The Biker's Secret Girlfriend Read online

  “Is Navy asleep?” he asked

  “Yes.”

  He took a step closer to her. “And you didn’t go to bed?”

  She gestured at the sweatshirt that fell off her right shoulder, the sexy, tight pants she wore. “On my way there, Maverick. Then I got your text.”

  And she hadn’t changed. Another step. One more, and he could touch her. “Are you afraid of me?” he asked, because he could see the glint of fear in her eyes.

  “Not anymore,” she said.

  “Good.” He took that last step and swept his arms around her, pulling her right against his body in one swift movement. “I’m dying,” he whispered, not caring that he sounded weak now. “I asked you to come by, and you didn’t. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, her breath falling across his collarbone. He ran his hands up her arms, along that silky skin peeking through the neck of her sweatshirt.

  “So I came to see if you were all right,” he said, though that was not why he’d come at all. “And I came to kiss you.” There, that was the truth.

  “Kiss me, then.” Karly looked up into his face, and Maverick didn’t waste his time.

  He claimed her mouth with his, probably a little too roughly for someone who’d never dated a biker before. She grabbed onto his shoulders, and he threaded his fingers through her hair, his need for her consuming him in an unreasonable way.

  He didn’t care. He didn’t want to be reasonable right now.

  He just wanted to kiss Karly, make sure she knew he wanted her, and that she could be his if she wanted that too.

  By the time he returned to the club, the ice cream bar sat in darkness and the front of the shop was completely silent. There were a few bikes outside, so Maverick knew someone would be in the back, and he paused at the doorway, wondering if he had to go check in with them.

  He didn’t. He was the leader, and he could go where he wanted and do what he wanted.

  Sort of.

  He lived by the Sentinels code, and if he put the club in danger, he could be in a lot of trouble. There was a Vice and a Sergeant at Arms for a reason. He wasn’t God, and he pushed into the mechanic bays to find Jordan, Lucas, Davis, and Dexter standing around a bike while Ian tinkered with his bike.

  “Hey, boys,” he said easily, and Davis elbowed Vice, who exchanged a glance with the others and then broke away toward Maverick.

  “Boss,” he said, a hint of nerves in his eyes.

  “How’d things go tonight?” Maverick asked, glancing at the other patches. Ian stood up, a blue mechanic rag in his hands.

  “Good,” Jordan said. “You get all the food delivered?”

  “Yep.” Maverick met Jordan’s eye. “So maybe I got caught up with Felicia.”

  Jordan blinked, and then he burst out laughing. “Yeah, that better not have happened.”

  “It didn’t,” Maverick said with a grin. He stepped toward everyone else. “Can you guys come over here for a sec?” Now that he’d involved Jordan, he needed to tell some of his most trusted guys about what he was doing.

  His secret girlfriend was about to become not-so-secret, at least with these five men. And he should probably tell his Sergeant at Arms, especially if William Addler really was a Hawk—which he still hadn’t been able to confirm. Ian was the Enforcer, and he worked closely with Gerald on compliance issues for the club, as well as the protection aspect. It was because of him that they’d gotten to Williamsburg so quickly last year. His experience in the military was invaluable, especially in explosives.

  “I have some news,” Maverick said when everyone had circled around him. They all wore cuts inside, and Maverick felt out of place among them in his leather. “I’m seeing someone.”

  “What?” Davis asked, his voice full of shock. “You?”

  “After Ruby?” Lucas asked, glancing at Ian.

  “Yeah, she cut you up,” he agreed.

  Maverick didn’t need the reminder. “It’s Karly Lydell.” He watched his guys for their reaction, and only Jordan didn’t look like he’d been hit with a bowling ball. “It’s on the down-low,” he added. “She has a one-year-old daughter, and her husband died last year, and she’s from one of the biggest families in town.”

  “Who?” Lucas asked.

  “The Addlers,” Maverick said at the same time Vice said it. “She’s the oldest Addler sibling,” Maverick added. “And there’s another thing.” He didn’t want to tell his club anything, but he might need their help.

  “Her grandfather might have been a Hawk.”

  Several heartbeats of silence went by, and Maverick hated them.

  “I’m calling Gerald,” Vice said, and Maverick nodded at him.

  “Good idea.” He looked at his other guys. “I need to find out for sure,” he said. “I haven’t been able to get to the bottom of it.”

  Ian cursed and turned back to his bike. “We can’t bring a war to Forbidden Lake, man,” he said. “I got kids.”

  “I know,” Maverick said, thinking of Karly’s pretty little daughter. “There’s no record of him in the Hawks history. You don’t think I looked?”

  “Gerald’s on his way in,” Vice said, rejoining them. “Fifteen minutes, and he sounded pissed.”

  Maverick nodded, hoping he didn’t lose his whole club over this. At the same time, he thought as long as he ended up with Karly and Navy, he could survive without his club.

  That thought felt false too, because his club was everything to him. This shop, the biker bar, the loft where he lived. They’d been his whole life for the past twenty-two-years, and he couldn’t just walk away.

  “Send Gerald upstairs when he gets here,” he said. “And you can all come up too. I’m taking King out for a minute. I’ll be back in a few.”

  “Go with him,” Ian called over his shoulder, and Lucas and Vice grabbed their jackets.

  “I don’t need a babysitter,” Maverick growled.

  “Yes, you do,” Vice said. “Davis, you’ve got the club.”

  Maverick walked away from his guys and went upstairs to get his dog, his mind switched back and forth between his choices.

  Karly or his club?

  His club or Karly?

  Chapter Nine

  Karly didn’t hear from Maverick that week, and she wasn’t sure if his invitation to stop by the motorcycle shop in a different car, in the middle of the day, was still open or not. She hadn’t taken him up on his suggestion the week before, because it was hard for her to get a different car and keep the reason why a secret.

  She loved her family. Loved living next door to her grandparents. Now that Mia had left and gone to California, the house on the other side of Karly was empty, with Jon and Cassie and the twins in the first house on the family lane.

  She’d relied on them all over the past fourteen months, but she still didn’t want anyone to know much about her and Maverick. He’d been deadly serious when he’d said they could all be in very real danger if her grandfather had ridden with the Hawks.

  With January started and humming along, Karly skipped going into the office for a few days. Instead, she bundled Navy in her snow clothes and let the girl romp around outside, laughing and giggling at a stray cat or making snow angels while Karly sipped coffee on the back deck.

  She took her daughter to Serenity’s as normal and went into town to get her hair cut, get groceries, and maybe drive down the road to that convenience store.

  As she emerged from the trees, the motorcycle shop came into view. But a man on a motorcycle sat off of the road several feet, his black leather jacket sporting a huge hawk on the back of it.

  As if that wasn’t obvious enough to convey who he was, the words Grand Central in curved stitching above the bird, and HAWKS in all caps below it definitely told Karly that the war between the Hawks and the Sentinels was very real and bubbling away.

  He wasn’t even trying to hide.

  She turned into the convenience store where her car had broken down a few weeks ago, determined
to get the soda and gum she loved. After all, she was allowed to buy sugary sodas at this store. She’d been doing it for years, always glancing toward Ruby’s—which hadn’t had a sign until a few months ago. Or maybe before that. She wasn’t sure. Her memories from the past year or so weren’t stellar, she knew that.

  She also knew the moment the rival biker entered the store behind her. She wasn’t the only person in the building, but it felt like it. This guy was easily as tall as Maverick, just as wide, and had deep, black ink that clawed its way up under his jacket collar, staining his neck.

  Karly had never appreciated tattoos all that much—until she’d had a chance to really admire Maverick’s. Last weekend, when he’d brought her the food she didn’t really need, they’d sat on her couch, talking.

  Okay, there’d been a lot of kissing too. The man had lips of candy, and Karly had enjoyed kissing him. But she’d also traced her fingertips along some of the lines on his arms, and she’d asked him about what the tattoos meant.

  “Some of them don’t mean anything,” he said. “I got them because I liked them. They’re art.”

  She didn’t think the man rounding the end of the aisle to come toward her had beautiful art on his body. She glanced at him, finished filling her diet cola, and moved down so he’d have access to the fountain drinks. Just like she would for anyone else.

  He picked up a cup and asked, “Do you know who I am?”

  “Should I?” she asked, unwrapping a straw and pretending like he wasn’t talking to her.

  “Your boyfriend hasn’t told you about me?” He filled his cup with ice until it reached the top.

  Karly reached for a plastic lid. “I don’t know you. And I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She looked right into his eyes, suppressing the shiver that threatened to slide down her spine from the cold, cold look on his face. “I don’t have a boyfriend.” She lidded her drink and stuck the straw through it, turning away from him. She managed to walk normally over to the candy aisle, where she found the grape gum that brought her to this part of town.

  The biker joined her, plucking a package of M&Ms from the shelf. “This isn’t the first time you’ve come here.”

  Karly held up the gum. “This is the only place in town that sells grape gum.” She glared at him, her very stomach quaking. She had a daughter at home. What would happen if she didn’t return? Would this guy take her somewhere? Never let her go?

  “Why’d you go to Ruby’s a few weeks ago?” he asked, blocking her path to the cash register.

  “My car broke down,” she said. “A guy tried to help me jump it, but it wouldn’t take. He said Ruby’s was a motorcycle mechanic shop, and I walked down there to get help.”

  “And did you?”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged. “Some guy came and looked at it. Left me here to go get the stuff he needed. Fixed it up.”

  “Have you been back?”

  Karly turned back to the candy shelf as if she was looking for another snack, thinking quickly. If that guy had been sitting by those trees for very long, he’d have seen her drive by late at night, with Navy in the backseat.

  “Sort of.”

  The biker stepped closer, and Karly backed up. “Do you mind? What’s your name?”

  “Tyson,” he said, the name a growl in his throat. “What does it mean you’ve sort of been back?”

  Karly glared at him and sighed like he was putting her out. “It’s none of your business.” She started to step past him, but he grabbed onto her arm. “Hey,” she said, glancing to the counter. No one was there, and she wondered if Tyson had cleared the building somehow. If so, he had more power than she knew, and fear painted her insides in heavy layers.

  “Let go of me.” She wrenched her arm out of Tyson’s grip.

  “It is my business,” Tyson said, his voice so cold she actually shivered. “Have you ever thought about what your husband was doing on the lake that night he died?”

  Karly’s mouth dropped open and numbness spread down her arms. Her brain screamed at her angrily, but no sound came out of her throat when she said the word, “No.”

  Derrick hadn’t been doing anything on the lake that night. Sometimes people wanted a late passage back to Grand Central after the ferry closed, and everyone in Forbidden Lake knew Derrick did that to bring in extra cash.

  “He worked for us,” Tyson said at the same time Karly cleared her throat. Had she heard him right? Her husband had worked for the Hawks Motorcycle Club? Doing what?

  Before she could find her voice and ask, Tyson said, “So, Mrs. Lydell. Everything you do is my business. I can’t have you talking about what your husband did for our club. So I’ll ask you again: What do you mean, you’ve sort of been back to the Sentinels clubhouse?”

  Karly couldn’t keep much of anything straight in her mind. But she knew she better answer his questions, and fast. “I have a daughter and she can’t sleep sometimes. I put her in the car and drive her around, so she’ll go back to sleep. I drove down here and back home. It’s a long route.”

  Tyson stared at her as if he could unfold the truth just by looking. “And that’s it.” He wasn’t really asking, and she couldn’t believe he didn’t know already. If Derrick had really worked for the Hawks…. Karly didn’t even know how to finish the thought.

  “That’s it,” she said.

  “Why was there a Sentinels bike at your place last week?”

  Karly wiped her hand down her face, hoping she looked embarrassed when she said, “I’m a single mom. They deliver food to the needy.” She really didn’t want to think about how this guy—and his whole Motorcycle Club—knew where she lived. And if they knew that, they knew where her daughter was. Where her whole family lived. Generations of Addlers could be gone with the strike of a match—and it would be all her fault.

  “I’m leaving now,” she said, her legs starting to shake. Tyson let her move around him, and the clerk came out of the office behind the counter, his eyes scared.

  “You okay?” he whispered as he took the package of gum and scanned it.

  Karly nodded slightly and pulled her debit card out to pay. “Thanks, Connor,” she said, though she didn’t really know this guy. He wore a name badge, and she wanted Tyson to think she did come here a lot, despite its close proximity to Ruby’s, Maverick, and the Sentinels.

  Outside, she noticed an unhealthy amount of motorcycles, but they didn’t wear leather jackets or patches, and she had no idea who they belonged to. There hadn’t been anyone else in the shop, and she paused to set her soda on top of the car as she dug for her keys to unlock it.

  The door behind her dinged, and Tyson came outside. He swore, obviously seeing the bikes, and then he yelled, “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” in a mocking tone.

  At least a dozen men in full leather gear emerged from seemingly everywhere. Both ends of the small building. From around gas pumps.

  Maverick was with them, absolutely terrifying in all that leather. He wore the chaps over his jeans and everything, with a denim jacket with the sleeves cut off over his black leather jacket.

  “Get in the car,” he said to her as he strode forward. “Leave.” He didn’t even look at her, and that, combined with the fact that he hadn’t used her name, convinced Karly to get out of there.

  No sense in making her lies come true right before Tyson’s eyes. She fumbled with her keys, got the door open, grabbed her soda, and got behind the wheel.

  The bikers cleared a path for her to back out and leave, but she couldn’t help looking in the rearview mirror, a morbid sense of curiosity to know what was going to happen.

  All the men had stilled, facing Tyson, who was absolutely trapped like a rat in a corner. Karly clenched the steering wheel, wondering how they’d kept everyone else away from the store.

  She passed the trees, and she couldn’t see the store behind her anymore. She grabbed her phone and dialed 9-1-1, her heart pounding in the back of her throat.

  Hours later, she s
at on the couch, her knees drawn to her chest, her phone ringing for Maverick for the third time that day.

  He didn’t answer.

  She hung up without leaving a message, hoping she hadn’t blown everything wide open for him. She didn’t know what he kept programmed on his phone for her. It could say anything, and all she could do was hope and pray he’d been smart and not put her contact info in his device. Or, if he had, it was disguised enough that no one would know it was her.

  She’d heard nothing on the news. Seen nothing online. She’d refused to give her name to the emergency operator, only staying on the line long enough to say there was a fight going down at the QuikStop out by Ruby’s. Then she’d hung up, driven five miles below the speed limit on her way home, and had gotten Navy from Serenity’s.

  She’d unpacked the groceries and started dinner before calling Maverick the first time. She’d tried again right after Navy had gone to sleep. And now, curled into herself on the couch, the clock ticking closer and closer to midnight, he still hadn’t answered.

  He walked King every night at midnight. “Every night,” he’d said. So why wasn’t he answering?

  “What if he can’t answer?” she asked herself. The hospital in Forbidden Lake wasn’t huge, but it was well-staffed, and she toyed with the idea of calling over there to see if anyone matching his description had been brought in.

  Minutes passed, and she didn’t make the call. Maybe everything was fine, but the way she had needles stabling her lungs, she knew it wasn’t. She’d felt like this the night Derrick had died too, after that first phone call.

  He hadn’t said anything out of the ordinary when he’d left that night. He’d never breathed a word about any Motorcycle Clubs. She couldn’t believe he’d been working for the Hawks, as he never seemed to bring home large sums of money after taking a couple of late-night partiers across the lake after the ferries had closed.

  Everyone had said he’d be okay. That he’d pull through. But she’d sat exactly like this in the emergency room, the same dread and anxiety attacking her.