I could feel his eyes searching my face and tried not to think about it. I let my own eyes examine the bruise. “Yes, if you keep something cold against it it’ll go down quick enough.”
“Sounds like you’ve dealt with plenty of black eyes before,” he said. We were so close and his voice so low that the sound of it reverberated in my chest.
“You know the story. Only daughter when dad wanted an only son. He taught me not to take any bull from people. Sometimes that comes at the cost of a black eye every now and again,” I said.
“And sometimes at the cost of getting held by two men while a third gets ready to…beat the hell out of you,” he replied, skirting the implications of Bobby’s true intentions.
I bristled at that. I never did like taking help from people. That got me in trouble sometimes, too. “It wouldn’t’ve been so bad. I could’ve handled it just fine.”
“Of course you could have… ow!” he exclaimed.
In my irritation, I’d pressed the bag against his tender skin with a bit too much force.
“Sorry!” I said, pulling the bag away. And again, before thinking about it, I leaned in close and blew gently on the bruise, pursing my lips the way my dad used to. “Is that better? …oh.”
We were close enough to kiss. I knew.
He knew it.
His eyes, sharp and green like some ancient and impenetrable forest, locked mine. I still had my lips pursed.
Slowly, I forced them to relax.
Something passed between us. Electricity, maybe. Some energy that suffused the nerves and fibers of my body with a tingling awareness.
A tingling awareness of him.
It’s just hormones. Hormones and adrenaline. He rescued me… Yes, I can admit that he did that. To myself at least. And he’s handsome and quiet and I KNOW I know him somehow.
He stared back at me. His bruise glowered an angry purple beneath his green eyes. His hair framed his face.
His hands twitched on his lap. One lifted, and my mind went immediately to it reaching up and touching my cheek. Gently at first. Then with more desire as it wrapped around to my neck to pull me in.
But it didn’t. His hands stayed there, resting on those armored pants that made up part of his biker outfit.
I caught myself wondering if maybe there were some tattoos beneath that armor.
“Thank you, that does feel nice,” he said finally. He took the cold bag in its tea towel wrapper and touched it to his bruise again, forcing some space between us.
He glanced away, as though nothing had happened. But something had happened, and I knew that he knew it, too.
“Good. So…” I got to the part that made me most nervous. The part that made a hundred little butterflies beat themselves senseless against the walls of my stomach. “Are you going to stick around for a while, or are you hitting the road again?”
I crossed my arms and leaned back against the kitchen counter in front of the sink.
He considered me again. Heat started low in my stomach and slowly spread its way up and down through my body.
At least I have this shirt of his buttoned up all the way, I thought. I hoped that heat would stop below the level of my throat.
He was so different from the men I knew. So different from brutes like Bobby and his two numbskull friends.
I knew that was ridiculous. How could I know something like that? I’d known Dash, if that was his real name, all of two hours. I couldn’t explain it, though.
Maybe that’s what I’m so attracted to him, I thought before I could stop myself. And for that thought, I wanted to scold myself.
How original, Ellie. You’re attracted to a handsome, rough-looking motorcycle-riding man shrouded in mystery. Not to mention he beat three men up in one go. Real original.
And of course I couldn’t forget about that boulder-sized chip on his shoulder.
“That depends,” he said.
“On?” I said, my heart giving a quick flutter before I could help it. I’d been a little more than half expecting him to pull his helmet on and roar on out of town and out of my life before I got my chance to figure him out.
“Do I get my shirt back?” he asked, nodding at me.
I bristled. “That depends,” I replied.
“On?” He said, turning the bag of peas around to find a fresh cold spot to touch to his bruise. I detected the slightest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“When are we getting the rest of my clothes back?”
He shrugged. “No time like the present.” Then he stood. He unrolled the peas from the towel and put the bag back in the freezer. When he couldn’t figure out where the tea towel went, he folded it and placed it on the table.
It was an oddly gentle, delicate move that I hadn’t expected. Something so little it shouldn’t have been noticed. But I noticed.
“Let’s go,” he said.
He didn’t wait for me. He started for the door.
Chapter 7
DASH
I’d been on my own for so long now that my first instinct was to go for my bike. Its chrome gleamed in the sun and it sat in the driveway waiting for me like some faithful animal.
“Wait!” Ellie shouted behind me, shoving the screen door open and bursting into the world.
It was a quiet, residential street. Too quiet, I realized. I looked around. The houses were empty, the former owners not out at work but gone completely. Many of them were big old things, a mix of red-brick and aluminum siding.
In the sun and the warm breeze they looked stately, if somewhat rundown and the worse for wear.
The sun beat down on my black body armor, which was a strong mix of leather and Kevlar. The heat worked its way into my back and shoulders slowly, like the fingers of a masseuse.
I guess that the town of Pleasant wasn’t so pleasant to live in, anymore. I’d had to take some old county road just to get here. The highway bypassed it by miles, and the town suffered for it.
“What?” I said. I stopped and looked back at her. She stood at the top of the porch steps, her hands balled into fists which in turn pressed against her hips. She looked a little flushed.
She also looked beautiful, with her hair swaying in the breeze like it did. She had a lovely face and a strength behind her eyes that staggered me when I caught glimpses of it.
She was also still wearing my shirt
“You just want to hop onto that bike of yours, roar on down to the laundromat, grab my clothes and ride along back here?” she asked.
“…yes?” I replied.
“Skipping over how you plan to carry laundry on that thing, what if Bobby’s gone and told his dad some biker roughed up him and his boys? And by his dad, I mean the sheriff.”
My competitive nature, which served me so well back in New York, wanted me to blurt out that the two of us could tell dear old dad what really happened. The realist in me quashed that idea.
It was the word of a vagabond and an ex-girlfriend against the word of the sheriff’s own son and said son’s friends.
I didn’t want to spend the next few nights in the holding tank. Especially since if anyone ran my prints or took a good look at me that might see who I really was.
So I swallowed my pride and said, “well, I’m open to suggestions.”
Ellie chewed on her lower lip, glancing between me and my bike. There was something endearing in that expression.