Longest Night (New Adult Biker Gang Romance) (Night Horses MC Book 1) (4 page)

The next day, as it edged closer to noon, we all drifted into the living room.

I picked up a pillow and spun it in my hands.

“Why don’t we go out to lunch?” my mother suggested again. “He said we could leave his stuff on the porch.”

“No, Mom!” I said. “That stuff’s expensive, I’d feel terrible if someone took it.”

I didn’t admit that I wanted to see Merle again, but my parents exchanged looks and I knew that they weren’t fooled for a minute.

“I think I’d like to meet this young man,” my father said, his voice deep and solemn.

“You guys could go out to lunch,” I said. “I have homework to catch up on.”

“Mm-hmm,” my mother said.

Finally, the doorbell rang.

I don’t know which of us were more surprised when we opened the door.

Merle was standing there, sure, but not the Merle of last night, leathered up and looking half-beaten.

He was still tall, lean, and handsome, but dressed in clean and tidy dark-wash jeans and a nicely ironed plaid button-down shirt.

His hair was brushed neatly and the scar and bruise that seemed to dominate his face in the harsh light of the street lamps last night were softened and blurred, only there if you paid attention.

The bike was nowhere in sight. He’d pulled up in a silver sedan, pretty new, but not flashy.

He looked… respectable. Younger.

He looked great, although I sort of missed the leather. His dark piercing eyes were the same, though, and I couldn’t help but grin when they fell on me.

“Hello, sir, ma’am, Megan,” he said.

My parents greeted him, a little warily. Definitely frostily.

“I’m here for my stuff,” he said, and smiled. “I’m also here to ask Megan to lunch.”

“Come in,” my father said. “We have a lot to talk about.”

I could hardly believe it when I was sitting shotgun in Merle’s car half an hour later.

He’d patiently borne my parents grilling him about his occupation - mechanic - family - mostly deceased - age - twenty two - religion - “Private, ma’am,” - and so on.

Finally, he’d leaned forward on the couch and looked earnestly at them.

“Look,” he said, very patiently. “Your daughter is eighteen. She’s about to go to college. From what she said last night, she respects you and thinks highly of you, and wants you to be proud of her and her choices.
That’s the only reason that I’m here.
”

They frowned.

“If I just wanted to date her, hell, if I just wanted to sleep with her, I’d have waited until you two went out, picked up my stuff, and left her a note with my number. If she’d wanted to meet up with me, she could easily have done so. She could have ditched school. She could have waited until you dropped her off at college and immediately met up with me, or a dozen guys like me, or a dozen guys worse.”

He looked at me.

“Megan, would you like to go on a date with me?” he asked.

“Yes!” I said, immediately.

He looked at my parents.

“That’s the opinion I’m interested in.”

My parents exchanged a long look. My father’s mouth twisted in an ironic smile, and he finally shrugged.

“We can’t say he doesn’t respect her, and we’re the ones who suggested she go out with Nate last night.”

“I can’t believe you sat through that,” I said, giggling.

He shrugged, and shot me a half-smile.

“I meant it,” he said. “I wanted to take you on a date, and you didn’t seem like the type of girl who wanted to sneak out.”

I shook my head.

“Are you really a mechanic?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Among other things, yeah,” he said. “I work on cars, bikes, tinker with some other shit. You like Mexican?”

“Love it,” I said.

I patted the center console of the car.

“This is not nearly as exciting as the ride last night, but I think I prefer it,” I said.

He laughed.

“I’ll have to tell my main girl you don’t like her,” he teased.

“A motorcycle is not a girlfriend,” I said, formally.

“Yeah, yeah.”

Lunch was awesome.

Not just compared to my crappy night with Nate. Lunch was just… awesome. We went to a little Mexican place where everyone seemed to know Merle, and we ended up getting three dishes and sharing them.

I told Merle that this was the best Mexican food I’d ever had, and he asked if I’d only been to Taco Bell and maybe a Torero’s or something.

I admitted that, yeah, I hadn’t had anything this authentic, but I had definitely learned the error of my ways.

Halfway through the meal, I’d grown so comfortable with him that I absentmindedly reached out and brushed my thumb across his cheek.

“Hah!” I said. “Concealer! I knew it.”

He grinned.

“Oh, come on. It’s hard to put on my fancy duds and impress parents when I just got in a fight,” he said.

“You put it on yourself?” I asked, peering critically at his face. “You did an awesome job.”

“Hell yes,” he said. “I wore concealer all through high school. I got some shit for it, but the teachers didn’t treat me like a thug, and I got outta there without getting busted for anything.”

“You go to college?” I asked.

I decided not to ask what he could have gotten busted for. Most people I knew smoked pot or drank.

“Thought about it,” he said. “Nope. Not when I could make the money from fixing up cars and selling dope.”

I blinked.

“Oh. Okay.”

He winced.

“I’m not good at making a good impression, am I?” he asked.

“I mean, you’re honest?” I asked. “That is good. I like honest.”

He looked a little uncomfortable.

“I guess I should tell you that I do want to go on a date with you, but that’s not the only reason I invited you out, then,” he said.

I smiled.

I don’t think it was a good smile.

I had been completely giddy when he gave me so much attention last night and then showed back up today to brave my parents and take me on a date.

Of course, there was another reason. He didn’t really like me. Why would he? I’d totally made a fool of myself last night.

God, I was so fucking
stupid.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey, look at me.”

I did, slowly.

“Okay, yeah. I have an ulterior motive. I need some information from you. If that were the only thing, though, I could have gotten it last night, dropped you off, gotten my stuff, and you’d have never seen me again.”

He reached out and covered my hand gently with his own, stroking his calloused thumb over the back of my hand, making me shiver.

“I wouldn’t have brought you here if I didn’t really want to go on a date.”

His voice lowered a little.

“I wouldn’t have danced with you.”

“I thought it was a pity-dance,” I admitted.

He grinned.

“Sweetheart, I don’t
do
pity.”

I tried out another smile. It apparently passed muster.

“What do you need to know?”

“I was at the truck stop because some assholes have been moving shady product through there,” he said. “What can you tell me about your date’s ‘friends’?”

“Um,” I said. “They were a few years older. There were three of them. Two looked maybe your age, one looked even older.”

“Even older?” he asked. “I’m hurt.”

I blushed.

“You know what I mean! One looked older. Not even older. You’re not old. I mean, not that you’re super young or anything. You’re older than me, and that’s okay.”

Oh, God, why couldn’t I stop talking?

He grinned.

“Okay, I get it. The guy who was older than me and the others, was he a little older or a lot older?”

“Maybe thirties?” I hazarded. “Old enough that I was REALLY confused about why he’d be hanging around the rest of them. Us, I suppose.”

“Tell me about him.”

I shivered, but not in the fun way that I had when feeling the biker’s touch.

“I didn’t like him,” I said. “His eyes were hard, you know? He was really muscular and tattooed, but that didn’t bother me. I’ve met dudes who looked scarier who were total sweethearts. Something was wrong with his eyes, though. He looked like a snake, or a spider, or something. I felt…”

I paused.

“I felt helpless. I didn’t want to be around him because I felt totally helpless.”

I shuddered.

“Do you remember his tattoos?”

I did, a little, and described what I could. I made sketches on napkins and Merle and I discussed him and the other guys Nate was hanging around with.

When he was finished picking my brain, he sighed and sat back, his mouth twisted in a wry smile.

His eyes looked a lot older, then. Not hard and evil like the guy we had been discussing, but not what I was used to. It looked like he was looking through me and seeing hell on the other side.

“Thanks, you’ve been really helpful,” he said. He sighed.

“I think we have a big problem.”

“What’s up?” I asked.

“You did an excellent job sketching gang tattoos,” he said. “I have competition I didn’t want to deal with.”

“You compete with a gang?” I asked.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “I said I sold dope, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but…” I trailed off.

Oh.

Dope wasn’t pot. Dope was heroin.

I blinked.

“You, uh. You don’t mean weed, do you?” I asked.

He winced.

“So, your family seems nice,” he said brightly.

“They are,” I said. “I can’t believe you talked your way into taking me out like that.”

“Parents are terrified of sheltering their kids and then sending them off to college,” he said. “They’ve been told for years that if they do that, they’ll end up with the kid who needs their stomach pumped at the first party. Or, you know.”

He grinned.

“The kid who goes on a date with a guy who maybe sells stuff that isn’t weed.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Come on, it’s not like I’m going to be hanging out with you while you do anything illegal,” I said. “Right?”

“Of course not,” he said. “I made my choices. I’m not dragging you into them. You’re a nice girl, and I like you.”

Merle liked me.

He thought I was a nice girl, which, I don’t know, might be bad, he maybe thought that I was boring.

But…

Merle liked me.

I grinned at him.

“I like you, too,” I said.

I was pleased with the slight red flush that spread across his cheeks.

“Even if you think bluegrass makes good slow-dancing music,” I said.

He looked indignant and launched into what he declared a ‘musical history lesson.’ The moral of his story seemed to basically just be that bluegrass was awesome.

I loved watching him get so passionate about it.

We had an excellent lunch. No more talk of dope or gang tattoos. Just about each other.

It turned out that we had a lot in common. We both loved silly comedies and neither of us liked horror movies (“What’s the point of paying money to be scared?” he asked).

We were both dog people. We both liked to read. He showed me the Kindle app on his phone and let me scroll through to see what he’d been reading.

I clicked on a story with a half-naked couple on the cover and held it up to show him.

“Romance? Really?” I asked.

“I like a happily-ever-after,” he said. “No shame in that.”

"Who doesn't?" I asked.

Secretly, I was delighted. I read romance novels and sappy fanfiction and watched silly movies where everything always came out okay. I loved them, but I tried to keep them a secret.

I had no idea that men read them too, let alone that a tough guy like Merle would.

That was pretty cool.

The waitress came by then to take our plates. She glanced down at the napkins I'd drawn on and frowned.

"Sorry about the mess!" I said.

She smiled.

"Oh, no problem, senorita!" she said. She flashed both of us a wide grin.

Merle took me home, driving the long way, past the river, telling me stories about running around as a kid, climbing the trees and feeling like he was king of the world, the biggest pirate captain the world had seen.

I loved picturing Merle as a kid. I wondered if his eyes were as piercing and dark, and for a moment, I felt a stab of sadness.

I couldn't picture a kid with eyes as deep or sad as Merle's. What had happened to make his look that way?

He pulled up in front of my house.

"I probably shouldn't go in. Someone, not naming any names, made my black eye a lot more obvious," he said, peering at his face in the rearview mirror.

"Thanks for the lift," I said. "Thanks for lunch."

"My pleasure," he said.