Ride Steady (Chaos, #3)(13)

He stopped as I held my breath. He turned off the motorcycle and put down the stand before he swung a long leg with its heavy thigh and clunky boot off the bike.

Travis squealed.

Letting go of my necklace, he twisted in my arms and was pumping his fists excitedly.

I started breathing, feeling my heart beat fast, as the biker walked toward me, his sunglasses aimed my way, then he abruptly stopped with a strange jerk.

He studied me, his face impassive, standing like he was caught in suspended animation, and I studied him right back.

I didn’t know bikers. I’d never met a biker. Bikers scared me. They did this because they looked scary. They also did this because I’d heard they were scary. They had girlfriends who wore tube tops and they had knives on their belts and they drove too fast and too dangerously and got in bar brawls and held grudges against other bikers and did things to be put in jail and all sorts of stuff that was scary.

As these thoughts tumbled through my head, he came unstuck, started moving my way, and in a deep, biker voice, he called, “You got a problem?”

Travis squealed again, pumping his arms, then he giggled as the big biker guy continued coming our way.

And as he did, slowly, my eyes moved to the traffic. It was bumper to bumper, crawling along at what couldn’t be over twenty miles an hour. Looking at it, I knew I’d stood there for at least ten minutes, on the phone, then not, baby on my hip, car with a flat.

And not one single person stopped to help.

Not one.

I turned my head back to the biker who was now standing three feet away, his eyes downcast, his sunglasses aimed at my baby boy.

He’d stopped to help.

“I… have a flat,” I forced out.

The sunglasses came to me and I felt my head tip to the side when they did because I got a look at him up close.

And what I saw made me feel strange.

Did I know him?

It felt like I knew him.

I screwed up my eyes to look closer at him.

He was a biker. I didn’t know any bikers, so I didn’t know him. I couldn’t.

Could I?

“You got Triple A?” he asked.

I wished.

“No,” I answered.

He lifted a black leather gloved hand. “Give me the keys, stand back from the road. I’ll take care of it.”

He’d take care of it?

Just like that?

Should I let a biker change my tire?

Better question: Did I have any choice?

Since the answer to the better question was definite, I said, “I… well, that’s very kind.”

At this point, Travis made a lunge toward the biker. I struggled to keep him close but my boy was strong and he tended to get what he wanted, and not only because he was strong.

Just then, he got what he wanted.

The biker came forward, gloved hands up, caught Travis at his sides and pulled him gently from my arm.

He settled him with ease and a natural confidence that made my breath go funny against his black T-shirt and leather jacket clad chest and looked to me.

Taking them in, biker and baby, for some reason, that vision filed itself into my memory banks. The ones I kept unlocked. The ones I liked to open and sift through. The ones that included making cookies with my mom. The ones that included dad teaching me how to ride a bike and how he’d looked at me when I’d peddled away without training wheels, so proud, so happy. The ones that included the Easter before my sister Althea died when she won the Easter egg hunt and Dad got that awesome picture of us in our frilly, pastel Easter dresses, wearing our Easter bonnets, holding our beribboned Easter baskets, hugging each other and giggling little girl giggles.

He didn’t belong there. Not in those files. Not this biker.

But somehow, he did.

“Got the kid. Free hands, you can get the keys,” he said and I knew how he said it that it was an order, just a gently (kind of) worded one.

“Uh… right,” I murmured, tearing my eyes away from him still holding Travis, who had become mesmerized by the biker’s beard and was tugging on it. Tugging hard. Tugging with baby boy strength that I knew was already a force to be reckoned with.

But the biker didn’t yank his face back. His chin jerked slightly with the tugs but he didn’t seem to care.

Not even a little bit.

His eyes just stayed aimed to me until I took mine away.

I dug in my purse that was looped over my shoulder and came out with the keys.

I did this just in time to see the biker had tipped his chin to Travis and his resonant biker voice asked, “You gonna leave any whiskers for me, kid?”

Travis giggled, punched him in the lips with his baby fist then tore off the biker’s sunglasses.

I drew in a quick breath, hoping that Travis doing that wouldn’t anger him.

It didn’t.

He just muttered, “Yeah, kid, hold those for me.”

Then he transferred Travis to my arms, took my keys and sauntered to my car.

He had the trunk open by the time I got myself together and took two steps forward.

“Uh… sir—”

His head twisted, just that, he didn’t move a muscle of the rest of his body, and he said in a low rumble, “Stand back from the road.”

I took three hasty steps back.

He returned his attention to my trunk.

“I just wondered,” I called, juggling an active Travis, who was trying to get away since he clearly preferred leather and whiskers to his mommy, “your name.”