Damn, I need to get tougher. The biker isn’t deterred. Not in the least. His grin widens.
“I know, babe. It’s a nickname. On account of your ass being shaped like a peach.”
I drag in a breath. That’s right. Dude’s definitely a drop-dead-gorgeous, Italian-marble asshole biker.
“I gathered that, pervert. Let me pass?”
I hadn’t meant it to come out as a question. A tough chick would tell him to move. Push past. She wouldn’t stare at his thick, beautiful brown hair with the caramel streaks and wonder why God always makes pretty things bad for you.
“I ain’t a pervert. I’m a—what d’you call it?—an aficionado.”
“Of fruit?”
He laughs. Oh, Lord. Even his laugh is gorgeous. Deep and raspy, but warm and easy at the same time. Like fingers tripping down a piano at the low end of the octaves.
“Yeah. Sure. Whatever you want to call it.”
“Can I get past?”
“I don’t know, Peaches. Wouldn’t you rather sit up here? Feel the breeze while I bring the rest of the boxes up? Then you can get me a beer and tell me all about where you’re from and what your interests are and—”
“Oh, yeah? You want to have a conversation with me? Get to know me?”
Why is it the hottest guys have the worst lines? Besides, dude is a grown-ass man. Aren’t grown-ass men supposed to be smoother than this?
“Nah, let me finish, woman. You can tell me all about your stressful moving day while I cup that perfect peach of an ass and work the kinks out of your achin’ back.”
He…wha—?
“Don’t look so shocked. You tellin’ me ain’t nobody ever remarked on that perfect ass before?”
Nope. Sure haven’t. Not this specifically.
God, I wish I had a comeback. I know I’ll have one at two in the morning when I wake up with this dude’s gravelly, playful voice in my head. And a picture of what he’s describing burning in my brain.
Damn, I need to get him gone before—
“Mama! Look what I found!”
Before this.
What happens next happens in slow motion, and it’s so clichéd, it’d be comical if I weren’t so worried that the biker will say something in front of Jimmy, and I’ll have to push his enormous smoking-hot body over the railing.
Jimmy bounds up to us, a cattail in his fist. The biker looks at Jimmy, looks back at me, stares back at Jimmy. Understanding and then horror dawn on his impossibly handsome face. He raises his hands like I’ve got a gun pointed at him and takes two big steps back, his impossibly blue eyes searching for an escape route.
He’s stuck between me, my apartment, and forty-eight pounds of filthy, scowling, scabby-elbowed six-year-old with an instinctive dislike of people. Especially men talking to his mama.
The biker is scared shitless. Forget me pushing him. If we weren’t a full story up, he’d leap.
“Uh…” He realizes he has his hands up like it’s a stickup, and he tries to play it cool and rub the back of his neck. He’s got no sleazy lines now.
It’d all be funny if it didn’t kind of suck. Yeah, a lot of guys don’t want a woman with a kid. Especially not a twenty-one-year-old with a kid in kindergarten.
The biker is doing the math in his head, and I can tell the exact moment when he borrows from the two and gets something like fourteen or fifteen. His eyebrows go up, and there’s some serious judgment going on behind those blue eyes.
Nothing like getting judged by a long-haired, tattooed dude who’s just hanging out and having a beer at eleven o’clock on a workday. Really reminds you that all things are relative.
I want to say something smart, clap back like my best friend Sue can, but I’ve never been able to speak up for myself in the moment.
Lucky, I guess, that I have Jimmy with me. He has none of my limitations. I’m making damn sure of it.
“What you doing up here, mister?”
The biker looks desperately at me like I have the answer. I shrug. I don’t know. Pervin’?
“Nothin’, little man. Just helpin’ your ma with a box.”
“Mama don’t need your help.”
“Doesn’t,” I correct. It’s a habit. My mom did the same.
It’s funny hearing her voice come out of my mouth these days. Funny and sad and wonderful. All these things I thought I’d forgotten about her have been coming back to mind since I got Jimmy back.
“My mama doesn’t need your help.” Jimmy says doesn’t like fuck off mister.
“I’m sure she don’t, little man.”
“Doesn’t,” Jimmy says.
In a normal situation, I’d lose my mind to hear him sassing a grown-up, but I’m feeling like making an exception. Maybe I don’t have the temperament to talk back, but I’m not raising the kind of kid I was. That kind of kid doesn’t have a chance in this type of world.
“I’m sure your mama can take care of herself just fine.”
Right.
Jimmy is glaring a hole in the man’s forehead, but he’s so tall Jimmy has to cock his head all the way back to do it. My little guy has a hand fisted on his hip and a black scowl on his face, cattail forgotten and dropped to a step.
I should grab his hand, go back to the car. Put some distance between us. But Jimmy’s in the way, and he’s got something on his mind. I’m making the let’s leave face like crazy, but he’s not even looking at me.
“What’s your name?” Jimmy squints at the patches on the man’s vest as if he can read them. He can’t. Not yet. He’s a little slow with letters, but Mrs. Garner at school says not to worry quite yet. Just keep reading to him and taking him to story time at the library.
“I’m called Charge.”
“That your bike?”
Jimmy points to the Harley pulled up in front of the house next door.
“Ayup.”
“What kind is it?”
“Harley Davidson Fat Boy with a Milwaukee-Eight Big Twin engine. One-fourteen displacement.”
Jimmy nods like he knows what any of those words mean.
“You ever crash it?”
“I laid it down a few times.”
Jimmy only has eyes for the bike now. Please, Lord, don’t let him ask to sit on it. I don’t know much about bikers besides what I’ve seen on television, but I’m sure there’s something in their code about letting grubby little boys climb on their ride like a swing set.
“You live here?” Jimmy asks.
The man—Charge—shakes his head no.
“My pops lives over there.” He jerks his chin at the little house with the pier and the long ramp next to the side door. “I’m over here a lot. Taking care of him.”
Jimmy nods solemnly. “I take care of my mama, too.”
Charge smiles, and damn, but it’s half blinding. Even knowing he’s an asshole, my tummy does a squishy flip.
“I bet you do, little man. Help me with the rest of the boxes?”
I want to say there’s no need, but before I can make my stupid tongue work, Jimmy nods, and then they’re both off down the stairs, Jimmy interrogating him in that slightly hostile tone he uses with strangers he deigns to speak to—which he rarely does—asking about what fish is in the river and if Charge has a fishing pole and if he doesn’t, does Charge’s pops have a fishing pole and—so on and so forth.
I make a mental note to pick up one of those plastic fishing poles at one of the big box stores near Gracy’s Corner the next time I visit my dad.
And then the three of us carry up the rest of the boxes, Charge hauling three to our one, and many hands make for light work, as my mama used to say. Charge keeps his eyes anywhere but on my ass, and I guess I’m grateful for that.
It’d be really messed up if I wasn’t. If the attention was kind of intriguing. If I wanted to know—just once—what it feels like to be a normal good girl brushing off a normal bad boy.
I should have higher standards for myself. That’s what Sue would say.
I’m not sure what I should be more offended by: him talking to me like he did or him running off like his shirt was on fire after he saw I had a kid.
But honestly, I’m not really offended. And I sure don’t have time to be wistful about men.
I’ve got to unpack, scrub the bathtub so it’s clean enough to give Jimmy a bath, go down to the Rutter’s to pick up some beef jerky and snacks for his packed lunch tomorrow, and call Victoria so she doesn’t get hysterical because she hasn’t heard from me in a few days.
Oh, and find out why the fridge smells.
I’m a busy woman. With apparently one peach of an ass.
Click here to keep reading Charge!
Books By Cate C. Wells
Charge: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Novel (Book 1)
Charge and Kayla.
The single mom and the biker next door.
Nickel’s Story: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Novel (Book 2)
Nickel and Story.
The enforcer with the anger management problem and the stripper with the heart of gold.
Scrap: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Romance (Book 3)
Scrap and Crista.
The lost soul and the man who did ten years for her.
Plum: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Romance (Book 4)
Jo Beth and Adam.
The tech genius meets Pretty Woman.
Wall: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Romance (Book 5)
Wall and Mona.
A second chance romance.
Forty: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Romance (Book 6)
Forty and Nevaeh.
A second chance romance.
Dizzy: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Prequel
Dizzy and Fay-Lee.
The single dad and the girl just passing through.
Twitch: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Novella
Shirlene and Twitch. A prequel to the Steel Bones MC series.
The Army nurse and the combat veteran.
Dizzy: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Prequel Page 25