Force: Blacktop Sinners MC (5 page)

Chapter Eight

“You’re all skin and bones,” her mother said, shaking her head but enveloping her in a hug.

Tess giggled and leaned into her mother’s embrace. “I’m plenty curvy. Last I checked I was bordering on an eight. I might have a long torso and legs relatively speaking, but I’m still 5’3, being willowy is definitely something I have to work out.”

Her mom chuckled herself and pinched an ample hip. “I should probably be more into that. The most workout I get around here is gardening and walking the dog. I think turning into foodies in retirement might have put a bit of meat on our bones.”

“But you look good!” She objected, coming into the house and smiling at the table before her. Her mom had gone all out. There were candelabras set, a huge ham, and every dish she could think of from green bean casserole to tons of mashed potatoes. On the side board was a caramel fudge cake and at least three types of pie.

“You don’t have to do all of this.” Tess shook her head and walked around the expanse of the dining room. “Seriously, you went all out. That’s…it’s too much. It’s just a family dinner.”

“You and Sarah rarely get over here to Asheville, and your father and I wanted to do what we could for the family. He even repainted all the woodwork trim. You know him; he’s always finding a new project around the house.”

“He definitely is.”

“I’m what?” Her dad called, coming in from the backyard. “I better hear the words ‘debonair’ and ‘handsome’ to go with everything else.”

She grinned back at her father. He hunched over a bit now, after he’d had a knee replacement surgery and his hair was white, even that of his Santa-like beard. He wasn’t quite the strapping man she remembered back when she was eight, but he still had a warm smile. At a time like this, it was comforting to be home, to be in a place that smelled of cinnamon and charcoal that allowed her to close her eyes and be innocent again.

“So, Dad, looking good. Is Sarah here yet?”

“She’s finishing up upstairs.”

Tess frowned and quirked her head at her parents. Sarah’s bedroom had been in the basement since her older sister had declared herself grown. The second floor were the quarters for her and Jason and then the top was her parents. If Sarah was upstairs, then that meant she was in Jason’s room. She’d always done her mourning up there, sitting at his desk or on his bed, saying a few quiet words.

Offering her parents a tight smile, she headed up the stairs. It was expected after all, even if after five years it still killed her to walk into an abandoned room like this. Somehow, it was easier to think of Jason as alive and vibrant---as untrue as it was---when one didn’t enter into the mausoleum commemorating him. Everything was how her brother had left it back when he’d left home for college: the trophies from Varsity baseball, the tattered pictures of old girlfriends folded one too many times, and the posters of his favorite film,
Jurassic Park
. To be fair, all three films’ posters were there, and he’d even started studying paleontology in school because of it. Hell he’d only been done with his first year when he’d gotten into the motorcycle crash, hadn’t even gotten a chance to have a taste of his dream. On his desk was still a cheesy “dig out your own” dinosaur fossil kit that she’d bought for him for his birthday from The Discovery Channel store. She’d been abusing the label of “eight and up” for him, but his eyes had lit up when he opened it.

It was only half-finished on the desk.

He’d been working on it that summer he’d suffered his accident.

Sighing, Tess slid into the door’s threshold but didn’t dare cross the border into the room. It was something she’d never been able to bring herself to do. It was too final. If she sat on a bed, he’d never make again (not that he’d done that often), then it was too real. Even if she’d been there in the emergency room the night he’d died, there was some aspect of his death that wasn’t yet real to her, something that Tess wouldn’t allow herself to process. If only she’d gotten through to him earlier. She’d seen two dozen motorcycle accidents as a nurse before he’d even bought his death trap. She could have saved him, if only she’d been more convincing.

“Hey, so Mom and Dad are almost done preparing dinner,” she said, offering a pained smile to Sarah.

Her sister was taller than she. Actually, Jason had been the same way. Everyone always joked that, though lithe, she was the surprise recessive gene bearer of the family, that hidden shorty in a family of giant. Sarah wasn’t just tall but also had fiery red hair from their mother. It was perhaps too easy to fall into that old saw about redheads and tempers, but it was something that still applied to her sister. Maybe it was why in the five years since Jason’s death, they’d drifted. Sarah kept trying to confront Tess’s lack of mourning, as if yelling at her to move on would actually be the same as her actually
getting over
it.

That was a stupid, thoughtless expression.

How could anyone get over decades of family? Hell, did someone with a missing limb really “get over” missing a hand or a foot? Doubtful. Jason had been no less important to her daily life than that. Anyway, as dynamic opposites, she and Sarah tended to disagree on everything. It took everything they had to keep the smiles and small talk between them for the anniversary, and they put their parents’ peace of mind over their own differing world views.

Still, it didn’t make finding the right words any easier, even when their hackles were down.

Sarah smiled back and pushed a red curl back from her forehead. “That’s good. Do you want to sit for a second? I find…it’s probably stupid to you, but it feels like communing almost, like I can feel him.”

Tess nodded but didn’t say anything. Her mother felt that way about going to the cemetery, and her father said he sometimes felt that peace---that elusive mistress that Tess couldn’t find---when he went fishing at their favorite mountain stream; it had been the big thing for “the boys” to do together when the girls were shopping.

She just didn’t understand how acceptance was supposed to fix anything.

“I’m good. I just was supposed to get you to be ready for the cook out.”

Sarah’s eyes narrowed, but she said nothing directly about Jason again. “Great, so do you think Dad drowned everything in garlic again?”

“When doesn’t he?” Tess countered, glad for her sister linking her arm through her own and pressing nothing further for today.

We’ll battle it out another time; we always do…

**

Tess was halfway through a pint of Ben and Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk and about two-thirds through watching
Thelma and Louise
, when her cell rang. Rolling her eyes, grateful at least all the parts with Brad Pitt’s abs were over, she picked up the cell.

“You know, Lizzy, sometimes a girl just needs her time off.”

She was shocked when a rich, throaty, and now familiar voice answered instead, “Well, I hope that doesn’t extend to me, blondie.”

Yipping a bit, despite her best effort, Tess set down her ice cream and was glad Derek hadn’t called via FaceTime. She was a mess in mismatched sweats (purple top, green bottoms), and her hair was pulled back in a sloppy pony tail. That would make the biker run for the hills instead of asking her out.

Wait, was that why he was calling?

Had he actually sat through Lizzy’s rambling and embarrassing message?

Could he possibly find it charming?

“Tess, wait, this is Tess Everhart’s phone, right? This was the number left on my voicemail. Lizzy didn’t lie, did she?”

“Uh, yeah.”

Great, real smooth there, Tess
.

“Great, I was just seeing what you were up to.”

Well it wasn’t asking her for dinner, but at least he wasn’t having a change of heart so far after she’d been so inarticulate.

“Just watching a movie, enjoying time off before another crazy week at the E.D.”

“E.D.?”

“Oh, sorry, I forget you’re a civvie or whatever. For the non-medical folks, I mean the ‘emergency department.’ You find when you have twelve hour days and longer with certain surprises, that you take the lack of excitement with bad reruns as a blessing.”

“I thought you said it was a movie,” he added, chuckling.

God, she wanted to dive into that tone, found herself melting just at the husky ring of his voice.

“An old one, at least twenty years.”

“Can I ask which one?”

She blushed, somehow ashamed to admit it. “Um,
Thelma and Louise
. Like I said, it’s an old one.”

“Hmm, chick flick right?”

She rolled her eyes and, though a bit embarrassed before, felt she had to defend the flick. It was one of her top favorites and that wasn’t completely based around a certain megastar’s washboard stomach. “It’s not! It’s about sisterhood but also about the open road and running from the law instead of giving in. It’s about saying ‘screw it’ and gunning for freedom anyway.”

Derek chuckled on the other end and the warmth was flaring wildly through her belly. “Well, blondie, I can relate to that. If it’s about embracing freedom and sticking it to the man, then I can respect that, even if it’s not my thing.”

“I…thanks,” she said, blushing a little and glad he couldn’t see that either. “It’s not like I made it or anything, but somehow it makes it easier when someone likes what I do.”

“Someone?”

“Okay, when guys sometimes don’t mock movies that are my favorites when I’m feeling down.”

“First, any guy or a guy you might like to date? Because I was dead serious yesterday in the hospital. I’d love to go out with you. I have some pressing business I’m working to take care of, but I want to get to know you better. I know there’s no way you had to do a double shift just to look after someone with a concussion. I think it’s more than that.”

“I…I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Clearly your best friend does. Nurse Alacron has some good sense. Look, dinner and something special planned tomorrow night. If it doesn’t work, and we have the chemistry of a cold, dead fish, then I’ll give it up. Besides, didn’t you just say you were feeling down? All innuendo aside, you helped take care of me, and I owe you. Let me take your mind off what’s bothering you, unless you’d rather talk about it right now. Would you?”

She sighed and fingered the St. Christopher medal around her neck. At this time of year, it felt heavier than it possibly could be. “It’s too much, definitely why I turned my brain to mush with a cry fest. Thanks, but it’s hard to talk sometimes.”

“I can relate to that, too. Look, give me your address, and I’ll pick you up tomorrow at seven.”

“You have a motorcycle, a crushed one at that. No way I’d get on that.”

“Actually,” he said, chuckling again, and no voice had a right to be that sexy. “My bike’s still being fixed up after I got it out of impound. It got off better than I thought, but I’ll let you in on a secret.”

“What’s that?” she asked, surprised a little to hear her voice going breathy.

I can’t possibly sound that desperate, can I? Pull it together!

“That just because I’m a biker, doesn’t mean I don’t own a truck for other errands and things. I’ll pick you up on four wheels and show you a good time. What do you say?”

Tess bit her lip and gazed back at the melting tub of ice cream. It was one date. What did she really have to lose except a few hours she’d be wasting on her DVD collection anyway? There was no way she’d fall in love with a biker, not with someone who’d take such stupid risks with his life, but for the night, she could have fun with a nice guy.