Ridge Creek (9 page)

I watch as he grimaces again and pours himself another
drink.  “Don’t fuckin’ ask.”

I decide I need to take my second shot of bourbon and throw
it back quickly.  “I think we’ve done enough sharing for one day don’t you? 
I’m not going to ask any more questions.”

“Good,” he mutters as he shakes his head and refills our
glasses.

*****

The pizza arrives a short while later.  With four pizzas and
two garlic breads spread out across the bar, my eyes bug out.  “You bought a
whole pizza for each person?” 

“Yep, Jerry knows the drill.  I give him the number of
people, he builds a large pizza for each and throws in the garlic bread. 
Leftover pizza is popular for breakfast and lunch.”

“Right,” I mumble as I continue to stare at the enormous
array.

Apart from being bountiful, the pizza looks delicious. 
Jerry obviously knows how to throw a mean pizza together and there are various
thin and thick crusts.  The cheese is thick and golden and he’s been
heavy-handed with toppings. 
Good
pizzas to rival any gourmet pizza
makers you would find in Melbourne suburbia.

Clearly deciding it’s safe to approach us, Bill and Luke
arrive at the bar to eat pizza.   Pulling up a stool either side of me I find
myself neatly sandwiched between too strange men.  They are sitting close.   A
little too close for my liking because I feel that if I make any sudden
movements, I’m going to accidentally touch one or the other of them. 

Looking over to Jake I throw him a slightly alarmed look.

“Give her some room fucktards,” he growls.  Without a
moment’s hesitation, both men slide their chairs sideways about half a meter. 
Still not ideal, but better.

Leaning across in front of me, the scrawny red haired one
tags a huge slice of Pepperoni pizza and jams most of it in his mouth.  Chewing
happily, he mutters between chews, “Since by buying pizzas, the big guy has
unintentionally given us permission to approach, I’m going all in.  I’m gunna
ignore his threats and I’m gunna speak to you.  I’m Bill.”

“Luke,” his blonde friend adds quickly as he breaks off some
garlic bread.

“Uh, hi Bill and Luke,” I mumble slightly confused.  “You’re
not allowed to talk to me?”

“Not unless you want us to,” Bill confirms as he reaches for
another piece of pizza.

He wasn’t joking when he said only if I want them to.

“Well I want you to,” I offer, and I do.  I think Jake and I
need to have a little conversation about human rights.

Bill grins and I hear Luke mutter “Thank God for that.”

Sliding my eyes to Luke, I watch as his face transforms with
a stunning smile that reveals neat white teeth and two amazing dimples.

Holy shit.
 

This guy could do dental ads for great smiles.  Dragging my
eyes from his pearly whites, I move upwards to see a set of bright, crystal
blue eyes crinkling at me.  With a square jaw framed with shoulder length
blonde hair that hangs haphazardly around his face, he definitely has a good
look going on.  Okay, so I’ve found a
third
reason to like bikers. 
Jake, Zane and now Luke.

“What do you do for a living Luke?” I ask conversationally
as I carefully select a piece of Hawaiian Pizza and start nibbling at it.

“I install Green Energy setups,” he replies casually
flicking his eyes to Jake.  I look across to see Jake scowling at him. 
Swinging my eyes back to Luke’s, I find his pinned back on me.  Looking amused
about something he adds, “I set up and repair standalone Solar and Wind energy
systems.”

“Cool.” I say as I move my eyes to study my pizza as I
nibble at it.  “That’d be a good job.  Traveling about meeting interesting
people.  I bet you meet a few hippies and greenies then?  You know, crazy,
friendly folks who hug trees a lot and grow their own vegies and pot yeah?”

Not receiving an answer, I slide my eyes back to his.  I see
he has stopped chewing.  He is watching me carefully, his eyes guarded.  I hear
Jake give a cough and Luke’s eyes swing to his.  I follow suit.

“She asked a question Luke, do you meet many pot growing
folk?”  Jake has a grin spread from ear to ear and his eyes are flashing with
humor.

“Well yeah…” Luke mutters as he swings his eyes back to me
and starts chewing again.  “You could say that.”

Thinking no more of it, I swing my attention to Bill.   “So
Bill… what do you do?”

“Drive trucks for Luke and Jake,” he answers between huge
mouthfuls of pizza.  I note that his teeth are
not
as well cared for as
Luke’s and he has a really bad habit of exposing his food while chewing.

Ewwww.

I nod.  “That’s handy having your feet in two business
camps.”

“You could say that,” he mumbles reaching for another piece
of pizza.

“I’m a website designer,” I announce wondering if Bill even
knows what a website is. 

In unison, both Bill and Luke reply, “We know.”

Huh?

My heart throws a small wobbly and stutters. 

Shit.

Am I ever going to be live with the fact that obviously
everyone around here knows who I am?  Snapping my eyes to Jake’s I find myself
sliding into a blind panic.

“Fuck.” He growls loudly and before I can register how he’s
done it, he rounds the bar.  Within in another instant he is spinning my bar
stool to face him.  Feeling slightly dizzy at the speed with which he’s
appeared in front of me, I gasp.  Which turns out to be a good thing because I
realize I have been holding my breath.  It feels better to have
air.

Planting a hand on the back of my neck, he drags me forward
to face plant in his stomach.  Finding myself blinking against his hard stomach
for the second time today I am speechless.  Breathing softly, I listen to the
sounds of silence around me and finally find my voice.  “Um… Jake?”

“Yeah sweetheart,” I feel his voice rumbling through my
forehead.  Staring at the floor between his stomach and my knees, I announce,
“I’m… okay.  I think you could classify that as a…
false
… alarm.  It was
more that I was… well… wondering just how much these guys
knew.
”

Feeling his hands slide away from my neck, I sit up straight
again and tip my eyes up to his.  Looking at his strong jaw line bulging with
tension, I add, “You know, about the
other
stuff.”

With a concerned look on his face he pins me with his eyes
and replies.  “All of it sweetheart.  Anyone who sits at this bar has my full
trust.  Which means they’ve got your full story and know what it means for
you.  These men are my brothers in everything except blood and you can trust
them with your life.  If I didn’t trust them, they would never have laid eyes
on you.”

“Right,” I murmur softly as I slide my eyes downwards
towards my feet.  “So there’s no need for an AA style announcement that my name
is Arianna, I’ve had a bad week and I am on the run from a gun wielding
mobster?”

“You could say that,” he chuckles as he comes to the
conclusion that I am okay.  He then leaves me to round the bar and reoccupy his
seat.  Swinging my head left and right I find two more faces grinning at me. 
With a roll of my eyes, I turn and reach for another piece of pizza.

“You guys say that a
lot!
”

*****

I wake up the next morning with a hangover. 

A bad hangover.

This is because I drank more shots of bourbon last night
than I cared to count.  I also had a
great
time.

Bill, despite his poor food eating etiquette, was
hilarious.  A cheerful guy with plenty of stories to tell, I soon found myself
laughing hard as he retold stories of the places he’d been and the oddities
he’d seen.

Luke was nothing short of a charmer.  With his crystal blue
eyes sparkling with dangerous intent for much of the night, I soon found myself
caught up in his blatant efforts to flirt with me.  The night had only come to
an end because Jake had decreed it. 

He did this by appearing in the hallway outside the toilet
as I stumbled out drunk off my ass.  “You’re done,” he had announced in his
deep, gravelly, no one is going to argue with me voice.  I vaguely remember
looking up at him after hearing the tone in his voice and wishing I was ‘done’
by him.  That’s all I can remember.

Now I’m lying here feeling like I’ve thrown myself out the
back of a truck again.   With my eyes still shut, I decide that I won’t be
drinking bourbon again.

Ever.

Realizing I am laying on my back, I decide to roll over to
my good side. Resettling in a more comfortable position, I open my eyes and
gasp.

Two bright green eyes are staring lazily at me.

Jake.

His shiny black hair is strewn haphazardly behind him and if
I thought he was a fifteen yesterday, he’s just bounced to a twenty with the
lazy look he’s got going on now.  Blinking, I murmur, “Good morning.”

“Yeah,” he says in the deepest, gravelliest, morning voice I
have ever heard.

“My drinking career is over,” I inform him.

I watch as he lifts an eyebrow and one corner of his mouth
crinkles slightly.  Mesmerized by his lips, I find myself unconsciously
moistening my own.  And then it occurs to me.  I don’t remember coming to bed.

Fuck.

Tipping my head downwards I drag the top sheet downwards and
gasp. First I gasp at the fact that I am wearing one of Jake’s Harley t-shirts
and just a pair of panties.  Second I gasp because he is
butt
naked. 
And he is sporting morning wood. 

Big
morning wood.

Ripping the sheet back over us I close my eyes and the
words, ‘What has been seen cannot be unseen’ flash through my brain.  The
vision of all that hard muscle and manhood etch themselves into the back of my
eyeballs.

Holy cow.

Opening my eyes again, I see that Jake’s face is now full on
smiling and he is shaking slightly as he chuckles silently.

Scared to ask, I do so anyway.  “Did we?  Uh…  You know…”

And then I instantly wish I hadn’t asked. 

I wish this because he instantaneously stops chuckling, his
jaw clenches and his eyes turn hard.  Knitting his eyebrows he growls, “Fuck
no.”

Taken aback at his ferocity I physically recoil and push
back across the bed.    This turns out to be a second thing I wish I didn’t do.
I wish this because the look on his face turns from hard to clearly
pissed. 
A look that as hot as he may be, it’s a look I don’t like.

Preparing to take my chances at a fast launch from the bed
with no consideration to my now healing injuries
and
my hangover from
hell, I suddenly freeze solid at his next words.  “I wouldn’t want to hurt you
sweetheart.”

Blinking rapidly at him, I find my eyebrows knitting harshly
together as I consider his words.  Registering the meaning behind them, I
catalog my injuries, including the stitches that are
down there
. 

Jake senses that I have reached a level of understanding and
his face softens
. 
His green eyes however, remain serious and they are
pinned on mine.  “Not that I wouldn’t want to,” and then with a smirk, “I think
we have clear evidence of
that
.”

“Oh,” I almost whisper.

Reverting to a serious look, he slides up on an elbow, the
sheet falling down his side, dangerously close to exposing him again.  Moving
closer to me he continues talking.

“Do you know how hard it is to sleep in a bed next to you
and not touch you?  And when I say not touch you, I mean that both sexually and
just normally.  Avoiding all your sore parts is kinda hard when you keep
rolling about and snuggling up to me.”

“I snuggled up to you?”

“At one stage you were wrapped around me so tight I felt
like I was a piece of driftwood and you were lost at sea.”  Grinning again he
adds, “It was only my fear of your back that stopped me throwing an arm around
you to make sure you didn’t … drown.”

“Oh,” I murmur again.

He’s such a good guy.

Then a second thought hits me.  Maybe he
isn’t
.

“You undressed me,” I announce in an accusatory tone.

“No I didn’t,” he starts chuckling again.

What the?  If he didn’t undress me, who the hell did?

“Huh?”

“You undressed yourself.  Well undressed could be a loose
term for what you did.  You
stripped
yourself, slowly.  After sitting me
in the chair next to the bed and telling me not to move a muscle.”

I did WHAT!

“Considering the limited movement in your right arm as well
as the gauze all over your back, you did a pretty good job of it too. 
Stripping off your rib cage bandage sexily was something a guy doesn’t see in
many porno’s.  Well to be honest I’ve never seen it done on a porno, ever.  At
a guess, I’d say your display was a
world
first.  And I’ve seen a
lot
of porno’s so I’d know.  You were
fucking
hot.”

He is flat-out smiling at me now.

“I did WHAT!” I screech.

Ignoring my screech, he stares at me a beat or two and then
rolls away.  Throwing back the sheet and stepping out of the bed in all his
naked glory, I find all the wind taken out of my screeching sails. My breath
leaves my body in a huge
whoosh,
and I nearly swallow my tongue as his
muscled back ripples above his
very
firm ass.

Striding towards the door, he turns his head back over his
shoulder and grins cheekily.  “Just joking sweetheart.  When I went and kicked
Bill and Luke out, I returned to find you already in that t-shirt, passed out
in bed.”

Watching as he disappears through the door I grunt,
“Bastard.” 

But I can’t help smiling as I say it.