The biker gang had just entered the diner.
The lowering volume she'd noticed when she'd come in was nothing compared to their reception. The diner went dead quiet.
They seemed unaware they had the attention of everyone in the place.
Her gaze collided with one of the men and a jolt went through her. For a handful of seconds, she couldn't seem to drag her gaze away. Finally, the realization hit her that by allowing him to catch her gaze she'd drawn attention she didn't want and she quickly averted her gaze to the menu again.
She couldn't concentrate on it. Her ears felt as if they'd elongated with the intensity of their focus on the men. She heard the heavy tread of booted feet as they sauntered unhurriedly through the diner.
"Mind if we join you?"
Danika looked up automatically at the deep masculine voice. Startled when she discovered the man—the entire pack of men—was standing right in front of her booth and worse, the man was talking
to
her, Danika felt her eyes widen. Her thoughts went chaotic in a frantic attempt to find some reasonable excuse for why she minded that wouldn't arouse their antagonism. “Well ... uh...."
The man who'd spoken to her slid into the seat. Frozen in place, she felt her eyes grow wider and wider the closer he came. Brought abruptly to the belated instinct to flee by the man's proximity, Danika slid away from him, only to discover that three of the others had slid into the seat from the opposite side, pinning her in.
Wide eyed with panic, she stared at first one face and then another until she'd catalogued a mental photograph of each. It didn't help that her imagination instantly kicked in and supplied her with a kaleidoscope of horrific images that all featured her as a victim and the pack as violent offenders.
"The name's Balin."
The voice was the deep rumble of a high testosterone male and it sent a wave of prickling sensation through Danika that she dimly recognized as a purely feminine reaction to an attractive male. She blinked for the first time in several minutes, realizing only then that she'd been staring slack jawed at the man who'd slid in beside her. Sucking in her first breath in as many minutes, which made it obvious by the dryness of her mouth that she'd been staring at him with her mouth open, she licked her dry lips and brought them together abruptly. Her eyes slid away as she pasted a nervous smile on her lips. “Danika,” she said weakly.
Where was a cop when she needed one?
"Con."
Danika stared at the huge paw the blond man had extended across the table toward her, wondering if he was admitting to being a con man.
"Connor,” he amended as if he'd read her mind, “but everyone calls me Con."
Or maybe it was just the blank look on her face?
Like a sleep walker, she extended her own hand, watching as it disappeared in the man's clasp.
"Dakota."
Still with the feeling that she was in the grips of a dream, or maybe a nightmare, Danika removed her hand from the man's grasp and watched it disappear as the second enveloped it in a firm shake.
"Xavier."
"Jared,” said the last of the five, who'd settled on the other side of Balin.
Marginally relieved when the five men grabbed menus and turned their attention to studying them instead of her, Danika tried to shift unobtrusively to put a little distance between herself and the men crowding her. She discovered it was useless. For all that they seemed more rangy than big, they
were
big men and the booth wasn't nearly as big as it had seemed before they'd descended on her. There wasn't much more than a couple of inches between her and the men now firmly entrenched on either side of her, Balin and Dakota.
Surprise flickered through her that she actually remembered the names. Ordinarily, she was very bad with names and it wasn't as if she'd actually had her wits about her when they were making the introductions. For one, they were unnerving just by virtue of being a biker gang. She'd never been this close to the criminal element of society and she was sure she was petrified with terror, although she was in a state of shock that, fortunately, made it impossible for her to either faint or scream, and she sure as hell couldn't run.
Secondly, although she was well aware that it was psychotic even to have such thoughts, despite their rough appearance and the fact that all of them were sporting at least a day's growth of beard, Xavier was the closest to ‘just average’ of the bunch and he wasn't actually average but several cuts above the best looking man she'd ever actually seen in person. They were all handsome enough any one of them could have made it as a model, or actor, despite the intimidating multitude of tattoos and piercings she could see at a glance that unnerved her more than she would've thought possible. Along with the unfashionably long hair they all had, though, the tattoos and piercings seemed to add to the wild, untamed air of the bunch.
The last time she could recall being this unnerved was when she'd looked up from taking notes in her wildlife studies and discovered one of her ‘subjects’ had noticed her and wandered close enough to study her.
Balin had a tiny ring at the outer corner of one eye brow she saw when she glanced at him again and her imagination took flight as to where else he might be pierced—his nipples, certainly. She couldn't resist flicking a glance at the t-shirt molded to his rippling physique and the nipple rings brought her focus instantly to his hard pecs.
"What's good?"
Her gaze jerked upward from his nipple rings to Balin's face. She thought she saw a flicker of amusement in his hazel gaze. “What?” she asked blankly, her mind going wild at the question.
"On the menu."
She felt her face heat. Trying to pretend she hadn't been staring at his body, Danika frowned at the menu. “Uh ... actually, I'm not from around here. I don't really know."
He dropped an arm along the back of the booth behind her, shifting to face her. “No?"
His hard thigh brushed hers when he shifted. Between the burning heat of that touch and her acute awareness of the arm behind her shoulders, Danika had to struggle to gather her wits.
"Maybe you'd know of a good place to stay around here, then? Or are you just passing through?"
She wanted to tell him she was just passing through in the worst kind of way, but his interest in a place to stay probably meant he was looking for a room for the night. If she lied and he found out, would he be pissed off?
She didn't want to piss him off.
"I ... uh...."
"What will you folks be having?"
Relieved by the interruption of the waitress, Danika's gaze snapped from Balin to the waitress standing over the table with a pad in her hands. “What's tonight's special?"
"Meatloaf."
Gag! “I'll take the baked chicken dinner, then."
The men all ordered beef—thick steaks and all the trimmings—minus the ‘rabbit food’ they didn't seem to approve of. They didn't look like they had anywhere to put that much food, but then again, they were all painfully young and very muscular. They probably burnt up a couple of thousand calories just breathing.
Ordinarily, Danika didn't pay much attention to her appearance or the passing years, but their youth made it impossible not to compare her age to theirs, and their beauty ... well, she'd never felt quite as plain or unappealing, like a little brown duck that had found itself swimming in the midst of a flock of beautiful swans.
It didn't occur to her until the waitress left that the woman hadn't asked about dividing up the tickets. “Wait! Put mine on a separate ticket!"
The woman turned around to glare at her in irritation.
Balin waved her off. “Just leave it together. I'll pay for hers."
Struggling with indignation when the woman left without waiting to see if she was agreeable to that solution, Danika bent a tight smile on Balin. “I'll just give you my share, then,” she said firmly.
He lifted the black, beringed brow. “Consider it payment for sharing the booth."
Danika kept her smile with an effort. She didn't want to argue with the man, not when he personified dangerous, but she wasn't about to be obligated to a total stranger,
especially
a dangerous one. “That's ... sweet, but completely unnecessary."
The comment provoked chuckles from the other men and she looked around at them in surprise. Con's blue eyes were dancing with merriment as he divided a glance between her and Balin. “Sweet? Balin? Honey, you don't have a clue."
Honey? She might've taken exception to that, too, except some of her shock was beginning to wear off and, as it did, she was more and more uncomfortably aware that she wasn't in the middle of a pack of swans.
They reminded her a lot more of a pack of ... wolves, she decided, though she wasn't certain why unless it had just popped into her mind because she'd been called in to study a wolf pack.
There was more to it than that, she decided. Balin was a bit more ‘solid’ looking than the others, not exactly stocky, but definitely more heavily muscled than the others. The rest of the gang, though, had the kind of builds that reminded her of wolves in the wild, muscular, but lean. Con was the only one of the bunch that was actually fair, though his complexion wasn't. Every inch of skin exposed was tanned to a golden brown—which probably meant he spent a lot of time on that bike of his. Balin was almost his exact opposite. His hair was black enough it seemed obvious that his sharp features were the result of a lot of Native American blood or maybe Hispanic, although he looked more Native American and his name didn't seem to be Spanish. Of the other three—Jared and Dakota were closest in coloring to Balin and Xavier, whose hair was a lot like hers, neither blond nor brown, but in between, was closest in coloring to Con.
They weren't related that she could tell but then again not all siblings looked like peas from the same pod. She looked nothing like either her brother or her sister, fortunately for them, and unfortunately for her since she was the family ugly duckling.
More to occupy herself than for any other reason, Danika looked around for her bag and discovered Xavier had dropped it on the floor by her feet when he'd slid in beside her. Dragging it out from under the table, she dug around for a piece of paper and a pen while the men scanned the restaurant with keen interest.
Despite her optimism, she couldn't think of anything to put on the list of things she needed.
"Taking notes?"
Startled at the low, husky voice near her ear when she was struggling to concentrate on recalling her list, Danika's head whirled automatically in that direction and she found herself almost nose to nose with Balin. He stared back at her with patent interest.
Her instincts seriously impaired, her head finally recoiled on her neck and she leaned back to put a more comfortable distance between them. “Notes?” she repeated blankly.
He studied her a long moment and then flicked a glance at the envelope she'd pulled out of her bag.
"Oh. I was just trying to remember what I'd come to town to get. I forgot my list."