Chapter 8
CHAPTER
EIGHT
LINDY
Tania, Butler’s old lady raised her shot glass in the air. “Here’s to our men holding down the fort!”
We were celebrating Ladies Night at Dead Ringers, a classic old-time saloon which was located in between Meager and Rapid, and was a known biker hangout from the seventies. My dad had been here many times with the Flames and had often mentioned it to me.
We all raised our glasses as Tania continued, “And it’s great to have you here with us, Lindy. Part of the woman fam.”
“That’s my girl!” shouted out Nina, Catch’s wife. I clinked her glass with mine.
“Yeah!” said Lenore.
All the ladies cheered and drank. Grace, Jill, Tania, Mary Lynn, Nicole, Nina, Krystal, and Lenore.
“Thank you.” I raised my now empty glass at Tania. I couldn’t believe Tania was Catch’s sister. They were total opposites. Tania, who owned the Rusted Heart, the art gallery and antiques shop in Meager, was sophisticated and articulate, while Catch was the classic jaded bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks.
From the get-go, Catch had told Tania to have an eye out for me, and when Lenore had introduced us on my first day in Meager at the store, Tania had swept me up in a big hug, which had come as a shock to me. I’d noticed all the One-Eyed Jacks old ladies were tight and very affectionate with each other.
The Flames were a bigger club, and their old ladies were separated into cliques, like high school, so I appreciated this different, positive energy that was obvious with the Jacks women. I liked it. Had my mom experienced this kind of sisterhood with her fellow Blades old ladies back in the day?
And even though Lenore was Queen Bee of another club, she was a part of this sisterhood like Nina seemed to be, Krystal too. Families overlapped. Families woven together.
Electric guitars blared as couples filled the dance floor. I spotted a group of Flames at a table in the corner. They had their eyes on us as they partied. The security gig was on. Minty was with them, and he stared at me as he drank. I lifted my chin in salute, and he nodded and turned away.
At another table were a couple of One-Eyed Jacks, including Dawes, who winked at me as he drank from his beer bottle. I gave him a quick smile and turned back to my newly arrived gin and tonic.
There were lots of bikers here tonight partying, but house rules decreed that wearing your club colors was forbidden so that the joint didn’t turn into a battleground, but it was easy for me to tell who were the civilians and who were the bikers.
“We need more nachos!” shouted Nina next to me. “Where’s our server?” She and I scanned the cavernous bar for the tall blonde, and my gaze snagged on a hot man at the bar. He seemed familiar. That sharp jawline, that teasing grin…my insides curled with heat. But that hair was distinctly unfamiliar…
My mouth fell open.
It was Wes, and he’d gotten a haircut.
No more long hair falling to his shoulders, in his eyes. Nope. He had some kind of Viking do, shaved on the sides with a long, thick patch on top that fell over one side of his face. I blinked, my blood rushing through my veins.
In combination with his sculpted cheekbones, perfect eyebrows, and those mesmerizing dark blue eyes, his new haircut gave him a full-blown edginess, an edginess that he always had, but held on the back burner.
Not anymore.
My mouth dried. Now that unique Wes intensity was front and center. And white hot.
I gulped down my gin and tonic. Holy fuck. So fucking hot.
Sparks and fizzles popped inside me, heat simmering through my flesh like a gas burner that got lit and blazed away on high. My legs pressed together. This was what real attraction felt like. Not that tickle I got whenever Dawes paid me attention.
My lips pressed together. I could not allow Wes to enter my lust zone now.
Wes was a no-brainer. Off-limits. Outlawed. Illegal.
I glanced back over at Wes leaning against the bar in a devil-may-care-cool-cowboy or undercover assassin kind of way, licking his lips as he studied his liquor, swirling it in his glass.
Kill me now.
The cute bartender in the tiny yellow halter top with the amazing cleavage leaned over and said something to him, and he perked up, giving her his full attention. They both burst into laughter and high-fived each other. She refilled his glass as they kept talking. I tore my attention away from them, the heels of my boots digging into the floor.
“Having fun, honey?” Lenore leaned into me.
“Yes, yes, I am. Great way to celebrate the new blush.” I had created that spreadsheet template and emailed it to all the Jacks ladies and the three dancers at the Tingle, and the data had come in quickly. “It’s great meeting everyone.”
“We get together regularly, but it’s extra fun to have you with us.”
“You have great friends here, Lenore.”
“These women are very special to me. I want you to know that you can count on any of them if you ever need something. Anything at all. Even if it’s only to listen.”
“I’m getting that feeling.”
Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
I did it.
My gaze turned to Wes again like he was a magnet and I was helpless in the presence of his atomic particles. My jaw tightened. Of course, now he was with another girl. A beautiful woman with long dark blond hair hugged him. They laughed and talked excitedly and then they hugged again, squeezing each other tight. A happy reunion.
With an arm slung around her shoulders like he’d done it a million times before and it was second nature for him and his arm, they turned and ordered from the bartender. The woman lifted on her tip-toes and planted a kiss on his cheek. Giggling, she rubbed at his face. Was she removing her lipstick from his skin? How considerate, sweet. Intimate. What a good girlfriend. My fingers tightened around my glass.
Wes had a girlfriend. Of course, he did. A handsome, sexy dude like Wes with the perfect smile, the perfect body?
It hadn’t occurred to me because I was too blinded by my emotions, by the shock of seeing him again, but here at the bar of Dead Ringers was reality playing out in live 3D. No denying that.
They got their drinks, clinked their shot glasses, and knocked them back. Talked, laughed.
A hot sting stabbed my chest. Wes in a relationship. I took in a painful breath. That was good, wasn’t it? I didn’t have to worry about dealing with him at all.
Sure was.
“You want to switch to beer, Lindy?” Nina held the big pitcher next to me.
“Perfect!” I replied, and Nina poured out a beer in a draft glass. Grabbing it, I sucked down the cold brew, but it did nothing to ease the fire burning my throat, blazing through my insides.
Stupid me, I had assumed he was almost flirting with me yesterday. Dying for my attention. But he wasn’t. He was expressing his lame regrets for yesteryear and sympathy for my present plight.
This was a relief, wasn’t it? Sure it was. Meager was now a worry-free zone. I didn’t have to give any more energy to thinking about Wes. Not at all.
Wes was taken— I mean, taken care of!
Wes was somebody else’s— I mean, somebody else’s problem!
Wes was not mine. Gah— not my problem !
I was free. Freeeeeee. Yup. I sucked down the beer. I was all about being free, wasn’t I? Absolutely. Hooray. Hallelujah. Glory be.
“Hey, Lindy, wanna dance?” Dawes leaned down and grinned at me, a hand on my chair. My interior radar went into overdrive, hunting for flutters, tremors, shivers, pulsations.
NADA.
I shot him a huge grin. “You bet.”
“Dawes is an amazing dancer, you lucky girl!” Nicole shouted out.
“That so?” My grin deepened as I rose from my chair. “Show me what you got.”
“Oh, I will, sweetheart.” Winking at me as he took my hand in his, Dawes chuckled as he led me to the wooden dance floor and swept me up in his arms, pulling me close to his body. We moved to the loud music under the red and blue spotlights in the cavernous dark saloon. Nicole was right. Dawes was a terrific dancer.
“I don’t think I’ve danced like this since middle school.” I laughed.
“Don’t you have places like this in Nebraska?”
“Sure we do, but I’ve only been a couple of times.”
“Let’s make this memorable…” His arm tightened around my middle, our bodies pressed together, and we swung to the music on the crowded floor underneath the swirl of colored lights. He moved quickly in tune to the beat. I loosened up at last, to the music, to Dawes’s fluid moves, letting the buzz of alcohol melt away the incessant stream of thoughts crowding my head.
The colored lights changed their tempo. A different song had blown up on the speakers. A blur of movement flared around me, and my body jerked.
“Hey, got to cut in. This is our song.”
“Jesus, dude!”
I was in Wes’s arms and he spun us away from Dawes, his hand pressing into my back, keeping me close.
“We don’t have a song!” I shouted over the music, attempting to pull back. Impossible.
“It could be this one, don’t you think?”
The band played a rocking version of Warren Zeiders’ “Sin So Sweet.”
“Really?”
“I was going to ask you to dance, but I knew you’d say no. Don’t worry about Dawes.” Wes’s hand slid down my lower back to the curve of my rear, and my muscles tightened. I spotted Dawes in the crowd dancing with a statuesque brunette, a grin on his face.
The intensity of Wes’s grip on my body deepened, and my skin heated. The friction of our bodies brought my attention back to the wonder of Wes. The wonder I’d spent half an hour attempting to deny.
“You got a haircut.”
“One of the artists at the shop cuts hair and she did this for me. She’s been after me for a while?—”
“I’ll bet.”
He chuckled. “After me to let her cut it.”
“So what made you give in now?”
“When you told me I looked the same, I realized you were right. I could use a change, step outside my box. This is a start.”
“That’s good.”
“You like it?”
“No.”
He only laughed as he moved us over the dance floor.
“What are you doing here tonight?” I asked.
“Dead Ringers is a hotspot. Everyone comes here. Now that you’re in Meager, our paths are bound to cross all the time.” He leaned down close to my face, his overgrown stubble rubbing against my cheek. Leather and a mossy wood scent filled my nostrils. Dammit, he even smelled good, miles away from that Old Spice he used to wear to impress me years ago. “Are we supposed to ignore each other?”
“Why not?”
“Waste of time.”
I pulled my head away from his and, as I straightened, I spotted his girlfriend. She scanned the crowd. He’d dumped her and grabbed me for a dance? Jerk.
A few yards past her, my gaze snagged on Minty who was staring straight at me, his face tight. He lifted his chin, and raised his eyebrows, his head slanting to my left, and I glanced in that direction. A neon sign for the bathrooms glowed over a hallway. I gave him a chin lift in return.
Did he know something about Dad?
Wes held me even closer now, my chest smashed against his hard wall of a torso. The friction between us as we moved to the music intensified. That feeling of liking being in his arms began to overwhelm my senses.
I sucked in a breath. “Your girlfriend’s looking for you. Are you’re trying to make her jealous by dancing with me? Nice move.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
The crowd exploded into cheers and applause. The band’s set was done, and Wes’s grip on me finally loosened. I peeled myself off of him. “Bye now.” I darted off.
“Lindy! Lindy!” His voice rose behind me as I slid through the crowd and headed to the bathrooms.
I recognized Minty and his long ponytail up ahead of me in the dimly lit hallway outlined with colored LED lighting. He shoved at a door and light spilled out into the hall. Grabbing my arm, he pulled me in after him. The antiseptic odor of the large accessible bathroom filled my nose as the bright fluorescent lighting made me blink.
“Minty, what’s going on?”
His face was etched in a deep scowl, and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. Minty reached behind me and, letting out a gruff snarl, locked the door.