Old Ghosts: Gypsy Riders MC (2 page)

By the end of the day, I had forgotten all about that feeling I had woken up with. I had spent the school day trying to put faces to names and wrangle the kids that needed wrangling and doing my best to draw out the shy kids at the same time.

Being a second grade teacher was best described as a juggling act, and yet as daunting as it could be, I was excited to be there.

I was excited to start a new school year, with a new set of kids, at a new school, in a new town.  I was excited to start a new life.

My old life was over and I was doing my best to bury it as deep as I could in the farthest reaches of my mind, and yet all the while staying prepared for the worst possible scenario.

So, when the day ended and all my students had been picked up except Rosie, I wasn’t thinking about my morning premonition.  I wasn’t thinking that the next few minutes had the possibility to change my life.  I never imagined that everything I had planned, all my dreams, all my desires, every aspect of my brand new, well-thought out, organized life could change in an instant.

But it did.  And once I realized what was happening, it was so far in motion there was no stopping it.

So, those first moments?  Those moments I first stared into Mike Montgomery’s chocolate brown eyes?  I had no idea what was happening.

I had no idea those eyes would put a spell on me so intense that with just one gaze, I would lose complete control of myself.

That’s why, after thirty minutes of sitting and talking with Rosie, when he finally roared up on his bike - a tornado of leather, long black hair, tattooed muscles and grit - I felt no trepidation.  

I felt a whole lot of other things, though.  In fact, I felt as if I was slammed with every emotion under the sun when he took off his helmet and sauntered across the parking lot to where we sat.

Rosie ran down the sidewalk to greet him, and when I watched him pick her up and spin her around, my breath caught in my chest.  

I never expected him to look like that, to be that strong, to be that fit, to be that fucking handsome.  When Rosie said he was a biker, I had imagined the complete opposite.

I expected nothing like this masterpiece of a man that easily lifted Rosie to his shoulders and walked over to me.  I stood up and when his eyes met mine, something clicked into place deep inside of me.

“You must be Rosie’s new teacher,” he said, extending the biggest hand I had ever seen.  Numbly, I shook it, his warmth enveloping me and shaking my hand rigorously.

“Yes.  I’m Ms. Sinclair.  Daisy Sinclair.”  I pulled away as quickly as I could, but as hard as I tried, I couldn’t tear my eyes from his.

“Nice to meet you, Daisy.  I mean, um…Ms. Sinclair.  I’m so sorry I’m late.  I was held up and I got here as fast as I could.  Thank you so much for keeping an eye on Rosie like that,” he said. His smile spread across his face, and I wondered to myself how many women fell to their knees under the charm of that smile each week.

Gently, he removed a wiggling Rosie from his shoulders.

“Go put your helmet on, Rosie, I’ll be right there,” he said.  Rosie turned and gave me a quick hug before she ran to the shiny, black Harley.  

“I’m Mike, by the way.  Mike Montgomery,” he said, his smile still charming me.

“Yes, Big Mike, right?”  He raised his dark eyebrows and cocked his head to the side.  “Rosie told me.”

“Oh, of course.  Yes, but you can call me Mike,”  he said, winking at me.  He reached behind him and pulled his wallet from his back pocket.  He pulled out a huge wad of cash, and pushed it towards me.

“Is this enough for your trouble?”  he asked.

“What? Oh, no…gosh, no.  No payment necessary, really.  It was my pleasure and it gave me a chance to get to know Rosie a little.” I was still smiling up at him, inhaling his leathery scent, drinking in the pure masculinity of this man and that’s the moment the world seemed to fall away completely.

Sure, I knew where I was.  I could see Rosie watching us from his bike behind him.  There was even a bee buzzing around us.  I was aware of these things, but anything in the world that existed outside of that parking lot?  As far as I was concerned, that was all in another dimension, and had no impact on this moment - this monumental moment that I would never forget in my entire lifetime - and everything fell away into insignificant oblivion.

God, it was pure bliss.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

“Absolutely, Mike,” I replied quietly.

It was then, as he stopped talking, as he did nothing but stare at me silently and smile, that I remembered my prediction for the day.  It whispered in the back of my mind - this is it! - the seed of something important, and yet, even then I still didn’t completely put it together.

Mike’s wad of cash disappeared back in his wallet, and I felt a flush come over me as I watched his gaze fall to my feet, and then trail up my body slowly.  When his eyes met mine again, his brown eyes darkened with unmistakable desire, and I felt all the air leave my lungs.

My heart pounded loudly as I struggled to breathe again and my brain searched desperately for something to say.  The silence screamed - an excruciatingly delicious, wordless conversation that passed between us.

“You seem nice,” he said finally, after what seemed like hours.  Such a simple statement, and yet I knew he meant something entirely different than ‘nice’.

“Nice? I…,” I wanted desperately to say something witty, something cute, something smart, but my brain was racing with inappropriate thoughts.  “Sure,” I finally squeaked out.  Sure? Really? I couldn’t very well tell him that he was the hottest thing I had seen in Los Angeles and that I wished it was me about to climb on the back of his bike, could I?

“That’s good,” he said, his perfect lips sliding against his white teeth.  “I can tell Rosie likes you.

I swear if he didn’t stop smiling at me like that, then I was going to melt right there on the sidewalk.  The school janitor would hate me, and I would forever be known as the scary teacher that melted on the sidewalk on the first day of school.  The kids would tell tall tales while embellishing the truth wildly, and claim I haunted the hallways on cold, winter nights. What a legacy I would leave behind.  All because of Mike Montgomery’s smoldering smile.

“I like Rosie, too,”  I replied, overtaken by an urgent need to be alone and screaming into my pillow.

“Good,” he whispered in my ear.  He leaned in so close I could smell the heat coming off the leather vest he was wearing.  “I look forward to getting to know you, Daisy.”

He winked again, then turned without waiting for a response.  As he walked back to his bike, my eyes memorized every inch of him.  From his black leather boots to the tight Levi’s that wrapped around his muscular ass, all the way past his broad shoulders and his long, black hair that trailed in the wind behind him - I committed every detail to memory.  I didn’t even struggle to look away.  I drank him in like I had never seen a real man before.  

And a man like Mike Montgomery?  A man that oozed masculinity like that?  I don’t think I ever had seen a man like him before, not before that moment, that one life-changing moment outside of George Peabody Elementary School.  Hell, if I had previously met a man like that, I’d have already done my damnedest to have him tied to my bed.

But Mike Montgomery?  Well, he wasn’t the type of man you tied up.  He was strong.  He was all man.  And he was sexy as fuck.

He was almost sexier walking away from me than he was walking towards me.  

I watched them drive off in a roar, Rosie’s arms wrapped tightly around her father.  It was then that that feeling I had in the morning came back with a vengeance.

I didn’t know how, but I knew Mike Montgomery was going to be a force to be reckoned with in my life.  

And no matter how he made me feel when he bore those chocolate brown eyes into mine,  no matter how lonely I was in this new town, no matter how desperately I wanted to feel those big, rugged hands sliding over my skin — the last thing I needed in my life was a man.

Especially a man like Mike Montgomery.

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

“Rosie, do you have any homework tonight?” I asked Rosie as soon as we returned to the clubhouse and took off our helmets.

“I have a few math worksheets. Ms. Daisy said she didn’t want to give us too much on the first day of school,” she replied, in her sweet voice that I adored so much.

“Ms. Daisy? I thought her name was Ms. Sinclair?”

“She said we could call her Ms. Daisy. I don’t know,” she replied, as she slipped her tiny hand in mine as we walked into the clubhouse. “I guess you can call her whatever you want!”

I can think of quite a few things to call her
, I thought to myself.
Pretty. Sexy. Blonde. Hot as hell.

“Well, hello, Rosie! How was the first day of school, darlin’?” A deep voice bellowed from the corner of the room as we walked in, our eyes adjusting to the stark darkness.

Rosie let go of my hand, ran right to the corner and jumped up into Reaper’s lap. As soon as she landed, our five year-old bulldog, lil’ Mike, scrambled on top of both of them. Rosie squealed, hugged him, and then scratched his floppy ears as she talked to Reaper.

“It was awesome, Reaper! My teacher is super nice and she’s really pretty, too,” she said to the enormous man who was smiling a crooked smile at her and listening to her intently.

“Oh, yeah? Nice and pretty? Sounds like you lucked out, little girl!” Reaper ruffled Rosie’s black curls and they laughed easily together and began chatting about the rest of her day.

Reaper was my best friend, and also the VP of my club. I trusted him with my life, and more importantly, Rosie’s life, too. We grew up together, joined the club together, and had gone through hell and back together - and we were barely thirty-five years old.

Reaper had held things together while I was mourning the loss of my wife Rose, Rosie’s mom. Everything had been so full of happiness and hope up until then. The club had been successful, without having to shed too much blood in the process, and we had some good brothers in the club, too.

Loyal and fierce. That was our motto.

It wasn’t just Reaper I trusted with my life, but the other guys, too. Death, the Secretary, was a big, burly, round man with unruly grey curls that framed his plump face. He looked a lot like Reaper, but he was a little older and a little fatter. Sandman, the Treasurer, was a powerhouse of a man. Bald, six foot ten and three hundred pounds, all he had to do was turn his intense blue eyes on someone and they would be intimidated into complete submission. He was the perfect man to have around in a conflict. Demon, my Sergeant at Arms, was the quietest of them all, and the smallest, too. Often, Demon’s opponents underestimated his strength, but he was always willing to show them exactly how strong he was and how quickly he could take them down. I think he liked the surprise, although he would never admit it.

These men, along with the rest of the brotherhood, are what kept me sane when Rose died. And Rosie. Always Rosie.

It’s amazing the feelings that consume you when you have a child. Intense love, intense protectiveness, and intense, constant worry. It was wonderful and excruciating at the same time, and I stumbled through the days doing my best to do right by her. If I didn’t have my brothers to back me up, hell, even hold me up when I needed it, I would never have made it this far.

And one look at Rosie made me feel that maybe, just maybe, I was doing a decent job. It killed me that she would never know her mother, never hear Rose’s sweet voice, or feel the tender warmth of her kindness. If there was any way I could go back and change things, I would.