Jerk: Delinquent Rebels MC (6 page)

Although she’d vowed never to get on the back of Van’s motorcycle, April had to admit that it beat walking home. Their heads clunked together, her helmet heavy and big and awkward with her arms wrapped around Van’s thick midsection. At first she’d just kept her hands on his shoulders, but when she found she was more stable if she just hugged him, she went with it.

Besides, at that point, she was still drunk enough to blame the inappropriate body contact with her future stepbrother on the alcohol that
he
poured for her. So, really, any weirdness in the days to follow was totally Van’s fault.

He glanced over his shoulder, his leather jacket cool on her bare arms as she hugged him, and April almost apologized—but then realized he wouldn’t hear her anyway. So, she smiled through the clear visor, the bike rumbling between her thighs, encouraging sensations that she shouldn’t feel, and Van nodded before turning back to watch the road.

It should have taken them fifteen minutes—maximum—to get back to her mom’s apartment. However, rather than taking a direct route through the town, Van went north, leading her along winding roads surrounded by trees. There were no other cars on the road at this point—just her and Van and his bike, roaring along the cracked cement, nothing but trees and starlight to keep them company.

Despite the way her stomach turned and her head ached, April was actually enjoying herself. She’d never been on a motorcycle before, and there was something of a… thrill to riding it. Maybe it was the way Van handled it, so confident, so sure of himself—so sexy in his leather jacket. She hugged him tighter, laughing as he leaned the bike around a sharp corner. She could have ridden with him for hours, forgetting that he had a job to get back to. A part of her wanted him to take her along the deep woods on back roads; maybe they could stop for a breather sometime.

But all goods things had to come to an end sometime, and April realized that might have been for the best. Van slowed the bike once they were back on Main Street, her mom’s apartment building appearing out of nowhere. As soon as he was pulled up to the curb, Van cut the engine and helped her climb off.

“How was that?” he asked, his helmet’s visor up. April dragged her helmet over her head, her hair a disaster in the aftermath, and grinned.

“Fun,” she admitted with a nod. “A lot of fun.”

“I knew you’d like it,” he teased, as he took the helmet back, setting in on the seat behind him. His bike was just as much an impressive specimen as Van. Although she knew nothing about motorcycles, it was big and shiny and ridiculously clean, and she knew that had to stand for something. A gust of wind barreled down the street, and her skin prickled with little bumps as her teeth chattered. Van studied her for a moment then cursed under his breath. “I should have given you my jacket.”

“It’s fine,” she said, waving off his concern. “I’ll be upstairs and warm in a minute.” April paused, licking her lips, and then asked, “Do you want to join me?”

It was the alcohol talking—yeah, let’s blame it on that.
She swallowed thickly, and when their eyes met, his were practically smoldering. It stole the breath right out of her lungs.

Unfortunately, that was where the smoldering stopped. Van shook his head and looked away. “I’ll see you around, April.”

He then pushed his visor down, started up his bike, and roared off into the night, leaving her alone on the sidewalk.

Confused. Embarrassed. Angry.

And a little bit broken.

CHAPTER SIX

Ugh.
If April had had the good sense to remember that she’d promised to help her mom with some snooty garden party at James’s house the following morning, she wouldn’t have gone to the bar. In fact, there were a number of hindsight reasons that sprang to mind when her mom dragged her out of bed that morning to get ready as to why she shouldn’t have gone to the bar—namely Van.

And I’d invited him upstairs! Double ugh.
As she’d thrown on a white sundress and combed her hair into a sloppy ponytail, April could only hope that Van knew it had been the alcohol talking when she was overly forward with him. There was the small chance, of course, that he might think it was the truth. Wasn’t there a saying that drunk words were sober thoughts?

Regardless, she could think of a thousand places she’d rather be the next morning, her head pounding and stomach sensitive to food, and none of them involved James and Van’s family home. Besides, her mom had spent last night with some of her closest lady friends—why did they need to see each other again? The business women of Cascade Falls, most well-off and independently wealthy like her mom, liked to put on airs every once and a while with something as snobby as a garden party—just to remind everyone that they were, in fact, the crème de la crème of the town.

And somehow April had been dragged into helping with the set-up.

“Shouldn’t James have servants to do this?” she asked without thinking as she unloaded a few boxes of cupcakes. Why they’d picked up pastries was beyond her. It wasn’t like any of these women were going to have more than a single half-slice of carrot cake, or something equally “healthy.” In fact, she wholly expected her mom’s fridge to be overflowing with cake and cookies and cupcakes by tonight—so, she supposed it was a good thing they’d splurged at the bakery.

“Servant is a crass word,” her mom chastised, as the pair unpacked bags in the kitchen. She’d seen James fleetingly that morning, but her mom insisted he’d probably spend the day in his study. Too many hens clucking around his house, apparently, which April thought was beyond rude of him. “He has a chef and a housekeeper, but I told them they wouldn’t be needed today.”

April pursed her lips, her eyes darting to the doorway of the ultra-posh kitchen at the slightest noise. No sign of Van yet, and she hoped he’d sleep through the whole ordeal. After setting up the tables and chairs outside, April and her mom began placing the pastries on a table for the ladies to sample from, only to be interrupted by a few early guests.

Her mom flitted off to entertain, something she had always done very well, and April was left to do the grunt work in the kitchen. If she hadn’t felt so hungover, she would have enjoyed the quiet, monotonous work. Instead, all she could think about was crawling back into bed and sleeping the day away, hopefully to awake tomorrow feeling less embarrassed about the last time she saw Van.

“Well, look at you.”

She closed her eyes tightly, hoping she was hearing things. Unfortunately, as Van sidled up to the center island, looking refreshed and sinfully handsome in a plain tee and workout shorts, April wanted the ground to open and swallow her whole. Of course he was fine after last night. Of course. She licked her lips and stared pointedly at her tower of perfectly stacked cupcakes. The pink frosting was the only food that tempted her thus far, and her mouth watered, as she wondered what it must taste like.

“How are you feeling?” Van asked, leaning on the countertop and snagging a cookie from the Tupperware container in front of him. She looked up sharply when he crunched down on one.

“Fine.” She went for the tray of cupcakes, hoisting it up carefully and stalking around the kitchen to the patio doors. Her kitten heels clacked loudly with each step, and she struggled to get the screen door open, as Van’s eyes bore into the back of her head. After some awkward maneuvering, she managed to get it open with her foot then disappeared outside to set the cupcakes out. A few more of her mom’s cohorts had arrived—though none of them acknowledged April.
Maybe they think I’m hired help.

“Listen,” Van started as soon as she was back in the kitchen, and she fixed him with a narrowed look as she went for a plate to set the cookies on, “about last night—”

“We don’t have to talk about it,” she said abruptly. “Thanks for the drinks and the ride home. I’m fine.”

“You know,” he told her, as she started transferring cookies from the Tupperware to the plate, “all I wanted to do last night was kiss you.”

Her hands slipped, and she ended up breaking one of the cookies in half, the crumbs littering the island countertop. April stared straight ahead, her cheeks flushed by the confession, and without thinking, she handed half of the broken cookie to Van, which he took.

“But you were drunk,” he continued, as April bit into her half of the cookie, her mind suddenly very far away, “and I’d feel like a real asshole for kissing a drunk girl, even more so for going up to her place when she invited me—”

“We can pretend that part didn’t happen.” She set the cookie aside and continued filling up the plate. “It was… I was drunk. I didn’t mean it.”

“Of course.”

“At all.”

“Understood.”

She cast him a sidelong glance and caught him studying her, cookie in hand. Of course he’d wanted to kiss her. He probably wanted to kiss anyone with a pair of boobs. She wasn’t special. Head held high, she gestured to the rest of the treats.

“You can make yourself useful and bring those outside, you know,” she told him, preferring to set him to work than continue with the conversation. She didn’t have it in her today to handle anything of that magnitude. Nodding, Van started grabbing trays and plates of sweets, bringing them all outside to the garden party without her having to direct him. When he was done, there was nothing left for her to move, so she popped open a tin of the leftover pink cupcake frosting and scooped some out on her finger, a reward for working with a throbbing hangover and a distractingly sexy man.

“How’s it taste?”

She closed her eyes and sighed, knowing the sugar was bound to make her headache worse.

“Delicious.”

April went for seconds, thirds, fourths, not caring that she was double-dipping with her finger, and before she knew it, Van was beside her. He caught her hand on her fifth scoop, then brought it to his lips. Their eyes met, and she noticed the heat again, her breath catching in her throat. Maintaining eye contact, Van wrapped his lips around her finger and sucked the frosting off. She swallowed hard, her eyes drifting to his lips, and a tremor passed through her hand.

“Delicious,” he agreed, his voice a sultry low rumble. Even after he released her hand, she could still feel the way he held her. Their bodies had shifted toward one another too, as if pulled by their own gravitational force. Without looking away, April dipped her finger back in the tin, ready to give him another taste.

Her plan stalled when, over Van’s shoulder, she spied James watching them with a discernable scowl. Clearing her throat, she stepped away and licked the icing off herself, cheeks flaming.

“Thanks for your help with… all this,” she managed, as she made a swift and hasty exit out the patio doors. As she went, Van called her name, sounding mildly confused, but she ignored him and stepped out into the sunshine.

Her head was about to explode as she squinted in the light. Her sunglasses were inside, in her purse, but she couldn’t trust herself to go back through the house. Instead, she grabbed a bottle of champagne from an ice bucket and poured herself a glass, hoping that the alcohol would off-set the hangover, and wandered into the crowd of snobby women. When she glanced over her shoulder, she spotted Van watching her from the patio doors, and she hastily turned back to the group conversation at hand.

A few moments later, she dared to take another look. This time, he was gone.

CHAPTER SEVEN

How she ended up on a date with Van Palmer at a glow-in-the-dark mini-putt course was beyond her, but she had no one to blame but herself. After all, it was
her
who was calling their outing a date. Not to him, of course, and not out loud, but every second she had a moment to herself, her mind screamed that she was on a
date
—and that she ought to run for the hills and never look back.

It had all began innocently enough. Somehow Van had acquired her number—probably from her mom—and texted her to ask what she was up to that evening. They hadn’t spoken since their Sunday garden party finger sucking incident, and several days later, April had finally gotten over the hovering cloud of embarrassment that refused to dissipate. Then, out of nowhere, he texted her. At the time, she’d been wrapped up in a new book, and when asked what she was doing that night, she gave an honest reply: playing mini-golf—alone.

It had been a favorite pastime of hers when she was a kid, and considering she was still spending most of her time renovating or puttering around her bedroom, she’d wanted to do something to bring up her spirits. Most of her old high school friends worked during the week anyway, and she needed to find something to keep herself entertained that wasn’t a book or a TV show.

Van had asked her when she planned to go, and just like that, it was a date. He’d picked her up on his bike and everything, showing up on the curb outside the apartment building just as she was headed for her car. Unable to resist the call of that beautiful motorcycle, April had hesitantly climbed on, scouring the street for any signs of James spying on them again.

And that was that. Suddenly, she’d gone from loner with plans to do something by herself to awkward other half of a date that was never meant to be. There’d been numerous times to back out. Hell, she could have just turned and gone upstairs as soon as she saw him waiting for her, but she didn’t. April had moved forward, all the while telling herself that she was doing this for her mom’s sake, she ought to be on at least speaking terms with Van once their parents were married, and spending some platonic time together was probably the way to foster that relationship.

Mini-golf was probably the least sexy thing they could have done together anyway, so even if it was a date—
guh
—there wasn’t exactly a lot of room for much to happen. There’d been a few families at the course when they arrived, and April spent a lot of her time admiring the glow-in-the-dark decorations while pretending not to notice the way Van’s teeth shone under the black-light.

He’d made a joke when they first started about helping her with her swing, but when she landed a hole-in-one on her first try, that shameless tactic went out the window too. April had no need for a guy to stand behind her and position her body
just
right. She was damn good at mini-golf, and she intended to win on her own.

If only she could quiet her mind and actually focus on the moment, not whether or not tonight was a date, she would have been in the lead by now. As it stood, Van was beating her by three strokes.

“And that was, what, two strokes?” he teased, marking his score down on his sheet with his comically tiny pencil once they completed the hole with two ramps and a fake sandpit. “I think I’m kicking your ass, April.”

“Hey, the course isn’t over yet,” she snapped, picking up her ball from the hole and moving on to the next challenge: a glow-in-the-dark pirate ship, the hole inside the impressive structure. “How did you get so good at mini-golf anyway? You don’t exactly strike me as the kind of guy to enjoy something like this.”

“Oh, I hate golf in every sense of the word. It’s pretentious as fuck,” he said, as he set his ball down, and April frowned, “but I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to see you. You seemed pretty dead-set on mini-putt.”

She crossed her arms, gripping the ball and putter tightly. “You didn’t have to come with me. I’m sure you can go if you’re having a bad time—”

“Did I say I was having a bad time?” Van squared his shoulders and tapped his ball toward the pirate ship. “I’m having a great time. I’m also winning…”

April rolled her eyes when he winked at her. They played a few more holes, with April closing the gap in their scores by two strokes. She waited in front of a dark, ominous, slightly glowing tunnel, watching as Van hit his ball with just enough force to send it sailing on through. However, as it was about to hit the tunnel, she casually stuck her foot out, causing the ball to bounce off her toes and take off in a whole new direction. Van pointed at her with his too-small golf club, his eyes wide.

“Cheater!”

“I just happened to move my foot,” she insisted, shrugging innocently. “I can’t help it that your ball was there at the same time…”

April let out a shriek-giggle when he took a run at her, and she thought she could lose him in the tunnel. Unfortunately, Van was
actually
running while she was merely jogging half-assed, and he caught her in no time. His hand wrapped around her arm, Van tugged her back and pushed her against the wall, which was painted with glow-in-the-dark paint to simulate an ocean view. The ceiling of the tunnel was littered in glowing stars, and if someone tried really hard, they could almost call the setting romantic.

But to April this wasn’t romance. With his body so close to hers, their faces inches from one another, the laughter disappeared pretty damn fast, replaced by a hushed need that surprised her. She leaned her head back, watching him, her gaze shifting from his eyes to his lips. His head ducked down a little, and her heart fluttered. Her stomach knotted, squeezing in a way that was almost pleasant, pleasurable even. Heat rushed to her cheeks, and she wondered, just briefly, what it would be like to kiss him again. As she recalled, he’d been quite good at it—never too much tongue, always forceful without gnashing teeth together.

She nibbled her lower lip, debating. And while she debated, Van took action. He pinched her chin between his thumb and finger, easing her toward him as his free hand curved around her lower back. He whispered her name—growled it more like, his voice low and husky.

It’d be easy to kiss him, to just close her eyes and savor the moment. They were alone. He smelled divine. His hard body pressed to hers, domineering without dominating her—and it would have been so
easy.

But she couldn’t.

Just as he dipped his head down, his lips a mere breath from hers, April turned her head to the side and cleared her throat. He exhaled, his breath hot and full of disappointment, then stepped back. Unable to look at him, April pushed herself off the wall and fixed her hair, then her t-shirt and shorts.

“You can have a do-over on that last shot,” she muttered—though it was difficult to get the words out. “I hit the ball on purpose.”

“Yeah… Okay.”

He followed her out of the tunnel, and this time April stayed off the green felt carpet, letting him get the shot he deserved. Her face burned with her blush, and it stayed that way until they finished all eighteen holes in the vast mini-golf warehouse. After they returned their clubs, April excused herself, making up a lie that she was meeting someone for drinks, and refused his offer to drop her off wherever she needed to be.

She walked back to her mom’s apartment instead, taking an obscure route along the lakeshore so that Van wouldn’t spot her on his drive home. Arms wrapped around herself, she glared into the distance on the brink of tears.

She knew, in her heart of hearts, that she shouldn’t kiss him. She knew that she’d done the right thing in rebuking his offer. After all, he’d probably be able to find someone at his bar to make up for whatever blue balls she left him with—that much was certain. Her response was appropriate.

So why did she feel so terrible?