Page 16 of Doc's Obsession
The car rolled into the lot and stopped. The engine cut. I watched Valentina through the windshield, watched her eyes sweep the row of bikes, the brothers, the bar, the compound stretching out behind it. Watched her face tighten as she calculated what she was walking into and decided it didn’t matter, because she was a Carrington and this was a biker bar and the math was self-evident.
She got out. Pearls, heels, the cream wool coat from last night. Richard followed. Pressed charcoal suit, no tie, the casual version of power that cost more than the dressed-up one. They closed their doors simultaneously, a choreographed move they probably didn’t even know they did, two people who’d been performing in sync for thirty years.
Valentina’s eyes found Evie. Then me, standing beside her. Then the arm I slid around Evie’s waist, my hand settling on her hip, my thumb tracing a slow circle through the fabric of her shirt.
“Genevieve,” Valentina said. The same voice from last night, the one that expected compliance the way it expected oxygen. “I hope you’ve had time to think about...”
I had no intention of letting her finish her sentence. Instead I kissed Evie.
I turned her toward me, cupped the back of her neck with one hand, and kissed her the way I’d kissed her last night when she came to my room.
Deep. Open. Obscenely slow. I licked into her mouth and she gasped against me, her hands grabbing my shirt, and I took the sound and swallowed it and gave her my tongue in return. She met it with hers, wet, hot, and I let my hand slide from her neck down the length of her spine to her ass. Gripped. Pulled her hips flush against mine, her body arching into me with a roll that was pure instinct and absolutely visible from where her parents were standing. My other hand tangled in her hair, tilting her head back so I could kiss her deeper, and she moaned, quiet but audible, a sound that had no business existing outside a bedroom.
I let it go on. Long enough for it to become unmistakable. Long enough for Valentina’s sentence to die in the air. Long enough for Richard Carrington to look at the gravel, the sky, the mountains, anything that wasn’t his daughter being kissed senseless by a man with tattooed arms and his hand on her ass in the parking lot of a biker bar. Long enough that when Razor muttered “damn,” under his breath, it carried.
When I finally pulled back, a string of wet still connected our mouths for a split second before it broke. Evie’s eyes were glazed, her lips swollen, her breathing ragged. She looked at me with an expression that was halfwhat the hell are you doingand halfdon‘t you dare stop.
I kept my arm around her. Turned to the Carringtons with the warmest smile I had in me, which was considerable when I wanted it to be.
“Mr. Carrington. Mrs. Carrington.” I extended my free hand. Richard stared at it. “I’m Doc. I should have introduced myself properly last night, that was rude of me. I’m Evie’s partner.”
The word landed like a grenade in a library. Valentina’s face went through three expressions in two seconds, horror, revision, and a forced neutrality that didn’t quite make it to her eyes. Richard didn’t take my hand. I left it out there for exactly long enough to make the refusal obvious, then pulled it back, unbothered.
“We’ve been meaning to reach out, actually,” I said. Conversational, easy, like we were at a neighbourhood barbecue. “Evie talks about you both all the time. I’d love to come up to Denver sometime, meet the family properly. Maybe dinner? I’ve got a bike, so we’d ride up, if that’s okay. Evie loves the bike. Don’t you, babe?”
“Love it,” Evie said. Her voice was even but I could feel her shaking against me. Not from fear. She was trying not to laugh.
“It’s great, who knew I’d be into bikes now?” She said, still trying to contain herself now she realised what my plan was.
I was enjoying this. I shouldn’t have been, but I was. The Carringtons’ faces were a masterclass in controlled panic, two people watching their worst-case scenario assemble itself in real time. “I was also thinking, when we make it official, the boys would love to ride up for the ceremony. Full formation. Chrome, leather, the works. I know a few of the guys have been talking about what to wear. Razor was asking about dress codes, weren’t you, Razor?”
From behind us, Razor’s voice, perfectly timed. “I was thinking leather kilts.”
“He’s joking,” I said. “Probably. But listen, the point is, we’d want to do this right. I know family is important to you. It’s important to us too.” I gestured behind me at the compound, the lodge, the row of workshops. “We’ve got plenty of room up here if you ever want to visit. Fresh mountain air, great bar, the boys are excellent company. Mrs. Carrington, do you ride? I could getyou on one of the smaller bikes. It’s a beautiful road up through the pass.”
Valentina looked at me like I’d suggested she eat glass.
“I’d hate to think we got off on the wrong foot just because of a misunderstanding,” I continued, warm, relentless, giving them absolutely no room to breathe. “Family should be close. And I want you to know, Evie’s been so happy here. Haven’t you, babe?” Evie’s mother seemed to visibly recoil in horror every time I used the word babe.
“Never happier,” Evie said. Perfectly composed. Still not laughing, but it was costing her.
Richard Carrington was looking at me the way a man looks at a problem he can’t solve with money. His mouth was tight, the controlled stillness of someone biting down on words that wanted out. Beside him, Valentina had gone a specific shade of pale that I recognized from a medical standpoint as mild vasovagal response. Her brain was sending blood to her vital organs because it had classified this situation as a threat.
Good. It was.
I could see the calculation happening behind Richard’s eyes. The spreadsheet running in real time. Their daughter, in leather, on a bike, showing up at the Cherry Hills Country Club Christmas party with a man who had full sleeve tattoos and and assumption that I’d have a criminal record despite actually being ex-military. Showing up at charity galas, at dinners, at the places where their reputation lived. Introducing him.This is my partner, Doc. He‘s in a motorcycle club. They‘re wonderful people, you‘d love them.
That was the nightmare. Not losing Evie, because they’d already lost Evie the morning she walked out. The nightmare was gaining me. Gaining all of this, welded permanently to their name, visible, undeniable, impossible to explain away at brunch.
“This is absurd,” Valentina said. Her voice had gone thin. “Genevieve, you can’t possibly be serious about this. This... person. This place. You have a life at home. A real life. People who care about you.”
Evie stepped forward. Out from under my arm. One step, then two, until she was standing between me and her parents with the morning sun on her face and the compound at her back.
“You don’t care about me,” she said. Quiet. Clear. The voice of a woman who’d found the words and wasn’t going to waste them. “You care about what I represent. You care about the name, the image, the perfect Carrington daughter who smiles at dinners and picks the right husband and never, ever causes a scene.”
Valentina opened her mouth. Evie kept going.
“Doc served his country. He spent years putting soldiers back together in places you can’t point to on a map. He’s more of a man than any of the men you paraded through that dining room, and the fact that you can’t see that because he wears leather instead of a suit tells me everything I need to know about your standards.”
