Six
Tess added “owning a motorcycle” to her bucket list.
She loved the hum of an engine and hot metal in between her legs as she sped down the road with nothing between her and high-speed danger. It was a thrill that couldn’t be rivaled by many things. Sex, great sex, was one of those things but the instances of that kind of sex she’d had in her lifetime didn’t outnumber the fingers on her right hand.
The hand currently settled over Adam’s heart and gripping his tight, black T-shirt as they sped down the road, chasing the city lights and dodging cars filled with people looking for a good time. Tess took advantage of the ride requiring her to hold on tight to the hard-bodied man nestled between her legs, and indulged in the anticipation of this night and their new arrangement.
Adam’s black Heritage Classic Harley-Davidson was a sweet ride, powerful and loud and everything you wanted a motorcycle to be. It was an odd choice for such a quiet man who did nothing to grab for attention. But it suited him when you really got to know him.
This bike was outward evidence of the part of Adam he buried down deep inside of him: reckless, intense and rebellious. Adam was a man of a million layers and she wanted to unpeel every single one.
So, it was a no-brainer to change her clothes and jump on the back of his bike to find out what the hell he did the second Tuesday of every month. Tess knew where he went, she’d discovered it during her background check of him, but something had held her back from following him inside the bar located on the seedier side of the Valley and finding out exactly what it was that brought him there every month, come rain or come shine.
Before she knew it and before she wanted the ride to end, they pulled up in front of Duke’s, passing by the entrance to enter a parking lot and head to an empty space. Duke’s had seen better days, the front of the building a dirty brick and the sign faded, but it had a loyal clientele and was packed almost every night. Live music and a generous pour were the hallmarks of this local institution.
Adam motioned to a guy sitting in a booth in the parking lot, giving him a thumbs-up of thanks and acknowledgment when the guy waved him in. Adam cut the engine, slipped off his helmet and twisted to look at Tess. She bit back a grin, unwilling to let him see just how adorably sexy he was with his dark hair mussed and an excited smile on his face. He reached into a side bag and pulled out a black baseball cap with Stanford embroidered on it, placing it low on his head so that the bill hid part of his face.
“You ready?” he asked, turning and reaching up to help her remove her helmet. His grin was genuine, a little bit shy and all kinds of sexy. “I’m running a little late.”
“A little late for what? You never did tell me exactly what is happening here.” Tess watched him hop off the seat and she accepted his outstretched hand to help her do the same. She’d changed into a jade-green T-shirt-style mini-dress and ankle boots and the length of her skirt required her to maneuver a bit to not land on her face on the pavement or flash the patrons of Duke’s milling about the parking lot.
Adam held on to her hand, lacing their fingers together, his eyes mischievous but narrowed a bit with skepticism. “Are you telling me that you really don’t know why I come here?”
She shook her head, allowing him to tug her along to a side entrance as she waited for him to clue her in. “It wasn’t necessary for the job.”
Adam paused at the door. “That never stopped you before.”
She shrugged, opting to go for honesty on this one, even if it was embarrassing. “I wanted to leave some things for you to tell me.”
Her reward for her candor was a quick, hard kiss and a flash of his dimple before he pulled the door open and she was hit by a wall of sound from the crowd of people inside Duke’s. The space was dim but not dark, the long bar visible where it ran the length of the room on one side. There was a stage at the end of the room and on it a band was setting up for the show. As if on cue, the two men and one woman on stage turned and waved at Adam.
It was too noisy to hear what they were saying but their gestures were the universal symbol for “where the fuck have you been?” and suddenly Tess had a pretty good idea about what Adam did here once a month on the second Tuesday.
Adam turned back to her, gesturing toward the stage. “I’ve got a tab here. Order whatever you want and there’s a table up front for our guests.”
Tess gripped his arm, tugging him back to get a little more info. “Whose guests? Who are those people?”
Adam grinned, his smile contagious and de-aging him about a decade. Tess caught her breath, grateful to have saved this revelation for now, this time and this place. He was so damn cute, sexy, so excessively fuckable. Agreeing to indulge in this thing between them was looking like one of the best mistakes she ever made. Now she only wondered how long this gig would go before she and Adam could get back to one of their places and a horizontal surface.
“It’s my band, The Double E’s!”
“Your what?”
“My band.” He winked at her. “Didn’t you ever wonder why I have drumsticks all over my office?”
Tess had wondered but had figured that they were his version of those fidget widgets, something for him to mess with as he let his mind solve all the problems at Redhawk/Ling. And even though she’d purposefully left some things in his life unrevealed, once again Adam Redhawk had surprised her more than she’d considered possible. The drumsticks constantly lying around in his office weren’t props.
It looked like Adam Redhawk was a secret rock star. Sweet Lord, this was a sexy tidbit she really didn’t need to know.
“Why the Double E’s?” she asked, tugging on his arm as he moved to head to the stage.
“We started playing together at Stanford. It seemed like a good name for a bunch of electrical engineering majors.”
She watched him stride across the room with palpable excitement, and up onto the stage where he traded high fives and back slaps with the very-average-looking-not-a-rock-star-among-them group. They looked like a group of electrical engineers. Engineers who played in a rock band the second Tuesday of every month.
Adam eased behind the drum kit, reaching down to grab a set of sticks and twirling them between his fingers. Tess laughed, startled by the tap on her shoulder.
“I knew I should have bet on it.” Justin Ling was smiling, waggling his eyebrows up and down like the idiot he pretended he was. “I would have cleaned up.”
Tess wasn’t fooled by his usual court jester act but she was thirsty. “I have no idea what that means but I know you don’t need the money from that bet to buy me a drink.”
“True enough. But let me get one for you. I’m just going to put it on Adam’s tab anyway,” Justin answered with a grin, motioning for her to follow him over to the bar. He was slim, tall with an athletic build and possessed a presence that made the crowd part like the Red Sea. Once more she was thrown by the difference between Adam and Justin: one made every effort to fade into the shadows and the other was disappointed if the spotlight wasn’t bright enough.