Chapter 4
GAUGE
Less than an hour later, the truck rolled back into the lot.
I saw it on the camera feed before I heard the engine, the grainy black-and-white image catching the truck as it turned off the road and swung through the front gate.
Riley pulled in carefully, parked in the spot beside the customer entrance, and sat there for a few seconds with both hands braced on the wheel.
Even through the camera, I could read the set of her shoulders. She was tired, irritated, and trying to gather herself before walking back into a garage where she didn’t want anyone to know she’d run out of options. That should have made me feel like a bastard.
But it didn’t.
I watched her climb out with her duffel bag slung over one shoulder, her black hair falling forward as she locked the truck and headed toward the door.
The sight of her coming back into my shop hit me harder than it should have, satisfaction rolling through me that had nothing to do with winning and everything to do with knowing she was back where I could see her.
I wiped the expression off my face before she came through the door, because Riley looked like the kind of woman who’d rather sleep in a ditch than accept help if she thought somebody was too pleased about offering it.
By the time she stepped inside, I was already looking down at a stack of invoices like I hadn’t been waiting for her return with the focus of a man tracking a pressure gauge in the red.
As she crossed the shop floor, a couple of mechanics looked up, noticed the duffel, clocked my expression through the window to my office, and suddenly became fascinated with whatever they were working on. Smart fuckers.
I pushed back from my desk and walked out to her slowly enough that she wouldn’t think I’d been watching the camera like some possessive asshole even though that was exactly what I’d been doing.
The closer she got, the more I noticed the strain around her mouth, the faint flush on her cheeks from embarrassment or anger, and the tight grip she had on the bag strap cutting across her shoulder.
“Where do you want me to park the Mustang while we wait for the parts to come in?” she asked the second I was within earshot.
She didn’t mention the motel being full. Or needing somewhere to sleep, because of course she fucking didn’t. Riley had pride, sass, and a survival instinct that apparently came with a built-in refusal to admit when she was cornered.
I respected the hell out of it, even as it made me want to throw her over my shoulder, lock her somewhere safe, and explain later when she was less likely to run on fumes and stubbornness.
I let my gaze drop to the duffel bag hanging from her shoulder, then brought it back to her face. “You’re not sleeping in your car.”
Her eyes narrowed fast enough to make heat kick through me. “I didn’t say I was sleeping in my car.”
“You were about to.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know plenty.”
“You know my car is broken,” she shot back, shifting the bag higher on her shoulder as if she could hide how heavy it looked. “That doesn’t make you psychic.”
“No, but you asking where to park it tells me you were planning to crawl into the back seat and pretend that was a reasonable solution.” I kept my voice even because the last thing I needed was her hearing how badly the image pissed me off.
The Mustang’s back seat wasn’t fit for a woman already running on too little sleep. “That isn’t happening.”
A muscle jumped in her jaw, and for one second, I thought she might actually throw the truck keys at me. Instead, she dragged in a breath through her nose and looked toward the Mustang like the car might save her from this conversation.
It didn’t. The car was dead in my bay, and I was standing between her and the next bad decision she wanted to make.
“What exactly do you suggest?” she asked.
“I have somewhere you can stay.”
The change in her was immediate enough to make my instincts sit up.
Her shoulders tightened, her chin lifted, and her eyes snapped back to mine with suspicion flaring bright in them.
For half a second, I wondered what kind of men she’d dealt with that made her hear an offer like that and go straight to bracing for a fight.
Then her mouth opened and gave me the answer before I had time to get pissed on her behalf.
“I’m not sleeping with you.”
My grin came out before I could stop it, and I let my eyes move over her because I wasn’t enough of a saint to pretend the thought didn’t already live in my head. “Didn’t realize that was on the table.”
“It’s not.”
“Not saying you wouldn’t be welcome in my bed.” I watched color rush into her cheeks despite the irritated look she tried to pin on me. “But I was talking about the pull-out couch in one of the offices upstairs.”
That knocked her off balance in a way nothing else had. Suspicion lingered in her eyes, but curiosity slipped in beside it, followed by a reluctant kind of interest she tried to bury before I could see it. Too late. The sight did something dangerous to my chest.
Riley didn’t want to need help, but she was too smart not to recognize when shelter didn’t involve folding herself into the back of an old Mustang in a parking lot.
She glanced around the garage, taking in the lifts, the wide bay doors, the cameras tucked high in the corners, and the men moving through the shop with tools in hand and cuts on their backs. Then she looked at me again, and her voice came out carefully casual. “What’s the security like?”
That question tightened every muscle in my body.
Most people in her position would have asked if the couch was comfortable or whether there was a bathroom nearby. Some would have asked about privacy. Riley asked about security, and she tried to make it sound like an afterthought.
I kept my face still, but inside, the pieces shifted.
Her busted car hadn’t put that look in her eyes.
Being broke hadn’t done it either. Something had made her afraid enough to clock doors, exits, cameras, and locks before she considered comfort, and the idea of anyone putting that kind of fear in her had violence waking up somewhere deep in me.
“State-of-the-art,” I told her. “Cameras cover almost every inch of the building and the lot. Entry points are alarmed. Nobody gets inside without authorization unless they want a very bad night. The system was built by my brothers, which means paranoia was considered a feature instead of a flaw.”
Her mouth tipped like she wanted to smile but wasn’t sure she should. “That’s one way to advertise.”
“It’s accurate.” I stepped a little closer, watching her eyes flick to me before drifting toward the closest camera again. “Besides, people around here know better than to fuck with anything owned by the Redline Kings MC.”
Her eyes widened, and her fingers flexed around the strap of her bag. Then her brow furrowed. “MC?”
“Motorcycle club,” I explained, lifting my chin toward a flag hanging behind the front counter with the club’s logo stitched on it.
She knew enough to understand the words and symbol mattered, but not enough to know what they meant in Crossbend and the surrounding towns.
The Redline Kings weren’t just an MC with a clubhouse and bikes lined up under security lights.
We were the spine running under the town—through our whole territory.
We were tied into the tracks, garage, bar, coffee shop, land, money, and every race that mattered within a couple of hundred miles.
People didn’t always like us, but they understood the rules.
You didn’t touch what belonged to the Kings unless you were ready to have your life dismantled one ugly piece at a time.
“Um…like…”
I chuckled and held up a hand to stop her comment before she could finish, already knowing where she was going. “Not like anything you’ve seen in the movies, baby.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And if it were, you would just come right out and tell me?”
Laughing again, I felt something warm spark in my chest when the sound seemed to loosen some of the tension in her muscles. “You have a point.”
“So you’re criminals?”
I raised an eyebrow, but the corners of my lips were still tipped up in amusement. “Some people call us criminals. Others call us heroes.”
“Which is it?”
“Depends on who is telling the story.”
Her mouth curved slightly.
“I’ll be honest. We don’t really give a damn about laws on paper, but we live by a code. Loyalty, honor, and brotherhood. We protect what’s ours with everything we’ve got. And if you’re staying on Redline Kings’ property, that includes you.”
Riley’s shoulders eased before she could stop them. The relief was almost hidden, but I still saw it.
Her controlled reaction only fueled my suspicion that she was running from something, and the questions piled up in my mind.
I wanted answers, but Riley was wound too tight to demand them.
I’d interrogated men for the club often enough to know when pressure would make someone crack and when it would make them shut down.
With Riley, right then, pushing would have sent her straight into whatever survival mode had kept her upright this long.
So I reached for the duffel instead, and she pulled it back on instinct.
Exasperated, I looked at her. She stared back at me.
Neither of us said a word, but she finally loosened her grip, and I took the bag from her shoulder.
The strap slid over my hand, warm from her body, and that small contact shouldn’t have done a damn thing to me.
It fucking did anyway. My palm tightened around the canvas while my mind supplied a lot dirtier images than carrying her bag upstairs, including the shocked sound she might make if I pulled her back against me and she felt exactly what she was doing to my body.
“Follow me.”