Tikka Chance on Me

by Suleikha Snyder

  Tikka Chance on Me

  Suleikha Snyder

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Dedication

  This novella probably wouldn’t exist without everyone on Twitter who cheered me on as I painstakingly built the story a few hundred words at a time. Thank you for having my back, romance tweeps! I also want to dedicate this story to Shelley Ann Clark and Jackie Barbosa, who were the first people to read it and tell me it was worth putting out into the world.

  Chapter One

  Trucker Carrigan was six feet three inches of pure, unadulterated trouble. I knew it, he knew it, everybody in town knew it. He’d been born bad and grown up worse. Tyson James Carrigan, son of an ex-preacher and a waitress, he’d declared at fourteen that he would no longer answer to “Tyson” since “I ain’t no chicken.” As he’d had one knee pinning a varsity football player’s chest at the time, folks weren’t inclined to protest. And in the twenty years since, no one had called him anything but “Trucker” or “Boss” or “Please don’t break my face.” Oh, and “God,” if you believed all the bathroom graffiti.

  I’d scrubbed some of those creative bits of praise from the restaurant’s two single-stall bathrooms countless times—much to my mother’s utter dismay. “Chee!” she said in her thick Punjabi accent every time I came out of the back with a bucket and scrub brush. “Have these Amrikan girls no shame?”

  Nope. And no other place to declare said shamelessness besides a stall door in the Taj Mahal, the only Indian restaurant for fifty miles. Graffiti and Midwestern isolation aside, we did a tidy business—both takeout and eat-in. And a large part of that success was probably due to Trucker Carrigan and his crew. Biker gangs liked butter chicken and samosas? Who knew?

  It was just my luck to be working the bar whenever they rode in—kicking up parking lot gravel and dust with their hogs or Harleys or whatever they called those noisy metallic monstrosities. I kept them supplied with beer, cheap whiskey, and the occasional spiked mango juice and tried to keep my head down. My head down...and my nose buried in the accounting books from Mercer Community College, which was about an hour’s drive and offered a decent chunk of online classes. Unfortunately, keeping my eyes to myself was another story. Like I said: pure, unadulterated trouble. The kind you couldn’t help but run headlong into.

  He practically filled the doorway, brawny arms brushing the frames as the bell jingled just inches above his head. The light from the faux Tiffany lamp over the host station made his hair look almost red, but I knew from previous study that it was dark blond. A shade paler than his close-trimmed mustache and beard. He waited for Asif to return to his post, even though it was a given he’d be seated at the six-top in the back. No matter how many of them came in, there was a tacit understanding that the circular booth, with its curved green leather banquette, was Carrigan territory.

  Asif, probably smoking dope in the alley behind the kitchen, took his sweet time. Dad had hired him six months ago, knowing how hard it was to be an immigrant in the middle of nowhere. Asif seemed more grateful for the breaks than the work, but even he knew better than to keep the bikers waiting. “Sorry, sorry, sir,” he simpered with enough oil to fry a paratha. He grabbed some menus, guiding Trucker and two of his equally massive buddies past me and to their seats.

  I watched, of course. And Trucker watched me. Like he’d been doing for what felt like years now. His full lips spread in a wolfish smile, and he mouthed one word: “Soon.”

  Soon. It was a promise. Possibly a threat. Of what, I still hadn’t quite figured out. I was pretty sure it didn’t involve helping me make gulab jamun in the back kitchen, even though he really loved the confection and almost always took an order to go. Kisses, maybe. Or maybe his hands on my face, those big palms cradling my cheeks. Which were getting hot at just the idea. I tried to busy myself washing glasses. Pulling bottles of Kingfishers from the cooler. But soon. It was a tease. Under my clothes. Under my skin.

  I hadn’t saved myself for the likes of Trucker Carrigan, but he sure knew how to make me feel like that old Madonna song—shiny and new. I’d been touched. A lot. In all kinds of places. I’d spent a glorious and wild four years away on scholarship at the University of Chicago and then somehow, miraculously, started my first year of grad school. I had it down to a social science—partying, keeping my grades up, working at a bookstore in Hyde Park a few nights a week. Before I dropped out, said a regretful farewell to my dreams of an anthropology PhD, and hightailed it back home because Mom got sick. The wildness in me had laid dormant for a long while. Buried under hours at the restaurant and longer hours at home. Until him. Until now. Maybe he could sense it in me the way I saw it in him.

  I still felt his gaze, hot on the back of my neck, as Asif slid the check onto the pass-through. I had the tray with the drinks ready. Because the guys always ordered the same thing. One Kingfisher per person. And one mango lassi. That Trucker double-fisted shitty Indian beer and a sweet yogurt drink should’ve been gross. Instead, I found it kind of charming. Way more charming than all the bathroom graffiti about his sexual prowess. It was like he had a vice and a virtue. A sip from one, a sip from the other.

  Would he drink from me the same way? Alternating between dirty and sweet? I fanned myself, forcing myself not to watch Asif take the order to his table. My T-shirt stuck to my back, damp with sweat, even though it was mid-September and the ceiling fans were spinning merry circles. My matching black jeans—the most generic restaurant uniform on the planet—clung to my legs like shrink-wrap. I felt molten, sticky, like the sweet gulab jamun syrup Trucker liked to lick off his fingertips.

  I’d caught him at it once. A few months ago. He’d been in the middle of some discussion with his boys. Finishing the last bite of deep-fried sponge-y goodness. All that had been left in the bowl was the syrup. Pure sugar, basically. And he’d dipped his fingers in and sucked them clean one by one. I’d say he did it on purpose, knowing I was there. Being suggestive and creepy. Except that his eyes widened when he looked up. And a faint tinge of red splashed across his cheeks. Like he hadn’t meant to be seen indulging himself. Not by me, at least. He’d apologized for being messy. Asked for a napkin and the check. I can’t remember what I said. All I remember is how I felt then. It was how I felt in this moment.

  Like I wanted him to be messy again. Licking me off his fingers.

  Soon.

  When would “soon” be now?

  ***

  It couldn’t be soon. It couldn’t be ever. He’d still whispered the word. Damn, he had no business telling lies to pretty girls. He told enough lies already. But he couldn’t help it. Whenever he walked up into the Taj Mahal, he felt like the guy who’d built the real one. A king. A shah. So into a woman he’d build her a monument. Except, in this case, the only thing he was erecting was in his pants. He couldn’t explain it. He’d known plenty of women in his time. Sprung plenty of wood. But there was something that kept him coming back here, back to her. Not just the samosas—though they were pretty fantastic. Pinky Grover was 5-foot-2 inches of temptation in tight jeans. It was amazing she could even see over the bar, but he’d be damned if she wasn’t an expert at tending it. At tending people.

  Her parents were good folks. They’
d been running the place for as long as he could remember. Her...she’d been too far behind him in school for him to really click with. Just a kid. But now that she was back in town, all grown? Everything was clicking. Humming. Buzzing. Like there were bees under his skin. Bees drawn to her honey. Her smooth brown skin and curly black hair—always pulled back from her sweet face and out of her way. The sensible dark clothes that showed off nothing and everything. The bold red lipstick that said “Don’t fuck with me!” and only made him want to fuck with her more.

  She’d come home to Eastville two years ago, because Mrs. G got diagnosed with breast cancer. Stage One. Caught early. Her mother was in remission now, but Pinky hadn’t gone back to Chicago to finish her studies. She’d stayed.

  “I heard she was flunking all her classes...”

  “...bet her scholarship ran dry...”

  “...probably slept with everybody on campus and had to Walk of Shame her way home...”

  “She was never getting out. No one ever gets out of this shithole.”

  Of all the gossip that flew around town, that last nugget had the most painful ring of truth. After all, he’d turned up back here, too, a veritable Prodigal Son. He’d definitely slept with more people than her, but no one considered his journey home any kind of shame, because he was a man. Because he was Trucker Carrigan, supposed enforcer of the Eastville Eagles motorcycle club. That he preferred biriyani to bikes didn’t seem to matter much either. As far as the fine folks of Eastville, Indiana, were concerned, he had control, he had power. And he had every right to exert both over any heterosexual woman who might cross his path. Hell, the homosexual ones, too. According to some of the more creative bathroom graffiti scattered around town, he’d made dick believers out of some hold-outs.

  Trucker didn’t buy that for an instant. Not just because it was disgusting to even consider “turning” someone gay or straight, but because he was the furthest thing from powerful. Or in control. It was all a lie. A very well-constructed lie. Just like his return to the shithole he’d hoped to escape.

  His gaze flicked past Butch and Snake—because of course their names were Butch and Snake now, a macho step up from Earl and Jimmy—to the front of the restaurant. The bar curved just enough that he caught periodic glimpses of Pinky as she worked. It couldn’t be soon. It couldn’t be ever. But it could be this. These little bites of her that got him through the day. The week. Six more of them to go, if he was being optimistic. Nine was the extent of his chain. If he didn’t get it done by then, he was getting pulled. There was actually small relief in that. In failure. Because it meant he could fly away from the Eagles without a trace.

  But not without a regret. One perfect, pretty, passionate regret.

  Chapter Two

  I had no idea what motorcycle clubs actually did, but I could guess. Largely thanks to that show that had been on cable for a while, Sons of Anarchy. While the small businesses of Eastville were happy for the influx of cash the club threw their way—allegedly balancing out the periodic shakedowns for protection money—it wasn’t like the Eagles were holding bake sales or Peanut Days like a local Kiwanis. The money was ill-gotten gains. Drugs. Guns. Who knew what else? Were we complicit because we served them whenever they came in? Was I morally bankrupt because I kept having fantasies about their enforcer? What the hell was he even enforcing?

  Despite all the questions, I still turned into a puddle of lust the next time I saw Trucker Carrigan. Or, at least, as puddled as a person could get while standing outside the Walmart garden center with a list of Mom’s current demands.

  It had been two days since he’d stopped by the Taj. The way my pulse leapt, you would think it’d been two years. As he strolled up with a half-filled shopping cart. I devoured him with my eyes like he was a feast after famine. His face. His body. The way his jeans clung to his butt. He wore his Eagles leathers—there was probably some kind of rule that he couldn’t take them off—but the faded T-shirt that hugged his chest sported Captain America’s shield. It seemed a little off-brand, given his choice of vocation and the company he kept.

  “You’re Team Cap?” I blurted, before I could think better of it.

  His brows quirked. “What? You think I’m more HYDRA material?”

  We never spoke much at the restaurant. Two or three sentences max. And never like this. About comic books. Edged with laughter. Without his biker buddies around, Trucker’s voice was lighter. Warmer. Less of a scratch and more of a stroke.

  It was that caress I blamed when more geeky babble spilled from my lips. “Well, according to one of those Marvel retcons, he was undercover HYDRA the whole time,” I pointed out.

  “No, thanks.” Trucker made a face. And managed to look devastatingly handsome while doing so. And then he grinned, which was even worse. “You’re into the movies and the comics? My guys in the Eagles are lucky if they can rattle off all the MCU Avengers.”

  I was tempted to do just that. To impress him. To make his bright blue eyes light up. I dug my nails into my palms to curb the urge, crumpling my mother’s list in the process. Because the important part of that sentence was the first half: “my guys in the Eagles.” He was a criminal. And as fun as it was to stare at him, to wonder about him, I couldn’t parlay a few fun observations into a full nerd-cred flirtfest.

  Why not? The reckless side of myself that I’d tried to stifle since coming home whispered in the back of my brain. It’s not like you’re going to marry the man.

  No. But I couldn’t sleep with him either. Eastville was too small. There was no privacy. Everyone would know our business in a heartbeat. Sure, the Walmart was twenty miles outside of town—closer to some of the more suburban areas of this part of the state—but there were plenty of familiar eyes on us even now.

  I shrugged, hoping too many seconds hadn’t ticked by while I got my raging hormones and geek squee under control. “I have a lot of hobbies and interests. I’m sure you know what that’s like—balancing comic books and motorcycle clubbing. Whatever that entails.” I could hear the ice in my tone. I hated it. And judging by the way Trucker’s jaw tightened, he felt the chill.

  “Yeah, I do.” He nodded once, short and sharp. He pulled his cart back with an equally abrupt gesture, and the unexpected force nearly sent it crashing into a pallet full of flowerpots. He caught the edge just in time. “Fuck!”

  Try as I might to maintain some distance, I had to laugh at the adorable look of frustration on his face. Maybe Trucker Carrigan could maneuver a Harley or whatever, but shopping carts were another story. The sound of my giggles made him look up, and his exasperation morphed into something like confusion. Way to send mixed signals, Pinky. That was the last thing I intended. I didn’t play games. Not anymore.

  “Definitely not undercover HYDRA,” I offered by way of apology. “Looks like you’re not smooth enough for that.”

  I got a crooked smile in return...and more than I bargained for. He huffed out a low laugh, dragging one hand through his hair and making dangerously sexy waves in it. “Babe, you have no idea how smooth I can be.”

  ***

  “Babe, you have no idea how smooth I can be.”

  Way to send mixed signals, Trucker. He cursed himself even as the suggestive words left his mouth, gripping the back of his neck and squeezing. Fuck. This wasn’t why he’d ventured out today. He was supposed to be picking up fertilizer for the club garden—which seemed to only grow pipe bombs and other assorted incendiary devices. It wasn’t even a question that he’d be paying in cash. But if he kept flirting with Pinky Grover, he’d be paying in blood. He could not get involved with her, or involve her in this. He was supposed to finish what he’d come back to town for and get the hell out. Not stand around in Walmart noticing how cute she looked in her day-off sundress and jean jacket—and that was pretty damn cute.

  He couldn’t blame her for trying to shut it down. He knew what his Eagles patches meant. He wasn’t oblivious to the looks people in Eastville shot at him and the boys. There
was no awe. Not even fear. Just distrust. Unease. The kind of look you cut a rattlesnake sitting in the sun. It might be minding its business, but there was still every possibility it could strike. For a few seconds, Pinky had forgotten he was dangerous like that. Hell, he’d forgotten. And that was the kind of mistake that could cost him.

  Trucker shoved at the shopping cart again as Pinky’s cheeks reddened and she shook her head. “This is not how I pictured my day going,” she admitted, more to herself than to him.

  Yeah, no kidding. He allowed himself one weekly indulgence. Seeing her at the Taj. Drinking mango lassi and eating gulab jamun. Reminding himself that there was a whole wide world outside of the Eastville Eagles Motorcycle Club. The rest of his days were supposed to be business. Eyes on the mission. No deviations. No geeking out over comics and Cap. No revealing those true—and therefore vulnerable—parts of himself.

  Don’t be soft, don’t give an inch. He needed to tell her to run. To trust those instincts that had cooled her attitude toward him. So, of course, he did the exact opposite.

  “Can you picture spending the rest of it with me?” The question slipped past his guard too easily, equal parts slick and sheepish. “Maybe grab a coffee or something?”

  “What?” Her eyebrows practically rocketed upward. “Why would you think that’s a good idea?”

  He totally understood why she’d be skeptical. This was, by far, the oddest interaction he’d ever had in a Walmart—and he had a pretty long list of dicey encounters. All he could do in response was shrug and offer her his most guileless smile...which really wasn’t very guileless at all. “Got any better ones?”

  Chapter Three

  If you’d asked me that morning what I planned to be doing, I wouldn’t have said “having sex with a biker in the cab of a pickup truck.” But there I was. In a chain-store parking lot. On my back. One hand slapping the steamed-up window like Jack and Rose in Titanic. “Coffee” turned out to be a euphemism. I felt like Trucker Carrigan had actually meant the caffeinated beverage when he suggested it, but somewhere between the potted plants and the check-out counters, it had morphed into this. Tension. Need. Uneven breaths and furtive looks. Waiting awkwardly while we loaded our respective purchases in our trunks. Then slamming against the side of his borrowed F150, tangling hands and meeting mouths. Hot, sweaty, totally ill-advised.