Chapter Three
Maverick
He woke up to Jenna’s text and smiled in spite of himself.
He’d been pissed when she’d rejected him the night before, but he didn’t blame her.
He’d taken too long to make up his mind that she was who he wanted and he’d do what it took to win her. After their exchange, he didn’t expect her to have a change of heart, but he wasn’t going to fuck his second chance.
Before he got out of bed, he sent off his reply.
Man picks a woman up for a date. Address, foxy.
It was going to be a busier weekend than most—with two pending missions on the horizon—but his Saturday was his own. He didn’t have all day to wait around for a response, so he didn’t wait for one. He got up and proceeded to get dressed.
He put on yesterday’s clothes, knowing good and well his chores that morning would be a waste of a clean shirt. After he brushed his teeth and tossed his curls up into a bun, he took up his phone once more. He went to his list of favorite contacts, hit one, and brought the device to his ear as he waited for her to answer.
“Hi there, sweetie.”
“Hey, Gran. ‘Bout to head out. You need me to get anything on my way?”
“You know—I was just thinkin’, I’ve had a hankerin’ for an egg and cheese biscuit from McDonalds. Have I missed breakfast yet?”
Maverick chuckled as he grabbed his wallet and keys from his dresser on his way out the door. “Not if I leave now. See you in a bit.”
“Drive careful,” she said before they disconnected.
It was how she ended every call, when the roads were dry and she knew he’d be coming on his hog.
Maverick’s manufactured home didn’t have a garage. He kept his truck parked in his driveway, and his gray, Harley Davidson Heritage Classic parked in his shed. With a speed that came only with the muscle memory of routine, he was on the road in no time.
Even with his pitstop at McDonalds, he was pulling up to his grandmother’s house not twenty-minutes later, breakfast for the both of them stowed in his saddlebag.
Her house on Carey Avenue was even more familiar to him than his own.
It had been the roof that covered his head for most of his childhood and all of his adolescent years. It looked as old as it was, and he wished his Gran would let him pour a bit of money into it, but she always refused. If he couldn’t do the work himself, she didn’t want him to worry about it. She always refused his money, insisting he needn’t waste it on her, and she was the only woman with whom he wouldn’t argue.
She’d never let him hear the end of it if he did.
Maverick was nine years old when his mother left him for an easier life. He knew how lucky he was that she’d been kind enough to abandon him at his grandmother’s door. It was the nicest thing she ever did for him—aside from allowing him to be born in the first place.
He had his Gran to thank for that, too.
He was the consequence of a one-night stand. When his mother found out she was pregnant, she’d considered aborting him, but his Catholic grandmother would hear nothing of it. At the time, the threat of being disowned was enough to convince her to carry Maverick to full term; but in the end, she’d run away without looking back, disowning herself.
His Gran took him in without batting an eyelash.
He was only three when his grandfather died. If it wasn’t for the pictures of the two of them together, he’d have no recollection at all of their co-existence. Mostly, he remembered only that his childhood was difficult, not knowing where he belonged. He didn’t have any siblings or cousins, the only child of an only child. Outside of that house, he didn’t feel like he fit in anywhere.
It had been his grandpa’s old Ford Bronco that rescued him from the dark and lonely spaces in his head. For years, it didn’t run. His Gran always refused to get rid of it, knowing how much his grandpa loved it. Boredom had beckoned Maverick under the hood, and he was seventeen when he got the engine to start.
The tears in Gran’s eyes when she heard it roar to life was his sign that he’d found his calling.
Two years later, he was full-time at Stallion Motors.
A year after that, he bought his first hog.
And at twenty-two, he finally found the family to which he belonged.
But Gran would always be his number one.
He didn’t bother knocking but unlocked the front door and strode right in.
“Gran?” he called, the screen door slamming shut behind him.
“In the kitchen,” she replied.
He knew before he saw her what she was doing, and it made his mouth water just thinking about it.
“Gettin’ closer and closer to autumn, but it’s still supposed to be a hot one today.”
Her counter was littered in lemons—some still whole, some sliced in half, some hollow and completely dry. All his life, he’d never known her to make lemonade any way but freshly squeezed.
His Gran was all of five-foot-nothing. Hardly one to sit still, she was petite and perfectly mobile at seventy-one years old. Her dark brunette hair was heavily streaked with gray. One of the only things she ever complained about was how she hadn’t gone totally silver yet.
“Come on, Gran. Take a break. You can finish that while I’m mowin’. Brought your biscuit.”
“You’re lucky you’re so handsome, tellin’ me what to do,” she teased, reaching for the tea towel hanging at her stove to dry her hands.
Maverick only grinned in response.
When they’d finished eating, he got after his weekly task of mowing and edging the lawn. The house was small, but the lot was large enough that it took him an hour to get the job done right. When he was finished, he mopped the sweat from his brow and returned to the kitchen for a big glass of iced-cold sweet lemonade.
He stood leaning back against the sink, his Gran at the table across from him, her hands busy with her latest cross-stich project. When his phone buzzed with a text alert inside his pocket, he was quick to extract it.
He smirked at the sight of Jenna’s name on his screen.
I hope you know I’m not getting on the back of your bike.
His smirk stretched into a smile.
He could hear her adamant tone through the text.
He had every intention of picking her up for their date.
She didn’t know it yet, but she was getting on the back of his hog.
It was August, and there was no way in hell he’d be caught in a cage.
He wouldn’t let any woman subject him to that.
Address?
He replied vaguely.
“I see you smilin’ over there,” said Gran, her focus seemingly glued to her needle and thread. “Who’s got you doin’ that?”
“Why you bein’ nosey?”
“It’s my right, and you know it,” she said on a chuckle.
Lifting his lemonade to his lips, he muttered, “I’ll let you know if it turns into somethin’. Still remains to be seen.”
She peeked over at him as he drank, her eyebrows raised in intrigue. “I think I like the sound of that.”
A minute later, Jenna responded with the answer he sought, and he slid his phone back into his pocket. There was no doubt in his mind, Gran would get a kick out of him bringing a woman home—and Jenna was the only kind of woman he’d bring to her doorstep.
He thought of Tess and Mustang, of Winnie and Bull.
Bull wasn’t the oldest of his brothers, but his relationship with Winnie was the longest and most stable he’d seen between a Stallion and his ol’ lady. They even had three kids to back it up. The fact that their oldest was seventeen, itching for his chance to become a prospect with the club, and their youngest was five, still riding a tricycle, was all the proof anyone needed that their love had not faded.
Bull was the president of the Stallions now, but he hadn’t been when Maverick was voted in as one of them. Scorpion, the club’s founder, had been their leader until he’d gone and fucked it up for himself. He’d had an ol’ lady, too—but what he had with her looked more like war than peace.
Until recently, the thought of settling down didn’t appeal to Maverick, in part because he’d rarely seen it work out for anyone. Wrangler had two kids by the same woman, and their split had been diabolical—the only ending one could expect when a woman asked a man to choose between her and his brothers. Bull and Winnie were the exception, not the rule.
Until Mustang found Tess.
They were still new, but Maverick had known Mustang a long time. He’d never seen his brother so content. It made him curious to find out if it might be possible for him to find the same thing.
If that kiss he still hadn’t forgotten was any indication of what it might be like to snag a woman like Jenna, he hoped he’d have something good to tell his Gran soon.