Bikers and Pearls (4 page)

“Look, I’m sorry. It’s only that I thought I saw an accordion on your rear seat.”
Correcting the upward curl at the left edge of his mouth, he forced his lips into
an even line. He was smirking again. He reached down, picked up the spiral of discombobulated
pages, straightened them, and held out the list and notes.

She brushed off the dust and pieces of gravel from her pleated skirt. As she took
the notebook from him, she said, “It
is
an accordion.” She wouldn’t tell him how her whole family had been accordion players…how
the instrument had connected her to Mimi, her grandmother. “It belongs to an elderly
lady I know in my condo. I help her with it sometimes. It’s too heavy for her to—”

“No need for such a lengthy explanation.” He was still smiling, but she couldn’t tell
if it was genuine or some kind of smirk. “I said it wasn’t mine.” Technically, it
wasn’t. If he was a tough guy like she figured, he’d never understand how sentimental
she was about Miss Adree, whom April loved like a grandmother. She was helping the
ailing, elderly lady to teach Ben how to play.

“Fine. Fine. Whatever you say. It’s cool, though.” He held his hands in the air as
if to stop her and looked her up and down. An awkward pause settled between them.
“It is cold out here. You’d better be on your way. I’ll call you tomorrow about that
list.”

She didn’t really believe he thought it was cool. He was probably being sarcastic.
She couldn’t wait to get away from him and the confusion she felt around him. She
nodded as she fidgeted with her keys in the car door.

Her insides felt funny—indignation, embarrassment, and a strange fascination mixed
into something she didn’t recognize. The closeness of the man felt almost tantalizing.
She couldn’t help herself from taking one last glance at him before opening the door.

“Thanks for walking me to my car,” she said.

“It was my…” He hesitated as one side of his lips inched upward again, and his eyes
sparkled. “Pleasure.”

Once locked safely inside her Ford Taurus, she felt the shivers of cold and apprehension
slow somewhat. She had to get a hold of herself. Keep her clarity. And keep her distance
from that man—for so many reasons.

From her rearview mirror, she saw him watch her as she drove past the big cow statue
and out of the parking lot. She didn’t know if his watchful eye was supposed to make
her feel safer or even more frightened. And it didn’t matter because she wouldn’t
stick around to find out. No matter how handsome he was.

April pulled up to her building, an old historic inn that had been converted into
four condos. Home. Simply the sight of it calmed her. In it lived her, Miss Adree,
Charlene Timmons, an old friend from high school, and safety.

She checked her watch. Only nine o’clock. Miss Adree was a night owl, so April decided
to pay her a visit.

April knocked on the door, and Miss Adree let her in. April dumped her purse on the
table beside two bags of groceries and piled herself in a heap on the couch.

“What’s wrong, dear?” Miss Adree asked, sitting next to her.

“Oh, Miss Adree, I had a horrible night,” April said.

“You look like you could use a glass of tea. I’ll be right back.”

April shook her head. All the old emotions had resurfaced.

Miss Adree returned with the tea. “Now tell me about it, dear.”

April obliged. “The whole evening was a disaster. You knew about how we were getting
together to plan the fundraisers for Ben, right? Well, I ended up in a group I have
nothing in common with.” She closed her eyes. “If only Jenna and her big mouth hadn’t
gotten involved.”

“You can’t hold anything against Jenna, dear. She’s very protective. Brought me those
groceries over there this very night. And a new lock for my front door.” Miss Adree
took a sip from her own glass.

She wasn’t surprised. Jenna was like that. She was a mother hen to those she cared
about. And a chicken snake to those she didn’t.

“April, Ben needs you right now. You not thinking about quitting, are you? I mean…how
would that look?”

Bad. April couldn’t let anyone think that she was…uncooperative…or politically incorrect.
She had to help. But Bull and chains and leather and beards—and her father’s cane—kept
running through her head. Miss Adree wasn’t helping at all, and April eventually took
possession of a full-blown migraine. It still needed sorting out, though. Whatever
Bull had done when he’d belonged to that group shouldn’t even matter now that he was
helping Ben. She’d simply have to get along with Bull to raise the money to help Ben,
too.

…

Early the next morning, the phone woke her up. Mr. Houseman.

“I’m glad you called,” she said as she willed the cobwebs and sleepiness from her
head and eyes.

“I’m so sorry about last night, but I had another family in crisis, and I couldn’t
get away,” he said with sincerity in his voice.

She sat up. “Well, I understand, but you wouldn’t believe the situation I got myself
into. Especially when Jenna got involved.”

“I know how Jenna can be, dear, but I knew you’d be fine. I’m friends with many of
those people. They’re good folks. In fact, I used to ride with them all the time.
Till the Humanity Project grew too large and Aiken Hughes asked me to take it over.
”

Wait. Back up. She couldn’t have heard what she thought she heard. “You own a bike?”

“You bet. Keep it in my garage. I don’t ride much any longer, though. Right now, it
only sees fair weather on an occasional Sunday afternoon. I’ve been promising myself
to take it out more, but I’ve simply been too busy.”

She threw her legs over the side of the bed.
Mr. Houseman is a biker
? How’d she not know that? She couldn’t imagine the slight, little, old man on a bike
like Slug’s.

“I’ve known Bullworth for years. Met him when he first got on at the Hickory Street
Garage long ago. That’s why I called him,” he said. “Best mechanic in town.”

Bullworth?
Why, that was not a biker name at all. Almost sounded kind of stuffy.
A biker mechanic named Bullworth?

Standing up, she started pacing. “I don’t think you understand what went on there.
At first they thought I knocked over a motorcycle with flames on the tank.”

“Was Slug there last night?” he asked.

She pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at it. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“Figures.”

“And then I actually insulted them. Unintentionally, of course.”

“I have confidence that you can handle the Project’s interest in this fundraiser.
You know how busy I am with all the families who’ve lost their homes recently.”

April looked at her alarm clock. She was running late. She had to be at the office
by nine.

“I’ll do my best,” she said. They exchanged good-byes and she set down the phone.
She jumped when she heard the loud ring of the phone again.

Assuming that it was Jenna, she picked up the handset and said, “I’m sorry I hung
up on you last night, but you don’t know what I went through after your…half-crazed
call.”

A low, even, male voice on the other end said, “What exactly
did
you go through after her call?”

It was Bull.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Great. She’d just done it again. “I thought you were—never mind.”

“No. Please. Tell me about what you went through,” he said, amusement marking his
words.

“What do you want?” she asked, still a bit perturbed at him.

“A copy of that list of names of the group members. Remember? I said I’d call. We
need to get the others working on riders and sponsors.”

She buckled her watch onto her wrist, looked at it, and shook her head. He was Mr.
On-the-Ball. She needed to stop being impressed, and she needed to keep reminding
herself that Bull used to be a part of that Rebel Angels group the town passed so
many ordinances against in an effort to run them out of town. “It’s only been a matter
of hours. I don’t see the big rush.”

“I like getting things done,” he said.

“Look…I really do need to get to work, and I’m going to be late if I don’t get off
this phone.” She glanced at her clock. “How about I call you this afternoon?”

“Sure. Say between twelve and one?” he asked.

Lunch break. That worked for her. She didn’t like using company time for nonbusiness
calls.

“Talk to you then,” she said.

As she sprinted around her condo to get dressed in record time, Bull Clayton’s image
kept popping into her head, confusing her thoughts. Her brain couldn’t merge all his
contradictions.

April knew there were two kinds of bikers—weekend riders and lifestyle riders. He
was definitely of the latter sort—the sort that didn’t fit in with the Ladies League
husbands with their snappy haircuts and starched white shirts. She closed her eyes
and imagined the way Bull’s short ponytail brushed at his strong shoulders. How different
he was. Then she remembered the time.

The moment she walked through the door at work, she noticed that she and three others
at the State and Casualty Insurance Company had chosen to wear blue suits that morning.
Thank goodness for different-colored shirts and blouses, or they would all look like
they had been birthed from the same IBM copy machine.

As she walked through the large, open building, she passed the other departments:
Policies, Premiums, Claims, and Finance. Risk Assessment and Management was her domain.
Once behind her desk, she let out a long breath. The tension inside her flowed out
for the first time in over fourteen hours.

She looked at the sign on her wall.
Risk Management
. That was what she was good at. Really good. She glanced over the awards and citations
on her desk and then got back to her report correlating statistics about drivers under
twenty-one.

Mandy stopped by her door with a file in her hand. “What are you doing there?” Mandy
was nosy. And she’d had April’s cubicle in the back across from the big boss in her
crosshairs for a while now.

“Compiling a report on texting and driving.”

“Oh,” she said and held out a file. “Here’s the latest financials from Hanna Marks.”
She paused for half a second. “Hanna’s been seeing that rich guy who owns that antique
shop in downtown Charleston. You know, the one next to S.N.O.B.”

Slightly North of Broad. Yes. Everyone living within a fifty-mile radius of Charleston
knew about the swanky restaurant.

Mandy went on. “Well…”

April tuned her out and recounted some of Mandy’s previous forages into storytelling.
There was the one where Charles, who was a married man, was purportedly “seeing” Hanna.
Mandy got that idea because the two stayed late for days because they were conducting
an internal audit directed by headquarters. Oh, and then there was that time she told
everybody that the reason Mr. Thompson was missing work and slurring his speech was
because he was having small strokes. When in reality, he was merely wearing “invisible”
braces and didn’t want everyone to know that he’d gotten braces at his age. And who
could forget the time Mandy told everyone that April was stealing company paper after
she’d loaded her car with the safety pamphlets from headquarters to deliver to the
women’s crisis center?

When Mandy finally quieted down, April said, “Please thank Hanna for me, and tell
her that I’ll need her quarterly report by Friday.”

Mandy craned her neck to eye the paperwork on the desk, picked up a mint from the
candy dish, and then leaned into the hall to see what was going on in Charles’s office.
After she left, April turned around in her office chair to retrieve her coffee cup
from the bookcase behind her.

There it was. Her notebook on motorcycle accident statistics from the National Highway
Transportation & Safety Administration. She didn’t need to open it, though. She knew
the numbers by heart. Over 4,500 motorcyclists killed last year, and an additional
87,000 injured. Bikers were thirty-four times more likely than passenger car occupants
to die in a crash. And eight times more likely to be injured. In addition, the statistics
proved that fatal motorcycle accidents involved an increased incidence in alcohol
use, speeding, and driving with a suspended or a revoked license. The numbers proved
everything. Motorcycles were dangerous, and bikers were risk takers. But she didn’t
need statistics to tell her
any
of that. Her stomach knotted around the knowledge she had carried in her gut since
she was seven.

She had more than enough reasons to stay away from Bull.

No time to really think about any of that right now. She couldn’t change the past,
and it was time to get to work. Through the rest of the morning, she typed dollar
amounts, percentages, and risk factors into her computer, turning out report after
report. During her midmorning break, she typed the information about the members of
last night’s group into a spreadsheet and then got right back to work. After making
several calls, she went to work on canceling the policies of some of their high-risk
drivers who’d had one too many DUIs. Finally, she set up several risk classes for
new employees, and then she leaned back in her chair. Almost eleven fifty-five. Almost
time to make that call to Bull.

At that moment, she saw her coworkers step aside at the front door and watch as the
tall, well-proportioned man approached.

The bell from the entrance clanged. Or perhaps it was the chains and zippers on his
jacket. And it wasn’t last night’s relatively conservative bomber jacket. This one
had insignia and metal rivets, and who knew what else.

Her stomach knotted even tighter as he stopped at the receptionist’s desk. April knew
he was asking for her. Now everyone was going to know. Oh, the questions she would
have to endure later from Mandy. Summerbrook was the deep, deep South—and there would
be talk. She twisted her pearl necklace around her finger.