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She looked up at him, and he could see the hurt in her eyes. Still, she didn’t try to remove his hands from her shoulders. “It seemed like you were real comfortable without me when I found you.”
“Okay, look, if you’re going to come live with me and be mine, you have to learn to talk to me when you have a problem, instead of disappearing on me. That wasn’t my party. My team brought it to my room. Yes, I was partying with them. I was happy because I’d found you, and we’d just won a game. No, I was not with those women. That was a matter of insanely bad timing.”
“How can I believe you’re not lying to me right now?”
“Because I’m not.”
Her eyes softened as she recognized those words and the tone in his voice, and he knew she did believe him. Then, suddenly her entire expression shifted, and her head snapped back for a moment. “Wait, did you say come and live with you?”
“What?” he asked. “Did you think I’d let the unemployed mother of my child live in squalor like this?”
That was when a very familiar tone of voice said from behind him, “Squalor?”
He and Maggie laughed, but Stacy stood there holding two cartons of ice-cream.
“Oh no, we’re talking about this,” she said.
“I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night,” Bryan said.
Maggie rested her head against his chest and sighed. All at once, that feeling returned of everything being right.
He’d never let her go again.
THE END
Billionaire Biker
Aimee walked down the line of tables in the diner she worked, a half-filled pot of coffee in either hand. One handle was black, the other orange. She smiled to each group of people at the tables, offering to refill any coffee cups she found.
She was well known in this place, and people were always happy when she came around. Big smiles, big hellos. It didn’t surprise her. She’d gotten used to such welcomes after having worked in this place for so long.
She grew up in this small town. Hah! Town. If one could call it that. It was a pit-stop on this particular stretch of highway. They had a grocery store, and a mechanic, and a bank, in addition to a few other things, but that was about it. There were RV hookups and mobile home parks around the area off a few side streets, but that was about it. Everyone in this place knew one another. It was like a shared nightmare, and one that Aimee knew from very early on that she’d never escape from it.
The smile on her face was plastic, the grit from the desert outside stuck to her teeth. Every time she closed her mouth, she crunched on small flecks of dirt from the air. After helping all of those that she could, she replaced the coffee pots back on their burners and picked up her water that she kept under the counter. A quick sip washed the grit from her mouth. The cool water quenched her throat, the cold washing down and splashing into her stomach, spreading out for a moment. It was so hot that the sensation was fleeting at best.
A car pulled in. It was nice, black, a sedan. The rims damn near sparkled. It was a city car if she ever saw one. The city wasn’t more than fifty miles away, but for Aimee, it may as well have been five-thousand. She’d never been in her life, and didn’t suspect she’d ever get the chance to. She’d been born in this armpit of a town, and as far as she was concerned, she was going to die here. She put on that plastic smile again and grabbed up a few menus.
“Two of you?” she asked the couple.
The man and woman smiled at her, the man holding up two fingers to confirm her guess. She held the smile as she guided them to a table.
Going through the specials were rote. They never changed. There was nothing special about the specials. The roar of a motorcycle pulled her eyes up almost against her will. The beast of a machine billowed black smoke like something out of a hellish novel. Riding atop was the very picture of manly beauty. She’d never had the reaction physically that he gave her. Just looking at him made her heart beat, her head swim, her stomach tighten up.
She verbally stumbled over the specials as her mind struggled to stay on topic. On a though — any thought! Aimee closed her eyes and shook her head for a second to try and get a clear hold on her thoughts.
The woman at the table made a disgusted rasping noise in the back of her throat. “I hate those things. Nothing but noise pollution.”
“And actual pollution, look at that thing. That can’t be legal.”
Aimee swallowed, trying to regain some semblance of conscious thought, and she pointed across the street with the tip of her pencil. “He’s pulling into the mechanic’s place. Must be something wrong with it.”
“Well what’s wrong with it is that it’s a motorcycle.”
The man laughed. “No fixing that.”
“No there is not.”
Aimee blew right by the conversation altogether, knowing that she couldn’t believably agree, and disagreeing with them would mess with her tip. “So can I start you off with something to drink?”
