Hollywood (Steel Demons MC #7)

Chapter Two

Winter

“H oly shit Luisa, you will never believe who I just saw!” After dropping the beers off with Dad and Hollywood I rushed to my room to call my best friend.

“Hey Winter,” Luisa began in a casual voice. “I’m good, thank you for asking. How are you?”

“Never mind all that,” I whispered into the phone. “You’re good. I’m good. Everybody is good. Now guess who just landed on my doorstep?”

There was a long pause because my friend was making me suffer. “Okay fine Winter, I’m dying to know who landed on your doorstep today. Tell me everything.”

I smiled and sucked in a deep breath, too excited to hold it all in. “Only the subject of all of my teenage fantasies,” I gushed, closing my eyes just thinking about how good he looked. How hot. How sexy.

“Hollywood, the sexy biker?”

“One and the same, and oh my god Luisa, he looks even better today. He’s all tall and tattooed sexiness. His blond hair is long now, just past his shoulders and his green eyes sparkle. And good lord, the smile he laid on me soaked my panties.” My heart rate spiked at the sight of him. “And the best part? He thought I was my dad’s girlfriend. I mean gross, but he thought I was just a beautiful woman.”

“Winter,” she began in that tone that said I wasn’t going to like what she had to say.

“Don’t say it, Luisa.”

“I’m gonna say it because you need to hear it, you have to let this crush go. The guy is too old for you.”

“No, he was too old for me when I was a kid. Now I’m a grown woman and there’s no reason something couldn’t happen.”

“He’s a biker,” she said as if that was the same as saying he was a serial killer.

“Yeah, and a business owner and a veteran. So what?” He was my dad’s friend and I’d known him most of my life. “He’s a good guy.”

“A good guy?” She laughed. “He’s a criminal. Is that what you want, to hitch your twenty-one-year-old heart to a criminal?”

No, it wasn’t. But the fact was that knowing Hollywood was back in town had flipped a switch inside of me. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him since I opened the door, and I knew without a doubt that my crush had bloomed back to life. “What else can I do?”

“Let me set you up,” she said and pushed ahead without my input. “I have just the guy for you. His name is Brad, he’s tall, dark, and handsome with big brown eyes and he works in finance.”

I bit back a groan. “How did you meet him?”

“He’s friends with Ted,” she said, mentioning the guy she’d been seeing for the past month. He was a braggart and a dull one at that. “He’s super cute and he plays lacrosse.”

I rolled my eyes, thankful we weren’t on a video call. “He sounds great,” I told her, sarcasm heavy in my tone.

“He is and I promise you’ll have a good time.”

“You can’t promise that.” The last few dates she set me up on have been nothing but a disaster. The men are boring and not my type. “It might help if you actually listened to what I want in a man instead of what you think I should want.”

“The guys you want aren’t going anywhere in life, Winter.”

“And that doesn’t matter to me unless or until I’m ready to settle down. The last guy got angry because I wasn’t interested in fucking him, Luisa.”

“Okay, that was my bad. Things will be different with Brad. I promise.”

I knew she wasn’t going to give up just as I knew what my date with Brad would look like, someplace boring yet impressive. Expensive too. “Fine but after this date, I’m taking a break from your blind dates.”

“Oh come on, you have to crack a few eggs.”

“No, you actually don’t. I haven’t eaten an egg in six years.” I was a proud vegetarian who didn’t eat eggs, just too much cheese.

“Ugh, fine. But it won’t matter because Brad is the perfect guy for you.”

“Sure.” I wasn’t looking forward to the date, but the only upside was that I’d get a really good meal that I wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise. “I’ll talk to you later Luisa, my dad is calling me.” I ended the call and tossed the phone on the bed, giving myself a few minutes to get myself together before I went downstairs and faced Hollywood.

Again.

I wasn’t ready to face him yet after seeing him for the first time in seven years. It was too soon for me to be able to look at him without drooling, without my body visibly responding to his presence. But my dad wouldn’t let me get out of hanging out with his oldest and best friend who was fresh out of prison.

They were tight. Oddly tight and honestly it made me think a little more highly of my father, not that I didn’t think the world of him already, but his friends tended to be stuffy and judgmental. They would treat Hollywood like he was scum when that was the farthest thing from the truth. He’d looked after my dad when they were growing up and now that they were grown, they looked out for each other.

Like brothers.

But I didn’t think of him like an uncle, far from it. I wanted Hollywood with every fiber of my being. My body pulsed with the need to have him, to have his hands on my body, to have his green eyes look deeply into mine as he slowly entered my body. I wanted to laugh with him, moan with him and be everything to him.

And that feeling that I thought was just girlish desires returned ten-fold when I nearly ran into him on my way to the kitchen. “Where’s the fire,” he asked with a laugh.

In my panties. “No fire. Dad said he needed my help.”

“Yeah,” he grinned and raked a hair through his thick, blond hair. “I’m supposed to be making a salad but what the fuck do I know about making a salad?”

I threw my head back and laughed. “Have you never eaten a salad?”

His thick brows dipped. “I try not to. I prefer my food hot. And meaty.”

I could go for some hot meat, but that wasn’t what he meant. “Well then I can help, or maybe you can help me.” I bumped him out of the way, but it was a mistake because every inch of him was hard. Rock hard and oh so tempting. “You can rinse the lettuce, can’t you?”

He flashed a brilliant smile. “You’re kind of a smart ass, aren’t you?”

“No,” I answered and looked over my shoulder. “I’m a big ol’ smart ass,” I assured him and pulled out the rest of salad ingredients.

“Good to know.” That look in his green eyes was breath-taking.

“So Hollywood, what have you been doing since you regained your freedom?” I watched him carefully as I chopped cucumbers and tomatoes, searching for any sign that he was about to lie to me.

“Not much. Had to deal with some MC stuff after I visited my mom and then I’ve mostly been partying and hanging out with my brothers. It’s time for me to reintegrate into society, I suppose.”

“Sounds like you’re reintegrating just fine to me. Your club brothers aren’t just your friends, right? They’re also your business partners so you have a job and a support system. What else do you need?”

“A place to live,” he began. “I’ve been staying at the clubhouse and that’s fine for the short-term but after the joint, some privacy would be nice.”

That was understandable. “You need to dry the lettuce,” I told him and grabbed the salad spinner for him. “And I heard there’s a whole profession of people who only help other people find places to live. What are they called again?”

“You’re right, you are a big ol’ smart ass.”

“Thank you very much. Now dry that lettuce.” I pointed to the wet lettuce and smiled because talking to him like this, like a normal person, was nice. It was good. He was becoming more than just a crush, a fantasy.

He was becoming a possibility.