Chapter Two
Carry-Ons
Dutch
With what seemed like a thousand other people,
Georgiana Traylor was spewed out of the wide opening that was at the top of the
escalators from the underground train at DIA.
Flight details indicated she’d come direct from DC.
A long flight.
And she looked bright, rested, and way more gorgeous IRL
than in her picture.
Dutch approached.
She took him in as he did, walking in a way she did not
intend to stop, the expression on her face all he needed to know.
Beautiful.
And a bitch.
One look at his MC cut, she thought she had his number, and
she didn’t like it.
Even though she could read the patch stitched into the
leather on the front of his cut that said Chaos, and she had to know his
brother was in the same Club. And he knew she knew Jag.
He also knew, as he watched her opening her mouth to say
something, he’d better get there first or the woman was going to have to get
over her issues with Lyft.
“Yo, I’m Dutch. Jagger’s brother.
Carolyn and him got tied up, so they asked me to come and get you.”
She made a show of stopping, blasting him with an unhappy
look, then drooping a shoulder to allow a beat-up leather backpack to fall off.
She caught the strap in her hand, dug into the pack, pulled out her phone, then
made a further show of taking it out of airplane mode and waiting until it
binged with her texts.
“Should turn off airplane mode the instant the wheels touch
down like every other loser who can’t breathe without an electronic
connection,” she mumbled irritably to her phone then looked at him. “Carolyn
shared. Thanks for coming all the way out here to get me.”
She said that last like she wasn’t thankful even a little
bit.
“Not a problem,” he lied right back.
Her eyes narrowed like him not meaning what he said
was rude, but her doing it when he’d just met her and was doing her a big,
freaking favor was a-okay.
Jesus.
This was Carolyn’s sister, all right, totally the pain in
the ass Carolyn had described her to be.
“You gotta pick up a bag from
baggage claim?” he asked in order to get this show on the road.
“Yeah,” she answered, her gaze scanning for the screens that
shared baggage claim info.
“You’re on seven.”
“Right,” she muttered and started motoring.
He watched her go.
More accurately, he watched her ass as she went.
Okay, he’d give friendly a try.
“Not a carry-on person?” he asked, falling into step beside
her.
She was tall-ish. Maybe five six.
Five seven.
And something the photo didn’t share, she was curvy as fuck.
Carolyn was tall too, but reed thin, no tits, but even he
had to admit she had a great ass.
Georgiana had it all. Tits. Ass. Thighs. A belly.
She was Ashley Graham and then some.
And just as fuckable.
Fuck him.
“I like to shampoo my hair, and sadly, I can’t shake my
dedication to mascara and foundation. Too many liquids to get through
security,” she said to the space in front of her, like she was talking to air,
and he didn’t exist. “And I detest all those jerks who cram all their
crap in the overheads, making boarding last a million years instead of twenty
minutes. They act like getting one over on the airlines and not paying to check
a bag is akin to their own personal V-E Day.”
Right, well, it wasn’t like he didn’t know she was
opinionated.
He definitely knew that.
And now it was confirmed.
“And when they shove their stuff in the bins over first
class, and they don’t sit in first class, it makes me want to scream,” she
ranted on. “I mean, the folks in first class either pay through the nose for
those seats or travel so much, they have the miles to upgrade and earn a
guaranteed section of overhead bin. It isn’t like the flight attendants won’t
find a place for your bag because every other blockhead has taken up all the
remaining space. And they’ll use first class if they have it. And a bag checked
at the gate does not spontaneously combust when it’s put in the cargo hold. But
you didn’t pay for that privilege, and you take it anyway, because you somehow
think it’s your due, so how the world revolves around you, I do not
know.”
Okay then.
He’d given it a shot by asking what he thought was an
innocuous question.
He decided it was quiet from here on out.
“Needless to say,” she carried on even though he’d given her
no indication he wanted to hear more, “I’d upgraded once, long flight, like
this one. To New York. I was running late, got to the plane, so I didn’t get to
board at the beginning. I had my laptop bag, which isn’t very big, mind you,
and my backpack, and I had to put one in the overhead bin, no way I was going
to check either. The plane wasn’t fully boarded, but some buffoon in the back
had shoved his bag in my bin and the rest of first-class stowage was totally
full. The guy sitting next to me was already there, saw it and told me. So I
had to shove my laptop bag in a bin halfway up the plane. It sucked. I had to
work on that flight, and it was a nuisance walking back there to get my laptop.
Jerk.”
They’d made it to carousel seven, and as they stopped to
wait, Dutch kept his trap shut in hopes she’d catch his drift and stop bitching
about shit that did not matter.
He was feeling optimistic about this when she was silent for
long beats.
Unfortunately, this didn’t last.
“Do you not travel?”
He looked down at her. “What?”
She was staring up at him. “Are you not a traveler?”
“I got somewhere to go, I get there on my bike.”
She visibly fought a lip curl before mumbling, “Of course.”
“Though, I’ve been on a plane more than once and I don’t
care what other people do with their bags. I check. It’s less hassle. The rest
is not my business.”
What made him share that, he had no idea.
It was a mistake.
“It’s literally impossible, not only scientifically, for the
world to revolve around seven point seven billion people,” she
declared.
“What?”
“The world’s population,” she informed him.
“You do know, you bitchin’ about this shit means you think
the world revolves around your opinion about it,” he returned.
Her eyes got huge.
It was cute.
Goddamn it.
“You got the power to just let it go,” he told her.
Now she looked like she was going to be sick.
Somehow, that was cute too.
Shit.
“I’m not one to let things go,” she said, and he
honest to God thought the last three words were going to make her gag.
And he had never before felt the sensation, but all at once
he wanted to laugh, kiss her, tell her to chill the fuck out and share he was
going to go get his truck and bring it around to pick her up, and then walk
away from her.
In that order.
“Like you cursing,” she went on. “You don’t even know me and
you’re using foul language. I could let that go, but that’s not in me.”
Hang on a second.
He turned fully to her. “Seriously? You’re gonna give me shit about my language when you don’t know me
either, and your language since we met, both the shit that’s been comin’ out of your mouth, and your body language, has been nothin’ good from the start?”
She didn’t deny either.
She stated, “I haven’t cursed at you. And you’re still
doing it with me.”
“But you do throw attitude and negativity around
with no shame. In my estimation, it’s not the words you say, it’s the way you
say them and the meaning behind them that holds the power, good, or in your
case, bad.”
She simply couldn’t deny that.
But even if she kept her mouth shut, for some reason, he
didn’t let it go.
He asked, “You don’t use cuss words?”
“Not with someone I don’t know.”
“You’re not the kind of woman to let things go, I’m not the
kind of man to let anyone tell him how he can be.”
Her eyes dipped down to his cut then back up. “Right.”
“Like that, Georgiana,” he told her. “Carolyn’s like you and
she says it like it is, so it isn’t like I don’t know about you, because she’s
shared. But I love my brother and he needed a favor so I’m here when I could be
doin’ a lot of other shit. Now you got a tick in your
skin about MCs or bikers or whatever, and you can’t let shit go, even when some
guy you don’t know is doin’ you a solid when he could
be doin’ a lot of other shit that’s far more
preferable than listening to you bitch about shit that makes no difference. And
just acting like a bitch because you got some shade to throw about how I live
my life when you have no clue the man I am or how I live that life.”
“I have a clue,” she told him.
“Oh yeah?” he retorted. “You get that clue watchin’ Sons of Anarchy?”
“No, I got that clue when Carolyn told me who she was
dating, and I watched Blood, Guts and Brotherhood.”
Well, hell.
Blood, Guts and Brotherhood was the
documentary—more accurately, the award-winning documentary their
now-president Rush’s wife Rebel made about the Club.
“If you did, then you know what we’re about, so what’s with
the attitude?” he asked.
“The director of that movie, Rebel Allen,” she told him
Rebel’s name like he hadn’t sat down to dinner at the woman’s table two nights
ago, which he had, “wore a leather jacket that said ‘Property of Rush’ on the
back of it to the premiere of that film. And women are not property.”
“Well, Rush wore his Chaos cut to that, but he has about a
half dozen tees he wears all the time that say ‘Property of Rebel’ on the back.
You got a problem with that?” he shot back.
She snapped her mouth shut so hard he heard her teeth
clatter.
“Unh-hunh,” he muttered, turning
toward the carousel that had begun to churn. “You don’t know dick.”
“Knowledge of MC culture is not hard to come by, Mr. Black.”
Yeah, she knew Jag enough to know his last name.
And his brother might be a guy who enjoyed a good time, but
who fucking didn’t?
Like Dutch, Jag had earned his patch, served the brothers,
ate shit, did the grunt work, pulled his weight, and then some. Jag worked on
the builds at the garage with Joker and he worked hard (Dutch didn’t work in
the garage, somehow—mostly because he was good with numbers, and people (just