WRECKED: CHOSEN FEW MC - BOOK TWO: OUTLAW BIKER/ALPHA ROMANCE (7 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

On Friday, with the promise of a weekend in the air, Melanie watched Donna make her usual run for the safety of her office the moment the harsh roar of Greg’s motorcycle cut through the hubbub of children’s voices. “I have some paperwork to do,” she said before beating a hasty retreat. Frustrated in not being able to find any reason to ban Greg from the schoolyard, she couldn’t bear to see how he was getting popular with many of the kids. He neither encouraged them nor chased them away. He just talked to them, mostly answering questions about his motorcycle. Many of the questions they asked were just to confirm something that Carly had told them, like how fast the bike could go.

Even Greg’s parole officer hadn’t been willing to help Donna in her quest. “He said Greg was a model citizen,” she said in a huff. She handed Melanie a sheet of paper. “Look at this. The man spent ten years in prison for murder. How is it that the authorities see no problem with him coming to a school?”

Melanie scanned the page. “Well, it wasn’t murder, Mrs. Turnbull. He killed a man in a bar brawl.”

“So he’s a murderer.”

“Not according to the justice department. What he is now, legally, is a reformed convict. He did his time. Even this report shows that he didn’t start the fight—it was more a matter of him using excessive force to defend himself. And it isn’t like he’s a sex offender or a drug dealer. If he’d been convicted of those they’d make him stay away from all schools.”

“It makes me furious that we can’t have a say so about this matter.”

Melanie handed her back the paper. “Well, it certainly seems that you’ve done everything you can do.”

“Thank you,” she said primly.

After that, even Donna accepted that she wasn’t going to find any legal restrictions, and the other staff said nothing. If anything, they found that he exerted a good influence on the kids. He was polite to the teachers and staff and other than his appearance, did nothing that would make him seem gloriously rebellious. His cordial manner contrasted with his biker colors and the nasty growl his bike made. If it hadn’t been for the bike and his attire, he’d be a model parent. Even if he was an uncle.

That first day, when Greg grabbed Carly by the waist and spun her around, he plunked her down on his bike. The other kids had watched enviously. Now, every day some of the children would gather round.

“That’s a cool bike,” one said.

Perched on the seat, a proud Carly surveyed her rapt audience. “It’s a Harley-Davidson Heritage Springer,” she told them, looking officious. “It has a 1550 cc engine with Samson fishtail pipes, which is why it sounds so cool.”

Greg laughed at her. “You stay put and hold court for a minute while I take care of some business.”

“What business?” she laughed. “Our business is fixing motorcycles.”

Melanie eyed him curiously as he walked up to her and faced her, his soft eyes capturing her. “Hello again, Melanie. I hope I’m not out of line, but I wanted to thank you for being so good to Carly. She adores you.”

The praise caught her off balance. “Thank you.”

“Beyond that, I’ve enjoyed our brief chats.”

“So have I.”

“Wonderful, because I’d like to get to know you better. I’d like you to get to know me better.”

With her mind reeling and her heart suddenly pounding, she stared at him. “Did you have something in mind?”

“I’d like to take you for a ride.”

“A ride?”

He used his thumb to point over his shoulder. “On my bike. Tomorrow is Saturday. The weather report says it is supposed to be a gorgeous day. If you don’t have plans, I’d like to take you on a ride up the coast to a little place I know that has the world’s best burgers.”

His intense look as he waited for her to answer made her wonder if he sensed the combination of excitement and nervousness the idea aroused in her. “I’ve never been on a motorcycle before.”

“Wonderful. I can introduce you to something new.”

“I mean, I don’t know what to do.”

“For the passenger, there isn’t even a learning curve. You just sit comfortably behind me and hold on.”

Her head spun. Greg wanted her on the back of his bike. She knew enough to know that when she held on, it meant having her arms wrapped around his waist as they tore through the streets. The idea of putting her arms around him sounded wonderful but his invitation also embarrassed her. It seemed silly, but it bothered her to have to admit to him that she had no plans for the weekend at all. “I don’t know.”

“I understand that it’s sudden, unfairly short notice, but the idea just occurred to me. So if you can’t, I understand, but if you have something booked that you can cancel, I would love to show you how this place looks from a powerful motorcycle. It’s quite an experience.” He winked. “It would even help you understand Carly a bit better—her love of motorcycles, if nothing else.”

There was more than a grain of truth in that. “I do have some things…”

“Organize your day.” He handed her a business card. “See if you can’t move things, condense things, so we can have an hour or two. Day or night, morning or afternoon, whatever suits you.”

It bothered her that part of her reluctance was her own internal stereotype of bikers as untrustworthy, dangerous men who didn’t respect women. But going with him during the day should be safe enough. And they’d be in public and she desperately wanted to taste what it was like. “I’ll see what I can do, but you’d have to have me back at my place at whatever time I say.”

He broke out in a smile. “Of course. You call the shots. If you don’t like the place I take you, we’ll go where you want, except a drive-through place. I hate fast food. And you’d be delivered to your door at the time you choose.”

“Then I’ll give you a call in the morning and let you know.”

“You can call me anytime from this moment on and I’ll be delighted to hear from you.”

She watched him walk away, admiring his build, his confidence. She’d heard prison broke a man or made him worse. Greg seemed unaffected. He couldn’t be totally unaffected by years behind bars, but he didn’t show any ill effects.

As the bark of the motorcycle told her he’d shifted gears (she’d learned that from Carly) and they disappeared, she looked at the card.

Greg “Wrench” Jones

Mechanic

The Chosen Few motorcycle club

At the bottom was his phone number.

She held the card tight, pressed between thumb and forefinger as if she expected it to slip away.

Turning to go into the classroom and get her things she caught sight of Brian heading out. She stepped in front of him. “I’d like to know if your father read my note, Brian.”

“Yes Ma’am.”

“Did he send me a note?”

“No.”

“Did he say anything when he read it?”

He nodded.

“What did he say?”

A pained look crossed his face. “I’ll get in trouble…”

“It’s just you and me, Brian. Please tell me what he said and I promise that no one else will know.” She watched him struggle with her request. “It’s okay, Brian, no matter what he said.”

Brian nodded. “He said, ‘fuck that bitch.’” Then he stood stock still as if waiting for lightning to strike.

“Thanks for telling me, Brian. I guess you should go on home.”

He darted off without another word, leaving Melanie frustrated. Monday she would think the situation through from the top. There had to be some other way to get to the man and make him see what he was doing to his son.

Before then, however, she was going on her first motorcycle ride, unless she chickened out. The prospect frightened her a little, but at the same time it had her practically giggly. She tried to imagine being with him on his bike, heading down the freeway on a sunny Saturday. There would be millions of people and cars on the road—there always were in LA. Of course, Murphy’s Law being what it was, she considered the odds of them riding past Donna Turnbull had to be extremely good. The idea made her laugh.

Things just worked out that way more often than people knew. Lateral synchronicity, it was called and it worked for good and ill, but the more she thought about it, the better she liked the idea. She had no idea whether spooking Donna that way would be good or bad, but it sure as hell would be fun.

* * *

Late Saturday morning, under a startlingly clear California sky, a dream came true and Melanie felt as if she’d suddenly come alive, awakened from a coma. Every fiber of her being tingled with excitement. In this dream she found herself sitting on the back of a mechanical monster that throbbed with unbelievable power as it tore down the asphalt ribbon called Pacific Coast Highway, following the coastline. It was a waking dream. Better than that, it was actually happening.

Dressed in blue jeans and a sweatshirt, she was on that bike with her arms wrapped around Greg Jones’ waist, her helmeted head against his hard back. Off to the side she watched the ocean, the beach, the entire world swirl into a maze of color. A warm wind brushed over her skin; the pulse of Greg’s heart pounded loud in her ear, and she had been transported to some different world where everything was startlingly fresh and new.

At first, the abrupt shifting of their weight on the motorcycle as he turned or changed lanes alarmed her. She thought they’d fall over at any moment, but soon she realized his movements, those shifts, weren’t sudden at all. Exposed to the elements, with the road flying by inches below them, they felt that way, but everything she’d learned about Newton actually worked, and the big bike stayed upright. Soon she calmed down, grew accustomed to the sensations and quickly fell under the spell of the rhythm of being on a motorcycle at speed. The intoxicating vibrations of the throbbing engine and those two big tires covering miles of blacktop thrilled her.

How have I lived so long without trying this?

Even now she couldn’t escape the comic idea of them flying down the road and passing Donna Turnbull in her green Volvo, and slowing down to wave at her.

“What on earth were you doing on a motorcycle, Melanie?” she’d hear on Monday. “And with that… biker?”

Now she relaxed as the bike took her up the coast and speed had never felt so wonderful. The question was where was Greg taking her? More to the point, what was she letting herself in for? Being with a man like this was uncharted territory. Although he was polite, almost refined, she was smart enough to know that different subcultures, like bikers, invariably had different codes of conduct. And she knew nothing about them beyond the barbarians the movies made them out to be. Certainly Greg was more aggressive, more confident than most men she knew, but beyond that? Well, he was also an ex con. A man who’d been punished for a major crime—someone who had taken a life. But soldiers took lives and no one thought that meant they were a danger.

Melanie had her doubts, her anxieties. She also knew there was only one way to find out what Greg was really like. It meant taking a gamble, but Greg had surprised her by offering her a baby step, a chance to taste spending some time with him, experiencing something that he thought was wonderful—the open road on a motorcycle.

Already she knew she would enjoy doing a lot of this. It was truly glorious. If Greg turned out to be… well, she if she liked him, then she would enjoy spending a lot of time with him, a lot of time on the back of his bike, and eventually in his arms. His presence, this nearness, made her heart pound faster.

She’d dreamt about him that night. She woke during a vivid dream in which he was making passionate love to her. She didn’t normally put a lot of stock in dreams, but it had seemed so good, so real, that she couldn’t ignore just how wonderful it made her feel.

Some of that was loneliness—she’d been alone, celibate for a long time. And, for her, dreaming wasn’t the same as doing, of course. And yet… Clearly he liked her, or he wouldn’t have asked her to come on the ride. And she liked him enough to want to see where it led or she wouldn’t be where she was right now. The tricky part was what came next. There were questions that could only be answered once she was spending time with him in his own element. Did he see her as a conquest? Was the goal simply to get her relaxed enough with him that she’d let him fuck her? There was the prospect that having sex with someone like her got him points with his club. But it was unfair of her to assume that he wasn’t genuinely interested in her, and wanted to get to know her.

So she’d taken this gamble, this tentative step into his world. And she was glad.

How many baby steps do you take before you try to walk toward a goal? And how well did you ever get to know a person anyway? She’d slept with men she thought she knew, men that came from her world, only to find that she didn’t know them at all, that she’d misjudged their intentions. Others had been disappointments in other ways. There were no guarantees, no sure bets.

Greg downshifted and turned the bike up a hill. She felt the G forces as he leaned the bike and powered back up, getting up to speed and then shifting back to the higher gear, his movements as graceful as those of a dancer in a ballet. She was swept up in it, and felt herself precariously swept up in her feelings for this powerful man even more than the sensations of riding the bike.

Heady stuff, Mel.

* * *

In the warm afternoon Greg stopped the ride at a small cafe perched on the end of a pier, out over the water. They watched as seagulls and terns circled and played, and a one-legged seagull stood on a pier piling, looking unconcerned, almost regal, as they ate hamburgers and onion rings at a table under an umbrella.

Melanie felt carefree… as if they had forever ahead of them and no concerns. She hadn’t felt that way in a long time. Too long. It made her want to stay inside the bubble of that moment.

Actually, her feeling was of being carefree and also wanted—sexually. She ate her meal aware of the delicious look Greg was giving her. His pale blue eyes watched her every movement with rapt attention. He was wondering too. It pleased her that he was also trying to determine what would happen next. She knew it as certainly as she knew how to breathe, that he’d brought her here with no plan, but discovery. He drove her to this place, telling her how great the food was, and she’d found everything fresh and delicious. With his intense and intensely flattering focus on her, she wondered if he even tasted his food. It was all exciting and slightly embarrassing. It also assured her that she wasn’t imagining the electricity she felt running between them.