WRECKED: CHOSEN FEW MC - BOOK TWO: OUTLAW BIKER/ALPHA ROMANCE (3 page)

More to the point, most women he met, even attractive, sexy women, didn’t grab his attention immediately the way this one did. He felt embarrassed thinking that it had to have shown in his face from the moment he took her hand. At that first touch, he wanted her. He lusted after her. And then, when she spoke, he felt something else, something potent and powerful.

They’d talked about nothing, just the commonplace, yet it felt intimate. An intimate encounter. Far more intimate and interactive than the one-night stands he’d had since his wife died. And that shocked him. Melanie Wilford had woken something in him that was long dormant. Something more than lust.

How could it be?

Greg pulled to a stop at the garage and Carly hopped off the back of the bike and eagerly tore off her helmet. She gave a cheerful wave to a huge, broad, big-handed man with dark, wavy hair, slightly heavy features, intense dark gray eyes and a bit of scruff to his chin. He wore his biker colors and stood by the door with his arm around the waist of a small but curvaceous woman.

“Hey Cutter, hey Audra.”

“Glad to see you’re here Grease Princess,” Cutter said. “My bike needs some of that mechanical magic. It’s running like shit.”

Carly frowned. “You know I can’t work on bikes until after I do my homework.” She looked in Greg’s direction. “I’m not allowed to. I would if I could.”

Greg shook his head slowly. “Priorities, kid.”

Carly snorted. “He’s just being hard-assed because I saw him get soft talking to Miss Wilford, my teacher. I think he likes her.”

“You aren’t allowed to say hard-assed, brat,” Greg said. “Stick to proper English for a few more years at least.”

She made a face. “Then no one around here would understand me.”

“Then suffer in silence. Now it’s homework before anything else time. Off to the office.”

Cutter laughed. “Well, Wrench, if you are sidelining the club’s best mechanic because she told on you, spread the word about a new woman in your life, then I guess I have to settle for whatever you can do.” Cutter looked at Carly. “Sorry Princess, but homework is important shit.”

Carly sighed, grabbed up her backpack and headed for the office. “Audra, when you were my age, did you do your homework?”

Audra chuckled. “There are some things one woman just doesn’t ask another, Carly.”

“I thought we were friends.”

“We are. I’ll get us each a soda and you get to work. You love the schoolwork anyway.”

“So, Cutter, what terrible thing did you do to your bike now?” Greg asked as Carly went inside.

“Me? I rode it. Audra and I were going fast down the highway. That’s what I did to it. I rode it. So there we were zipping down the Pacific Coast Highway, passing Nissans and Toyotas and all those other American cars, just digging the way the ocean gets all blurry if you go fast enough, and then, all by itself, my bike decides that slow is almost as good as fast. Audra and I don’t think so—I want fast again, Wrench. Fix my machine. Convince it of the right working of things.”

Greg smiled. “We can do fast, man.” He walked over to the bike and squatted beside it.

Cutter squatted beside him. “See anything?”

“Not yet. My x-ray vision takes time to warm up.”

“How’s Jake?”

“So, so. If he actually starts doing the physical therapy they scheduled him for, and takes his meds, they say he’ll stay able to walk fairly well. He won’t be riding again. He could do it, but any big jolt to the spine, even a hard bounce over a railroad track, could paralyze him.”

“Sorry to hear that. At least he’ll be able to move.” Cutter watched Greg run his hands over the engine. “Sometimes I think you work by Braille.”

“Sometimes I do. Something similar anyway.”

“Right.”

“Think about it. You know how sometimes you can walk into a bar and somehow you know somebody in there has bad intentions? I know you do that. I’ve seen you move before trouble had time to happen. For me it’s like that with an engine. Even turned off, it has a way of telling me things. If I don’t find anything that way, then I turn it on and feel how it hums. There’s lots of variations, but an engine has a feel to it. I’ve worked on yours enough to know what it should feel like idling. Now this problem is at speed, so that might not be enough, so I’ll listen, see if the sweetheart can purr or growl or roar with the right amount of encouragement.”

“Is this how you’re teaching Carly to work?”

“It’s the only way I know, man. When I was in the Marines, I worked on choppers and it was the same thing. You can hear a rotor about to come off, or a bearing that is going bad. It’s more subtle with a bike, but the program is the same. Machined parts are whirling around inside and they make noise and vibration.”

“You love the damn things.”

“And you love what they do for you. We all do. But I love them for what they are too—cantankerous beasts, that need a lot of coaxing to get them to do their best.”

“So you coax, and when she’s doing her best, I’ll ride the crap out of her.”

“Let me see what I can do. I’ve still got several other jobs going on, too, you know. The parts came in today for Bernie’s rebuild. Seeing as Carly will do the carb, I can take a bit to get your machine roaring again.”

“She’s got a knack for this stuff, Wrench. She really does.”

“And I’m all for her learning engines inside and out, as long as it doesn’t mess with her schooling.” He grinned. “I made a deal with Willow about that. She’s scared to death that because Carly hangs out here, she’ll wind up being somebody’s old lady, with no job skills but being a waitress. This way she’ll have schooling and the choice of being a mechanic if she wants. If she meets a guy she likes, hooks up with some biker, well he’ll have the best running bike around.”

“Well, if anybody can herd a kid down that narrow path it’s you. I’m with Willow. I’d hate to think how she’d turn out if she spent all her time around this crowd without that direction.”

“Well, your old lady is another good influence. Audra manages to be a biker chick and still have class.”

Cutter smiled. “Yeah, she does that.”

“And you aren’t half as bad-ass as you make out.”

“Hush, dammit. We all have an image we need to project, dude, and I’m supposed to be the Enforcer for this crowd. But I thought we weren’t allowed to say bad-assed after school.”

“The princess is occupied.”

“And you think she doesn’t hear every fucking word?”

Greg shook his head. “You aren’t being helpful, pal. You want your bike fixed or not?”

“I’ll make myself useful and go find some beer.”

When Cutter walked off, Greg turned his attention to the bike, touching it, and letting his mind visualize the flow of energy through the machine, the way air and gasoline were compressed and ignited to produce an explosion that moved the cylinders. When Greg got like this the others called it his fix-it trance. And now Cutter, returning with two bottles of beer, saw him engrossed and stopped a distance away. Greg watched the power circulating in his mind, thought about what Cutter told him, that power just fell off while riding, then he opened his eyes and held a hand out for the beer. Cutter came over and handed it to him.

Greg took a long sip and then stood. “Probably the coil,” he said.

“I knew it. The fucking coil. It had to be the coil,” Cutter agreed. “What’s a coil?”

Greg laughed. “You better hope nothing ever happens to me.”

“Shit, the crew would beat me to a pulp if I did that. I think it’s in my job description—no one and nothing harms Wrench.”

“Or the Grease Princess.”

“That’s in everyone’s job description. I think the club is planning to put up a big-assed plaque that says that.”

“Call Tiny and tell him to swing by the parts store for a coil.”

“Sure. Are they big?”

Greg pointed to a plastic case. “It fits in here, so it must be at least eight feet long.”

“Okay. What the fuck do I know about parts.”

* * *

Greg and Carly rode up to the trailer outside of town where she lived with her parents, Willow and Jake. The remnants of Jake’s bike, now a pile of twisted metal, much of it chromed, sat alongside the dirt driveway, right next to Willow’s battered and faded blue Ford pickup.

The trailer had seen better days, but Greg knew they were glad to have it because of its one sterling quality—it was paid for. With Jake unable to work, and disability not paying much, keeping the monthly bills as low as possible was the only way they’d survive. Even before the crash and all the hospital bills, Jake had been having trouble finding work full time. With the economy in the toilet and new construction almost at a standstill, he’d been getting by doing home repairs under the table—working for cash.

His pot habit didn’t help the family fortunes, either. For his entire life, Jake had just gotten by. He was strong and bull-headed, and finding himself unable to help himself wasn’t doing much for his mood. Not that he got angry, but Greg worried about him getting depressed, maybe becoming a drunk. It had happened to others he’d known.

Willow was strong and loved Jake. He had that much going for him. And Carly loved her parents. That helped too.

Greg was fortunate to have steady work at his garage. He bought it for cash when he got out of prison after doing ten long years for killing a club enemy. His record meant he wasn’t a prime candidate for any sort of high-paying job. Even without that he had a spotty record in working for someone else. If you asked the Marines, they’d tell you that much. He’d been asked to leave. He’d been asked to leave any number of jobs.

Then came prison. He’d killed a man. He’d been shot in the process, and in his eyes, though not the law’s, killing the other biker had been self defense. Without any credible witnesses (it was his word and Cutter’s against that of three guys from the other club), the circumstances didn’t convince a jury. If it hadn’t been for his wife… well, regrets had no place in a biker’s life unless he wanted to get sour and filled with self hate.

Jake had suffered from that some. Not as bad as some of them, but the seeds were there, and the accident had increased his bitterness, his negativity. Greg understood the temptation.

Five years into his sentence, his wife, his beautiful, lovely, supportive wife, had died of ovarian cancer. It hit her fast and hard. And he hadn’t been there for her. The thought of her dealing with the pain, the fear, alone still haunted him. When he got out, still stunned by her death, he’d spent time absorbing the fact she was gone. It had been one thing to hear it in prison, and even being allowed to go to the funeral didn’t make it real. Nothing was real for those ten years, other than a few slash wounds from fights. When his friends decided he had spent enough time feeling sorry for himself, Cutter, the Enforcer, his best friend, came over and kicked his ass.

“Open a fucking garage, will ya?” he said. “You need something and we need a decent mechanic who knows us.”

So there was only one thing to do. The life insurance company had paid up after her death and the money was still sitting in the bank. He’d forgotten they had insurance through her work until he got a letter. It was enough money to buy a defunct garage near the clubhouse, a complete set of tools and some parts. He didn’t bother decorating, settling for pressure washing the entire place.

Because his wife had done so much for him when she was alive, he almost felt guilty that she’d had to save his ass after prison too. But she’d dreamed of him getting his act together and building something—so he did it. It wasn’t exactly a fresh start, but it was a good one.

From the start the garage made money. Enough to keep him happy. He kept his prices low for club members. In return, they brought him referrals, people who’d pay good money to have their bikes or cars brought up to par by the mechanic of The Chosen Few. There was a certain cachet to it. He could pick and choose the work he did. Even a couple of movie stars brought him their bikes, although there wasn’t anything hard about the repairs and he suspected it was more so they could lay claim to drinking beer with The Chosen Few, and having the same mechanic.

Greg lived simply. There was no trick to that in his book. He had the garage, and home was just a place to go, maybe cook dinner, watch television, throw clothes in the washer and dryer, and to sleep. He didn’t know if he wanted more. Something was missing.

“Girls,” Cutter told him.

He meant sex, but that wasn’t it. Greg wasn’t celibate. He indulged in one-night stands with girls that came to the clubhouse, or came to hang around the garage with the idea of connecting with a bad boy. He didn’t mind obliging them. Sex was good. That wasn’t what he lacked. He knew what it was. His wife was gone. She’d left a void—a big void. None of the girls he’d met was even near what she’d been.

And yet… now he’d met Melanie Wilford, and it reminded him that there were women in the world who weren’t biker chicks. Women who had careers or jobs and lives of their own. More to the point, it reminded him that they could be both intelligent and hot. Melanie seemed to be both. And he had sensed a glimmer of attraction. Something might be possible there.

When Carly called, Greg went into the office and found that Audra had already quizzed her on her math problems. “She knows it backward and forward,” Audra said.

“Yay! Time to rebuild the carb,” Carly shouted, putting her school work in her bag.

“It’s on the workbench. You know where the tools are.”

“You bet!”

“And the shop rule?”

“Keep it clean.”

“Go for it.”

As he watched the girl dash excitedly to the workbench, his mind drifted. To Melanie. For the first time in a long time he found himself thinking of a woman as more than someone to spend the night with. It made him feel good. When Tiny arrived with the ignition coil, Greg put her out of his mind and thought about Cutter’s bike.

Carly whipped through her job, singing to herself as she worked. “It’s done,” she sang out.

Greg came over and picked it up, turning it in his hand, working the butterfly valve. “Looks like a good job. Sparkling clean and shiny as it should be, everything snug.”