Page 22 of Riot’s Revenge

I turned toward the door before Riot’s voice stopped me.

“Maria.”

I looked back over my shoulder. Riot leaned one arm against the bar, watching me with that same look that always made my brain stop functioning properly.

“You working tonight?”

I narrowed my eyes slightly. “Maybe.”

A slow grin spread across his face.

Ghost made a dramatic choking sound behind him. “Oh, he’s gone,” he announced loudly to the room. “Riot’s actually fuckin’ gone.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Riot muttered without taking his eyes off me.

Then he looked back at me again, expression softer this time. “I’ll see you tonight, yeah?”

The way he said it made warmth spread straight through my chest before I could stop it. Which was exactly why I immediately started backing toward the door. “Bye.”

Ghost shouted after me before I escaped outside. “Don’t forget your boyfriend, Nurse!”

“I hate all of you!” I yelled back through the rain while the clubhouse exploded into laughter behind me.

10

RIOT

I was halfway through rebuilding the carburetor on one of the club bikes when Shadow found me.

The afternoon sun beat down on the yard behind the clubhouse, turning the concrete hot beneath my boots. Grease coated my hands and stained the rag hanging from my back pocket, but the work wasn’t holding my attention the way it normally would.

Fixing bikes helped clear my head. It gave me something simple to focus on. Metal made sense. Engines made sense. You found the problem, fixed it, and moved on. People were a different story, especially women.

Every few minutes my thoughts drifted somewhere they had no business going.

Back to Maria, to the way she’d smiled at me the last time I’d seen her.

I tightened a bolt harder than necessary before swearing under my breath and forcing myself to loosen it again. It was exactly why I avoided complications.

Women were supposed to be simple. A few hours together. Some fun. Then everyone went their separate ways. Yet I found myself wondering whether she’d eaten that day. Whether she was buried beneath textbooks preparing for those exams she never stopped talking about. Whether she’d remembered to sleep or if she was still running herself into the ground trying to do everything at once. The thoughts irritated the hell out of me. Which was probably why I nearly jumped when Shadow’s voice sounded from behind me.

“Heard you had a visitor.”

I glanced up.

Shadow stood a few feet away, arms folded across his chest, studying me with the same look he gave prospects when he suspected they were about to do something incredibly stupid.

“Yeah.” I tossed the wrench onto the bench and wiped my hands on the rag.

Shadow was silent for a moment. “Don’t make a habit of bringing strangers around club business.”

I leaned back against the workbench. “She wasn’t around club business.”

“No?” His eyebrow lifted slightly.

“No.”

His gaze stayed on me a few seconds longer before he nodded. “The less she knows, the better.”