CHAPTER ONE
Billie Boggs stood on a street corner by a sign that read 'Bus Stop'.
She was shivering, despite her cream down jacket, the fuzzy, coral scarf wrapped around her throat, and matching crocheted beanie, and the mass of her long, light-brown hair curling down her back. Underneath this, she wore brown skinny jeans and a green sweater. Her knees were locked to keep her in place, toes curled in her cute, but not warm, knee-high leather boots.
It was April, but it felt more like February, as Airway Heights, Washington was currently suffering through a spring squall, the cloudy skies spitting snowflakes that melted the moment they hit the damp ground and pavement.
Billie was also shivering with nerves and fear. She had to get on the bus when it arrived, no matter what awaited her on board.
And it would be ugly, of this she was certain. Because of a certain trio of very badly behaved guys who had for some reason taken to riding the bus each morning, seemingly just to harass her.
Yesterday this had escalated to more than words. What came next, she didn't want to know.
As she stood there, she heard a familiar sound, the deep, throaty purr of a beefed-up muscle car.
She didn't look up, but kept her eyes trained on the game she was playing on her phone.
That car represented another source of fear, this one easy to avoid, because the driver never truly noticed her and never would unless she suddenly leapt out into the street in front of him and he had to slam on his brakes and lay rubber with his wide tires.
She didn't fear the driver of the car the same way she did the thugs on the bus. No, she feared that he would notice her, and she would have to interact with him, thus revealing that she was inept with attractive members of the opposite sex.
With guys that were as hot as him, she was at a complete loss.
And anyway, she wasn't looking for a hot guy, she was looking for a quiet, steady one. A guy who would think she was all that, and work hard to get her, then work to keep her. She would do the same for him, and they'd make a good life together.
She didn't need her heart to thump and her stomach to develop butterflies, her skin to flush just at the sight of him. She just needed him to be there for her, forever and always.
So, while her older sister Lesa had found a hot, biker man to promise forever and mean it, that was different. Lees was gorgeous, out-going and loved being the center of a crowd. She was able to draw her hot guy's attention and hold on.
Billie was quiet, content to be in the background. And she wanted a guy who was the same.
Two things happened—first, the gray bulk of the 7:30 am Airway Heights-to-Spokane South Hill bus loomed over the slight rise of the main road.
Second, the low shape of a classic muscle car prowled to a stop at her side.
Billie stiffened, her hands in fingerless, knitted gloves frozen on her phone, along with the breath in her throat.
Her gaze slid sideways as the darkened window rolled down on the near side of the restored 1968 Pontiac Firebird, all black except for the gleaming chrome trim and wheels.
A deep, rough voice growled two words from the depths of the car. "Get in."
She stayed frozen in place. The words were not a request, not an offer—they were an order. One which she could not believe she was hearing.
The bus rolled to a stop at the curb a few feet away from its regular place, which was somewhat blocked by the Firebird.
Her gaze darted to the bus, then back to the car by her side.
The doors of the bus slid open. Through the windshield she could see Herb, the friendly but ineffectual bus driver, peering down at her. Probably wondering why the driver of a hot muscle car was bothering with the likes of her.
"Babe, get in," repeated the deep voice from inside the car, this time filled with enough impatience to make Billie's already knotted stomach jump, and her body tilt in his direction as if compelled by a powerful force.
She bent her knees and peered into the car.
Rocker Hayes—yes, his MC handle was really Rocker, and he seemed to have accepted the name as a life imperative.
Not only was his unruly, black hair clubbed at the back of his neck in a man-bun, he wore a rock band tee under his leather jacket, along with heavy boots, and a variety of silver chains around his neck, as well as silver rings on several fingers of his big hands.
His facial hair included a 'stache that was trimmed in a narrow band around his mouth to meet a goatee, shot with the occasional silver thread. This was perfect for him, in her opinion.
He looked Caucasian mixed with Hispanic heritage—his jaw was wide, his mouth narrow and curving, although now twisted with what looked like supreme irritation, which also lowered his heavy black brows, and narrowed his eyes behind thick lashes.
His dark eyes were cold, so cold that the few times his gaze had swept over her, they'd left a chill behind, along with a strange thrill of heat.
A scar slashed under his right cheekbone, and another down through his left eyebrow. She suspected he'd given worse to whoever dared mark him.
Now he wanted her to get in his fabulous car.
"Um ... why?" Billie finally managed, her voice husky because she hadn't yet used it that morning, except to say good morning to the large striped tom cat that hung around her new neighborhood.
Rocker gave her a look that seemed to express his extreme displeasure that she was not instantly falling in with his plans—or maybe that she existed at all, she honestly wasn't sure. His gaze flicked over her face, lingering on her right cheekbone, which she had attempted to cover heavily with makeup.
One of his heavy brows arched, a skill which she'd love to master, but never had—unless you counted her gamer avatar, Sheenah, who had flaming red hair and always arched a disdainful brow as she blasted her opponent with a fire bolt.
"You really wanna get on that bus?" Rocker demanded.
Billie felt heat rising, burning up her wrapped throat and up over her face. She knew her attempts at hiding the bruise hadn't been entirely successful, but of all the people on the planet, she hadn't expected this man to notice, and she especially hadn't expected him to care.
The only time he could have noticed her injury was last evening, when she'd seen him for like five minutes while standing in line at the local hardware store. He'd been two ahead of her, turned to face the counter as she waited to make her purchase and tried without success not to stare at him.
His gaze had flicked over her from head to toe, returned to her face and narrowed on it. Then he'd lifted his chin to her, taken his change from the clerk, and walked out of the store.
After making her own purchase, she'd hurried across the highway and along the street to her tiny rental house on Barker Street.
Inside, she'd locked the doors, checked the window locks as well, then pulled down the blinds and curled up on the small sofa to play her video game, a small ice pack in a washcloth on her bruise.
Only when she'd been unable to keep her eyes open had she taken herself to bed.
He, astoundingly, had apparently used part of his own evening to uncover not only who she was, and how she commuted to work, but also what might be the source of her facial injury.
She and he had existed in the same world--that of the Devil's Flyers of Airway Heights, Washington—for two months and five days— she remembered this, because he had that kind of effect on women, even those like her, to whom Rocker Hayes didn't pay attention.
She blinked at him now, trying to wrap her mind around this conversation. Did she want to get on the bus?
"Um ... no?" she answered, then wished desperately that she could disappear in a poof! of smoke or whatever. She sounded like a complete idiot. "But I have—I'm prepared this time."
"Right," he growled. "I'm thinkin' you're not. So get in and I'll give you a ride."
"But ... why?" Billie was desperate to understand what was happening. She was also conscious that not only Herb, but some of the passengers on the bus were watching her chat with a hot, semi-outlaw biker, and that she was keeping them all from rushing to their jobs and other downtown activities. She was the nice girl, the considerate one, who never kept people waiting—even when some of them were intent on doing her harm.
"Because if you get on that bus, Whitey and his vicious, stupid sidekicks are gonna take it as you presentin' yourself for more of their shit. Yesterday you got a black eye. Today, or tomorrow it's just gonna get worse and worse until you either end up givin' blowjobs in the bus' backseat while everyone else who's scared of 'em pretends it ain't happening, or somebody tries to help you and gets hurt. An' if you think that old man drivin' will help, you're fuckin' clueless. While you clearly walk around with your head in those fuckin' games you play on your phone, I don't think you're that stupid."
He leaned over, used one long muscular arm and tanned, tattooed and be-ringed hand to push the car door open. "Now get. In."
He'd just insulted her, planted images in her head that would likely never be erased, and done it all in a way that said that unbelievably, he not only noticed her on a regular basis, he had indeed somehow discovered her troubles at the hands of a few of the local thugs.
Her mind reverberating with shock, Billie took hold of the door of his beautiful car, pulled it the rest of the way open, and got in.
The door closed with a solid thunk, and the big car immediately snarled away from the curb.
She had one last glimpse of the faces through the bus's front window—Herb's surprised but cautiously pleased, two sisters who rode the bus to their posts as bikini baristas giving her wide, envious eyes, and behind them a malevolent scowl that would have made Billie shrink back in her seat had she been anywhere else but in the front seat of this particular vehicle.
As it was, her hand lifted of its own accord, and she gave a little finger-wave to everyone on the bus.
Then the car swept past the bus, and rolled along the boulevard in the stream of morning commuters headed from this suburb into downtown Spokane.
"Seatbelt." Rocker said this without looking at her, but by this time she wasn't surprised he knew what was happening even without looking.
"Right." She found her seatbelt and buckled it around herself. Then she sat back and let Rocker drive her downtown.
The big car purred smoothly over the rise and swooped down toward city center, its new high-rise office buildings, hotels and shopping center contrasting with the old industrial area along the river. The highway gained two more lanes, and branched ahead, two lanes curving up and onto a bridge.
"I work up on South Hill," Billie ventured, not wanting him to take the wrong turn. "At the hospital."
"I know," was the astonishing answer.
"You do?"
Rocker did not look at her, as he was busy negotiating the merge onto the bridge, but the corner of his fascinating mouth kicked up. "Babe. Not rocket science."
Right. Her job wasn't exactly rocket science, either. With a two-year degree in coding from community college in the Tri-Cities, she now did patient data entry, in a tiny shared office deep in the middle of the second floor of the medical center's south tower, which held most of the financial offices as well as the main records center.
It wasn't a bad place to work, as employees were treated well, but the job itself was mind-numbingly boring.
She often resorted to entertaining herself by imagining that the patient with a broken leg had received his injury at the hands of a marauding band of darkish elven warriors, or that another patient's life-threatening infection was the result of an evil spell cast by spiteful goblins.
Since these imaginings could sometimes later be translated into perils in the games she helped code in her spare time, this ability to divorce her lucid mind from what her hands were doing served her well.
And since she still did her very best for the patients she served, and always checked her own work, no one was harmed in any way.
But Rocker didn't mean her job wasn't rocket science, he meant his knowing where she worked wasn't hard to discover. Which left her with only one question.
"Why do you know where I work?" she asked, watching his rugged profile instead of the steep hill, which she knew by heart from the bus commute. "And how did you know all that other stuff—like who those guys are on the bus?"
He accelerated around a curve, his gaze on the road. "I keep eyes on Flyers' family. Who they are, what they do. Didn't take long to find out who likely gave you that shiner you're sportin', even though you never reported it to the cops, which you should have, or to one of the brothers, which you goddamn well will in the future."
There was so much astonishing information inherent in this statement, Billie didn't even know what to marvel over first. Or second, for that matter.
He knew things like that how? Also, how did he know she hadn't gone to the cops?
And she was supposed to report any problems to the Devil's Flyers, the semi-scary motorcycle club with whom her older sister was now affiliated, seeing as how she was living with one of the members?
Okay, that one Billie did know. And if her plan hadn't worked, no doubt she would have been forced out of her shyness to speak up, even though she hated to bother her busy, hard-working sister and her man.
They slowed and then stopped at a light. Rocker turned and scowled at her. "So, what I wanna know is, what the fuck were you doin' getting back on that bus, knowing the little gang-banger who gave you that black eye was likely gonna be on there again?"
Billie had to work at not babbling now, because when he gave her that dark, accusing stare she was ready to confess anything.
She scrabbled in her messenger bag and pulled out a hot pink canister. "Well, it would've been fine today. If they started anything, I was going to pepper spray them."
She'd purchased it the evening before, at the local hardware store, thus her encounter with him.
He stared at her for a long second, then his lip curled and he shook his head. "Jay-zus fuck, woman. You ever use that big brain of yours for anything but computer shit?"
Billie blinked, but before she could reply to this astonishing insult, he went on. "Pepper spray can be useful, sure, when you got one opponent in an open situation, and room to move. But on a bus, with two, three or more of those shitheads around you--not to mention all the other people who do not need to be breathin' that shit in—you seriously thought you were gonna have time to get it out, get the top off and aim it?"
"Well, it wasn't like I was going in blind. I practiced at home." Her face grew hot, because she'd gotten into her practicing with zeal, ending up doing some warrior moves, posing like her avatar, Sheenah with one of her deadly fire-bolts—although without the cocked eyebrow.
Luckily the blinds in her sitting room had been shut at the time.
"Oh, well, good," he said dryly. He shook his head. "Babe. Best self-defense weapon in this case is your own car. Need to get you one."
"I'm saving for one," she assured him. "I'll have enough soon. I just didn't want to start making payments until I was past the probationary period at my job. Thus, the pepper spray."
"You need your own ride now," he pointed out. "I'll ask around, get you a loaner."
"What? No, you don't need to do that!" Why would he do that for her, when he'd essentially never spoken to her before today?
"Babe," he said again. "You're Flyer family now. We take care of our own. And that includes makin' sure you have a ride. Surprised Pete didn't arrange you one."
"I didn't ask. Pete and Lesa have enough to do with the Hangar, and their new relationship. Anyway, they're in Denver this week at a brewers' con. I can look after myself." She'd been doing so for a while now.
The light changed and the big car rolled forward and turned more sharply up the hill toward the hospital complex, towering pale grey ahead against the cloudy skies.
Daffodils rose optimistically from pots and garden beds, but snow still spiraled down on them.
"Flyer women do not look after themselves," he growled. "Appreciate that you're tryin' to stand on your own two feet, and be a grownup and all that, but you got a club of brothers behind you now. When you have a problem, you bring it to us."
When she didn't answer, he looked over at her. "You gettin' this?"
"Trying to be a grownup?" she repeated, wishing she could smack him on the shoulder with her bag—and it was heavy, because it had her lunch, coffee mug and water bottle in it. "I'm nearly twenty-five. I've been a grownup for some time now."
"Twenty-five, huh? Yeah, you're practically an old hag." This time he grinned at her, and the effect, his eyes crinkling at the corners, white teeth flashing in his tanned face, amongst his 'stache and goatee, was so startling she forgot to be mad at him for essentially calling her a kid, and smiled back, her insides melting in a puddle of marshmallow goo.
His gaze flicked to her mouth. Then he looked back to the street, slowed for an ambulance to negotiate an awkward turn ahead of them, and exchanged a finger-lift with the other driver.
She continued to stare at him, not only because once a female looked at his rugged profile, it was difficult to look away, but because all the things he'd just said to her added even more layers to the bad-assery that surrounded him like an aura.
He was an old-fashioned chauvinist, yes, but he was also protective and even kind, in his extremely forthright way. Since she'd grown up with an ex-Marine dad, this did not bother her as much as it might have.
If Rocker were a character in one of her games, he'd be a lone, rogue warrior—a paladin—with a huge sword in his hands. He'd wear fitted leggings and a wide belt, maybe even a kilt of sorts, but his upper body would be bared to reveal his muscles.
His hair, she wouldn't change at all. And his face ... not a single, solitary thing. It was perfect.
His mouth quirked, and the corner of his eye closest to her crinkled. "Babe," he reproved. "Why you always stare at me like that?"
She blinked. Eep! He'd caught her. Still, she tried to brazen her way out of it. "I don't stare at you." She totally did. He was... well, everything a girl like her wanted in a man. How could she help staring?
"You do."
Quarking laser balls. She was so busted. "Sorry," she mumbled, turning to stare blindly out the window, her face flaming. "I won't do it anymore."
They pulled to a smooth stop under the portico of the main patient entrance. It was brightly lit, but other than the middle-aged orderly waiting inside the automatic doors beside an empty wheelchair, no one was around.
"Didn't say I minded," Rocker pointed out, turning to drape one long arm over his steering wheel and train that amused gaze on her. "Just wondered why."
As if she was going to admit her mild obsession—which could also be called a total crush—for him. She reached for the door handle, which was an old-fashioned real handle, not just a button or tab. She opened the door and dared one last look at him.
He was smiling at her again.
Billie really wished he wouldn't do that. The smile transformed his rugged, tough face into sheer beauty. Sexy beauty that was so compelling that if he crooked his finger, any woman within range would obey, and come straight to him.
And since he was also rude and overly frank, she did not want to find him attractive.
Then he made a deep, rough, rumble in his chest. He was laughing at her. Because she was still staring, and she had no doubt he knew exactly why.
Billie tore her gaze off of him and pushed the door outward, stretching one foot out of the car. "Um ... thanks for the ride, and the, uh, advice. I ... I have to go. To work."
He lifted his chin in acknowledgment, but his gaze dropped to her lap. "Might wanna take the seatbelt off first."
Billie wished, harder even than when Whitey Gibbs and his sidekicks had roughed her up yesterday and scared the living daylights out of her, that she could pull a Zoroastrian spell ball from her pocket and rocket herself out of this car and into the hospital at the speed of light.
And in the game, she could. But in real life, she was a hopeless dork.
"But I like your car so much I thought I'd take a souvenir with me," she said, tossing her hair back, with a big grin aimed at his left ear. "Start a new fashion around this place—safety can be sexy."
He chuckled, a warm rasp in his throat.
Finally—thank you baby Jesus—she was free. She slid from his car, slammed the heavy door behind her, and bent her knees to give him a little finger wave. "Bye. Thanks again. See you around."
"Yeah, you will. What time you get off work?"
"Oh, you know, five-ish," she said.
"Pin it down for me. Five, before five or after five?"
"Uh, five."
"All right. Someone will be here to pick you up. They'll text you, let you know who's comin'. You do not walk outta here and get on that bus, you hear me?"
"I hear you. Bye."
Then, before he could do or say anything else to destroy what tattered pride she had left after being rescued, lectured and caught gawking at him like a fangirl again, Billie turned and skedaddled inside the big front doors of the hospital, giving a quick wave to 'Nando, the security guard, who was a nice guy with seven grandkids.
Usually she stopped to chat, but not today. Today, her over-riding goal was to hide away in her cubicle.
Only she had a very bad feeling she wasn't going to be imagining game moves today, but instead reliving every second of her ride with the man of whom she dreamed each night, while she was still awake.