Unruly (21 page)

“Today I'm in a foul mood, and I want to be on the back of your bike,” I said. “Riding with you without having to keep my distance will put my mood to rights.”

“Is that all you want today? A ride?”

I paused, debating the wisdom of my next words, but I figured I was either all in or not at all at this point. I'd lost months because I had no idea he thought I was forbidden. I took a sip of the coffee I was cradling, hoping to sound less nervous than I really was, and said, “Sex at the end would be perfect, but I'm not demanding it.”

“
Damn
, darlin'.” He didn't look away. “An offer like that's enough to make a man offer all sorts of promises.”

“No promises. No strings,” I clarified quickly. “If we work well together, we can make a habit of it. Just to be clear, though: I'm not looking to be your old lady, and if there is one back home, I need to know. I'm not a home wreck—”

“There isn't,” he interrupted. “There's no one.”

I debated pressing the matter. There were an awful lot of women's clothes in his guest room for a man without someone in his life, but I trusted him. If he said there wasn't a woman, there wasn't. I knew him well enough to know that. Maybe there had been one, and she was gone now. Maybe he was holding on to the past. I didn't know, and if we were going with no strings, it wasn't my business. He was a good man with a sexy body and a custom bike. That was all I wanted in that moment. If I'd been looking for a relationship, I'd have a lot of other questions, but that wasn't what this was.

“Ride. Sex if it happens. Repeat if it's worth it. No strings either way,” I clarified so we were both sure of where we stood and what was on the table. I tilted my head to stare into his eyes and asked, “So . . . are you in?”

“I'm in,” he confirmed in a slightly rougher voice.

I finished my coffee and stood. “Meet me at my house in two hours then,” I said, and then I went to get dressed and go home.

Chapter 18

I
F
I
WAS LUCKY
, I
COULD SLIP IN
,
GET CHANGED INTO SOMETHING
to ride in, and then get out without an interrogation from my mother.

I wasn't lucky. Mama was waiting in the front room, the one she always called the “parlor” like we were some sort of gentrified people. We weren't. We were just regular people. We weren't on assistance, but we hadn't ever been money either. She earned enough at her job to pay the bills and buy groceries. The house was paid off because it was my father's. That was it. We weren't struggling, but we weren't headed off on luxury cruises either. I was hoping to change that now that Echo had pointed out that I could do so with my singing, but I wasn't sure that I could. These last few months were the first time I'd truly considered it, and it was both exciting and intimidating. I was starting to get back to being comfortable enough with the idea of singing in public, and I'd made some money doing it. Now that my internship was a wash, I was going to throw myself into it.

“Ellie?” Mama called when she heard the door close. There was a slim chance it would be anyone else. No one else walked in without knocking or calling out. Seeing my mother and one of her boyfriends wasn't comfortable for anyone.

I usually called out too—unless I was trying to slip up the stairs without stopping to chat. I bit back a sigh and answered, “Yeah, it's me.”

Instead of darting upstairs as I had planned, I went into the living room. Mama was sitting on the sofa with a cigarette in hand, smudged eyeliner that told me she'd been crying, and a brittle smile that warned me that she was in what I often called “determined happiness.” She was dressed in a pair of jeans so tight that if she stood, everyone and their cousin could tell she didn't wear underwear. The shirt she had on was some frilly number that was utterly unsuitable for sitting around the house at this unholy hour. There were only two reasons for her to be dolled up so early—either she was just getting home or she was newly single again. The shirt wasn't the worst of it, though. She had on her black leather vest, the one proudly proclaiming that she was the property of the Southern Wolves. She didn't wear it outside the house. Daddy had been gone since I was still in elementary school, and she hadn't belonged to anyone since him. Wearing that vest meant she was single. She always wore it around the house when she and her latest split up. Usually, there was a lot of chain smoking, and once in a while she'd throw a huge meal and fill the house with bikers. Echo always slipped me money for groceries afterward, not that we always needed it, but just because widows were under his care. I hadn't thought much about that until he'd pointed out that we didn't need to be under club care. I had another option.

“Tell me you had a better night than I did. Tell me you were out
there
”—Mama waved her hand in a wild gesture in the general direction of the world beyond our house—“celebrating getting that dressmaking job or something.”

“Nope. I had a flat tire coming back, and I didn't get the job,” I told her as I slumped into the chair across from her.

“That sucks.” She sighed.

“Yeah.”

“Harry went back to his wife,” she announced in the same heavy tone I'd used. “He thought I could still scratch his itch after he moved home. Idiot.”

“He snored like a rabid beaver anyhow. I could hear him clear downstairs.” I bit my cheek as soon as the words were out. It was a silly game we always played when her lovers became exes.

“Smelled worse than that,” she added sagely.

“Probably the foot fungus.”

Mama sighed again and took a drag off the cigarette in her hand before saying, “Poor Harry. He just couldn't bear living on his own, and when I said I wasn't looking to let anyone move in here, he said he was going back home.”

There was no actual sympathy in her voice, and I knew that “poor Harry” wasn't how she really felt. She was livid, but Mama was a Southern lady. She might look like she wasn't particularly ladylike, but poverty and manners weren't mutually exclusive. It took effort to get her to break manners and say what she really meant—and that was my job.

“Bless his heart.” I uttered the Southern truism with a fake sigh.

Mama didn't miss a beat before saying, “Well, the Good Lord sure hasn't blessed anything
else
of that man's. Harry was so small in his drawers that I think his exes might all still be considered virgins.”

“Dodged another bullet,” I told her, wondering if these post-breakup conversations had ever been any different. We'd shared some version of these same lines for as long as I could remember. I didn't know if there was a time when she cried or raged about a man. Honestly, I'd come to think that if she ever cared enough to feel that much for a man, she'd chosen to never spend another night with him. It was the ones who mattered
least
who seemed to get to stay the longest.

My mother was, in her way, still faithful to my father after all this time. It wasn't the sort of faithfulness most people would understand, but I had figured it out years ago. Her heart was safe from anyone else's getting into it the way he had. The rest? They were distractions. The only one who stood a chance was Big Eddie, and he was too much of a gentleman to push his luck. I suspected he'd been waiting for Mama to be ready to be with another Wolf, but the closest he'd seemed to be able to get was a few conversations with her. I didn't understand them.

And I wasn't sure I wanted to know. The idea of a stepfather halfway between our ages was weird to me—and I knew that my mother wouldn't take up with a Wolf unless she meant it as more than a passing fancy. Everyone knew that.

After a few moments, she sighed. “I'm not sure I'm up to cooking a big meal this time, Ellie.”

“So don't.”

“Traditions are what keep things in order.” Mama lit another cigarette, holding the new one to the still-glowing cherry of the one in her hand. “I like to have the family over when I'm blue. It helps.”

I didn't know what to say to that. I got it; after all these years, I had to. I just didn't like it. I went over to her and kissed her cheek. “Let me talk to Echo or to Uncle Karl. Maybe we can have a party or a potluck. Aunt Dar might have ideas too.”

My mother reached out and squeezed my hand. “You're a good kid. I don't understand half of what you say most of the time, but you're a good kid.”

“Hush, you.” I had to deny it, that was part of the rules too. She didn't get me, though—never had, never would. Most of what I liked wasn't what made sense to her, and the one thing I thought we should have in common—bikers—was a source of stress between us.

We still had a no-lies rule, so I paused before heading up the stairs and said, “I'm going riding.”

“With Noah?”

“No.”

“Noah's a good boy,” she started.

I held up my hand before she could start singing his praises again. The son of Eli Dash could do no wrong in my mother's eyes. “Alamo.”

“Does Noah know?”

I sighed. “It's none of his business, Mama.”

“I have no issue with Alejandro. He seems like a good man, but Eli's kid—”

“No.” I tried to keep my temper down, but after finding out that Noah had been meddling in my life, I wasn't feeling as charitable as usual. “Dash might be worse than
you
when it comes to committing. When he falls, I'm going to sit back and hope the woman's got a boatload of patience.”

Mama nodded. “Men are nothing but trouble. If it wasn't for sex or carrying things, I couldn't see a single reason to keep any of them past the first night. Your father was the only one worth keeping.”

She lit another cigarette and glanced at the picture of my father that hung on the wall.

“Go on then,” she said, shooing me off with the hand holding a cigarette. “I'm sure you've got better things to do than sit here while I get all maudlin on you.”

I gave her a kiss on her well-rouged cheek and headed upstairs.

Once out of her hearing, I had to decide if there was anyone to update. She expected it, even if she didn't mention it. Harry hadn't done anything wrong, not in a “needs an ass kicking” way, so updating the club wasn't necessary. I called my aunt Darlene quickly, filled her in, and decided that was enough. Mama wasn't keen on Echo or the others knowing her business most of the time, so I respected her wishes as much as I could. Plus, of course, Aunt Dar was the longtime wife of one of the Wolves, so if she decided to share my mother's single-again status, that was on her.

Family situation resolved, I started to go through my clothes to find the right thing to wear for my date with Alamo. As much as I wanted to wear something super-sexy, I also needed something that wouldn't result in road rash if we ended up laying the bike down. Alamo wasn't an unsafe rider by any stretch, and Williamsville was a very rider-aware town, but accidents still happened, and I was fairly sure that Alamo was the sort of man who wouldn't even let me on the bike if I wore a cute skirt to ride. Jeans were unavoidable; so was either a vest or a jacket.

Growing up around bikes and bikers meant that I also had a variety of boots for the occasion. I grabbed one of my favorite pairs: knee-high distressed black leather, sturdy but high-heeled, straps and buckles that looked more piratical than anything else. Tight jeans, tall boots, riding jacket . . . which left me with the girlie touches. I was all about independence, but I always preferred the girliest underthings I could find. Alamo had already got a glimpse of the blue set, so I looked through the options. Pale pink? Too soft. Red? Too predictable. Purple was a good compromise.

The top was the biggest challenge, so I went to get my shower while I let that thought stew. I'd missed this, primping for a night—or afternoon, in this case—out with someone. Maybe Alamo would be the perfect solution: a strings-free relationship with a beautiful man on a Harley. As long as he wasn't looking for strings, we could have something good now that I'd solved idiot Noah's attempt to keep the Wolves away from me.

Unlike Aubrey, I had no issue with being someone's old lady. In truth, if I ever decided to take dating seriously, I was more likely opposed to being with a man who
wasn't
a Wolf, but serious wasn't on my to-do list. Right now, that list was pretty short: relax and ride.

Chapter 19