“Where?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“I hate surprises.”
He leaned in and looked a little smug. “I know. See you back here at ten.”
I watched his broad back as he started to walk away.
“Be here or the deal is off and I won’t ever forgive you.” He called over his shoulder before disappearing around the corner.
I stared at the empty corridor and dropped my hands to my side wondering what the fuck had just happened.
Outside, I ran into Davey, the club’s treasurer. Somewhere in his forties, he was a big teddy bear of a man.
When he saw me, he pretended to duck for cover.
“I’m sorry,” I said sincerely. “Seems I’m a bad drunk. I have this murky memory of saying you have Neanderthal hands.”
At some point during the night he had walked in. I had a vague, fractured recollection of me shoving my finger into his chest and telling him to lose weight.
Why I had told him he had Neanderthal hands was a complete mystery to me. I didn’t even know what that meant.
He took pity on me. “Wanna hug it out?”
Normally I’d say no. Davey could be an old pervert.
“Come on,” he said, his arms out wide.
Davey was a good guy. I couldn’t believe I’d been such a dick to him. So I accepted his hug.
But of course, he squeezed my ass.
My near-naked ask.
“Just kidding,” he said, releasing me.
I smacked him on the arm for the butt feel. “You’re incorrigible.”
“Admit it, if I didn’t, you’d be disappointed.”
I tugged on the hem of Cade’s tee wishing it covered more of my thighs.
“Come on, sweet face. Let me give you a lift home. I don’t want you getting into a cab with some stranger leering all over you.”
“Why do I get the feeling that a cab is probably the safer option here?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow at him.
Davey winked as he opened the car door for me. “You couldn’t be more safe with me, honey. Don’t think for a second that Cade wouldn’t kill any man who tried anything with you.”
Because I had messed up my pants by puking all over them, and because my other clothes weren’t back from the dry cleaners, my options were limited. I still had another pair of black pants from McGovern’s, but let’s face it, they weren’t really my style. And as I looked at them laid out on my bed I wondered how long I was going to keep trying to convince myself that they were.
Still wrapped in my towel from the shower, I opened my wardrobe to see what I had left behind all those years ago. It was pretty sparse. There was a jacket, a pair of jeans, and a few shirts.
Everything smelled like the patchouli fragrant discs I’d left hanging next to an old Led Zeppelin T-shirt.
I stared at the jeans. Would they even fit me after twelve years? I reached out to touch them and the worn denim felt familiar against my palm. Did I even want to know?
Apparently, I did, because two minutes later I was bouncing up and down to get them up and over my thirty-year-old thighs before zipping them up.
I slipped on a tank top and an old pair of knee-high boots I found at the bottom of the closet, and then stood in front of the mirror.
“They look good,” came a familiar, female voice behind me.
Startled, I turned around to see Ronnie standing in the doorway.
“I wanted to see if they still fit,” I explained.
Knowing, hooded eyes gleamed over me.
“The jeans?” Ronnie asked, her wild curls gently brushing her face as she tilted her head to the side. “Or the old feelings between you and Cade? I heard he was taking you for a ride today.”
This was typical Ronnie Calley—the straight-shooting biker queen. She wasn’t one to beat around the bush.
I looked away.
“Those days are long gone, Ronnie,” I said, studying my reflection in the mirror.
“Sure, sugar. But seems to me you and my son have a lot of unfinished business to tend to before either of you can move on… if last night was anything to go by.”
Again, my face burned with embarrassment.
I looked at her. “I behaved like an ass. I get it.”
She shrugged. “There was a lot of emotion behind it. Seems to me there are a lot of things left unsaid between the two of you.”
“Cade has moved on. So have I.”
She pushed off the door frame and walked in. “Oh, he says he has. He says a lot of things because he is a man, and just like his daddy, he can be a damn fool. But I know my boy. The torch he burns for you is as bright as any torch is going to get.” She slid my leather bolero jacket from a hanger in the closet and put it on me. And because I was so lost in what she was saying, I let her. “If you’re going to say goodbye to that girl for good, best you know who you are saying goodbye to.”