Grave Games: Gravediggers MC (Gravediggers MC Duology Book 1)
Chapter One
Weekend Warrior
“Hey, Shiloh. He’s here again.”
I looked up from the task of pouring water into the commercial-sized coffeemaker to my friend and fellow server, Heather, who tilted her sable-brown head toward the back of the diner. Automatically my gaze followed the gesture and ran slam-bang into a pair of eyes the color of a storm-tossed sea.
Romeo again.
Though “Romeo” probably wasn’t his real name. It was just the name on his leather jacket, along with a bunch of other patches that told me bits of information about him. For starters, he had a yen for rebellion, if the pair of middle-finger patches he sported were anything to go by. He also liked retro art, considering the patch of a Rockabilly woman on the left side of the chest. A couple more patches ballyhooing the beginning of Route 66, which was right here in Chicago, hinted at him being a native, since he showed so much pride in that historical landmark. And lastly, he didn’t belong to any actual motorcycle clubs—the only plus, as far as I was concerned.
No one belonging to a real MC would dare to wear a jacket like that. The patches this guy wore could be picked up at a Hobby Lobby or a Love’s truck stop. He was a wannabe biker, a weekend warrior who probably lived the suit-and-tie life five days out of the week. If he ever crossed the path of a real biker, he’d find himself in a world of hurt… after they stopped laughing at his fake patches.
The thing was, I didn’t like bikers.
Not even pretend ones.
“Great.” Mouth tightening, I swung my attention back to the coffeemaker before I accidentally reenacted the Great Flood. “Don’t suppose I could ask you to swap sections with me?”
“We tried that last week, remember? He just moves so he can be with youuuu.” Heather sang the last word, then moved toward the front when a couple came through the frost-covered glass doors. “Face it, honey. It’s true love. Be sure to invite me to the wedding.”
“You’re hilarious.” I glared at her retreating back, listening to her laughter before admitting defeat. Setting the coffee to brew, I made sure my order pad and pen were in my apron’s front pocket, then found myself checking my hair in the distorted reflection of the coffeemaker’s chrome plating.
Stupid, I immediately chided myself and turned my back on my warped reflection. Who cared if my frizzy, not-blonde-but-not-brown hair was still holding up in its bun? As long as it wasn’t falling into my customers’ food, that was all I needed to care about.
Refusing the urge to smooth a hand over the annoying curls above my temples that tended to look like devil horns if not nailed down with gel or bobby pins, I tried for a calm expression and made my way to where the wannabe biker sat alone in a booth.
“Hi, welcome back to Buzzby’s. Would you like to start off with something to drink while you look over the menu?”
“Don’t you know my order by now, Shiloh?” All smiles with eyes full of flirty playfulness, Romeo leaned back in the booth and draped an arm along the backrest. “Gotta say, I’m disappointed. I’m going to have to do something about being so damn forgettable.”
“You’re hardly that.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. Then I sucked my lips in as if that would somehow pull the words back. When that didn’t help, I decided to power through like nothing happened. “We have a new special this month in honor of Elvis Presley’s birthday, peanut butter and banana pancakes with a cream cheese drizzle—”
“Damn, I think I became diabetic just listening to that,” he snorted, shaking his head. His dark brown hair brushed his shoulders, and I couldn’t help but notice it was just past the point of shaggy and tucked behind ears pierced with a pair of black titanium rings. “Black coffee, as strong as you can make it, a club sandwich with double bacon, and fries with brown gravy. Same order as yesterday, just as it’ll be that same order tomorrow.”
“You are a creature of habit, I’ll give you that,” I remarked, writing it down, though I was sure by now everyone in the diner knew the order by heart. “Extra pickle spear on the side, right?”
“See? I knew you remembered what I like.”
I fought a blush. Why the hell did he have to make it sound so intimate, like I knew a secret about him that only a lover would know? The dude liked pickles. BFD. “Okay, I’ll be right back with your coffee.” I bit my tongue to stop from promising not to bring him any cream. He’d no doubt think that meant we were on the verge of being engaged.
I could swear I felt his eyes on my back—or more specifically, my backside—as I hurried away, put the order in with the cook and headed back to the coffee area to get him his drink. As I reached for a mug I paused, stunned, when I saw the faint tremor in my outstretched hand. Then I closed my eyes, took a slow breath, and grabbed up the mug with a determined calm and filled it up.
I was being ridiculous. So incredibly ridiculous to get this wound up over a customer. A customer, more to the point, who was so obviously not my type. Anything remotely related to the biker world—even an embarrassingly obvious store-bought wannabe—was radioactive to me. I hated that world. It would be a blessing if I never had anything to do with it again.
Then again, maybe Romeo, the weekend warrior wannabe, wouldn’t want anything to do with that world either if he knew a few hardcore truths about the average 1%er. If I took him out for coffee—coffee that wasn’t here at Buzzby’s where Heather could laugh at me—I could try to educate him on just how foul that closed-off, hidden world was. Then maybe he’s lose interest in it and… and…
What, exactly?
Be the perfect guy to date?
Was I seriously giving that a thought?
Maybe. Just… maybe.
“Hello, Shiloh? Beep-beep, you’re blocking traffic.”
Startled, I glanced behind me and saw Heather, two mugs in hand, waiting patiently behind me as I stood blocking the coffee machine. Crap. “Whoops, sorry.”
“You okay?” she asked while I hustled out of the way. “That biker wasn’t mean to you, was he? I can switch tables with you if you really want me to.”
“No, no, everything’s cool, honest. But thanks for the offer.” Giving my friend a thoroughly fake smile, I tried to get my head out of the clouds and made my way back to Romeo’s table. “Okay, here we are—coffee, no cream and lots of kick. Hopefully that’ll keep you warm once you ride out of here on this snowy night.”
“It’s four degrees out there, even without windchill. No way is anyone riding in this shit, unless they’ve got it into their head they have to prove how tough they are. And how stupid.” Romeo pulled the cup close to wrap his hand around it, and his hand was so huge it almost did wrap all the way around the mug. “The question is, why are you already thinking about me leaving? I think I’m going to take that personally.”
Yikes. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“But you’re still thinking about me leaving. Sounds to me like I should take offense.”
“I…” Horrified, I studied his face—excellent bone structure, with beautiful cheekbones, a slightly crooked nose that spoke of a long-ago break that he’d survived, and gray-blue eyes that looked like a stormy sea. “I apologize, truly. Um, let me know if there’s anything else I can get you.”
“Yeah, there is. You can sit down for a sec and give me some of your time.”
Stupid heart. Why was it skipping all over the place? “It’s against policy to sit with customers during shift.”
“You might want to reconsider. I’m no Karen who’d complain to the manager about being insulted, but I’m not above making a scene with you at the center of it.”
Like that, my skippy heart turned to stone. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
“You surprise me,” I gritted out as anger bubbled to the surface. Grudgingly I sank onto the edge of the seat opposite him, not bothering to tamp down the heat in the glare I sent his way. “I thought all you big, bad bikers were so tough you don’t get offended by offhand comments. You must belong to, shall we say, a gentler kind of club.”
“Ooh, I think there was some spice behind those words.”
“Considering how fragile you are, snowflake, you should worry my spice is going to melt you right out of existence.” I couldn’t seem to stop gritting my teeth as I crossed my arms and gave him what I hoped was the world’s most disdainful stink-eye. “You wanted to talk? Talk.”
For just a second his eyes narrowed on me, and in that flash of time it seemed almost like he was calculating all the potential variables on how to get to some ultimate outcome. Then a half smile appeared along with an aw-shucks shake of the head, and the weird illusion that 3D chess was being played vanished.
“Look, I get it,” he said in a quiet, cajoling tone edged with a honey I was sure swayed many an unwary woman into his trap. “I’d be pissed off too if some asshole came in, threatening to upset my boss while I was just trying to earn a buck, so I promise I’m not going to jack you up here, okay?”
“I really need to check on your order,” I said the moment he stopped talking. If he had a brain in his head, he’d get that my bored tone indicated that as far as I was concerned he was dead to me. “So, if you’re finished—”
“I like you, Shy girl.” He looked me right in the eye as he spoke. It was one heck of a look, I’d give him that. Not much impressed me in this world—I’d been through too much—but I couldn’t deny my breath didn’t seem to want to leave my lungs while those sea-colored eyes locked me into place. “I can’t remember the last time a woman made me stop in my tracks and forget where the hell I was going or what I was doing. Then I saw you, and bam—fucking amnesia. All I could think about was you, working the evening shift at Buzzby’s Diner. The food’s good here, yeah, but it’s not so good it brings me back every damn day. You’re the only one who has that kind of power over me.”
“Wow.” The word whispered out of me before I even knew I wanted to say it, but it couldn’t be helped. When a hot guy—even a wannabe-biker hot guy—admitted you gave him amnesia, wow was definitely an appropriate response. “I have to admit that as lines go, that’s a real corker. And I’ve heard them all.”
“I’ll bet you have, with your toffee-colored hair, grass-green eyes and knockout figure. Thing is, it’s not a line. I want to get to know you better, and I want you to get to know me.”
In an instant, a whirlwind of emotions roared through me, and that alone was shocking. Usually my emotions remained blissfully flat, to the point of nonexistent, thanks to the overload of trauma they’d suffered years ago. But now everything female inside of me abruptly awakened and blinked in bright-eyed attention. Get to know him? This man? Did I even want to do that?
Want. The word seemed to echo like a low moan through every part of me, shocking me into stillness. Want…
Okay, fine, I acknowledged while my skin prickled with an uncomfortable flush and the intimate flesh between my thighs ached and pulsed. This man was hot, with those deep-sea eyes and chocolate-brown hair just long enough to make my fingers itch to sift through it. And while he wasn’t an actual biker—something I would have hated in the worst way—it was clear he wasn’t afraid to walk on the wild side. Sexy looks and a weekend warrior’s love of danger was a tempting mix, but was that what I wanted?
The answer had to be no, because I’d stopped wanting any man a long time ago. That part of me was forever broken. In fact, the last time I checked in with myself, I just wanted to be left alone. I’d lost so much these past few years—my parents, my home, my brother, any sense of a future and even the belief in myself. There came a point in my life—a place probably called rock-bottom—when it was a relief to realize I had nothing left to lose.
And there it was, the reason for my hesitation.
I’d almost lost track of how long I’d been numb. Blissfully, perfectly numb. Did I want to let myself care about Romeo, or anyone, when in the end caring about someone only led to pain and loss?
No.
No way was I going to open myself up to feeling anything, for anyone. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I just wanted to be left alone. Being alone meant you couldn’t be hurt by anyone, and I’d been hurt in every way possible by people I’d been stupid enough to trust.
Never again.
“This has been a nice chat.” With a calm I was nowhere near feeling, I pushed to my feet and offered a smile that I could feel cracking under the weight of the grief I carried inside like an anvil crushing my heart. “But I’m not in the market for any kind of relationship.”
“You got a man? A woman? An ex that needs to be dealt with?”
Wow, he didn’t give up easily. “What I have is no heart left. It died a long time ago. I wish you well, though,” I added honestly, backing away. “I’ll go see about your order.”
Without waiting for a reply, I turned and headed for the diner’s kitchen. And with every step I told myself I was glad that this would be the last time I ever served up a club sandwich with extra bacon, French fries with brown gravy and two pickle spears.
*
One of the great things about working the four-to-midnight shift at a diner was that after the usual dinner rush, things were pretty peaceful. As I’d known he would, Romeo left without saying much more, something I told myself I was happy about. He left behind a huge tip, something I hadn’t been expecting, another thing I should’ve been happy about. Heather even volunteered to take over my empty section the last ten minutes of my shift—declaring that she was tired of my moping and bringing the whole place down—and that should have made me happy, too.
But happy and I hadn’t been on speaking terms for a while now. Happy, as far as I was concerned, could go suck a bag of dicks, because happy always came to an end, usually in a blaze of epic destruction.
Or maybe that was just me.
Tucking my face into the extra-long scarf I’d knitted for cold January nights just like this, I narrowed my eyes against the snow blowing in my face and rooted around in my coat pockets before remembering I’d lost my gloves days ago. Great, I thought, scowling as I fished my car keys out instead. Just another fun-filled night in wintry Chicago.
The weather hadn’t been that bad when I’d started my shift at four. but it had definitely gone down the tubes in the past eight hours. Instead of the gentle flurries when I’d started my shift, the heavy snow now blew sideways, and I couldn’t see my little pickup parked at the far end of the restaurant’s parking lot. What I really needed was a ride-share dogsled to get me to my trusty third-hand pickup, but since dogsleds weren’t a thing in Illinois, I trudged out into the howling blizzard, my eyes trained on the place where I knew I’d parked my truck. Unease rippled through me that I couldn’t actually see it—or anything farther than a foot in front of me—but at last the vague outline of my truck emerged from the blowing snow. It was cocooned in snow and ice, of course, and I’d have a hell of a time getting it uncovered, especially with no gloves to keep frostbite at—
A rough hand shoved me hard between the shoulder blades. I flew forward, skidding on the snow and ice before just managing to catch myself on the side of my truck. My legs nearly did a Bambi on the snow-covered parking lot before I snapped my head around to face my attacker.
He was huge, like a grizzly bear on its hind legs, made that much larger by the black parka he wore. Its hood was up, and a balaclava covered everything except a pair of eyes that looked so black he could have been a demon fresh from the pits of Hell.
“Gimme your wallet,” the man ground out, seeming to swell to an even larger size as I watched. “Now.”
Who mugged people in the middle of a blizzard? My stunned brain threw that question out and wouldn’t leave. Everyone knew this wasn’t supposed to happen. It was like an unwritten rule. Who was this mutant who didn’t know the rules of basic urban dwelling? This wasn’t right.
This wasn’t fucking right.
A low growl ripped out of me, a sound swallowed by the wind before I turned, swiping an armful of snow off the hood of my truck and straight into the mugger’s face. My exposed fingers were both burning and numb, so at first I didn’t realize I’d thrown my keys at him as well, but I couldn’t worry about that as I took off as fast as I could back toward the diner. It was my only option since my keys were now probably in the possession of my idiot blizzard mugger, and the diner’s lights were so close…
Somehow I wasn’t surprised when I was tackled from behind.
It was as if the nightmare I’d lived through years ago was happening all over again, and for a horrifying, gut-wrenching moment I was back in a wood-paneled room that smelled of stale beer, sweat and old sex, and every inch of my abused body hurt. Then the iciness of the snow bit into my face, jarring me back to reality, where another man was trying to make me his victim.
No.
Fucking.
Way.
Wildly I swung my elbows back behind me, connecting with something so hard a muffled grunt of pain sounded from my attacker. Before I could celebrate or even think what to do next, the weight crushing me into the slush and ice was suddenly gone as if by magic. Frantically I scrambled on all fours through the snow, slip-sliding as I tried to find my feet. At last I made it and looked back even as I stumble-ran toward the diner.
When I saw Romeo tossing the parka-wearing mugger halfway across the parking lot, I froze as solidly as if Elsa had touched me with her magic.
“Get inside,” Romeo yelled, waving a hand at me before turning back in the direction of the mugger with menacing intention. “I’ll deal with this motherfucker.”
I didn’t stick around to see what that meant. Blindly I turned and half-ran, half-skidded my way back to the diner while my weekend warrior dealt with an idiot who thought mugging people in the middle of a blizzard at midnight was a great way to earn a buck.