SIENNA
June 8th, 2014
With my heart beating out of my chest and my mind racing in ten different directions, I brushed my hand across the face of the screen anxiously. The page didn’t move. I carefully pressed my finger against the screen and flipped the page in the other direction. After a quick study, and confirming it was the page I had previously read, I swept my finger across the screen again and stared at the end of what appeared to be the last page.
There was no doubt.
I had reached the end of the book.
“Are you fucking serious? A cliffie? You bitch!” I screamed as I tossed my Kindle across the room and into the wall.
My favorite author had just become a worthless heap of steaming shit. After falling deeply in love despite all of their differences, being torn apart and then reunited, the hero proposed marriage; and I was prepared for a wedding. Instead, in the last chapter, out of the fucking blue, the hero was arrested for murder. Who in the fuck would end a story in such a place, leaving the reader to wait anxiously with knots in her stomach for the next book?
A fucking idiot, that’s who.
Although I generally tried to give myself twelve hours to digest a book before writing a review, I rolled off the edge of my bed, grabbed my glass of wine, and commenced to downing it as I walked over to my desk. As I waited for the computer to go through its startup procedure, I walked to the kitchen with my empty glass and grabbed the remaining bottle of Madeira.
After roughly two seconds of considering how much wine I should pour into the glass, I uncorked the bottle, raised it to my lips, and took a much needed drink. I tossed the cork on the counter beside my empty glass and stomped toward my bedroom with the bottle dangling from my loosely clenched fist.
I walked into the room, sat down, slammed the bottle against the desk, and began to type.
*Kindle throwing alert*
I’ll be taking donations from anyone wishing to fund a new Kindle purchase, because after reading this book, my Kindle is in a thousand pieces.
Can you imagine the story Cinderella ending with the prince finding Cinderella’s glass slipper, but not searching for – or finding – her?
Or maybe in The Notebook, the story ending with Allie receiving Noah’s letters from her mother, but not acting on her feelings?
You can’t, can you?
Neither can I.
The reason I can’t imagine it, and I’m sure you’ll agree, is because most authors follow a proven pattern in the crafting of their stories for romance novels. They have a hero and heroine meet, fall in love, and eventually some type of conflict tears them apart. We frantically flip through the pages, saddened by their separation, and jump with joy when they eventually reunite. At some point the book ends, alluding to them living happily ever after.
I reached for the wine, drank a quarter of what remained, and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I slid the bottle beside my monitor, inhaled a shallow breath, and turned on Bruce Springsteen’s “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.” After a few minutes of bobbing my head to the music, I commenced typing.
That, my friends and followers, is not the case in this book.
Not at all.
The author seems to have misplaced the memo explaining the necessity on not only writing a novel, but completing it.
When I reached the point where the book stopped (I refuse to call it an ending)…
I stopped typing, searched through my files, and inserted a .gif of a wide-eyed woman’s head exploding. After laughing to myself for a few long seconds, I took another drink of wine and continued.
I realized the author must have run out of time. Maybe she needed to meet a deadline, and decided finishing the book would push her past her date or time. Who knows? But what I do know is this…
She sure as fuck didn’t finish writing it.
Now, for the beginning of the book, and what transpired between that point and when the book simply stopped?
I loved it.
As I read through this book, I was relieved that it had it all. A hero I could sink my teeth into. A heroine I wanted to sit down and have a glass of wine with. Scorching hot love scenes, more scorching hot love scenes, and conflict I saw coming, but hoped never came to fruition. After a hundred or so well-written angst-filled pages, the H and h were reunited, and then…
Something ridiculous happened and the book just fucking ended.
Up until the last chapter, this was a five star read for me. After reading all the way to the point she ran out of desire to finish it, I’ll have to give it one and a half stars.
And I’m only doing that because I’m half-drunk and a hell of a lot happier than I was when I started this review.
I inserted a .gif of an obviously drunken woman sitting on the edge of her bed in her underwear with a bottle of wine between her legs.
As I read the review, I finished the bottle of wine. After rereading it, I wished I had another bottle, but knew I had no business driving to get one. Hoping a search of my kitchen would produce a bottle, but knowing damned good and well I had drank my last one, I published the review, excited at the thought of all of the comments I was sure to have when I woke up. I glanced up and stared blankly at the small hole in the wall, and slowly filled with drunken regret for throwing my Kindle. After a few insanely long alcohol induced seconds of lusting over my newest book boyfriend while Bruce Springsteen’s “Merry Christmas Baby” played, my doorbell rang.
The sound startled me, causing me to jump from my seat and almost pee in the process. As my mind filled with thoughts of some mass murderer going door to door in search of his next victim, I tossed my glasses on my desk and ran to the window to get a peek at the scum. I carefully pulled the blinds away from the window frame and peered outside.
Dear God.
A big, rough, muscular, tattooed biker stood on my porch in his leather vest, jeans, and biker boots.
It was like Christmas in June.
I rubbed my drunken eyes with the tips of my index fingers, blinked a few times, and continued to admire him from the privacy of my bedroom.
He got more handsome with each passing second.
He pushed his hands into his pockets, shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and slowly turned around. His bare arms were covered in tattoos and muscles. Even his muscles had muscles. After a few seconds of watching him walk toward the street, my curiosity – and the fact I was sexually deprived – got the best of me.
I released the blinds and made it to the bathroom in three quick strides. I glanced in my mirror, attempted to fix my hair, and ran toward the front door. Dressed in a reasonably clean pair of Victoria’s Secret’s best sweats, I looked pretty presentable – at least for a late Sunday night. After clearing my throat and second guessing my thoughts for a few seconds, I yanked the door open and did my best to look sleep deprived. In my half-drunken state, it wasn’t much of a stretch.
“Hello,” I said in what I hoped to be a sensual whisper. The words escaped my lips as a raspy drunken cough.
Half way to his motorcycle, but fully illuminated by the security light in my driveway, he paused and turned around.
Holy fucking shit.
He looked like no other biker I had ever actually seen, but exactly like the ones I had developed in my head from the MC Romance novels I had spent so much time reading. If it wasn’t for the warm and extremely humid summer air blowing in my face and making me half nauseous, I would have thought I was dreaming.
As he walked in my direction and spoke, my heart began to beat rapidly and my palms began to sweat. As the low rumble of his voice explained the situation he was in, my mouth fell open and I stared at him as if he was being offered to me by the God of sorrow.
“Listen, this is going to sound like complete bullshit, but I ran out of gas and this is where I ended up,” he said as he waved his hand toward the motorcycle parked by the curb.
I glanced at the vintage Harley, shifted my eyes to where he was standing, and stared. Common sense, which was something I often seemed to lack, should have caused me to turn toward the house, go inside, and lock the door. Instead, I stepped from the house onto the porch and asked for more details.
After clearing my throat of the sweet wine that still heavily coated it, I widened my eyes at the sight of him. In an effort to look cute, but more to lure him a little closer, I tossed my hair over my shoulder. The move threw me off-balance, causing my drunken ass to almost fall flat on my face.
“So, you need a ride?” I asked in a fractionally more sultry tone.
He took a few steps toward me, crossed his arms in front of his chest, and sighed heavily. “Well, not exactly,” he said. “I don’t want to leave the bike here.”
I turned my palms up and shook my head from side to side. “I don’t have any gas. The maintenance men cut the grass and stuff, so I don’t have any need for it. But…”
I paused and studied him as I considered what else to say. He rocked back and forth nervously on the balls of his feet as he seemed to consider leaving his motorcycle in the street. He looked rough, but not in a homeless unkempt way. He seemed to be, at least by his appearance, stature, and stance to be a guy no one would ever want to cross, and I suspected very few had successfully done so. His hair was dark, short, and as close as I could tell in the dark, well-cut. His face was covered in a day or two of beard growth, and it complimented him quite well. His bare arms were nothing but muscle, and were covered with various tattoos.
All things considered, he was perfect.
I’m sure most women would have offered very little, if anything, to help him. A biker running out of gas in an upscale residential neighborhood on a Sunday night in the summer wasn’t a common occurrence, and by most people’s standards, wouldn’t warrant much assistance. After what seemed to be an eternity of admiring him and thinking, I blurted out what must have been a subconscious thought.
“What? You don’t have a phone?” I asked.
“Like I said when I walked up, I knew it would sound like bullshit, but it’s the truth. I was riding down Central, and I ran out of gas. I wanted to coast off the main street and get under a street light. So, I kicked it into neutral and coasted as far as I could. That got me to there,” he said as he turned and pointed at his motorcycle.
“And no, I don’t have a phone. Long story,” he said as he turned to face me.
I nodded my head and grinned as if I understood. Half-drunk from my wine induced book review, and half-horny from the shitty romance novel without an ending, I gazed at the sexy biker and gave him my best resolution to his problem.
“Tell you what. Push your bike into my garage and we can lock it up all safe and happy and then we’ll go get gas in my car. Will that work?” I asked.
“Safe and happy,” he said with a laugh.
“Just wait until I get the car out before you try and shove your bike in,” I said.
Still facing me, he nodded his head in apparent appreciation.
Proud of my pearly whites, I smiled a tooth-revealing smile and nodded my head in return. The expression on his face reminded me that my teeth probably weren’t white, but wine soaked. The half-bottle of Madeira I had guzzled while reviewing the book undoubtedly had my teeth looking like I’d just finished eating a raw steak.
“I appreciate it,” he said as he turned away. “I’ll owe you one.”
I turned toward the house and did my best to wipe my teeth clean with my index finger as he walked away. After carefully backing my car out into the driveway, I got out in enough time to watch him push the Harley into the garage. He situated it perfectly against the inside wall of the garage, studied it for a moment, and turned to face the car. As he walked toward me, I made note of the fact he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, but I doubted many of his type did, even if they were married.
“This is your car?” he asked as he walked around it with his hand on his chin and his eyes glued to the flawless black paint.
“Only one I got, yep,” I said proudly.
“1966 or ’67?” he asked.
I shook my head. “It’s a 1965. Year my dad was born. He left it to me when he died.”
“Well, it’s a damned fine looking Continental, that’s for sure. And I’m sorry about your pop,” he said as he opened the door.
He carefully got into the car, fastened the seat belt, and looked around the interior as I got inside and situated myself. His expressed appreciation of the car and his careful manner of opening the door and getting inside led me to believe he wasn’t only a big tough biker. At least a small part of him was kind and considerate, and it was apparent.
“I’m Sienna,” I said as I turned the key and started the car.
He coughed a laugh and grinned as he turned his head in my direction. “Call me Vince. And I’m guessing this fucker ain’t stock?”
The rumble from the exhaust made sneaking around in the car almost impossible. My father had built it as a show car, and planned on using it as a trophy of sorts, only driving it on special occasions. He had a 521 cubic inch 600 horsepower motor built by a local professional shop, and I helped him install it right before he died.
His instructions to me upon his passing were clear.
Drive the car, Sienna. Drive it and enjoy it. And if you ever decide to sell it, don’t sell it because you want something different; sell it because you don’t love it anymore. And only sell it to someone who does.
He had the car as long as I was alive, and actually had purchased it a few years before I was born. His entire life had been spent making the car perfect, and perfect was how I intended to keep it.
“521 cubic inches of earth shaking Big Block Ford, six hundred horsepower to be exact,” I bragged as I backed out of the driveway.
“No shit?” he said with a grin. “You know your cars, huh?”
“I’m an only child, and a daddy’s girl. The only time I spent with him was in the garage,” I said. “So, I know a little about cars, and a lot about this car.”
He nodded his head as he glanced around the interior of the car admiringly.
“So where were you going?” I asked as I shifted the car into drive. “You know, when you ran out of gas.”
“Nowhere, just riding. I go out on Sunday nights and just ride, it clears my mind before starting a new week. Had a poker run yesterday, and as that fucker started spittin’ and sputterin’, I remembered I forgot to fill it up after. I can get two hundred miles on a full tank, and not a mile more. Runnin’ out is the price I pay for not keeping track of my miles, I guess,” he said.
“Well, the station up on Douglas will loan us a gas can. Just remember, two hundred miles,” I said with a grin.
He stared at me for a moment, narrowed his upper lip, and revealed his teeth. As I gazed back at him rather confused, he narrowed his eyes and pointed to his teeth with his index finger.
“You’ve got a big piece of meat or something in your front teeth. Sorry, but it’s driving me nuts,” he said as he tapped the tip of his finger against his tooth.
I glanced in the rearview mirror and curled my lip upward. The side of one of my two front teeth was as red as a ruby. I had obviously wiped the other tooth clean with my finger on the front porch, but missed whatever wine-soaked matter was stuck between my other teeth.
“Shit, sorry,” I said as I alternated glances between the road and the mirror.
He shook his head and grinned.
“I was eating crackers and cheese and drinking wine. Typical Sunday night at my house,” I said as I turned into the gas station.
I pulled in front of the store and after a few seconds of the engine running, decided to shut it off. The sound of the motor running while parked against a brick building became rather annoying very quickly, the low rumble from the high performance camshaft made the car sound like an old school race car.
“This fucker was shaking the windows,” he said as he opened the door. “You got to love the sound of all that power.”
I grinned, proud of what my father and I had built. He pushed the door open slightly and paused. Time seemed to stand still as he fixed his eyes on me and cleared his throat.
“Need anything?” he asked.
I had no idea of who this man was, but on the outside he was everything I wanted in a man. I may have licked my lips before I responded, but if I did, he didn’t seem to notice or care. After a few seconds of admiring his muscles and handsome looks, I shook my head from side to side and shrugged.
“A toothbrush,” I laughed.
“Be right back,” he said as he stepped out of the car.
After carefully closing the door, he walked into the gas station, talked to the guy at the register, and turned toward the back of the building. In the well illuminated store, I could see every detail of what he was wearing. The back of his leather vest had a patch of a winged skull with two crossed rifles sewn on it, and had a “Kansas” rocker. I’d read enough books about bikers that I recognized the diamond shaped one percenter patch, and considering he was wearing a cut with the patch and rockers, there was no doubt he was a fully patched member of the club.
Selected Sinners.
I’d seen a few of the members of the club from time to time over the years, riding down the road or in a bar in Old Town. For a one percent club, they sure seemed to have their shit together, and never made the news for doing anything stupid, at least not that I’d seen. As I sat in the car and watched him walk toward the gas pumps, I recalled seeing on the news that one of their members had donated gold coins to the Salvation Army during Christmas time.
I glanced in the rearview mirror and admired his reflection. He was far too handsome to be standing there alone. I opened the door of the car and shuffled toward the gas pump. With each well thought out step, I realized although I was far from sober, I was not as drunk as I needed to be to offer myself to him.
I was single, lonely, and really needed to be fucked, but I was far from a slut. The thought of being ravished by a biker was always something lingering in the back of my mind, but actually allowing him to do it was a different thing altogether.
“So, one of your guys donated a bunch of gold on Christmas a while back. Right after he got back from the war. He was some special forces guy or something,” I said as I walked up to the gas pump.
“Sure did,” he responded.
I shrugged my shoulders as he placed the nozzle back into the pump. “Not the kind of thing most people think of bikers doing.”
“Probably not,” he responded.
Wow.
Don’t feel like talking?
I stared down at my flip-flops and realized my toes were in desperate need of polish. Half embarrassed, I turned toward the car as he began to step past me. As I glanced up from my toes, I noticed a man standing beside my car with his hand on the front fender. Before I had a chance to say anything, Vince barked out a demand in a tone of voice that caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand up.
“Step away from the car, Motherfucker,” he growled as the pace of his steps quickened.
The man, obviously drunk, turned his head toward Vince and all but fell into the fender of my car. After taking a few more steps, Vince placed the gas can beside the car, walked up to the man, and gently pushed him to the side by pressing his left forearm against the man’s chest. As the man stumbled backward, Vince stepped between him and my car.
“Expensive paint job, Brother. Just want you to be careful,” he said.
“Get your fucking hands off me,” the man howled.
In a split-second, the man produced a knife and began swinging it toward Vince. Immediately, it was apparent Vince was no stranger to fighting, protecting himself, or disarming a knife wielding drunk.
Kick his fucking ass, Vince.
As the man grunted and lurched forward with the knife, Vince raised his left arm high in the air, wrapped it around the man’s right arm, and quickly turned around. With his back against the man’s chest and the man’s arm pinned in Vince’s armpit, he reached for the man’s wrist and turned it to the side.
As the drunk wailed in pain, he dropped the knife. As soon as it hit the pavement, Vince stepped on it and pushed the man to the side.
As the man stumbled, Vince bent down, picked up the knife, and shoved it into his back pocket. I stood in awe at what I had just seen. No differently than the men in my MC Romance books, Vince was not only a biker, but a bad-ass biker. Standing and waiting to see what his next Judo move might be, I was surprised to see a police officer walk from inside the store and onto the sidewalk in front of my car.
“Kid inside told me what happened. He saw it all. You want to press charges for assault?” the officer asked.
Still standing between the man and my car, Vince crossed his arms in front of his chest and shook his head. “Simple misunderstanding, Officer.”
“Kid inside said he pulled a knife on you,” the officer said as he tilted his head toward the drunk.
“Nope. He took a swing at me and missed. Didn’t see a knife,” Vince said with a shrug of his shoulders.
“A swing and a miss, huh? Anyone here had too much to drink?” the officer asked as he glanced at each of us.
It had only been thirty minutes since I finished the bottle of wine, and although I wasn’t shit-faced drunk, I was definitely not as drunk as I was going to get. With each passing minute, I felt a little more incapable of standing without teetering over. A sobriety test would land me in jail for sure.
“Can’t speak for him,” Vince said as he tossed his head toward the drunken man. “But, she’s had some wine. Good thing I’m driving.”
The officer cocked an eyebrow. “You’re driving?”
“That’s what I said,” Vince responded.
The officer pointed his finger at me. “Kid inside said she drove up…”
He turned and pointed his finger at Vince’s chest. “You got gas…”
He swiveled to the side and pointed at the drunk. “And he attacked you with a knife when you walked up to the car.”
“Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear,” Vince said.
Wow. He just quoted Edgar Allen Poe.
The officer turned to face me, pressed his hands on his hips, and sighed. “So what really happened?”
Raised by a father who was wrongly accused and subsequently wrongly convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, I had very little respect for police officers, especially our city’s finest. Based on my desire to spend more time with Vince and less time standing and talking to a cop, I shrugged my shoulders and smiled.
“Exactly what he said happened,” I responded.
The officer raised his hand and pressed his thumb against the bill of his hat, raising it slightly. “And how much wine did you drink tonight?”
“Not so much that I’m blind or stupid, but too damned much to drive,” I responded.
He nodded his head in confirmation, apparently disappointed he wasn’t able to make a few arrests.
“How’d you get here?” the officer asked as he turned toward the drunken man.
Obviously not an intelligent man, the drunk tossed his head toward a truck parked a few stalls away from where we were standing.
“Have a nice night,” the officer said with a nod as he grabbed the man by his upper arm and pulled him onto the sidewalk.
After carefully placing the can of gas in the floorboard between my feet, we got into the car and turned to face each other.
“Keys?” Vince asked as he held his hand out.
I reluctantly dropped the keys into his hand. Other than my father and me, he would be the only other one to ever drive the car.
He reached into his front pocket, fumbled around for a moment, and then reached toward my lap.
“Here,” he said as he dropped a small tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush in my lap.
I glanced down and smiled. As ridiculous as it seemed to actually think of the toothpaste and toothbrush as a gift, I immediately felt warmth developing in my heart as I gazed at the items. Short of my father, it was the only gift a man had ever given me.
“Any secrets to starting it?” he asked as he pushed the key into the ignition.
I turned to face him and immediately my mouth curled into a grin. He had captured my attention in a short period of time, and I had no desire to let him slip away without trying to learn more about him. Before I embarrassed myself by staring, I shifted my drunken eyes away from him and responded.
“Pump it once and turn the key,” I said as I opened the glovebox and placed the items inside.
He started the car and slowly backed out of the parking stall. Relishing in the recollection of Vince’s one-sided fight, I glanced out the window and toward the building. The officer was giving the man a sobriety test on the sidewalk, and it was pretty obvious he wasn’t going to pass it. As I shifted my eyes once again toward Vince, I wondered just how well I would have performed the same test in my flip-flops.
“I appreciate you saying you were driving,” I said.
“No problem,” he responded. “I appreciate you taking me to get gas.”
“No problem,” I said in a mimicking tone. “But we’re not even.”
“Oh we’re not?” he asked over his shoulder as he pulled into the street.
The muscles on his tattooed bicep flared as he turned the steering wheel. He was torturing me and he had no idea he was doing so.
I shook my head and swallowed a mouthful of desire. “Nope. I want a ride on your bike.”
He turned his head in my direction as the car came to a stop at the traffic light. After cocking an eyebrow comically and fixing his eyes on mine, he responded.
“I don’t give just anyone a ride on my bike,” he said flatly.
“Well,” I said as I raised my eyebrows slightly.
“I’m not just anyone.”