Page 41 of The Tiger in the Sack

He began grooming his left paw.

“I mean it this time.”

He switched to the right paw.

I set down the helmet. Picked up my own. Checked the time.

I was going to have to take an extra long shower, and take my sweet time getting ready if I was going to avoid the tea party going on in my living room until my date.

I mean my ride.

With Clover Freeman.

Fuck, I hope she didn’t murder me when she found out I was “Cheerleaders with junk in their trunk are really hot” guy.

The Rhinehaus looked the way it always looked in the early evening, the old brick going warm gold in the last of the light, the kind of building that looked like it had always been there and always would be.

She was already outside, right by the tree where we’d met.

Jacket, boots, arms loosely crossed, standing on the sidewalk looking like a snack I wanted to eat right up. She was watching me pull up with an expression I couldn’t read through my visor, which was the same problem I’d had all afternoon and apparently wasn’t going away.

There was something about how she was standing.

I couldn’t name it. It wasn’t the nerves I’d expected, the first-ride energy that most people had when they were about to get on a motorcycle for the first time with someone they’d only known from a tree. It was something more settled than that. Considered. Like she’d already made a decision and was watching to see if what happened next confirmed it.

I really hoped whatever it was included me and her on a bike, her arms around my waist, her thighs against mine.

I pulled up. Cut the engine. Got off the bike with her helmet in my hand.

She looked at it.

I held it out.

She took it, both hands, and glanced down at it for a second before she looked back up at me, at my helmet, at where my face wasn’t. I thought about Jules on the couch and the consent speech and the introduction threat and the fact that I was going to tell her tonight, I was going to tell her, I just needed to find the right moment on the ride and I was going to.

“Ready?” I said.

She looked at me for one more beat with that expression I couldn’t read, and smiled.

COOL RIDER

CLOVER

Ireally wanted to be wrong about Kingman being Cat Daddy.

I was already standing on the sidewalk in front of The Rhinehaus when he pulled up with a pink helmet in his hand. The fact that it was pink did something to my chest that I was not going to examine right now because I was busy being a woman with evidence and a plan.

The plan was to get on the bike, give him the whole ride to tell me the truth, and see what happened. I was only like... ninety percent sure it was Isak Kingman. That last ten percent was why I was getting on the bike and going for this ride. Yep. Uh-huh. That was why. It was.

The fact that he’d thought about me enough to pick a color was a little bit adorable. I hadn’t expected that.

He held it out and I took it and turned it over in my hands. Solid, probably expensive. Good thing I’d twisted my hair into two strands so the helmet wouldn’t be uncomfortable

I put it on and he stepped closer. His hand came up and grabbed the chin of the helmet, tilting it, tilting me toward him. Whoo boy. That melted me at the knees a little bit.

Girl. Get a hold of yourself.

I had approximately one second to get my body in check, and then he was doing up the chin strap with both hands and I was looking up at his visor from very close range.