Biker B*tch Read online

  He tugged on her chin until she looked him in the eye. She wanted to squirm away, but she didn’t. She could see any lust for her he’d let creep in fade away. His lips went flat, and he rubbed his chest.

  “Not going to happen, Carrots.” When her gaze dipped to his lap again, his grip tightened. “I’m twenty-three. He’s always that way.”

  He hadn’t really wanted her, and she’d hopped on him like every other girl in town. She knew her face was bright red and she wanted to climb into a corner and dematerialize. Or hit something. Smash him over the head with the wine bottle.

  He’d had sympathy for her, that she didn’t have anyone. Coming here tonight wasn’t an invitation to lose her virginity.

  No one wanted her.

  “You deserve better than some backwoods biker. You’re Ivy League, Carrots.”

  She clenched her jaw. That damned name was back. He saw her as the plucky little girl who followed him and his brother around. He would never see her as anything else. He’d let her use his hand for a few minutes, but he wouldn’t take her and let her leave town with one good memory.

  “No, I won’t. I want…I need you.”

  He cocked his head and said nothing.

  She pulled her chin out of his grip and tugged her dress up, trying to fight back the tears. Recent discovery: embarrassed tears were harder to resist than sad ones. She had to go before she lost it.

  She pushed against his stomach. “Please go.”

  “Carrots—”

  She stood up, looked him straight in the eye, and slapped his face. He stumbled back then, his face going slack.

  She picked up the bottle of wine and looked at it for a second before tucking it under her arm. She ran out of the barn without her shoes.

  When she was a few feet away, he said, “Wait a second. Don’t be such a baby.”

  Her vision clouded with rage. She spun and threw the bottle against the wood slats of the wall. It shattered and purple fluid streaked the whitewashed boards. Travis just stood there, didn’t even flinch. But from the look on his face, he thought she’d lost her mind.

  Maybe she had. Breaking the bottle deflated her ballooning anger, and she shuffled to her truck. She climbed into the cab and curled up in a ball. Only realizing then that she clutched his T-shirt along with the top of her dress.

  She put the fabric over her face and smelled him every time she had to take in air to fuel her sobs.

  Travis must have used the other door to exit the barn because she didn’t hear him leave.

  She didn’t move for the rest of her last night in California.

  2

  Now

  Skyler got out of her truck and took a deep breath of the crisp valley air. Sebastopol, California still felt like home. Little things like the way it smelled. The same barber shop stood next to the same diner, serving hot cakes and hot coffee along Main Street for as long as she’d been alive. The scent of incense and patchouli still emanated from the crystal shop a half-block away.

  Thank goodness, the woman behind the counter at the feed store was a stranger. Skyler might be able to avoid the town’s rumor mill for a little longer.

  Unlikely, but it would be a dream come true if everyone living in town a decade ago had left or died.

  “Let me know if I can help you find something,” the clerk said as she flipped some of her grey curls over her shoulder.

  Skyler still knew her way around. The shop was a preserved relic of the time when the Russian River Valley was rich with apple and plum orchards. All wood slat walls and a few piles of dust-covered grain bags strewn around for show. The orchards had all but disappeared when people discovered you could grow some of the best wine grapes in the New World from the area’s arid soil.

  She shopped for the essentials. Although she had most of what she needed in the old Airstream trailer, she still needed some girl gear. She noticed the feed store had started marking up prices. Probably capitalizing on the healthy flow of tourists who got stuck in gridlock traffic on their way to Healdsburg or the area wineries.

  She brought her purchases to the counter. The clerk flashed a friendly smile. “Are you visiting?”

  Skyler hesitated for a moment before deciding there wouldn’t be any harm in making pleasant conversation with a stranger.

  “Nope. Just moved here. I’m making wine on the old Travis plot.”

  “People have been chattering away about who bought that place. Merle Givens was just in here bitching about all the carpetbagging tech money snatching up a prime plot.”

  So much for her hopes about the town rumor mill.

  The engine of a bike roared as it came down Main Street. She smiled at the cashier, but her heart beat faster out of habit. Of course. Not twenty-four hours back in town before bikers show up. With her luck, it’d be Travis. Even a decade after last seeing him, her belly clenched at the thought of the last time. Of his hands on her, his words in her ear.

  Her app-building whiz kid of a best friend couldn’t have bought her a vineyard in Oregon. Probably because she’d found a way to hate every single property they’d looked at that wasn’t in Sonoma County. Maybe it was because she thought returning to her first home would prove she was over her shitty childhood and disastrous adolescence. Or perhaps she still wasn’t over her stupid high school crush on Abner Travis—it sure as hell was the only explanation for the way her heart beat so fast thinking of him now.

  The engine cut off in front of the store as she paid for her tampons, lip balm, and soap.

  She was also here out of necessity. It wasn’t like she’d had options outside of accepting the charity of her oldest and dearest friend. Especially after she’d told the vintner to the Queen of England that he had shit taste in Burgundy. He’d said that her wine tasted “Californian,” like it was an insult, but still. Her boss tossed her out on her ass as soon as the buyers left the chateau. She didn’t even know if she could retrieve the cases of wine from their cellars that she’d made with grapes she’d bought with her own money.

  The door opened and a pair of heavy boots made echoing sounds as someone walked across the ancient floorboards. She moved away from the counter, back to the aisle with lotion, gesturing at her torn-up hands as an excuse. She couldn’t know—for sure—that it was Travis, but the fluttering in her chest wouldn’t let her stay put. She had to leave.

  She peaked her head out of the aisle so she could get a good look at whoever it was. It was him. As though she’d conjured him by driving past the damned barn that morning, he sauntered right out of her hottest dreams over the past decade.

  He was turned away from her, but it was him. The way he walked was unmistakable. She’d remember his gait anywhere. It was long and loose and damn sexy. His backside had been fine when he was twenty-three. Ten years later, and he was still everything. She had never seen a more finely built male form in all her life.

  Travis headed straight for the beer. It figured his tastes hadn’t gotten more refined in a decade. But he was big and hard in all the right places. Turn around. I want to see your face.

  But she slid a little farther behind the magazine rack. She was dusty, disheveled, and menstrual. She needed time, mental preparation, and a blow dryer before she faced Travis for the first time since she’d slapped him across the face in a tantrum.

  He wore jeans that hugged him just right, a white T-shirt hanging out from underneath a leather jacket like the one she used to run her fingers all over when he hadn’t been looking. Over it, he wore a cut, the leather vest denoting he was a member of a motorcycle club. But patches didn’t belong to her father’s club—the Diablos Santos. The center patch was striking with two angels’ wings, one looking damaged. The top patch said, “Heaven’s Sinners,” and the bottom one said, “Sebastopol.”

  She couldn’t see whether he wore a “1-percenter” patch, marking him an outlaw. And part of her didn’t even want to imagine Travis as part of a criminal organization. He’d tried so hard to pull his brother out of the
Diablos when Isaac had joined up, even threatened to cut him off completely. The idea that Travis would leave the laws of society behind completely, that he would become a law unto himself, sent a shiver down her spine.

  The hippie at the register said, “How’s it going, Trav?”

  He turned his head and she could see the side of his face, half of his smile. Not enough.

  “Gracie-girl, I’m in a shit mood. I’m going to need all of these beers after I spend the rest of the day at the Foundry.”

  “What are you working on?”

  “Vintage Firebird. I’m working on re-tooling it into something for a client.”

  He would still smell like beer and motor oil. Her mouth watered.

  “This rich, Hollywood douche doesn’t even know what he has. Chevy could have made the thing run, but I don’t think this guy’s even a motorhead. He just wants to display it like a big swinging dick to his friends.”

  “I hate to think of some schmuck wrecking one of your masterpieces,” Gracie said.

  His hair was darker now. It probably would have hung to his shoulders if it weren’t slicked and pulled back. He’d shaved the sides.

  She glimpsed his work-roughened hands as he reached into the refrigerator for a six-pack. She could see from his profile that his face was just as gorgeous as she remembered. And he had a goatee now—almost as blond as his hair ten years ago.

  “When are you going to get on the back of my bike, Gracie-girl?”

  Gracie snorted. “Even if I wasn’t twenty years older than you, I know for a fact that you’ve had every pretty girl within a hundred miles on the back of your bike.” He put his hand to his heart, as if she’d wounded him physically.

  She saw his cheek curl up into a dimple underneath his goatee, and she knew she had to get out of there.

  She spared a thought for her abandoned feminine hygiene products before deciding she’d just have to go to the drug store in Santa Rosa.

  When she was a few feet from the front door, he said, “Whose stuff is this?”

  Skyler froze and scooted backward. She could turn around and act like a grown-up. Why did she care if he saw her looking like something the cat dragged through a vine row?

  “The redhead who hid behind the tabloids when you came in.”

  Nope. A power surge of adrenaline filled her. Instead of hiding from her childhood crush, she was running from a big scary animal—out to eat her and not in the fun way. She turned and ran for the front of the store, digging her truck’s keys out of her pocket, not even stopping when she knocked over a display of boxed quinoa.

  She didn’t know if he was chasing her, but she didn’t slow down until she got back to her truck. She turned the ignition, praying it would roll over the first time. She’d driven her baby cross-country twice, and it hadn’t stalled out on her yet, but the old truck sometimes took its time starting.

  Just as the ignition cranked over, she saw him burst through the door. “Carrots? Is that you?”

  Travis stared after Skyler’s truck for at least a full minute before he went back in the feed store for his beer.

  “I’ll get the lady’s purchase to her if you can bag it up.”

  Gracie narrowed her eyes at him. “I thought you were out of the wine business.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s making wine on your daddy’s old plot.” His stomach dropped. He’d sold the land to a holding company, and he couldn’t quite believe that the holding company had been Carrots.

  “That right?” She’d always planned to go to med school.

  “Like what you see, huh?” Gracie shook her head.

  He paused for a moment. Had to think about the answer to that question. Ever since she’d walked out of the barn ten years ago, he’d felt something uncommon for him—regret—whenever she crossed his mind.

  He wouldn’t take her virginity. Even an asshole like him had principles, which prevented him from deflowering a fragile, teenaged girl. But judging by the power she’d put into the slap she’d laid on him, he’d only succeeded in hurting her feelings. Maybe it would have been better had he just taken what she’d been offering. He rubbed his chest, thinking about hurting her and seeing her again now.

  Skyler Clark was something deep in his bones. She was part of his DNA. The fact that she’d come back—even after all that had happened—intrigued him more than he wanted to admit.

  “Nah. She’s just an old friend.” The words were like pebbles in his mouth.

  He paid for his beer and grabbed Skyler’s stuff then exited the store and put everything in the saddlebag of his bike.

  His Carrots had come home.

  3

  Riding onto the dirt road that led to his parents’ old house filled Travis with a sense of nostalgia—and foreboding. Before selling the place, he’d handed off its management to the foreman, Roy, and spent very little time there. It was filled with too many memories—of his brother and of Carrots.

  He dismounted his bike with her grocery bag and his six-pack. Maybe he’d just caught her off-guard, and they could laugh about their youthful foibles over a few beers and bury the hatchet.

  Skyler stood on the steps of an old Airstream trailer.

  Her only acknowledgement of his presence was a look out the corner of her eye. She stood with a ramrod-straight spine, like she was riding dressage instead of catching up with an old friend. Still mad.

  “You forgot your stuff.”

  She took the bag when he offered it, careful not to touch his hand. He wanted to walk up the steps to her trailer, but held back. Then, she waited a few beats. Hoping he’d leave, maybe.

  When he stayed put, she said, “With the vineyard for sale, I thought you’d moved away.”

  “Nope, once my pop died, Mom decided to sell.” He paused, trying to gauge how she felt about him being there. “You know I didn’t want to take it over. Never could stand that swill.”

  She looked at him then. He tried a shit-eating grin. That kind of smile always worked. Skyler had never been any different from any other woman when he turned on the grin. He’d rarely used it on her because he’d always known she had a crush on him, and he hadn’t wanted to encourage it. She was never meant for him. She still wasn’t.

  When she rolled her eyes and looked off into the distance, he pulled a bottle of beer out of the six-pack. He flipped the cap off with a tool from his keychain and offered it to her. She shook her head. He shrugged and took a long swallow.

  He broke the silence. “So, you bought the homestead.”

  “Nope, I’m making wine for a friend here.”

  “Good soil for pinot noir.” Sebastopol soil—rich in clay—produced better grapes than any of the surrounding areas in the valley. He had no interest in the wine business, but tales about the land were almost nursery stories around here.

  “The best.” She looked at him full on. He’d forgotten how damned pretty she was. Between the heavy fall of hair, the striking eyes, and dense freckles, she looked like she ought to be in an ad for shampoo or something. “That’s the only reason I’m back here. The grapes.”

  “I thought you came back for me, Carrots.” Maybe a joke would melt some of her frost.

  “You know my name.”

  He laughed, and the set of her jaw tightened. Just a little bit. And it made her even prettier somehow. He’d missed teasing her like this.

  “You manage to get your virginity situation taken care of with an attitude like that?” Since the shit-eating grin had failed, maybe teasing her would work.

  Her green eyes still told the whole story. They flashed and sparked when her temper was about to set fire. Like right now. And he was in the mood to throw on some gasoline.

  “Easily.” She lifted her dainty chin.

  “City boys like it when you throw attitude their way?”

  “They’re smart enough to take ‘yes’ for an answer.” She smirked, but blushed.

  “Carrots, it wasn’t right.”

 
She shrugged, and the smile left her face.

  Back then he’d wanted her so much it hurt. After his brother died, he tried to avoid being alone with her because he was afraid of what he would do. He’d constantly thought about peeling open those sweet, pale thighs and pounding into her until he forgot all the shit raining down around them.

  The worst part had been knowing that he was going to lose her, too. She was all ready to run across the country, so far away from him. So far away that he couldn’t protect her. So, he’d protected her the only way he knew how—he’d made sure that she could go to her fancy school without thinking that she had to rush back here to be with him. But part of it was selfish; he’d known that if he’d let himself have more, he wouldn’t have been able to let her go. Not without a lot of grief. And he’d had too much grief to deal with back then.

  She’d been the only beautiful thing in his life when Isaac died. But her father’s bullshit almost destroyed her. It would have been wrong for him to take what he needed from her back then. He just would have kept taking. And taking. She never would have left this town, and no one would have let her forget who her father was.

  He wasn’t so sure it was different now.

  They stood there in silence. He took another long pull of his beer. Her posture softened and she turned toward him. It gave him a chance to really look at her for the first time in a decade. At seventeen, she’d been like a foal, all long, awkward limbs. Now, he could tell, even under the work coat, that she had tits for days.

  She cocked her generous hip. “And it’s too late now, Abner.”

  “It was wrong…” As soon as he started explaining himself, he knew he was going to get stupid over her. Again. “I was fucked up, yeah?”

  “And I wasn’t?” He could hear the raw pain in her high, thready voice. It made his chest ache as though she’d punched him in the solar plexus.

  “I was supposed to treat you like my little sister.” At least, that was what his mom had told him. Until the night of her high school graduation, he’d succeeded. Not an easy task considering the way she’d looked at him, and how he’d wanted to map out her freckles with his tongue even then.