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The other two men strapped on helmets and mounted their bikes. The engines roared to life, the vibration wrapping Charley in a Harley hug.
A moan of pure pleasure escaped her mouth. She chewed her lower lip as she watched them ride away.
The man called Dog chuckled. “You like bikes.”
Charley glanced at him, and he wore a wide grin. He extended his hand. “Give me your keys. After I change your flat, we’ll go for a ride.”
Her heart mimed a tap dance. Another ride on a motorcycle. A long-held dream come true.
“F-fob,” she stammered. Good grief, where had the sudden stutter come from?
“What?”
Tamping down her nerves, she managed to utter the words. “Fob. Not a key. I just have to stand near the car for it to unlock.”
He circled to the trunk, opened it, and stood quietly surveying the contents. He glanced up with a grin. “You plannin’ for Armageddon?”
Charley cocked her head. “What do you mean?”
“You got something for every emergency in here. Hardly room for the spare.”
Charley’s face heated. “I legacy from my dad. He wanted me to be ready for anything.”
Dog smirked and shoved aside her junk, pulled up a trap door Charley barely remembered, and hauled out a small tire, leaning it against the Camry. He rummaged in the compartment some more and found a jack and lug wrench. Armed with his supplies, he crouched by the flat.
Charley searched her mind for something to talk about to drown out the staccato heartbeat in her ears. “He called you ‘Dog,’ Your friend, I mean.”
“Yep,” he said, tilting his head to look under the vehicle and shoving the jack into place. “Short for ‘Mad Dog.’”
“Mad Dog? Did they name you that? Do they hate you or something?”
He barked a laugh, the sound deep and gravelly, as he shoved the lever into the jack. He eyed her as he pumped up the car, the jack clicking in the warm summer air and the chassis groaning as it left the ground. “It’s actually a compliment. Got the name after a fight. Guess I wouldn’t stop, even after the guy was down.” He stared into the dark and then frowned. “Bastard deserved worse than he got.”
Charley’s chest constricted. Maybe the violence on the TV show wasn’t all Hollywood drama. She took a step back, and her fingers tightened around her dead phone, like it would be some help.
He stopped moving the lever and grasped the wrench. Charley had a sudden flash of Daddy teaching her to change a tire. He’d wanted to prepare her for emergencies like this. But the first time she’d tried to change a tire, she’d found thatthe air wrench at the dealership had put the lug nuts on too tight, and she couldn’t move them. After that, she’d joined AAA.
Daddy would be appalled at what was happening now.
Dog fit the wrench on the first nut and grabbed the opposing ends of the tool. Just a flex of his biceps and it was spinning. Hand over hand, he twirled the wrench until the nut fell to the asphalt, then he moved to the next. Four more and he slipped off the tire, his muscles swelling as he dropped it to the ground. The tattoo on his arm, an ornate rendition of a grim reaper, had a sheen of sweat covering it. Its macabre grin made Charley shudder.
“Why a grim reaper?” she asked and then shut her mouth with a pop. That might have been rude. Crap, would it make him mad?
He picked up the little tire and slid it into place. “A reminder. Death can come at any time.”
Charley tightened her fist. She didn’t need a reminder. Daddy’s unexpected death was with her every day. “I suppose that’s true for all of us, but I try not to dwell on it.”
He stared at her, his expression intense. “In my world, it pays to never forget.”
His world. A world so separate from hers she had never seen this man or any of his club members before tonight though she’d visited Edwards many times. A world so violent it was not only okay to beat a man after he was down, but he got a nickname for it.
Charley wanted to feel repulsed, but somehow, she couldn’t. A different kind of violence had touched her life. Her mother’s aggressive cancer and her daddy’s heart attack had been vicious in their way. Savage enough to kill.
Dog gave her a half-smile and returned to his task. Suddenly, grief pummeled Charley from all sides, and she needed the answer to a question that was burning its way through her brain. She squatted beside him as he finger-threaded the nuts back into place.
“How many times have you faced death?” she asked, surprised at the hush in her voice.
He turned to her, his face only inches away, his expression tight. “Enough times to know where I stand.”
