Blazing Hot Bad Boys Boxed Set - A MC Romance Bundle (70 page)

CHAPTER TWO

The
Goose
has a good crew. Yesterday Rose and Melina had looked through Tim’s address book and she had made the calls to tell everyone they were opening the next morning for business on schedule. When she arrives at 4:45, the lights are on and the sounds of a busy restaurant are in full swing.

As she enters, Jack, the head cook, greets her with a rib-cracking hug. Jack has been the chief cook for as long as Rose can remember—at least fifteen years. She also recognizes Gail, Tonya, and Dick, greeting each of them warmly, but the rest of the staff are new to her.

She gives everyone a quick pep talk and then unlocks the doors. By five-thirty the
Goose
is humming. The old-timers remember Rose and talk to her, many asking if she is taking the
Goose
back after the tragedy. She brushes off the innocent questions with noncommittal answers, not wanting to mention the intent to sell.

***

Though open and busy all day, the
Goose
has two rushes—breakfast and dinner—allowing Rose to take a breather after the breakfast crush slows. She had forgotten how much work running a well-liked, mid-level family restaurant is. After the dinner rush the
Goose
will probably have served more meals in a day than
Aguilar’s
will in four or five.

She is sitting in Tim’s chair, trying to stay awake while looking over the morning receipts, when she hears a voice that she had not heard in years. “Rose?”

“Holy shit,” she breathes as she rises from her chair. “What are you doing here? Did you come for Tim’s funeral tomorrow?”

Joseph Warner smiles—the same smile that she remembers so well. She and Joseph had been lovers a long time ago before he had left her to join a motorcycle club.

“No. I live here now.”

“I thought you were in Arizona, or New Mexico, or someplace like that.”

“Tucson,” he says. “But once I took over the Nine Devils we relocated back here, to Eagle Valley. To damn hot in Tucson.”

“Nice name… Nine Devils,” she mutters.

Joseph shrugs. “It’s just a name. It has meaning to us and reminds us of who we are.”

They stand in an awkward silence for a moment, neither sure of their position with the other. Rose and Joseph had become lovers right out of high school… not long after Tim caught them necking in her dad’s restaurant, actually. They had carried on a torrid affair for two years, Joseph making the ride from Eagle Valley to Las Vegas at least once a week while she attended school. Once there they would make wildly passionate love for a couple of days before he would return to Eagle Valley. During her junior year, after a night of sexual bliss under the stars in the middle of the desert surrounding Vegas, he announced he was leaving. At first she thought he meant he was going home to Eagle Valley, only to realize he meant leaving forever.

She had begged him to stay and he had asked her to go. But in the end, she wouldn’t leave school and he wouldn’t stay. That had been seven years ago. She had thought she was over him—she
is
over him—except now that he is standing in her door he reminds her of what they had. Something she hasn’t found since. The years have been kind to Mr. Joseph Warner. He has filled out and muscled up, his skin kissed by the sun so that he glows with a healthy, outdoorsy tan. He is still as neatly trimmed and dressed as he always was, but he fills out his shirt and pants much better now.

She clears her throat, pulling her thoughts back from the past. “Are you going to the funeral tomorrow?”

“Yes. We all are.”

“We? You’re married?” she asks, hoping she kept her voice level and neutral.

That panty-dropping grin appears again. “Hardly. No, I mean all the Nines are going.”

“Oh,” she says, trying to hide her nasty little satisfaction that he hasn’t found someone to replace her. “How many is that?”

“Twenty-seven men and women.”

“Twenty-seven? Is that a special number? Three times
nine
?”

Once again the grin appears. “No. No secret meanings. Two years ago there were twenty-six of us. Soon I hope there will be twenty-eight.”

“So what brings you in? And how did you know I was in here?”

“I didn’t. I just came to get my mail and check my messages. And what are
you
doing here?”

“I came up for the funeral, but I’m also watching the place for a few weeks until Melina can get her feet under her again. And what is that about the mail?”

“My mail,” Joseph says, stepping into the office and picking up a plastic box with about a dozen pieces of mail in it. He removes the mail and puts the box back on the shelf. “Tim would pick up my mail along with the restaurant’s. He would just throw it in the box and I stop by a couple days of week to pick it up. He also lets me have a phone line here as well.”

“You have your mail sent to the
Goose?”
she asks in confusion.

“No. I have my own P.O. Box. Tim was just kind enough to pick up the mail each day for me when he went to the post office.”

“And the phone?”

Joseph smiles. “May I sit down? Let me explain what is going on then I think this will make more sense.”

Rose smiles and waves him to chair. “Take a load off.”

“Okay,” he says, settling into one of the guest chairs. “The Nines, we live off the grid. That means we don’t have phones, credit cards, bank accounts… none of that stuff. We deal strictly in cash and we don’t own any property. I mean I have a house, bike, and truck, but it is all in Tim and Melina’s name. Just like the phone and the P.O. Box. Those are also in Tim’s name, but they are mine. I pay Tim for these items and he takes the money and pays the bills.”

“What are you, some kind of whacko?” she teases. “Who doesn’t have a computer or a telephone these days?”

“I have a computer and a phone,” he says calmly. “The computer is at home and the phone is on Tim’s desk.”

“That’s my phone. Well, I mean Tim’s phone.”

“If you look, you see that button at the bottom? The line that is separate from the other two? That’s my line. It just happens to be ringing into Tim’s office. I could just as easily have it switched to ring somewhere else.”

“So you don’t have a phone at home? No cell phone either?”

“Nope. No cable television. No city water or sewer. I’m on a well with a septic system. The electricity for the house is billed to Tim Scholly.”

Rose looks at Joseph. He had always had a problem with authority, but he is just
weird
now. “But you have a computer? How does that work?”

“The
Goose
has Wi-Fi. So does every
Starbucks
and
Panera
in the country. Getting on the internet isn’t hard anymore.”

“And if someone wanted to reach you?”

“They know where I live. And if they don’t, I probably don’t want to see them anyway,” he says with grin.

Rose thinks for a minute. “Well, that at least explains why I couldn’t get that damn ‘message waiting’ light on the phone to go out.”

Joseph’s grin widens. “Yeah. Sorry. It’s not a perfect system.”

“Why do you live like this?”   

Joseph looks at Rose, and smiles. She hasn’t changed a bit. She is still the raven-haired beauty that she has always been, but softened as she has matured, a change that makes her more beautiful still. But that quick and inquisitive mind is as razor-sharp as ever.

“Because I want to. I don’t want the government to know every little detail of my life.”

She stares at him a moment, then grins. “What are you? Some kind of outlaw terrorist or something? What have you got to be afraid of?”

“No, and nothing. But the less the government knows about me the happier I am. Rose, you would be amazed and disturbed if you knew how much information about you is out there. If I wanted to, I could almost find out what you had for breakfast this morning. I don’t want my life to be that public. None of us do.”

“Us?”

“The Nine Devils.”

“All of you live like this?” she asks in surprise.

“To one degree or another, yes. For example, none of us has a credit card or a bank account. But not all of us are as committed to the idea of privacy as I am.”

“What do you do for money?”

“Ever hear of cash?” he teases.

“You pay for
everything
with cash?”

“That’s right. No bank account means no checks. If I absolutely have to send money somewhere I either wire it or get a bank check.”

Rose is quite for a moment. “Joseph… what happened to you?”

He laughs. He is used to this reaction. “Nothing has happened to me, Rose. But I want to live as a free man. I don’t want every aspect of my life dictated to me by some faceless bureaucrat that has only his own self-interest at heart. The best way I know to accomplish that is to… disappear.”

She can certainly understand that. Trying to get
Aguilar’s
open was a study in bureaucracy and frustration as she fought her way through the red tape. “Seems pretty radical to me, but whatever,” she says, waving off his comment. “But you can’t keep your phone here. I don’t know what arrangement you had with Tim, but you need to work out something else.”

Joseph nods. “Okay. But may I have a week as a courtesy? I need to work out other arrangements.”

Rose is surprised he gave in so easily. “Sure. In fact, there is no time limit so long as you are working to get it changed over. Thank you for not arguing with me about it.”

“Not my place. This is Melina’s business, which apparently you are running at the moment. If you say no, then that means no. I can find another person or business that will do it. I’ll take the post office key now if you like.”

Rose rummages in the desk for a moment and turns up a ring of keys with two post office box keys on it. Neither is labeled. “Hmmm. Let me get your mail for you until you come in again. That will give me a chance to figure out which key is which. I’ll give you your key then.”

“Fair enough. It’s box 601. Thank you, Rose.”

“For what?”

“For understanding and working with me on this.”  

Rose grins. “Despite the fact that you are a whacko, we’re still friends, right?”

“Yes.” Joseph pauses for a moment, his smile fading. “Rose, I’m sorry for what happened.”

“What? Leaving me?”

“Yes. There hasn’t been a day that has past that I haven’t thought of you.”

“Sure…” she says, drawing the word out. “Why did you do it then?”

“I had to get away. I couldn’t stay and live the way I was. I had… an
epiphany
, I guess you could say. I read
Atlas Shrugged
and I realized that I couldn’t live like that anymore. I wanted you to come with me, but I can understand why you refused.”

“You left me because of a
book?”

“No. I left you because you couldn’t come with me. The book was just the catalyst that made me realize that we are all just slaves to society. I don’t want to be a slave, Rose.”

She looks at Joseph impassively for a moment. “I think you must have been out in the Arizona sun too long and your brain has been fried. But whatever. So what have you been doing these the last seven years?”