2. Chapter 2
two
S everal streets away, Cassie Carson also gazed at herself in a mirror.
She was not happy with what she saw.
Her surroundings were fine, since her dad Mac ‘Cooler’ Carson’s old lady and bride-to-be RaeAnn had decorated this guest room in soft beige and cream, with white furniture from Ikea and a fluffy comforter on the queen bed.
Cassie’s own appearance… not so great.
RaeAnn had given her a gift card to a website featuring bridesmaid dresses.
Cassie had chosen a short, stretchy dress with a keyhole neckline. The dress was snug on her small waist, which was fine. However, it was also snug on her big butt and revealed her A-cups in all their lack of glory.
She wasn't a fan of the russet color, either. It made her look like she was coming down with something. But russet and gold were RaeAnn’s fall wedding colors. Gah, she should’ve chosen the gold.
On the upside, she wasn't paying for the dress. She'd wear it for the ceremony, and hand it off tomorrow to a thrift shop. Not the one here in Airway Heights, but one in Spokane, a big enough city that the dress would disappear into a stranger's closet, and never be seen again by anyone she knew.
Cassie made a face at her reflection. Maybe she also should've gone with a different color for her highlights this time. The purple ombre ends on her pale blonde hair looked great with her skin tones, but with this dress? No.
She was also uneasily aware that the brown, ankle-length leggings she'd chosen to wear under the dress were another mistake. But she refused to don pantyhose, her legs were too winter pale to go without, and at least the leggings matched her chunky, brown sandals. The platform soles were awesome, raising her height from five foot three to around five foot six, and made her legs look longer. God knew her legs could use all the help with that. She was built like her dad, Mac 'Cooler' Carson--short and sturdy.
She blew out a breath that feathered the asymmetrical, purple-tipped wing of hair feathering her right cheek.
“Today is not about you,” she reminded herself with a scowl.
It was about her dad finally getting off his butt and marrying the woman he'd loved for most of Cassie’s life. Why RaeAnn and Mac hadn't stuck the first time they got together, Cassie didn't know. She was hoping to get the story out of one of RaeAnn’s friends today, when they had downed a few drinks at the reception.
Parties had that effect on people—biker parties in particular.
Cassie and her new stepmom had liked each other from the start, which was a hoot, because Cassie was supposed to be jealous of the evil stepmother taking her own mom's place, or some crap like that.
But Cassie was not. She was happy her dad was happy. She was glad her younger half-brother Connor, who was a hoot, got to live with both his parents for his last couple years of high school. They'd made her an integral part of their blended family too, which was so, so sweet. At home, she’d always felt like she came after her mom’s business, sometimes a long ways after.
The wedding and reception would be Cassie's first party at the clubhouse of the Devil's Flyers, her dad's MC. She knew from things her dad and Connor had said over the years that these parties got loud, rowdy, and even wild. Cassie’s mother had made darn sure she was not allowed at any of them when she'd visited here as a teen.
Cassie was looking forward to this party, and to many more. Because she'd be around, as an adult now herself.
That was… if she could find a job in the area that fit her junior college degree. And if a certain associate professor ever got off his ass and called her back to expedite that process as promised.
"Cassie!" a familiar voice hollered up the stairs, cracking in the middle of the word. "You ready, or what?"
Relieved to be pulled out of her anxious thoughts, Cassie hurried to open the bedroom door. She leaned out to look down the stairs at her half-brother Conner.
Unusually, the seventeen-year-old’s blond hair, long on top, short on the sides and back, was neatly combed, and instead of his usual soccer gear, or ripped jeans and tee, he wore a russet dress shirt and skinny black slacks.
"Hey, bro,” she replied. “I'm ready, just let me grab my stuff."
He tipped back his head in exaggerated impatience. "Hurry up," he moaned. "We gotta get there early, or Mom will have a meltdown."
Cassie didn't know about that, as RaeAnn was pretty easy-going. Still, not cool to worry the bride on her special day. RaeAnn had waited seventeen years for this wedding, she deserved everything to be perfect.
Cassie grabbed her jacket, brown leather purse, and purple backpack, and ran down the stairs to join Conner. "You look good," she told him. Unfairly, because they were both blond. Why did he look great in russet, while she looked like an unbaked pumpkin pie?
He lifted a hand to run fingers through his hair, then stopped, which meant he’d used hair product to tame it. "You too. What's in the backpack?"
They walked outside into the crisp, sunny November afternoon, and he locked the front door after them.
"Just some other clothes," she said. “For after the ceremony, when I want to get out of this dress.”
"Hey," he complained as they got into her car, a blue Camry her dad had given her when she started community college in the Tri-Cities. "No one told me we could change for the reception."
She snorted. "You're not wearing a dress and heels, either."
"But you always wear heels," he grumbled as he put on his seatbelt.
"Poor baby," she crooned in faux sympathy as she backed out of the driveway and then shifted, heading down the street toward the main highway. "Has to dress up and have all the girls drooling over him at the reception."
It was Conner's turn to snort. "Yeah, like there will be any girls my age there. Besides, Amber wouldn't appreciate if any chicks did that, or if I let 'em."
"Amber’s not coming to the wedding?" Conner was dating a cute girl from his high school in Cheney, another small town a few miles west. The rural school district encompassed both small towns.
"No," he said glumly. "They're gone to her great-grandpa's funeral in Montana."
"That's too bad." Cassie waited for a semi-truck to pass and hit the gas to turn onto the main road through town, gravel flying out from underneath the tires.
They passed the flat-roofed building that housed the local cop shop, and then JJ's Auto, owned and run by Flyers T-Bear and Moke. Next to this sat a tire sales shop, and then The Hangar Brewpub & Grill, owned by Flyer Pete Vanko and his wife Lesa. This late on a Saturday afternoon, the parking lot of The Hangar was full, and the local burger drive-in and Mexican fast-food cafe both had cars lined up as well.
On the other side of the road sprawled a grocery store, the parking lot also nearly full, a storage facility surrounded by high fences, and a small hotel.
“But you can let the single guys drool on you,” Con teased her. “You’re single.”
Cassie gave him a look of horror. “Uh, not happening. Even if—and that’s a big if—any of them are my age, I’m staying far away from any guy who’s tight with the Flyers.” Gaze back on the road, she shuddered at the thought.
“Huh? Why?” he asked.
Cassie flicked him a quick glance, seeing nothing but honest bewilderment on his handsome young face.
“Because, the Flyers are all great people,” she explained. “But they gossip worse than the kids at your high school, you know they do. I don’t want everyone in Flyer nation all up in my business.”
Besides, Airway Heights had few places to go on a date, with exactly two bars—a little hole-in-the-wall where serious drinkers hooked their heels on a bar stool and listened to music about cheatin’ and cryin’ in your beer, or The Hangar.
Ugh, the idea of a first date where the guy took her to The Hangar? Nope to the no. The place was awesome, with great beer and food and good music. But it always had at least half a dozen Flyers and or family on the premises. Goss central, baby.
“Not to mention, the brothers are a little over-protective,” she added.
If the brothers saw any guy in her space, holding her hand or—gasp—kissing her, they'd do two things—report immediately back to her dad, and get in the guy's face and try to intimidate the hell out of him. They'd do it thinking they were looking out for her, of course. But what they did not get was that she was an adult now, and she could make her own decisions.
She scowled to herself as she remembered a convo she'd had with her dad when she arrived to stay a few weeks ago. Her dad had said, right to her face, that they’d be keeping an eye on her, and any guy who could be scared away with a few words from him or her ‘uncles’ wasn't worth her time.
While she agreed with this in principle in theory, she could decide for herself if a guy was worth her time, thanks very much.
She was finally out of school, and away from working for her mom. She was ready for freedom with a capital ‘F’.
“So why d’you wanna live here, then?” Connor asked. “I mean, uh, if you’re worried about that stuff?”
Cassie grinned at him. “Because, I’m gonna find myself a place in Spokane. That way I’ll be close, but … not too close.”
Connor nodded appreciatively. “You tell Dad yet?”
“Um… no. I’ll wait till my plans are firmed up.”
Until she had a plan, was more like it.
All she knew at this point was, she was not, no way, no-how, never going to live in the little podunk community of Airway Heights. She wanted to be in Spokane itself, where she could pop out for a coffee, a quick bite, or to meet friends for drinks and dancing, or whatever. Spokane was cool.
And it was where her dad, and all his nosy club brothers and their old ladies were not.
Cassie flipped down the windshield visor against the sun, hanging low in the Western sky, then slowed to turn left after a semi truck passed headed east.
Now they were on the graveled road that led to the clubhouse.
“I’m so glad the wedding and party are at the clubhouse,” Con said. “And not at some boring-ass place Gran Ellen chose.”
“Right?” Cassie agreed as she slowed the car outside the gate to the Flyer’s clubhouse grounds. She gathered from convos between RaeAnn and her friends that RaeAnn's mother had wanted the wedding in a big church, and the reception at a Spokane country club. She'd gotten neither. “The clubhouse may not be the fanciest place, but everyone can relax and have fun.”
“Yep,” Con said with satisfaction. “Except maybe Gran Ellen.”
They were both grinning as they pulled into the parking lot.
Once a carpet and flooring warehouse and sales center in Airway Heights, Washington, the clubhouse was a long, low one-story building with a paved parking lot in front.
On the north side was a gravel sweep, loading docks and a privacy-fenced area with plenty of space for whatever a motorcycle club might want to store out of sight of curious passersby. The area at this north end that had once held huge rolls of flooring, now most often held crates with labels announcing they contained motor parts--but which occasionally held other items--and an assortment of motorcycles in various stages of repair.
The old sales center now housed the main clubroom and bar, as well as a kitchen and meeting room. The main doors and plate glass windows were now barred for security, and cameras surveilled the place, inside and out, their readouts uploaded to a computer network set up by Rocker, who had access to all the latest gadgets, since he owned a security business.
Anyone stupid or reckless enough to try breaking in or vandalizing the place would be seen, and they would almost certainly get caught. And while the Flyers were not one of the lawless one-percenter gangs, they were still not to be messed with.
Cassie knew the system had been set up after a member of a rival motorcycle club from out of state had tried to shoot the place up--at Christmas, of all times.
The clubhouse also had a few bedrooms, big restrooms, and a couple of storage rooms at the back end of the hallway that Cassie had never seen inside because they were always locked.
The wide parking lot already had a line of gleaming motorcycles parked in front of the main doors. The rest of the lot held pickup trucks and other vehicles ranging from SUVs to a black, 70's muscle car.
As they pulled into the parking lot, Connor peered at the old airplane propellers that had been mounted over the clubhouse’ main doors. “Hey, the panties are gone. Wonder if Mom made them take ‘em down for the wedding.”
Cassie snickered, remembering the long-standing Flyer tradition of claiming scanty undies from women willing to have sex in one of the back rooms, and tossing them up on the propeller as a trophy of sorts. "I'm betting she did."
Connor laughed with her. "She would've grabbed a ladder and climbed up there herself if no one else would do it."
"So then, the bet is how long it'll take the brothers to get a new set hanging up there," Cassie said as they threaded their way between vehicles to the main doors.
"Probably not long," Connor managed, snorting with laughter. She laughed with him, because he was not wrong.
Cassie checked her phone as they walked inside. Four o'clock on the dot, perfect.
Let this wedding at long last begin.