Page 30 of The Girlfriend's Guide to Dating a Biker
I’d finally fallen into a restless sleep around 2 a.m., which is why I wasn’t exactly looking my best when I heard his Harley rumble into the car park.
As I stepped onto my balcony, he switched off the engine, removed his helmet, and sat there for a moment, head bowed. Even exhausted and with tension in his shoulders, he still looked like every fantasy I’d ever had.
I was watching him intently when his head lifted and his eyes found me. He just sat there for a long moment taking me in. Then, he was off the bike and walking towards the front door of the building. He jerked his chin at me, and I took that to mean he was coming up.
Oh, god.
He was coming up.
This was not a drill. It was a full-blown emergency protocol failure. I was in very unsexy sleep shorts and a T-shirt from a dev conference, and my hair looked like I’d just lost a wrestling match. Also, I may have drooled on myself in my last REM cycle.
I needed at least five minutes to reboot my face. MINIMUM.
Maybe if I stayed perfectly still, he’d think he hallucinated me.
Maybe he wasn’t actually coming to my apartment.
But no. He’d jerked his chin. That was the universal hot-guy sign for coming up to emotionally destabilise you in person.
WHY DID I PICK THIS SHIRT?
WHY WERE ALL MY NICE SHIRTS DIRTY?
WHY DIDN’T I DO LAUNDRY YESTERDAY INSTEAD OF PRACTICING CASUAL RESPONSES TO EVERY POSSIBLE THING JAKE MIGHT SAY ON OUR DATE?
I decided to pretend this was a deliberate look.
Oversized conference T-shirt from years ago? Ironically sexy.
Sleep shorts that had never once in their life been sexy? Effortless “I didn’t plan this” thirst trap vibes. Totally intentional.
A hair situation that could qualify as a cry for help? Strategically engineered to trigger the part of the male brain that thinks bed hair is hot.
When I answered the door, his eyes met mine, burning straight through me like I was the only thing on his radar. His hair was a little windswept. His jaw was shadowed and tense.
“Sorry if I woke you.”
“You didn’t.” Lie. Bald-faced. Worth it for the flicker of amusement in his eyes.
“Liar.” He looked me over. “You’ve got pillow creases on your cheek, darlin’.”
I slapped a hand to my face. “Oh my god?—”
“Don’t.” He reached out, caught my wrist, and gently pulled my hand away. “I like you like this. All soft and sleepy.” His other hand slid into my hair, fingers threading through like he was learning it. “Makes me think about how you’d look in my bed.”
My brain crashed like a Windows update. “Jake?—”
“Been thinking about you all night,” he murmured, letting me go and stepping inside. “That kiss. Your mouth. The way you looked at me after.”
I stood there staring at him, fully forgetting how to human. Somehow, I figured out how to open my mouth and ask, “Is everything okay? With the club?”
A look passed behind his eyes, dark and heavy. “Nothing you need to worry about.” He used his boot to close the door behind him. “Club business is club business.”
Ah.
Club business.
There it was. The phrase that had been haunting my Google search history and my nervous system. The phrase that could mean anything from “went to Bunnings with the boys” to “helped bury a body in a shallow grave behind the servo.”
