Page 44 of Wild Ride

“Guess I better go remind her of a few things.”

Ivy watches me for a moment, shaking his head once. “I don’t know. Maybe you should stay away from her. She seemed pissed, and not in a good way. Maybe she needs a few hours.”

He’s probably right. Ivy seems to know how to keep a cool head about shit. Maybe that’s something he learned in law school ’cause I sure as fuck didn’t learn it here at the club. I’m all about shoot first ask questions later, but Shade practiced patience, and I’m old enough that I should do that shit, too.

So, instead of walking past Ivy and heading straight for my bike, I flop back down in my chair. Ivy chuckles, then stands and walks toward my desk. He pats the top, his eyes focused on mine.

“For the record, I like her a lot. She’s got spirit and fight inside of her that matches yours. She’s confused. She might be a club princess, but she sure as shit doesn’t know anything about club life, and the life she does know is fucked up. Patience is going to be the way to go with her and maybe…”

“Yeah?” I ask when he doesn’t continue immediately.

“Love.”

“Okay, Romeo,” I snort.

He chuckles. “Don’t tell anyone. I’m a ruthless attorney and a badass biker.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

DAKOTA

“I thinkI messed it all up,” I whisper.

I’m standing in front of a bakery counter, looking at the pastries and wondering why I’m here when I don’t need to eat any of this stuff. But I want it all. I didn’t sleep again last night. I lay in bed all night long, staring at the ceiling of the hotel room and wondering where the hell I went wrong.

“Hey,” a girl with bouncing curls says from the other side of the counter. She appears to be in her late teens, maybe early twenties, and she’s beautiful. Not just cute, though she is that, too, but downright beautiful. “Can I help you?”

I’m staring. I know I am. Shaking my head a couple of times, I clear my throat before I point to the éclairs. “Can I have an éclair, please?”

She hums, then reaches into the case and grabs one, placing it in a small box before her eyes meet mine again. “Anything else from the case?”

“I want it all, but no thanks. Just the éclair.”

“Cool,” she says with a smirk. She walks over to the cash register and places the little box down, then she punches a few buttons on the iPad in front of her. “Anything else? A coffee maybe?”

“I wouldn’t even know what to order,” I murmur.

It’s true. Briana always brings me different coffees, and while I haven’t had one that I don’t like, I also have no clue what she brings me. She says there’s a great little café just a couple of doors down from our apartment complex. Obviously, I’ve never been, but she surprises me on Saturday mornings when she’s around.

“The brown sugar latte with almond milk is my absolute favorite. Not for any reason other than I think that the almond milk tastes sweeter than regular.”

“Then I’ll take one,” I say.

Her smile widens, and she turns her back to me to walk over to the coffee machine. Instead of just making the drink, she starts talking to me. I watch her move and wonder just how someone can work so effortlessly. She seriously looks and acts like she’s on a stage, a ballerina or something, gracefully making the coffee for me.

“So, where are you from? Just here on vacation?” she calls out.

I snort and wonder how much I should even say. Then I decide, fuck it, I have nobody else to talk to other than Briana, and she’s dead asleep right now, thanks to the time difference. “My father was from here, but he passed away, and I came to handle his estate.”

She stops making the coffee, then turns to look over at me, and I can see the pain etched on her face. She feels for me, or maybe she knows exactly how I’m feeling. “I’m really sorry to hear that,” she whispers. “I lost my dad when I was ten. It’s hard.”

“Harder when you know him, I would imagine. He’s a stranger to me.”

“That’s just as hard, I think,” she whispers. “You don’t know what you could have had. So you have to mourn what could have been.”

She’s right, but she’s also wrong. As she hands me the coffee, I pass my card over to her. “Not sure if it’s harder to mourn what could have been or to mourn what was and the promise of what could be.”

“Your mom’s gone, too?” she asks.

---