Hiding in Plain Sight (7 page)

"Then tomorrow, we hit up the Harley store…" he began, but was soon without a sound other than the 'whoof' of breath that escaped as I launched myself at him.  Grasping his neck tightly in the cradle of my arms, I squeezed. 

"You are the
best
, Bayco," I whispered, holding him firmly in an effort to let him know how appreciative I was of his shopping.   My eyes were squished shut, trying to hold all that was within me at bay.  Nobody, and I mean
nobody
, had ever showed me such care and concern; much less had ever bought anything for me.  Not like this.

I felt his hands underneath my arms, above the towel, catching me as I'd thrown myself at him.

"It is…it is…" he stuttered, then I felt his body relax against mine.  "You are happy with the purchases?"

"Oh, hell, yeah," I breathed against his ear.

"So I did good?" he asked again and I felt one of his hands begin to pat, to rub, against my back.

I pulled myself away so I could look into his face.  "Hell, yeah, Bay.  You did better than good."

I saw his eyebrows raise at my words and another emotion swept through his greeny-gray eyes at my words.  What the fuck?  If I didn't know better, I would've called what I saw, desire.  But I knew I was wrong when he peeled me away from him, setting me back in my space on the bed.

I know I was beaming up at him as I settled back onto my calves.  "This shit is amazing.  And you did very well to get it."  I was all for giving credit when credit was due. 

Bayco deserved all of it and more.

Who'd have thought?

Me.  A red-headed biker babe.

Chapter Seven

Holy fuck!  What the hell was that?

Brand's mind and body reeled with the smell, the feel of having her pressed against him.  True, he couldn't feel much beneath the looped terry of her towel, but the heat of her arms around his neck, the feel of her soft skin beneath his hands?  And the fragrance of her, the soap, the lotion and just the overall floral smell of all that was Reese, all that was the purity of
her,
in his nose?

Goddamn ambrosia.

He could've stayed locked against her forever.  And forever was a word he didn't use, ever.  Life had taught him that forever was a fleeting illusion, something that couldn't be captured no matter how hard you tried.

Words were spoken between them, but he had no remembrance of them since he was in the earthquake reaction of having her body pressed to his. 

Bloody hell.

He watched her move back to her previous spot on the covers, knowing his face was revealing all the emotions he had moving within him.

He dropped his eyes, searching for a distraction as he tried to discreetly cover the evidence of his arousal that was trying to find an open space beneath the tightness of his boxers and the covering of his towel. 

"And then tomorrow, we will outfit you in a full biker-girl wardrobe," he said just to cover the silence, to break the connection of their eyes.  He slid a foot to the floor and draped himself across the pillows, pulling the sheet to swathe his waist in an effort to cover what needed to be hidden.

"You mean in North Platte?" she asked.

"Yes, at the Harley Store.  I will need to trade in my motorcycle and you will need to obtain clothes," he explained, though he could tell his words were at a different rhythm than his breath, his heartbeat. 

"You're gonna trade in your bike?" she asked, turning her head to the wall that abutted their room.  Much like she was seeing the machine on the other side of the barrier that separated them from the outside. 

"Yes.  I believe they have seen it, and we could be identified because of it," he replied, taking in her profile in the dim light of the bedside lamp.  She was stunning with her hair damp, just now beginning to curl as it dried.

Her head turned back to him, her face serious.  "So, you're giving up your motorcycle in order to hide me?"

He felt the slow deep blink of his eyes as he recognized she'd asked the same question twice, knowing she'd only allowed her concern to show on the second question, the fuller inquiry, just as before.

"It is just a vehicle.  One that has served me well, but it is only a means of transportation," he answered, knowing it was the truth.  "I will buy another."

She slid the bounty of his purchases to the other side of the large bed before scooting slowly towards him.  He felt her wrap herself around him again, this time encircling him beneath his arms.  Her towel had unfastened, allowing her thinly clad breasts to press into his chest.

"
Damn
, Bayco," she breathed and he felt the hot air from her mouth on the skin of his pecs as she snuggled against him.  "Damn,
Bayco
."

He had no words, nothing that he could say.

All he knew at that moment, with the feel of the scared, loud, outspoken girl against him, was to move, to get away for her delicious smell and arousing heat.

*.*.*.*.*

I felt him pull away from me and realized I'd overstepped my bounds.  Maybe it was because I was from a small town or was because I was the only girl of the town's fuck-up in that tiny burg, but I was very sensitive to the vibes of those who didn't want to be around me.  So I did what every normal person with a lick of sense would do. Which was to pull back and create as much space as possible between us.

But the hurt was there.

I thought he might be different, more forgiving somehow of my upbringing, my family's reputation and my ineptitude.  But I guess that old saw was right.

Blood tells.

And the blood that moved in my veins was about as common and as tainted as blood could get.  It was obvious that Bayco saw it and, like anyone in their right mind would do, he pulled away from being sullied by it.  I mean, shit, some of the customers at the Dairy Queen wouldn't let me wait on them, knowing my family's history.  No matter how nice, in spite of using my absolute best customer service skills, some people were afraid of 'catching' whatever it was attached to me and my family. 

I labeled it 'luck'.  But my family's only luck was of the bad variety.  Well, actually, 'bad' should have been pronounced as 'the worst'.

My mother, Veronica, had been born with a bum leg.  A leg which required several surgeries and culminated in the removal of the leg and foot below her left knee when she was only thirteen years old.  'Bad blood', her own mother had called it.  'Lost her dag-gummed leg 'cause of her daddy's bad blood,' Granny Teague had said.  Which was why Mama ended up with Grady, my daddy.  Married him when she was only fifteen years old and he was thirty-three.  Which was a whole 'nother story just in and by itself.

My lazy-assed, excuse-for-everything daddy hadn't ever worked more than six months at a stretch in his life.  That was, of course, if you didn't count his daily exertions to pour Wild Turkey either in his glass or down his throat as work.

But together, they'd had eight kids.  I was third from the bottom and the only girl.  A girl who, if you read romance novels as much as I did, was supposed to be valued, coddled and taught the feminine graces.

I almost snorted out loud at the thought as I moved over the cheap carpet to the only window of our room.  Without thinking, my arms reached to wrap around my waist in a move I'd been making since I was really small.  It was a gesture I'd always hoped to receive from someone when I'd been growing up.  But as I grew older, I'd learned that unless sex was involved, it wasn't one I could ever count on getting.  I stood alone, so alone, in that silence with nothing but my own flesh to make me feel better about Bay's rejection. 

I'd been taught to cook and to clean.  I was taught to move quickly when a demand was barked in order to avoid a well-aimed hand or fist if I wasn't fast enough.  I was schooled at what was important in the whole scheme of things:  that I was only as good, only as
valuable
as whatever man I was able to reel in with my virgin status while I was growing up.  Females, except for pleasure or procreation, meant diddly-squat.

I got rid of that little bartering chip as soon as I possibly could.  Even though the romance novels I'd read advised me not to give it up as easily as I'd done. 

What-the-fuck-ever.

But the only person that had cottoned onto it, that little flash of rebellion, had been my mama.

"We've gotta keep this a secret, Reese Ann," she said, her voice almost a whisper in the kitchen throwing together the mix for that morning's biscuits as I turned the thick slabs of sizzling bacon in the cast iron pan.  "I know things we can do so your fella will think he's snagged himself a virgin on your wedding night.  A little blood collected and smeared inside will make your man think…"

"Mama, quit," I remembered saying.  "I don't care I ain't no virgin.  I don't want no husband."

She went still as stone next to me, but I kept my eyes on the grease-popping pan.

"You don't mean that, honey," she finally breathed.  "How you gonna get out of here without one?"  She moved closer to me, although she kept her head down, out of sight of my brothers who were filing into the kitchen and planting their lard-asses at the table.  "Baby girl, we ain't got nothin' without them.  No way of gettin' out 'cept for them.  Don't throw away your life!"

"I ain't throwin' away my life, Mama!  Geez, stop bein' so dramatic," I'd whispered back fervently, pissed off as hell hearing the same old bullshit, the same old way. 

A woman was nothing without a man.

No.  My mama's belief was that we were nothing unless we snagged someone else to save us.

But it was nothing I subscribed to; not in any way shape or form.

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
 

I read that once when I was studying for a paper due on the Women's Liberation movement.  At first I didn't know what it meant, and I thought about it a long time before its meaning became clear.  A fish without a bicycle was crazy.  So the saying that a woman without a man, being able to live a good, happy life that didn't include one was just as crazy.

When I got it, finally understood what the author had been trying to say, it hit me at a heart-deep level.  It became something I vowed to remember; to keep in the front of my mind. 

Especially with someone like Bayco. 

Even if he was going out of his way to help me. 

Even if he was going to trade in his motorcycle to hide me better.

My eyes again focused on the floral print of the cheap curtains in front of me.

He was only
helping
me, not liberating me.  He couldn't save me because I didn't need saving. 

Nope. 

He was just a means to an end, someone who helped me get from point A to point B. 

But I couldn't help but think that I was gonna have to keep reminding myself of it going forward. 

*.*.*.*.*

The next day was a long one on the back of the bike, but he'd assured me we would be in North Platte by late afternoon.  His plan was that we would stick around for a couple of days to take care of his business and complete the plan of changing the way I looked.  The first step, changing my hair color had taken hours the night before.  My hair was long and it was thick. 

"Have you ever done this before?" Bayco asked as he re-read the instructions.  I was trying to muddle my way through them myself and glanced up when he spoke.

"Uhm, no.  But it doesn't sound that hard," I replied.

"That is what scares me," he said with a small dimple flashing, before scooping up both boxes of the hair dye and moving to the bathroom.   I followed right behind, pulling at my bottom lip.  I knew what he meant about being scared when things sounded easy.  Experience had taught me that nothing was as simple as it first looked. 

Case in point? 

That damn car.

Closing the lid on the toilet, I sat down, idly wondering about the rest of my clothes and suitcases we'd left in the trunk.   

"Do you think they've found the car yet?" I asked, watching him as he began to mix the potion from the boxes.

"I do not know.  But since your pursuers were on the main road of the town…" his voice trailed off.

"Yeah," I agreed.  Other people may not have found the car but somehow, someway,
his
people had got wind of me and where I was.

Bayco's eyes roamed over me as he shook the bottles to mix the ingredients together.  "How much do you like your shirt?" he asked.

I glanced down at my purple, baby doll t-shirt.  "Uh… it's okay, I guess.  Why?"

"In case it gets ruined with the color, are you going to be upset?" he asked.  I hadn't thought of that.  I knew hair color stained when that Julie girl at school tried dying her hair black, determined to be our small town's only Goth-girl.  She'd managed to get the color on her forehead and neck, making her look like something from a zombie movie.  The long gray streaks had taken a long time to fade.

"I'm okay with it getting on the shirt.  Just keep it off my skin, all right?" I offered, glancing up at him.  I got a shy grin in return.  With the dimple.