Finding Allie (2 page)

Pulling the glove off, he waves his hand in the air. “Sweaty.”

I clasp it anyway. It’s hot and slick. The touch of skin on skin makes everything else in the world disappear. Our eyes meet and we can’t stop staring. Am I imagining this?

“Nice to meet you too, I guess.” I look behind him, at the door. “Why are you here?”

He laughs, tipping his head back. It makes him seem less dangerous. “For a drink! This
is
a bar, after all.”

I smile, unable to tear my eyes away from him.

He’s staring right back.

The engines all trickle to silence. Boots scrape outside on the mottled gravel parking lot. Are they coming in? My heart swells and slams against my ribcage. If trouble is coming, I don’t know what to do. I’ve never been here before during an actual fight.

“All of you coming in?” I ask. If they’re paying customers, then this is fine. Jeff acts like this isn’t fine, though.

“Allie!” Jeff shouts from the back. “Get back here.” That sounds like an order. Jeff likes to order me around. 

Chase frowns. “He always talk to you like that?” His words come out like a growl.

Surprised, I give him confused look. “Like what?”

“Like he doesn’t have to be nice.” His voice pounds through me like a heartbeat. He is being possessive, like a protective boyfriend. I only just met him.

The words sting because Chase is right. I swallow hard. Chase’s eyes are combing my face as if he’s trying to memorize me. I look away even as I wish he would watch me forever.

Chase. I want to say his name aloud simply to hear it on my tongue. To feel it roll over my lips. If I say his name then he’s really here, he really shook my hand, and he really is looking at me like he wants to.

Like he
needs
to.

“Whose stepdad is nice to them?” I ask lightly, like I’m trying to blow off the comment. This is too intense. Too unreal. He’s right, though. A little too right.

Chase’s fingers twitch and then his hand forms a fist. He’s staring in the direction where Jeff’s voice came from. He looks back toward the door where he entered.

“Good point,” he mutters, running his bare hand through that mop of hair. It makes him seem stronger. Darker. More in command.

“One second,” I say, turning away. I can feel his eyes bore into me. If I turn around now, I bet he’s staring at me. As I walk through the threshold to the back hallway I pause. Pretending to adjust something on a shelf, I look in the mirror behind the bar and catch his reflection.

I’m right. A shiver runs so fast through me I have to inhale sharply. This is a new feeling. I don’t know what to do. He’s gorgeous and frightening and the first of many bikers to show up now.

“Allie!” Jeff barks. I scurry back, cursing him in my head but knowing it doesn’t matter. I turn the corner into his office and his voice is so sharp he might as well cut me with it.

“You stop talking to Chase Halloway.”

“You know him?”
Chase Halloway
. The name makes me buzz all over.

Jeff’s face tightens. I asked the wrong question. By now I should know better. The butterfly of panic flaps its wings in my chest. How could I be so stupid?

He gives me a look that makes my stomach burn.

“What I know isn’t any of your concern. You just serve those bikers and don’t make trouble. No checks. It’s all on the house.”

“What?” My jaw drops. I can’t help it. Jeff never comps drinks for anyone except the sheriff. And he knows I can’t serve drinks.  

“You heard me. Don’t question it.” His voice is pure venom.

I won’t. Not again. Jeff is not a violent man. Not toward me, anyway. When he has his bad moods, though, life can be hard. Very, very hard.

Loud voices interrupt us. I turn away and rush down the hallway to find at least twenty men and two women standing at the bar, lined up in a confusing group of laughing and angry faces.

A wolf whistle cuts the air. “Hey there, pretty girl.” A man older than Jeff, with all-grey hair in a fringe around his balding head, whistles again.

“Where’s your daddy?” grunts another man. This one is huge, taller than Chase, but with features that are similar. Chase’s dad, maybe. It’s hard to tell. All the bikers are covered with a layer of road dirt. Their faces look tanner than they really are.

“I’ll be her daddy,” shouts someone in the crowd. “Her sugar daddy.” A bunch of men laugh. My whole body goes cold with fear. I shut down. All I can think about is the baseball bat behind the bar. If I can get back there, maybe I’ll be safe.

“Cut it out,” Chase says, louder than the laughter. I look to my left and see him, alone, standing right where I left him.

His eyes are on me. Only me. But his words are for the crowd.

“Claiming her already?” someone shouts. There’s a challenge in the question.

Chase steps forward, closer to me. When he’s only a foot away, he pauses. I can feel his heat reaching out to pull me in. His arms don’t, though.  

Chase turns back to face them. “And if I am?” His words hold an even bigger challenge. I feel a need to go to him coursing through me. I’ve had crushes and boys who’ve wanted to go out with me. Never has a man staked a claim like this. I feel safe even in the middle of this brewing fight. 

I shouldn’t like it, but I do. My eyes roam over Chase as he looks into the crowd of his own people and waits.

You could hear a pin drop.

The doors burst open and a small, muscle-bound man wearing leather pants and packing a gun on his hip barges into the middle of the bar and screams, “Wakefield!” That’s Jeff’s last name, and this doesn’t look good.

The bikers all pause.

“Wakefield!” the guy says again. He has a “1 percent” tattoo on his shoulder. I don’t understand what it means, but that doesn’t matter. He looks like he’s Italian or Greek, dark and swarthy, short but bouncing with energy. He isn’t much older than Chase, I guess. Under thirty. He’s a loose cannon, even with these hard-core bikers.

People get careful suddenly. Quiet.

Watchful.

Ready.

“Where’s your dad?” Chase asks under his breath. I’m trying to move away from him, to get closer to the bar, but my slow slide isn’t good enough. He grabs my arm, but it’s a gentle clasp. He touches me like I’ve given him permission already.

I shake my head and tell the truth, the press of his bare fingers on my forearm like silk. My pulse races. My skin wants him to touch more. It’s like my body has a will of its own. 

“He’s my stepdad,” I say, correcting him. “And I don’t know. He was back—”

I’m cut off from my own answer by the crack of a gunshot splitting the air.

It’s Jeff, holding his double-barrel shotgun that he keeps in back.

And his five best friends are right behind him, all armed.

Chapter Two

I see guns everywhere, the clack of metal on leather like a roar. Every person in the room, except me, has one. Chase is holding a gun suddenly, too, in the hand that isn’t touching me. It’s big and long, glistening in the shaft of light that comes through the partly-open main door.

I can’t think. The gun brushes against my arm and I stifle a scream.

The whole room goes cold. Quiet. Tense. You could hear a pin drop. My heart stops and races at the same time. Everything seems unreal.

“Get out,” Jeff says to the group, his words flat and clear. I have never seen his eyes so dead. He looks at me but doesn’t see me. It’s like I don’t exist.

Chase’s hold on my arm tightens and he leans down. His breath tickles my ear, making my belly clench. “Don’t worry. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

I can’t look at him. I’m too afraid to move. If I did look at him, I think I’d see a lot more concern for me than I’ve ever seen in Jeff’s eyes. His hand is hot and tense on my skin. It feels like a lifeline.

“What? Can’t a guy have a drink with a few of his closest friends?” That voice comes from the older biker who reminds me of Chase. Chase looks at him. All of the bikers look at him. He’s commanding and loud, his voice boisterous. I think he’s the leader.

The darker-haired man is twitching, his fingers dancing on the trigger of the double-barreled gun he holds tight in a sweaty fist.

“Is that your dad?” I whisper. I wish I hadn’t, because a woman in the group turns her head sharply toward me. She narrows her eyes. I look away.

“Yeah, it is. You’re not the only one with dad problems,” Chase says. He lets out a little puff of air. “We’ll get to know each other later,” he murmurs, so quiet I can barely hear him. There’s something in his voice, a deep heat that makes me feel a connection.

I swallow, my throat dry from fear. I’m less afraid when he touches me, though.

“You can have a drink all you want,” Jeff shouts back. His gun is still pointed in the air. No one actually points a gun
at
anyone. I look at each person in the room, avoiding eye contact. If I can just get back behind the bar, I’ll be safer. But I don’t dare move. I’m stuck. At least Chase is here to help me. 

“Alrighty then, Girlie. Serve up!” Chase’s dad shouts, looking straight at me. Chase takes a half-step closer and his hip and shoulder touch mine. He is solid and feels so safe.

Jeff scowls. “Have your drinks somewhere else, Galt Halloway. Plenty of bars down the road in Harlow.” Harlow’s the next town over, but it’s practically owned by the Mephists, a different motorcycle gang. They’d never come to Jeff’s place like this. Why bother? 

Chase must be part of
this
motorcycle gang. Yet another one. 

Oh, God.

A ripple of chuckles passes through all the bikers. “All the bars in Harlow are shit. So’s this one, but it smells less than the ones there,” says the dark-haired man with the one percent tattoo. He looks like a boxer dog that drank too much coffee. His index finger caresses the trigger on his gun.

I’m more afraid of him than anyone else in this room. Including Jeff.

Chase pushes me a few feet closer to the bar. His touch is kind of rough. It startles me, and I shuffle my feet, stumbling slightly. His father grins. He dips his head and nudges it forward, like he’s encouraging Chase. A wall of muscle presses into my backside. A rush of heat pushes through my body like a wave.

I’ve never been touched by a man like this. He acts like he has the right to walk me closer to the bar and make me do whatever he wants.

He smells like mint and sweat, like danger and impulse. The grip he has on me is fierce. I can feel his thigh press into my hip and it makes me want to lean into it. I want to feel more of him. 

All of him.

How can I be so attracted to a complete stranger, one who’s with a motorcycle gang threatening my stepdad with guns? I don’t even know who I am, suddenly.

This is not the normal Allie.

Then why do I feel so alive as Chase moves my body?

“Pretend you’re making drinks,” he whispers. His voice is dark and low, but his eyes watch the room. He lets go of me and my skin burns where we were touching.

My hands shake as I pull one of the glasses from the dishwasher rack. Jeff looks at me and barks, “Stop right there, Allie!” I know two of the five men standing behind him. One of them is old Zeke, who is at least eighty years old.

Zeke’s hands are shaking, too.

Chase’s aren’t. He puts one firmly on my shoulder and towers over me from behind. My heart slams against my ribs, my pulse riding faster than a biker on an open, straight stretch of highway. The room is an oven. I can’t breathe. Each time I try, I feel panic.

“Allie?” says Chase’s dad. His eyes take me in, looking up and down, settling on my face. The grin he flashed me a minute ago fades. “She looks an awful lot like her mama.” Then he stares Jeff down until I think I will cry.

How does Chase’s father know my mother? My skin tingles and my head begins to pound.

Something bad is about to happen, but no one wants to make the first move. I don’t understand what is happening.

This makes no sense. Jeff doesn’t have guns lying around everywhere. He doesn’t get into fights with bikers. When did my life turn upside down like this? Ten minutes ago I was tucking away my moving money in my music box. Now thirty loaded guns feel like they’re all pointed at me.

And a very dangerous biker dude knows my mother? Knew my mother.
Knew
. She’s dead.

I can’t stop trembling. From behind, Chase’s voice makes me startle, softer now, but still on guard. “Ignore my dad. He’s just fucking around with yours.”

“He’s not my dad,” I say through gritted teeth.

Chase squeezes my shoulder like he gets it. “Stepdad. Right.” His hand with the gun slides against my forearm, sending an electric shock up to my scalp and down to my toes. I tuck my long, sweaty hair behind my ear and just try to breathe.

“I said get out.” Jeff cocks the shotgun but keeps it pointed up. All the other men tense up, the women stepping behind their men. Chase’s hand on my shoulder weighs on me, like he’s trying to push me down behind the counter.

“We’ll get out when we’re good and ready. After our thirsts have been quenched,” says the dark-haired one percent tattoo man.

“Shut up, Frenchie,” a voice growls.

Frenchie looks at me. His eyes settle on my breasts. The way he looks at me makes my stomach turn. “We need to have lots of appetites taken care of, Galt.”

Chase’s father—Galt—looks at him and snorts in disgust. “You keep your appetite in your pants, Frenchie. We got bigger things to deal with.
Lots
bigger things.”

The group erupts into low-level laughter, but their eyes are serious. So serious.

So deadly.

“How ’bout this,” Galt says. The name sounds familiar, but I can’t remember where I’ve heard it before. All I can think about is the feel of Chase’s hand on my shoulder, the solidness of him behind me.

His hand pulls away the thick wave of black hair that has fallen over my neck. He is gentle and suddenly I can’t think, can’t speak, can’t move. I can hear him breathe, a ragged sound of suspense and expectation. It’s the only sound for a moment, all my mind can take as we wait.