Ruined (The MC Motorcycle Club Romance Series - Book #1) (4 page)

Later on, as I sat in my brand new cell, I tried to
convince myself that
the drugs were put there by a rival club
.
Maybe my dad moved in on someone else’s territory and they were looking to get
him back. But that made no sense. Even if they set up the stop, they lost a lot
of money in drugs and my dad wasn’t the one who
got arrested
.
He wasn’t even there.

Trying to shake it all off I set about putting the
bike back together and getting ready for the ride. I would be sure to check my
bags this time. I
would never be made
a scapegoat
again, that’s for damn sure. It would be good for me to get out on the open
road for a bit and get some fresh air. It had been too long.

About an hour later, my dad, a guy named Johnny that
everyone calls “Johnny Red” because of his ruddy complexion, another guy called
“Bo,” —I had no idea what the rest of his name was if he had one— and
Terrance’s dad, Blake, came out of the clubhouse which was out behind the bar.
There were two other guys that were always hanging around, wanting to be part
of the club waiting outside. There was a garage attached to the clubhouse where
they kept their bikes and worked on them. The equipment in the garage far
outweighed the worth of the bar it
was attached
to.
Eventually, my dad would have to put some of that money into the bar or his
front would fall right down around him.

The business conducted in the clubhouse is the
business that I had spent my life trying to stay
out of
.
My mother would never come right out and tell me what it was my father did
there, but she got her point across that I needed to stay far away from it.

Terrance and I used to sneak around and listen
sometimes when they had their meetings. A lot of it we didn’t understand, but
we heard enough to know that my mother was right. It was a shady business. I
also knew the old man rarely went on just a ride with the entire club. When he
went for a ride to clear his head, he took the bike up to the foothills and
spent the day unaccompanied.

They were working on something or setting something
up. A morbid sense of curiosity and an intense sense of boredom pressed me
forward anyways. I put on my skull cap and my helmet and straddled the bike. It
felt good;
it had been a hell of a long time since I had
rode, close to three years when you counted all the jail and trial time leading
up to my two year stint
. I was praying the old adage about it being like
riding a bike applied to Harleys as well. Eating the pavement my first time out
might be more than embarrassing.

I waited until the other guys were on their bikes
and then I fired her up. She purred
like
she was happy
to see me and as I eased her out of the garage and into the open road I
realized that at least one thing still felt normal. I hadn’t forgotten how to
ride, it was like second nature. I loved the feeling of the wind against my
face and just the simple freedom being on a bike gave me. I guessed it was in
my blood, even though I should have hated to admit that.

We rode along the highway for a while and through
the foothills far out of town. We rode until we came to an old warehouse with a
couple of nondescript cars parked out front and some unfriendly looking guys
sitting in them. A wave of PTSD hit me and I started sweating, thinking they
were undercover cops and I was about to be arrested again.

What the fuck was I doing there? How stupid was I?
Really.
I had talked to my parole officer in the morning.
She was going to come by the house this week. Being at the warehouse was
probably enough to put me back inside if something bad happened.

We parked the bikes along the side of the warehouse
and everyone got off and some of us went inside. I guessed that the two prospects
and Bo who had been beside me were outside to make sure the guys in the cars
stayed there. Whatever was going down, it was much heavier than a few baggies
of heroin in my saddlebags. I hadn’t met her yet, but I was convinced that my
parole officer would definitely not approve.

There were wooden crates stacked up all over and I
was pretty damn sure that I didn’t want to know what was inside them. Some of
them were long and flat.
Guns?
Maybe.
Some of them were more rectangular.

I stood back with the other guys and watched as my
dad and Blake approached a couple of guys on the other side of the warehouse.
They were looking into one of the crates and there was a large green duffle bag
opened at one of their feet. One of the guys was dressed similar to us in blue
jeans, T-shirt and leather vest. The other looked like he would be overly
dressed for the Emmys in a suit that had to cost three or four grand. He was a
tall, muscular guy with dark hair and gray at the temples and he wore a thin
framed classy looking pair of glasses. He reminded me of the Grey
Poupon
guy from the old commercials and I wondered if he
spoke with an accent.

I couldn’t hear anything that
was
being said
, especially since Johnny Red was expounding about some
red-haired girl he had picked up the last time he was in Vegas. He said she had
called him the night before and wanted to come out and visit. I looked at
Johnny and wondered how ugly or desperate she must have been if she needed to
come all the way from another state to be with him. Johnny may not have been a
bad-looking guy when he was…no, let’s face it; guys like Johnny were born ugly.
He was about five-five and that was in his boots. His waist had to be about a
forty-four wide and he had a gray beard that lay against his chest that looked
like a heavily used
Brillo
pad. His hair was long and
greasy and he was missing one of his eye teeth. But the worst thing about
Johnny was how he smelled. I had spent almost a year in county jail and then
two in prison and I still hadn’t come across anything that smelled like Johnny.
I didn’t know what it was, but it’s just indescribable.

I looked back at Blake and my dad. They were shaking
hands with the suit guy. The other one didn’t look like a guy who liked to be
touched.

They strolled back over and Blake said, “All right,
all taken care of.”

“Everything’s all set?” Johnny asked.

“Set up and good to go,” Blake told him.

“Let’s go have a cold one,” my dad said. It was ten
a.m. I guess in MC time it was five o’clock somewhere.

I rode back to the bar, following the
Smokin
’ Jokers patch on my dad’s back and wondering what
the hell I was a part of, but most importantly, after all I had been through I
had to wonder why I was putting myself in this kind of situation at all.

CHAPTER
4

OLIVIA

I got up in the morning with good intentions. I had
a lot of cleaning and laundry to do around the house and after I finished, I
planned to look into whether or not I could get back into some of the classes I
had dropped. I felt the sudden need to start cleaning up my life.

I got dressed and grabbed my purse. It felt light
and I remembered that I had moved my wallet into my other purse when Terrance and
I had gone out to dinner and then the bar. I didn’t find it at home anywhere so
I called Terrance and asked him to look in the saddle bags. He said that it
wasn’t on the bike anywhere. He was gone again on a parts run for his dad and was
not expected back until late.

I was hoping I could find it at home because I
really didn’t want to go into the bar alone. I needed to find it though. It was
either that or
cancel
my credit card. I wished I would
have noticed it missing sooner but I
had been frazzled
since we ran into
Dax
. I only had one credit card and
it had a three thousand dollar limit, but even that would kill me if someone
charged it up.

I went to the restaurant where we had dinner first
and they were nice and checked their lost and found. I’d asked a few waitresses
and waiters if they had seen it. They hadn’t, so I finally had to suck it up
and go out to The Smoke Joint.

When I walked in, Bull and his crew were sitting
around drinking…that was new, not. He looked up at me inquisitively
like
he wondered what I would be doing there without
Terrance…a lamb in the lion pit…

“Hi, Bull,” I said, trying to hide the tremor in my
voice. “Did anyone turn in a little black purse? I lost it the other night
after we were here and I can’t seem to find it anywhere.”

 
“I don’t know,
sweetheart, check with Cookie. He has a big old lost and found box back there.”

Cookie was the cook, both for the bar and the club.
Dax
said he had been around as long as he could remember.
He did some bartending too, but mostly Bull left that to some of the girls who
hung around, he said that gave them a way to earn their keep. Cookie was a tiny
Mexican man with a handlebar mustache and a quick smile. He didn’t fit in there,
he was too nice. He didn’t speak much English so Bull’s guys often made him the
butt of their jokes too.

“Yeah, but if it matched any of his shoes he’s
probably already taken it home,” one of the guys was saying and they all
laughed. I laughed too, but mine was a nervous one.

I started around the counter toward the kitchen to
see if I could find the box full of lost treasures. I could only imagine the
stuff that place must have raked in. Just as I had about made it around the
corner I heard a familiar voice that stopped me dead in my tracks.

“I got the hog all shined up.”

Well, the voice and the fact that the rest of the
room went dead silent. I guessed the guys were interested to find out how
Dax
was taking the news that I was dating his former best
friend. This place was great like that, no one had any business that was
strictly their own.

“Good, now get a beer,” Bull said.

Dax
acted
like
he didn’t notice anything was going on. He
reached behind the bar and grabbed a beer out of the ice trough they kept
there. I willed myself to keep walking and just go out the back, but part of me
also wanted to just get this over
with
.
Dax
and I were likely to be seeing a lot of each other. It
had to get easier and maybe if I explained things to him and even gave him a
chance to explain things to me…

“Hi,
Dax
,” I said softly.
It seemed that my voice was as hesitant as I was. Either that or I was hoping
he wouldn’t hear
me and he
had walked away. It would
give me an out and I could still say I tried.

He heard me though. He looked up at me and took a
swig from the bottle in his hand. He seemed to be swigging a lot of beer
lately. That was new, for him. I looked at the clock and I saw the corners of
his lips twitch. He knew what I was thinking.

“Hey, Olivia,” he said finally,
like
he had just noticed me.

He turned around and began to walk away. I guess
that was it. I heard myself call after him and wondered if I was a glutton for
punishment.

“
Dax
!”
My stupid voice cracked.

He turned slowly toward me and I found myself
wishing that he wasn’t so fine to look at. His green eyes and full lips and
this new and improved body were almost too much for my heart to take.

“Yeah?” he said nonchalantly.

“Can we talk for a minute?” I asked him.

He couldn’t control his facial expression any longer.
It was suddenly obvious that he had no desire to talk to me whatsoever. I felt
a pang in my chest, although I knew I deserved it. Everyone was still looking
at us and I wondered if he would just keep walking to save face with the guys.

“Just for a minute?”
I asked him, trying not to sound like I was begging in front of our audience.

“Okay,” he reluctantly agreed. We went over to one
of the booths and as we sat he said, “You want a beer?”

I rolled my eyes before I caught myself. It wasn’t
even eleven a.m.

“Um, no thanks,” I told him.

Dax
was only nineteen when he went to prison, but his dad would have had no problem
letting him drink all he wanted then. He usually chose not to, unless it was a
party or a special occasion. It was just one more thing that had changed.

“So what do you want to talk about?” he asked.

God, he was so good-looking I could melt under his
gaze.

Pulling up all of my courage I said, “Don’t you
think we should talk about the past couple of years and what’s going on now? I
mean, it seems like we’re going to be bumping into each other a lot and that’s
going to get awkward.”

He laughed. It was a sarcastic laugh. “More awkward
than watching my ex-girlfriend and my ex-best friend walk into the bar as a
couple the very day I get released from prison?”

I sighed. “I’m sorry about that,” I said.

I could feel the heat coloring my face. I wanted to
tell him he had no right to be angry. I was his ex-girlfriend, but I knew
Terrance was right when he said there was an unwritten rule amongst friends.