AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ryker
As soon as the new girl showed up to work, he had to practically beat the guys off with a stick. You would have thought that none of them had ever seen a pretty girl before. He led Harlow back to his office, needing for her to finish filling out the paperwork so that she could legally and officially start.
“I’m sorry about all of them,” he said as she sat down in the chair in front of his desk.
“Are they always like that?” she asked.
“Unfortunately, they are usually like that. They’re kind of pigs,” he said, crossing his eyes to make her giggle. What was it about this woman that made him want to be silly enough to make her laugh? “Sorry,” he said, “just being honest with you.”
“Well, I appreciate that,” she said. “As for the pigs out there, I think that I’ll be able to handle them.” He wasn’t too sure that she had any idea what she was taking on with his club, but he’d knock some heads together if he needed to, in order to get the guys to behave. “What did you call me in here for?” she asked.
“Well, I thought I’d give you a tour, since we didn’t do that earlier, and I also need you to fill out these forms,” he said. He handed her the tax form and a few other things that he was required to hand over to her as his new employee.
“Oh,” she said. “I’ve never really filled out one of these tax forms before.”
“Not even with your other employers?” he asked.
“Um, no,” she said. “They usually just did it all for me.”
“I can help you with it if you’d like,” he offered.
“That would be great, Ryker,” she agreed. “Thank you.” He sat down next to her and God, she smelled so good. Harlow had changed into even tighter jeans if that was possible, and a skimpy shirt that showed off her belly when she took the paperwork from him. He needed to get himself in check and remember that she was his employee and nothing else. Fucking his new employee wasn’t the best practice, especially when he was hoping to hire some more women to come in as waitresses to entice his male clientele to spend a little more time at the bar—and money. That would be the only way that he’d be able to crawl out of the hole he’d dug himself with the loan shark.
“So, you put your personal information here,” he said. “Name, address, social security number.” He pointed to the form, and she started to fill it out. “Here you just mark the box,” he said.
“I file single, so this box?” she asked.
“Yep,” he said. He walked her through the bottom half of the form, and she finished filling it out. “Great, now I just need to make a copy of your driver’s license. The rest of the paperwork is yours to take home and look over when you have time.”
“Sure,” she said. “I did mention that I have a two-year-old at home, right?” Ryker laughed and took her driver’s license from her.
“You did mention that,” he said. He took a copy of her license and handed it back to her. Ryker quickly looked over the paperwork that he’d gotten from her and noticed her date of birth.
“You’re only twenty-one?” he asked, quickly doing the math. She made him feel ancient at just thirty-four. She was so young, he wondered how she already had a two-year-old kid. Well, he knew how it happened, he just wondered what her story was.
“Yes, why?” she asked.
“You’re so young. I guess when I thought you said that you had a kid, that you were older,” Ryker said.
“I was only eighteen when I got pregnant with her. I met her father in high school and thought that he was the one. You know—foolish high school stuff?” she asked. He really had no idea since he dropped out of high school to help take care of his mother. He ended up getting his GED, but it was a shit ton of work. Now, he was struggling to run his new bar and wondered if he might need to take some college courses to help him out. Maybe some business classes or something equivalent.
“Sure,” he lied. “High school was crazy.” There weren’t many people that he shared his past with, and he wouldn’t start by telling the new girl his deepest, darkest secrets.
“Right,” she agreed. “So, I thought that I was in love with Craig and when I ended up pregnant, he promised to stick around to help me with the baby. He even convinced me to marry him.”
“He sounds like a good guy,” Ryker offered. “I thought you said that you were single on your W-2 form.”
“I am,” she said, carefully tucking her hair behind her ear on the right, seeming a bit nervous. “It’s a long story, really. He wasn’t the guy I thought he would be and well, long story short, we’re not together anymore.” He wanted to push her for more but knew that not giving her space was overstepping.
“Well, I’m sorry,” he said. “Sometimes things don’t turn out how we planned.”
“No, they don’t,” she agreed. “But that’s the past. I just want to move forward.” “How about that tour then?” he asked.
“That would be great. Thank you, Ryker,” she said. “This job means a lot to me.”
* * *
Ryker had shown her around the bar, concentrating on where she’d be working. She seemed to catch on quickly, even ignoring the bikers who were watching her like hawks. “I’ll show you the kitchen,” he said. He led the way to the back room and found Taz getting ready for the kitchen to open in the next half hour.
