Page 66 of The Biker and the Baker
“You know she’s just worried about her own businesses, right?” Roller says as he takes the cigarette that he had stuck behind his ear and lights it up. “You make her rich, doing all the work while she sits back and does shit. ‘Course she ain’t gon’ want you getting distracted with the club, too busy to do her bidding. But you gotta be who you are, who you were born to be. Follow your heart, son. This club, it’s your legacy, your destiny.”
And that’s what I do. I follow my heart. All the way to Aurora. Toherdoorstep, my knuckles kissing painted wood.
The bright yellow door swings open, and there she is, like a ray of sunshine.
My destiny.
Chapter 16
Pia
It’s a littleafter ten at night, so I’m surprised to see Onyx on my doorstep. When we closed the pastry shop together some two and a half hours ago, he’d turned down my offer to sleep over in favor of an important “family meeting.”
“Hey,” I say when he just stares at me with an almost dazed expression.
He steps inside and I move back to make way for him. He closes the door and turns the lock.
“Just showered?” he asks, scanning me.
I’d been out of the shower for less than a minute when the knock came at my door, so now I’m swaddled in just my bathrobe, my damp hair piled on top of my head. “Uh, yeah. Getting ready for bed. Is, um, everything okay?”
He shrugs. “Dunno. Can I stay over?”
I panic a tiny bit at this request. As much as he loves spending time at my house because it’s a “mood booster” for him, he’s never slept over before. It’s usually the other way around. So it’s not something I’m prepared for. Is my quirky little apartment macho-man-sleepover friendly?
“Of course you can,” I say, though still not quite sure. “Want some tea? Something to eat?”
“Nah.” He shrugs out of his leather jacket and tosses it on the couch. “Kinda burned out for the day. I’m just gonna grab a quick shower if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, okay.”
He kicks off his heavy biker boots then hauls his t-shirt over his head on his way to the bathroom. I watch him go, listen to the click of the door closing, and the subsequent squeak of the shower turning on.
As I pick up his boots and set them neatly aside at the front door, I wonder what his family meeting was about. He seems distracted, yet pensive.
Although he declined, I brew some chamomile for him. Most men never know what they want until you give it to them anyways.
By the time he emerges from the bathroom with droplets of water on his pecs and my towel slung low around his waist, I have a tray with chamomile tea and mint cookies waiting for him on the nightstand in the bedroom.
Fingers gripping the towel closed around his waist, he eyes the tea tray and shakes his head with a smile. “In the end, Pia always does whatever the hell Pia wants.”
“Damn straight,” I agree, peeling back the colorful mandala print duvet.
“Still got those sweats you stole from me?” he asks, heading to the dresser. “Or the basketball shorts. Or, you know, any of the five different boxers you snatched?”
I fire bullets with my glare. “I didn’t ‘snatch’ anything. You always ask me to stay over without advance notice and I always end up having to wear your shit.”
“And never returning it.”
I launch a throw-pillow at his head and he laughs.
“Ah, here’s one.”
It’s the pair of red basketball shorts I wore home sometime last week. My favorite “snatch” so far. Slept in them three nights in a row before I finally washed and hid them in the drawer with no intention of ever giving them back.
He flags them out before he dons them without boxers, his abs flexing with the movement. He’s one sexy hunk, this man.
He strides over to the nightstand, picks up one of the cookies and bites off half. “Mint…” he muses, nodding in approval. “Bomb.”
