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Proving it, none of his worries were strong enough to make him change his mind. He was taking his Mistress to her first rally.
Though Tiger had offered to get them a hotel room, Skye’s online surfing of rally footage told her most bikers like him preferred to stay at campsites.
Skye would never offend his pride, but she could guess his current financial constraints. With him owning a business and property, and being a motorcycle enthusiast with a half-dozen bikes of value, she had no doubt he was financially comfortable. However, when business or personal needs shifted, cash poor periods could happen. His loss of time during the weeks after the attack, plus things his insurance might not have covered on his medical or to make the garage operational again, were two prime examples.
She was also almost certain he’d funneled extra money to the garage owners who’d taken on his employees during that transition. Taking care of his people.
Beyond those concerns, she suspected a big part of the rally experience was staying where a lot of the other bikers were. When she attended Dragon Con in Atlanta, she always stayed in one of the hotels that hosted the event, since it would be fully booked by attendees.
When she shared that thought with him, he informed her that no “geek” festival could be comparable to a bike rally. In response, she’d pulled up a Dragon Con montage video. Though he’d seemed a little dazed by the visual hordes of costumed attendees at panels, parades and social events, the camaraderie, the passion of a shared interest, was obvious enough he conceded her point.
So here they were, on their way to a rally campsite, a few hours’ drive from New Orleans. His mind was apparently on a track akin to hers, because he reached out and touched her knee, a concerned look on his face.
“If we get there and you change your mind about camping, we can still book a hotel. Since this is a small rally, relatively speaking, they shouldn’t all be sold out.”
“I have camped,” she informed him, typing it out.
He shot her a dubious look. “Yeah? When? Where?”
“When I was little,” she responded with dignity. She held up the screen beside the steering wheel so he didn’t have to shift his attention fully from the road. “My father made a tent in the backyard using blankets and clothesline. I don’t remember it, but there are pictures.”
She got his slow smile in response, his blue eyes flickering from the sunlight coming through the driver’s side window. “Forgive me,” he said gravely. “I didn’t realize you were such a seasoned outdoorswoman.”
He laughed as she gave him a rude gesture. “I did date a guy in college who took me camping,” she added. Why she’d brought that up, she didn’t know, but his laughter loosened her hold on things she normally didn’t talk about.
“That so? Where did you go?”
While she typed the response, he took a sip from his coffee travel mug and changed the GPS’s suggested route to keep them on the rural highways. “Just one of the national parks,” she showed him the screen. “He only took me once, but not because I wasn’t willing to do more.”
Tiger glanced her way. “There’s more to that story.”
She lifted a shoulder. She’d wanted Brit to take her on more adventurous hikes, the ones that went into deeper terrain. He’d balked.
“What if you got lost? You couldn’t call out for help. And what if your phone gets broken or the battery goes dead?”
She’d pointed out multiple ways to handle his concerns. She did carry a panic whistle. Plus, unless she’d broken both her legs, she could track her way to him using the sound of his voice, if he or other campers were calling out.
He’d hedged and made excuses. She’d been young, not yet experienced enough in recognizing the signs. Dating a mute girl had been a novelty, something that won him praise and admiration. Even some sympathy. But over time, the luster of that died and what he’d seen as intriguing and self-congratulatory, putting up with a mute girl, became burdensome.
The intrigue part wasn’t a dealbreaker. Every man, even every woman friend, had that at first. It was what the intrigue evolved into that mattered.
From the beginning, Tiger had taken everything about her in stride, even learning how to navigate communication with her differently than with Abby as if it was no big deal. Rather thananswering his implied question about Brit, she shared that last thought with Tiger and how much she appreciated it.
“It was easy.” The weathered skin creased around his eyes and mouth as he smiled. “I liked you. And the more I got to know you, the more I liked your style, how you didn’t make a big deal of it, didn’t get uptight. You put me at ease over doing the wrong thing, so I didn’t worry as much about making things harder for you.”
That was what had worried him. Making things harder for her. Which was why he’d offered the hotel setup.
“You going to tell me more about the camping prick? Because I can tell he was a prick.”
She relented with a half-smile, though she kept it high level. Tiger pursed his lips after he read it. He didn’t say anything for the next few miles, then he fished out a pad and pen from his center console, handing them to her.
“Do me a favor. Start making a list of guys who treated you like that, so I can go kick their asses.”
That deepened her smile, though she picked up the paper notebook with two fingers as if it was an alien object, looking at it from all angles and comparing it to her hi-tech phone.
Throughout the trip, she and Tiger talked about a wide variety of things. Travel and work experiences, opinions on movies and music. The challenges of supervising employees, since they had that in common. What it was like living in New Orleans. They teased one another a lot. Most all of it was light-hearted, but not because they were avoiding the heavy stuff. They were simply enjoying one another’s company.
No matter how long it took to type her responses, Tiger made her feel like they had all the time in the world. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d “talked” this much with anyone, even the TRA women.
