Fuck if I knew why.
I frowned then cleared my throat before I asked, “How ’bout this one: if you could be anywhere else right now, where would you be?”
She smiled all wide. It was the first genuine one I’d seen on her in a while. Maybe since I’d known her. “Easy. I’d want to go to Brazil.” She skipped a little in place, which was even weirder.
I squinted. “That sounds boring as fuck.”
“No way.” She shook her head. “Brazil is known for the Rio Carnival and some seriously amazing beaches.” Her voice softened a little. “Actually, my mom and I were planning on taking a trip there before my wedding.”
Good Christ. Two sore subjects in one statement? I scrambled to try and make a joke. “Well, if there are nudie beaches, count me in.”
“Of course you’d bring sexuality back into the conversation when I’m trying to share something personal.” She strode ahead of me, but our cuffed hands didn’t let her go far.
“Come on, JP. I’m kidding.”
“Kidding is your MO in life.”
I came to a stop, urging her to face me. She wasn’t wrong on that. I wanted to say so too, but by the look on her face, even in the dark, she looked like she wasn’t down with me making fun of her or the conversation.
“It’s my turn,” I told her.
“I don’t want to hear it if you’re going to be a douchebag.”
“Not a douchebag this time.” I crossed my chest over my heart in an X with my finger.
Her eyes narrowed like she still didn’t trust me, but she also kept her lips sealed. Not many people gave me the benefit of the doubt like that. It was… nice.
I started walking again, keeping her close this time by the cuffs. Not that anyone else could hear what I said when I spoke, I just wasn’t used to opening up like this. “You’ll be surprised to know, JP, that if I could be anywhere else right now, it’d be back at my childhood home in Ireland.”
“Really?” Our eyes met and I saw a flash of something there in her gaze I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to see. Wonder? Curiosity? Yeah, those were there too, but I was almost positive I saw a bit of respect there as well. I knew what she thought about me; that I was just some idiot biker. But unlike most of my brothers, I had a whole life before I became an RD.
“Yup.” My throat burned a little, choking me. I cleared it, trying not to feel weak.
“I bet it’s beautiful there, isn’t it?”
“In some parts it is.” I shrugged. “The sea was pretty badass. It changed colors a lot. Sometimes it was blue, sometimes it almost looked, I dunno, like a light purple, especially when it rained.”
“You mean it looked lavender, I’m assuming.”
I frowned, guiding us toward the restaurant about fifty feet ahead. “Pizza” was all it said on the outside. Winner fucking advertisement to me.
“What’s wrong with just saying light purple?”
“The colors have names for a reason. If you say light purple, you could mean lilac or periwinkle or even orchid.” She shrugged. “It’s just another scientific fact that’s more important to artists than anyone else.”
“Shit, JP. That’s too complicated.”
She followed me in, the smell of grease and bacon hitting us head on. “Only if you make it complicated.”
“Touché.” I smirked just as the hostess greeted us.
“Two?” she asked, looking between us.
“Yup.” I nodded, tugging JP behind me.
Seconds later, we were walking toward the back of the quiet little restaurant, less than a handful of people around to notice us. The waitress, though, she saw our cuffed arms the second Emily slid into the booth first, her gray eyes widening as she glanced between us.
“Newlywed fun,” I whispered just softly enough so that Emily didn’t hear me. Then I took a seat across from her, our cuffed arms stretched across the table top. Emily’s brows lifted in question, and I gave her a soft wink. If she knew I was tormenting this lady, she’d likely yell at me again. I’d already been lectured enough for one day.
“D-drinks?” the waitress stammered.
“Whiskey.” I smiled up at her, wondering what she might be like in bed.
Unlike every other time I thought about fucking a woman, though, the image wouldn’t come to me. Why? Because all I could see instead was a short little brunette’s naked body stretched out on the bed we’d be sharing tonight, my tongue between her legs as I played her body like an instrument. God, what kind of sounds would Emily make when she came? Was she a screamer? A whimperer, maybe? Would she moan my name or—
“Archer.”
I blinked, coming out of my fantasy. Turning to Emily, I opened my mouth, but getting a word out was a damn struggle.
Jesus, Archer. Get your shit together.
“Do you know what you want to eat?” she asked, her voice playing like I was a toddler she was trying to punish for not listening.
“No.” I frowned, then said, “But JP here would like a margarita on the rocks.”
Emily scowled at me, but she didn’t say no either.
“You should stop drinking so much.” She picked up her menu once the waitress took off, hiding her face as she said, “Liver failure isn’t a good way to die.”
“And you should maybe drink more than you do. Might help your stick slide out a little easier.”
“I told you I don’t drink.”
“Why? Can’t handle your liquor?”
“No. I just… It makes me stupid.”
I rubbed a finger over my lip, studying her. “Stupid as in drop your panties stupid?”
I waited for a smack to my face, or a punch to my shoulder, but it never came. Instead, she shrugged and said, “Didn’t your mom ever tell you to keep your mouth shut?”
Shit. I didn’t like that non-answer.
“No, actually. Ma had a bigger mouth than I do.”
“Poor woman,” she mumbled.
“Yeah. Poor Ma and her big, Irish mouth. That was actually one of the things I loved most about her.”
“Oh, um… loved?”
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “She was murdered back in Ireland.”
Emily stiffened, eyeing me from the side of her menu. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
“What, you didn’t know that the police found her body all chopped up and shit? You miss that memo?” I’d meant it to be funny, but her face immediately paled.
“Oh, God.” She dropped the menu onto the table and laid her hand on mine. I frowned at the view, not real sure why the sight and the feel of it made my stomach tighten. Still, for some reason, I wanted her to know this. Felt like talking about it for once in my life. Every single day since the day she’d died, I missed my ma. And even all these years later, it hurt holding onto the memories.
“Dad told me it was random. I believed him. They never found the killer.”
“That’s terrible,” she whispered.
I shrugged, finally looking at her face again. I’d let the idea of revenge go a long time ago, though my old man never had. “Eventually he remarried, but it didn’t last long. He and my ma were like penguins.”
Emily’s entire face seemed to light up at my analogy. “Penguins mate for life.”
“See? I’m not as dumb as you think.”
“I don’t think you’re dumb,” she said with a frown. “I just think you’re immature.”
“Yeah. So does everyone else.” Which was why I did it; why I acted like such a horny douchebag all the time. I wasn’t who anyone thought I was. Nor did I tell anyone who I was either. Hell, even Hawk, Slade, and Flick didn’t know the whole story when it came to my childhood and all the bad shit that had happened. But it was easier that way. Pretending to be one way to avoid being another.
“Why do it at all though? Why not just let yourself be you?”
“That’s the pot calling the kettle black there, JP.”
She pursed her lips but kept whatever she was thinki
ng locked inside her head. Good thing too. This was all getting a little too much for me. The sharing shit. I was the one who was supposed to be finding out what made Emily tick, what made her the woman she was. Not the other way around, damn it.
“How’d you wind up in the US?” she asked, running her free hand flat over the menu. It shook a little, almost like she was nervous. “I mean, you don’t have to answer that. Niyol told me you don’t like talking about your past and I should respect that…”
“Yet you’re still asking.” I refocused on my own menu and frowned. Emily and I’d be parting ways soon enough though, so what was the harm in sharing my shit in order to get her to share her shit? Wasn’t that the point of this whole game? To finally get a read on her?
“Sorry,” she whispered and looked out the window, her long hair brushing over my arm as she turned.
A shiver ran up my spine from the way it felt against my skin. I shut my eyes, trying to regain a sense of here and now before I answered. All this damn closeness from the cuffs was beginning to backfire on me. Maybe I needed to rethink them after all.
I scrubbed my free hand over my face then set my elbow on the table. “It’s fine. I just don’t talk about it for a reason.”
She turned to me again. “What reason is that?”
“You’re nosy.” I nudged her knee under the table with my own.
“It’s the scientist in me.” A shrug followed her long sigh.
“Fine. I’ll tell you. But only on one condition.”
“What’s that?” Her eyes narrowed in distrust.
“You answer whatever question I want, whenever I ask it.”
She leaned back in the seat and huffed. “That’s not fair.”
I nudged her knee again, grinning as I said, “But the scientist in you won’t let it rest until you know everything about me, am I right?”
She stared up at me, all dark eyes and dark brows, pink lips and those motherfucking freckles I was dying to count.
“Fine.”
“Yeah?” I lifted my brows in surprise. Hadn’t thought it’d be that easy, yet what did I really know about JP?
“Yes.” Her word was more of a huff than anything, and I couldn’t stop myself from laughing under my breath.
“Well, alright then.” I rubbed my free hand over my jeans. “One day Dad got a call from Pops. It was kind of out of the blue actually since they’d only met once, via a mutual biker. Guess they got along real well when they did, enough so that when Pops heard about my ma, he did some digging. Called my dad up and told him he knew a guy who knew another guy who was killing women at random overseas, bragging about it and shit.” I looked at Emily again, wishing my story ended a hell of a lot happier than it did.
“It wasn’t true, was it?” she asked with a frown.
“Nah. Just Pops being an asshole who needed more bodies to start up his club.” I toyed with a napkin, shredding it as I kept going. “I’d told my old man it was stupid to follow up on a lead that made no sense in the first place. Hell, I was twelve and knew it was a fucking farce. But my old man’s quest for revenge when it came to his wife led us to the good old U S of A… away from the land I loved.”
“I’m so sorry.” Emily reached over like before, taking my cuffed hand and linking it with hers.
I frowned, stared down at it for a long moment as I studied the difference between us, the way her tiny fingers looked wrapped around my massive ones. I was pretty sure, as fucked up as it was, that I’d never get over the way holding hands with her made me feel. Maybe it was like the hugging thing because I’d never done it before just for the hell of it.
“It’s a part of my life I don’t think about much anymore.”
She nodded, pulling her hand back to her lap. I hated how I missed it. How I wanted to feel it again. “Yeah. I get it. Mom and I… we went through our own fair share of bad crap.” She frowned at her lap. “Sad part about it was things got better when my mother supposedly ‘met’ Pops for the first time when I was sixteen. We weren’t poor anymore, had an amazing home, Mom got to open up her wedding-planning business…”
“You know where all that money came from, right?” I asked, not wanting to burst her little fantasy for the second time in one night. But this time, I had to. Because no part of Pops could ever be good, no matter what anyone thought.
“I do know.” Her eyes grew sad, the corners dropping with her lips. “But as much as I hate Pops, it was his appearance in our lives that made things easier for my mom. I was able to go to college, I met Summer, I taught at an incredible school too.”
I didn’t miss that word—taught. Running like this, it meant she’d likely be quitting her job with no warning. Also meant Emily was possibly missing out on a lot of good shit in her life because her ma had been selfish. Because of that, I hated Lisa more than I hated Pops right then. But only because she’d royally fucked things up for her daughter, even if that hadn’t been the woman’s intention.
“Your dad…” She hesitated, changing the subject. “He was killed too, right?”
“Yeah. Run gone wrong, thanks to Pops.”
“Oh.” She blinked up at me.
“It’s why I’m going with you. I plan on killing the asshole.”
Her eyes widened, but, surprisingly enough, she didn’t comment.
“You’re not gonna tell me it’s a dumb idea to go after him on my own?” I asked, curious what was going through her mind.
“Will it make a difference if I do?”
“Nope.”
“Then I won’t say anything, especially since me going to try and break Mom free is an equally stupid idea.”
“You said it.”
I wanted to say something else though. That Emily wasn’t just stupid for going after her ma—especially when she might not know why the woman ran in the first place—but that she was practically suicidal too. She didn’t know what Pops was capable of. Not to the extent me and the RDs did, which was why I was glad to be going with her, only so I could protect her in case something went south. The last thing I wanted was for Hawk and Summer to lose her.
“Not that I’m going to complain, but why are you not telling anyone about what you’re planning on doing?”
“Easy.” I leaned forward on the table, bringing her cuffed hand along with mine. “If I tell anyone the truth, then I won’t be able to go alone. I could lose my best friends. I’m not having that.”
Emily didn’t respond right away. Just looked at me instead. Nobody ever looked at me like I mattered. Like I was a hero. Why? Because I wasn’t anything more than a guy looking to be the best Red Dragon he could be. And Red Dragons did not wear capes.
“You’re willing to sacrifice yourself,” she stated matter-of-factly.
“I am, yeah.” There wasn’t anything that could be said beside that. My brothers had lives. I had, well, nothing… other than a few monthlies, my whiskey, and this moment, in this pizza place, with a woman who was looking for something I’d never be able to give her, even if she wanted me to. Even if I wanted to.
Stability and friendship. Two things I didn’t have with women. Ever.
“Enough about my dumb ass,” I told her, smiling, trying to lighten the mood. “I’m boring as fuck to a smart chick like you.”
Disappointment flashed through her gaze, but it didn’t last long. Come tomorrow, we wouldn’t have tonight again. As far as I was concerned, nothing else mattered but the here and now.
Nine
Emily
My stomach fluttered in an odd way when we started back down the road toward the farm-shed-slash-Airbnb. I’m not saying it was happiness, but it was something I hadn’t felt in a long while. Contentment? Relaxation? Was it simply the margarita I’d drunk? Or perhaps the company I was keeping? Either way, I was thankful for it tonight.
Archer was definitely different than I’d thought. And I kind of hated myself for not giving him the benefit of the doubt before now. Judging him the way I had was wrong, which left
me wondering if I’d judged all of the Red Dragons wrong too.
Well, all except Chop.
I rubbed my hand over the mark on my neck, deciding to bring up a new subject. The two of us had talked all through dinner, eaten our crappy deep-dish pizza like it was the best thing since sliced bread. Again, that could’ve been the alcohol, but I wasn’t going to pretend I didn’t have a decent time tonight.
“Once this is all over, what will you do?” I asked him, staring up at the night sky. It was starting to rain a little, enough to coat my cheeks and hair. I didn’t mind, not like I normally would have. My cardigan was dry-clean only, yeah, but it wasn’t like I’d need it again anytime soon. Teaching would sadly be put on the back burner for a while, maybe forever, now that I was running away.
“Easy. Go back to the club and drink whiskey till I puke.” He grinned, a dimple forming in his right cheek that I’d never taken the time to notice before.
“Because that’s really mature.” I rolled my eyes.
“I never claimed I was anything else.” Unlike every other time he’d joked around like this, he didn’t crack a smile.
Had I offended him? I’d feel bad if I had, but I also had a feeling that Archer would never let it go if I had. Either way, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe Archer didn’t have a plan when he went back because he didn’t expect to survive this.
The thought had my heart racing a little faster. My chest squeezing too. I barely knew this man, but at the same time, he was so different than I’d assumed. I didn’t want him to die, not for his stupid club, and certainly not for me either.
Clearing my throat, I asked my question a little differently this time. “Okay. What about this: if you weren’t a biker, and didn’t work at the club, what would you be doing right now?”
For the first time since meeting Archer, he didn’t have an immediate answer for me. It was as if he was almost trying to figure out what to say. It was odd in the sense that if there was one thing I’d come to know about Archer, it was that he loved to talk, if only just to hear his own voice. This quiet, serious version of him made my belly flip a tiny bit.
Her Hot Ride: A gripping and sexy biker mc romantic suspense novel Page 9