The Outlaw Edition

by Jennifer Chance

  He smiled ruefully at that last possibility. The white-capped ladies at The Donut Stand made a mean bear claw, but he didn’t think they were likely candidates for this job.

  Chantal stood as he passed by her, looking the question at him. He shook his head.

  “Nothing yet,” he said, holding the door for her as they entered the bakery—and beyond the smells of chemicals, scorched wood and damp…there was the distinctive aroma of bread.

  “Ovens all working great, boss!” Mike called from the back, and there was a loud round of cheers.

  Despite everything that had happened, Luc grinned. With the sun streaming into the broken windows and most of the foam cleaned up, the place actually didn’t look too bad. He had a glass guy coming out and then a framing contractor, but other than some cosmetic damage, they’d really gotten out of it largely unscathed.

  Chantal didn’t seem mollified. “It’s got to be Granger,” she said, still sounding morose as she gazed around the room. “I can’t believe he’d do something this stupid.”

  “We’ll be fine.” Luc gestured to the back of the shop. “Looks like beyond the dining area, it’s just the display cases that took most of the hit. That’s all replaceable.”

  “But you can’t serve people in here.”

  “Not today, no,” he gave her a lopsided smile. “But we’ve got a stretch of beautiful weather coming. We can put up tables outside. Hell, people have been after me to expand the outdoor seating for years, so…” He glanced through the broken-out windows toward the front flower patches. Maybe it was time to remodel those too.

  But that was a problem for another day. Now he refocused on Chantal. “I’m more concerned about you,” he said, honestly. “This Granger guy, did he hit your setup at the rally?”

  “No,” she said, though she didn’t sound happy about that, either, strangely enough. “Murdoch reports there wasn’t so much a peep of a disturbance overnight, and he’d know. He doesn’t leave the site, just bunks down in the trailer. Besides, Granger knows better than to hit me directly.” She made an angry gesture. “Sneaking around is way more his style. Though swear to God, I didn’t think he was capable of this.”

  “If it’s even Granger at all. You don’t know that.”

  She flashed a glance at him, her eyes full of pain. “Yeah, I do know it. Maybe not that it was Granger, but this was definitely about me, not you, Luc. And I…I’m really sorry.” She grimaced. “Like I said, trouble has a habit of following me around.”

  He knew she didn’t mean her comment as a slam against him, but against herself. Still, he bristled. “And you’re good with just living like that?”

  Now her face shut down. “I don’t really have a choice,” she snapped, her voice flat. “I pretty much have my act together now, but I didn’t always. I did some pretty stupid things, with a lot of stupid people, and though I moved on from that, not everyone else did. This isn’t the first time some dumbass has tried to get my attention by doing something they classify as funny.”

  “You damaged public property?” he pressed. “You threw bombs at people?”

  He expected her to deny it, but Chantal merely gave him a weary smile. The kind of smile that put a thousand miles of distance between them in an instant. “What is it you want to hear, Luc? Did I ever catch anything on fire? No. Did I ever injure anyone? No. I ever damage anything I didn’t pay for twice over, tried to make good on anything stupid I did, even if I was never technically caught? No. But that doesn’t change the decisions I made about hanging out with people who did cause problems, and it didn’t change the fact that I covered for them more times than I care to admit.”

  “We all do stupid things,” he said staunchly, but Chantal shook her head, her glance going to the door. She couldn’t be telegraphing more obviously that she was ready to bolt…but how far would she be going?

  “I guess I should get back to the rally. Two more days, then we’re off to Daytona Beach for the last leg of this circuit.”

  “Daytona Beach.” Well, that answered that. She hadn’t mentioned where she’d be heading next after the Panama City Beach rally, and Luc hadn’t asked.

  But now she continued briskly. “Yeah. Not expecting too much from that stop, but then this one proved better than expected—at least until all this happened.” She gestured with a small, defeated wave at the empty windows. “You know I’ll do whatever I can to cover this.”

  “I have insurance.”

  Her smile, if anything, grew more wan. “Of course you do. Because you’re smart like that.”

  “Can I take you back to the rally?”

  “No,” she said, too quickly. “I called Murdoch a while ago. He should be here any minute. A new supply truck is coming in this morning, and we’ll meet it at the edge of town and lead it to the rally.” She glanced up to him, but didn’t quite meet his eyes. “You—you think you can stop by again before we head out?”

  Ouch. “Well, I was hoping I’d get to spend some more time with you, actually. Unless you’re going to be busy.”

  He could see the emotions warring on Chantal’s face, and despite her dismissive words, they gave him hope.

  Then her next words dashed it.

  “I’d like to see you every minute, honestly, for the next few days, as soon as you get all this mess cleaned up,” she said. “But then I’m out of here, and we both know it. So it’s really up to you. You want to waste your time with the girl who got your business blown up, hey, be my guest.”

  “I do want that,” he said, watching her closely. “In fact, maybe your guys can go on ahead to Daytona and you could stay here a few more days.”

  “No,” Chantal shook her head hard, as if the very idea was too painful to contemplate. “I’ve learned a long time ago not to create those kind of illusions, Luc. They look great up there on the horizon, but they just disappear if you get too close, you know?”

  But Luc didn’t know that—he didn’t know it at all. And he was about to explain that to Chantal when a big truck rumbled into parking lot of the bakery, sounding overloud without the benefit of the shop’s windows to filter the noise. Murdoch.

  With barely a rushed goodbye, Chantal was gone.

  Chapter Six

  “Are you Chantal Green?”

  Chantal braced herself. She’d been waiting for the cops to come around again all day, especially after she’d seen a few uniformed officers moving quickly and quietly through the rally, making a beeline for Granger’s kit. She’d made a point of going nowhere near that side of the rally grounds, but she hadn’t completely been a saint: she’d sent Murdoch over that way under the pretext of getting a funnel cake, to see what he could find.

  “Yes?” she turned, but instantly realized her mistake. It wasn’t another round of cops, but a guy in a tee shirt and jeans, with the kind of jelled hair and shiny boots that screamed L.A. Another product sales rep looking to get his foot in the door. She could handle that on autopilot.

  She’d managed to leave her stupid phone back at the bakery, balled up in her hoodie, but she figured Luc would eventually figure that out. Truth to tell, she was glad of the reason to get him to come see her. Even though he didn’t seem to blame her one bit for the trouble she’d brought to his door.

  As she waited for the man to present his new clothing line for fall, Chantal allowed her mind to wander over everything that she knew so far about the crime.

  Murdoch had gone over to Granger’s as she’d asked, but only because Luc hadn’t been able to bring over their usual assortment of French pastries. Granger hadn’t been there, but his whole crew had been jacked up by the rumors surrounding the attack on the bakery, though mostly because of the unexpectedly heavy damage to Luc’s business versus any sort of worry over her. Granger pulled this kind of crap all the time, and they were used to it.

  Used to it. Chantal grimaced. Just like they were used to Granger bugging out after wreaking havoc. This time had been no different. He and another of his group had “gone
ahead” to the next stop in the rally circuit, Murdoch had learned. Not Daytona for them but South Beach, which was good. From what Murdoch had overheard, the video feed had nailed Granger and his buddy right to the wall. The cops suggested the other members of their kit not go on to South Beach. Once law enforcement contacted the gear shop’s owner, she suspected Granger would find himself without a job. Probably just as well, because he’d be doing some time for this bit of idiocy—maybe a lot of time. As it turned out, Florida didn’t have a lot of patience for anyone making a homemade bomb.

  The clothing guy wound up and Chantal sent him on his way as soon as she politely could, with a promise to test drive some of his product in Daytona. By this time, there were a dozen people in the Sex Machina pop up store trying on helmets, and she drifted back, content to let her guys make the sales and the commissions. She was too scattered this morning to do anything but smile at people…and without her phone, she couldn’t even check in with Luc.

  “News has been pretty low key about the bakery,” Murdoch said, looking up from the chromed-out bike he was polishing. The thing was a magnet for kids with sticky hands. “Their Facebook page says a fire broke out, but that it was quickly contained. Made it seem like the damage to the windows was done by folks trying to fight the fire, not by an actual bomb. Played down the whole thing.”

  “Makes sense,” she nodded. “No use getting anyone scared who’s just a casual patron. It’s not like Granger’s coming back. The guy’s a whack job.”

  “That he is,” Murdoch said. He eyed her. “But he’s gone now. Ain’t no point in you worrying about him either.”

  “I wasn’t,” Chantal said, maybe a little more sharply than she wanted. But she could be excused, it’d already been a long day. “I haven’t worried about him in a long time.”

  “Yeah? That why you decided to push away Luc, too?”

  The question was so unexpected Chantal stopped, turning to Murdoch in surprise. The older man regarded her easily over the handlebars of the Harley he was straddling, his polishing cloth forgotten. Instead he leaned forward, resting his elbows on the bars, as if he was settling in for a long lecture.

  Oh, lord no. “Not like you to care about who I’m seeing or how,” Chantal said evenly. “I appreciate your concern for me, but—”

  “Murdoch’s right, Boss.” Chantal swiveled to see Danny’s head emerge from behind another bike, and another half-dozen pair of eyes fixed on her. “Luc’s a good guy, and you deserve a good guy. Setting aside the fact that he feeds us.”

  “Which makes him a really good guy,” another crew member piped up.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Chantal said, lifting her hands. “It’s not Luc who’s the problem, guys. If you didn’t go over there for yourself, take a break sometime today and check out Luc’s bakery—not all at once, either. That kind of trouble is what I brought into that good guy’s life. I know it, and you know it. That’s not cool.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Danny began, but Chantal cut him off.

  “It’s not a question of fault. It’s a question of reality. Luc’s been fantastic to us here, and I appreciate that, but he’s a homer. He’s not going to leave this town, and I sure as hell ain’t built to stay any one place. You understand that, right?”

  “Well…” Murdoch sighed, lifting a weathered hand to rub the back of his head. “How do you know he isn’t willing to leave? You ask him?”

  “C’mon, are you nuts? He has family here. A business. Hell, half the city practically turned out to help him clean up his store. He has everything he could possibly want, all the way down to the freaking sunset. Why in the world would he ever want to—”

  Chantal broke off abruptly, feeling a completely uncharacteristic surge of tears threaten to spill out of her…and she never cried. She hadn’t when her dad had taken off, hadn’t when her mom had thrown her out of the house, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to cry now.

  “Bakery truck!” Danny’s interjection sounded rushed, even panicked, and Chantal turned, never more grateful in her life to be interrupted. She quickly dashed her hand against her eyes, swiping away any tell-tale tears—but it wasn’t Luc who hopped out of the truck, she realized immediately. It was Mike, Luc’s summer help.

  And he was waving her phone.

  A sudden, crashing wave of disappointment swept over her, almost stirring up the tears again, but Chantal didn’t have time to give into that temptation as Mike ran toward her.

  “Luc sent me off her and told me to drive as fast as I could, to give you time!” Mike said, the words tumbling out in a breathless rush. “The guy’s already on his way, though. It’s really cool!”

  “On his way?” Chantal took the phone from Mike, frowning at him. “You mean Luc?”

  “No!” Mike said his eyes going wide. “The reporter from GQ! He called your phone, Luc picked up, they started talking and…whatever, he’s coming here. He said he’d been trying to get a hold of you for weeks to do some sort of biker cover shoot and—and he’s coming!”

  Chantal stared at Mike, but behind her, the guys instantly sprang into action, moving the bikes back, cleaning up the rags, restacking the clothes on the shelves. Chantal swiped on her phone and opened the calls register—sure enough, it was a New York area code, one she’d been avoiding because the guy’d never left a voicemail—or he hadn’t more than once anyway. Maybe twice. But she’d been dealing with a supply issue then of their new jackets and…

  “Chantal.” It was Murdoch in front of her now, waving his hands. “You gonna just stand there looking like you cleaned up a fire bombing?”

  She blinked at him, then ruefully looked down at herself. She’d showered after getting to the rally, but hadn’t done much else with herself. “It’s not me he’s interested in, Murdoch. It’s the bikes.”

  “You are the bikes. Go—put on some of our most expensive shit, it’s why we have it. And try to brush your hair while you’re at it. I’ll stall as long as I can.”

  He sounded so much like what she’d always assumed a mother would sound, Chantal couldn’t help but laugh, allowing him to push her toward the rack of women’s custom gear. “We don’t even know for sure he’s coming,” she said, pawing through the rich leather jackets.

  “Oh, he’s coming!” Mike said, with the absolute certainty of youth. “Luc said he’d be here in…” he checked his phone for the time. “Now fifteen minutes.”

  Chantal made sure she was ready in ten, and she couldn’t keep the grin from her face, no matter how much it didn’t match her tough-chic biker look. Even when he wasn’t right next to her, it seemed, Luc was looking out for her.

  Luc’s fingertips drilled a staccato rhythm on the steering wheel, as he turned into the far edge of the bike rally, well away from Sex Machina’s storefront. An hour had passed since the reporter had shown up to interview Chantal, and Mike had given him the all clear. He didn’t know if the kid knew what he was planning, but probably. Tante Patrice and Jerome had all but led a cheer as he’d pulled out of the parking lot in the freshly-washed truck.

  He wasn’t at all sure about this, didn’t have a permit to even be in a vehicle this far up on the rally grounds, and he didn’t want to crowd Chantal. He also didn’t know how she’d react to him showing up like this but…screw it. He had to try.

  A loud banging on his door startled him, and he looked down, not surprised to see a guy in a Festival Park polo shirt standing there with a clip board.

  “Luc?” the guy began, already apologetic, but Luc waved him off.

  “I know I don’t have a permit to be here, Stan. I don’t mean to cause any trouble, either. I just wanted to see how to maneuver a crowd like this before I tried it out for real.”

  It was a lame excuse, but the best he could come up with. It seemed to work, though. Stan was a regular customer of Luc’s at the bakery, and a good guy. He was also one of the main people responsible for keeping the rallies that pulled in so many tourists running smoothly.

&nbs
p; Now Stan stuck his pen back in the hinge of his clipboard. “Well, we all thought you might be test driving the idea, what with your kiosk down by the Sex Machina crew. The other vendors would have been pissed except you were giving everything away for free, and once the sugar high wore off people were at their trucks, ready for more.” He sobered. “Heard about the fire, man. Rumor on the strip has it that one of our vendors was behind it. That true? Because if it is, they’re never coming back.”

  “I don’t think it’s a vendor issue, more like a couple of drunk guys being stupid,” Luc said.

  “Yeah, well, I’ll get the report, and they’ll be getting a call. We don’t put up with that crap.”

  Luc nodded. “Cops are on it now, and I’m sure they’ll sort it out. Wasn’t too much trouble, though—before we barely got everything cleaned up, we had a line down the parking lot for food, even though all the seating was outside. And most of the customers wanted to pitch in on the clean-up.”

  Stan nodded. “Sounds about right for here. It’s a good place.”

  “Yeah, it really is.” Luc decided it was now or never. What he wanted to do wasn’t allowed by rally rules, but Stan seemed in a generous frame of mind. “Mind if I drive down the access road to get out of here? I promise I won’t take the Midway.”

  To his surprise, Stan waved off his words. “You know what—do take the Midway. Free publicity is the least we can do after what you’ve been through this morning, you know what I mean?” He grinned. “Just don’t hit anyone.”

  “Will do.” Not a minute later, Luc was crawling down the Midway. He didn’t miss the way people looked up and smiled, their faces brightening in recognition. Maybe Patrice and Jerome were right, he thought. Maybe it was time for this.

  For this…and for a lot of things.

  Chantal had just pulled off her jacket and re-hung it on the rack, her mind still spinning as she played the interview back, the reporter’s card still burning a hole in her pocket. There’d been a photographer with him, and they’d gotten a ton of shots while they’d talked, but the reporter had taken one look at her, their bikes, the gear, and back to her…and immediately had started talking a full-on cover shoot for one of GQ’s special spin off editions. A cover shoot with her and her entire team, too—even Murdoch’s ugly mug. She could hardly believe it.