Motorcycle Man (Dream Man #4)(88)

“And inviting your friends who’ll wear short, tight skirts, show cle**age and strap on heels,” Hound added.

I mentally drew a line through the item on my to-do list that said I needed to go to Costco.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I muttered, smiling at Hound, thinking that Gwen, Elvira and the girls would like a hog roast. I thought this because, before my time, a few of them had already attended one or two. And I thought this because I’d spoken frequently on the phone and I’d twice shared drinks with my new posse since our first night. I had found they were pretty much anything goes types of gals. Though Mara was kind of shy and Tess was settled in home life with her and Brock’s two boys, still, they’d be up for it.

I heard Dog’s phone beep.

He pulled it out, looked at the display then his gaze cut through the group.

There it was. The alert vibe made its presence known and it did this when, with only that glance from Dog, the boys quit lounging around on my chairs and the beat up couch under the window, their faces got serious and they all started to make a move.

They’d been called to action.

“Business, Cherry,” Dog told me what I already knew. “Later.”

“Later,” I replied, lifting my hand to flick it out when the phone on my desk rang and I could see the display said “Tack Calling.”

I reached for it, calling out laters in response to laters as the men shifted out my door. They were still filing out when I flipped the phone open and put it to my ear.

“Hi, handsome,” I greeted.

“Hey, babe. Just checkin’ in to tell you you’re at your place tonight. I’ll meet you there but I’ll be late. Probably way late. Called Tug, he’s takin’ you home. Go to bed without me.”

“All right. So you’re saying I’ll wake up with you?”

“Do you ever not?”

“No,” I whispered, liking that.

“Then no.”

“Okay.” I heard the boys’ Harleys rolling out of the forecourt when I reminded him, “Tabby and I are shopping tomorrow.”

We were and I was looking forward to it.

Rush and I were forming a bond.

Tabby, on the other hand, was melding herself to me.

I didn’t question it and I didn’t mind it. Her relationship with her mother was strained (to say the least), something it wasn’t hard to notice at first because it was so out there, it was in your face. But since then I’d discovered it was more. From what I could tell, Naomi loved Rush and showed it. Her daughter, not so much. Why, I didn’t know. But it was happening.

Therefore Tabby had latched onto me as the woman in her life. I liked it because I liked kids so I just liked it but also because Tabby was sweet, charming and funny. I enjoyed her company immensely and we had a good time together. It helped that I was giving her that. It felt good. A good woman in a teenage girl’s life was important and it was cool as all heck she chose me.

Tabby was shopping for school clothes. I was still on my mission to dress like Brandi from Storage Wars, a show that Rush now taped for me so I didn’t miss it and caught up on episodes when I was at Tack’s. So I needed Brandi clothes. They were probably going to be one size bigger than what I normally wore but… whatever.

“Gotcha,” Tack replied.

“I’ll call her and tell her to come down the mountain and meet me at my place at ten.”

“Make it noon.”

“Malls open at ten, Tack.”

“And my woman’ll hit them after I have plenty of time to hit her.”

Oh.

Well then.

“Right,” I said into the phone through a smile. “Noon then.”

“Right. Noon,” he confirmed and I could hear his smile. “And do me a favor. Top drawer, back, in the dresser in my room in the Compound is an envelope. Go in, grab it and bring it home. I’ll need it tomorrow.”

A mysterious envelope.

Hmm.

“Got it,” I replied. “Top drawer, back.”

“Right, darlin’. You leavin’ soon?”

I looked at the bottom right corner of my computer screen to see it was ten after five. Part of being Tack’s woman, him being my boss and living the biker life with a biker, my eight to five workdays became nebulous. Weeks ago, Tack told me my responsibility was to get the work done, how I saw about doing that was up to me. It didn’t matter what the office hours said on the door, I went in when I went in, I left when I left and as long as the work got done, he didn’t care. If I didn’t happen to be there to take a call, customers would have to deal and I found they did. They knew they were dealing with bikers.

Bikers didn’t do office hours.

This I liked a lot. I didn’t take this freedom and f**k over Tack, Ride and thus Chaos. I got the job done and these days that meant actually getting it done without f**king up, finding or calling Tack to ask how I’d f**ked up and then redoing it properly. Sometimes Tack rolled in with me on the back of his bike at seven, seven thirty in the morning and I’d get started then. Other times, or, say, after energetic mornings it was closer to nine (or even ten). Sometimes, we swung out of the forecourt close to six at night. I worked until I didn’t need to anymore and if Tack wasn’t ready to go or he wasn’t around and I didn’t have my car, one of the boys took me home or I hung in the store, in the office, in the Compound common area or outside it with the boys.