Bad Boy Biker’s Bride (Seven Brides for Seven Bikers #1)

Chapter 1 Striker

Chapter One

STRIKER

I'm wiping down the last glasses of the afternoon.

Tuesdays at the Outlaw Saloon are slow, with only a couple of customers.

The big black cat sleeps on my bar with his one eye slightly open.

This bar's mine. It has been four years now, since Prez fronted the down payment and walked me through the paperwork like a man teaching his kid to ride a bike.

Scratches across the wood of the bar; this place is forty years old, and it shows.

But the light floods through the windows just before sunset, turning the whole place gold for about twenty minutes.

Hawk is on his stool at the end of the bar, the same one he's been on every Tuesday and Thursday since before I owned the place. He'd cut the legs off a man who tried to take it. His beer is half-drunk, and he's staring at the cat like a man trying to figure out a puzzle.

“Is it a girl? You could call it Bonnie.”

“He is a boy.”

“What you gonna name him, then?”

I pick up the list under the bar. “You’re welcome to enter the raffle. Last night we had Thunder, Smoke, Cocktail, Knox, Styx, Fearless, Storm, Brave, Piston, Tiger, Torque, High Jinx, Apache, Midnight, Chopper, Nitro…”

Hawk shakes his head. “I’d just call him Cat. Can’t believe you want a pet.”

“He adopted me.” I shake out a fresh towel. “He’s a great mouser, leaves them lined up outside by the trash bin. At least the bastard doesn't drag his dead things in here.”

“That deer was for the kitchen.”

“You put it on the goddamn bar, Hawk. Took me an hour and a gallon of bleach to get the blood out.”

The shoebox sits beside the cat with a hand-lettered sign: SUGGEST A NAME.

ONE TICKET AND ONE VOTE PER DRINK. Customers love it.

With the most votes are Harley, Cujo, Onyx, Hellion, Sprocket, Captain Jack, Whiskey Neat, Hairball, Batcat, JW Black, Fluffy, and one drunk vote for Stinky.

I write the new names down on the board over the pool table.

Hawk takes a swallow of his beer when I walk back to the bar. “Quiet.”

“It's Tuesday.”

“Quieter than a regular Tuesday.”

He's not wrong. The High Vale Outlaws are scattered. Prez and Doc are out of state on a mysterious mission they said they’d fill me in on when they’re back.

Wrench is over in Ember Heart, a couple of hours' drive, delivering some parts to his buddy in the Ridge Renegades MC. Lucky’s flying some big shots into High Vale Lodge today, and nobody’s seen Ruin for days.

Until the patches return, this town is mine to hold.

On a quiet afternoon in May, there's only me, the cat, and whoever has nowhere else to be.

Like Hawk.

“Lodge schedule run yet?” I ask him.

“Uh, there’s some fancy wedding tonight.” He says it like a man reporting the weather. “Off the main calendar with the special-events crew. Flagged it with Prez last week.”

“Numbers?”

“A date and a room… that's all I've got. They keep the rangers away from the receptions; you're more likely to find a bear in the parking lot than a guest list.” He swallows his beer. “Whoever it is, they got the creepy suite that locks from the outside.”

I set the glass down slowly. “From the outside?”

“I asked maintenance about it. He told me he didn’t know anything.”

“Fuck,” I shake my head.

Hawk nods, standing and putting on the thick goggles he rides with, then pushing up the bandana that covers his nose and mouth.

We've been pulling at this thread for eighteen months; the High Vale Lodge is a hospitality operation on the outside, but a nest of vipers run by the Rotmere corporation underneath. They don’t know Hawk’s in the MC, and Prez wants it to stay that way.

Whatever and whoever they're moving through that place, they're good at keeping secrets.

That whole corporation is sour as a spoiled peach, as my grandma used to say.

Outside, a weather front pushes down from the mountain. The light sliding across the floorboards goes warmer, then a purplish-orange, then the kind of sickly red that only happens when the sky's making promises about a storm.

The door opens and slams against the wall hard enough to rattle the bottles behind me, and a woman runs into my bar.

She's in a long white wedding dress with mud caked at the hem like she waded through a creek to get here.

Her mascara has tracked down her cheeks in twin black rivers.

Her wavy blonde hair is half-down from whatever style it was supposed to be in, and she's barefoot.

She's young, maybe twenty-five, curvy in a way the dress wasn't cut to handle.

Her eyes are light blue and wide with shock or fear, maybe both.

Despite the smeared makeup and the muddy dress, she looks like a fucking princess from a fairy tale or some shit.

She looks wildly around the bar, and then her gaze finds me.

I’m not given to romantic thoughts or drama.

I keep my cool in a crisis, that’s why I’m the club’s sergeant-at-arms. But one word lands in my brain, and it sets like concrete, fast and final.

Mine. I've taken hits in cages that didn't knock me down the way this girl just did, looking at me from across the bar with her hand pressed to her chest, dragging air in like she ran the whole way here.

She gasps the words out. “Please. They're coming.”

I'm already moving and so is Hawk. He may be a grumpy bastard, but I trust him with my life. He doesn't waste precious time asking questions, because we all learned a long time ago not to waste time when danger’s coming. Prez taught me that.

I cross the bar in five strides, and she braces, staring up at me with her mouth open. The size of me does that, has done my whole life. Then this curvy little girl does something that knocks me sideways; she steps toward me.

I get my hand on her elbow, and her skin is too fucking cold. I steer her around the end of the bar and into the recess carved underneath, where I normally keep boxes of spare glasses.

“Stay there, princess. Don't make a sound. And you don't come up unless I tell you it’s safe.”

She nods, keeping her eyes on me the whole way down. Whatever she's running from has to be uglier than the scarred motherfucker telling her to hide under his bar.

I straighten up and wipe my hands on the towel, then resume stacking glasses. My pulse drops the way it always does before a fight, loud and slow, like a fist closing.

The cat sits up, his tail swishing back and forth. He’s the calmest creature in the county, watching the door with focus. Outside, there’s the crunch of tires on gravel.

“Hawk?”

“Got you.”

He angles himself in the corner, where the door is in his sightline and his back is against the wall. He keeps his hand loose at his side; he’s carrying.

Footsteps crunch on the gravel outside. The girl under the bar is shaking as she gathers her dress into the small space. I bend down and meet her eyes.

“Don’t worry, princess. You’re not going anywhere. Not unless it’s with me.”

I straighten up, resting my palms flat on my bar and shielding her with my lower body, as the door swings open.