easier.”