Ride Wild

  “Whatever happened to your idea of checking out volunteer opportunities at the animal shelter?”

  “Oh,” she said, wishing she’d never voiced her pie-in-the-sky dream of one day becoming a veterinarian. Growing up, her parents had never let her own an animal, so she’d become the queen of the stray cats, once sneaking a little gray tiger-striped kitten into her bedroom for a whole weekend when she was about nine, and routinely leaving out bowls of milk or cans of tuna for a pair of orange tabbies when she was a little older. At first, they’d been too scared to approach if she moved at all, but eventually they’d gotten brave enough to sniff her hand. And the moment when they’d finally let her pet them remained one of her fondest memories. She’d wished she could do more for them, that she knew how to do more, because those cats, even with all their standoffishness, had made her feel more loved than anyone who’d lived inside her house . . .

  But what was the point of talking about her dream when it required, somehow, coming up with enough money to afford college, and then doing well enough there to get into a vet school? It remained as far out of reach now as it had when she first met those tabbies. She’d only shared it in the first place a few weeks ago in the hopes of getting Haven to admit and pursue her own much-more-realistic dream to open a bakery. The woman could be printing money with her cookies alone. “I have to save up for a car first,” Cora said, “and probably also for an apartment, before I can think of doing anything like that. More importantly, what happened to your idea of—”

  “Wait. Why do you need an apartment?” Haven asked.

  “It’s not like I can live in the Ravens’ clubhouse for the rest of my life,” Cora said. No one had said a word to her or Haven about moving on, and honestly, she didn’t think they would. It also probably didn’t hurt that the club’s president was in love with Cora’s best friend. But they were currently the only two permanent residents at the clubhouse, though members and the Ravens’ other protective clients sometimes crashed here, and there was always someone around. And Cora wanted more for herself than being some biker groupie, even if she was still figuring out what exactly that was.

  Really, it was the first time in her life she’d ever realistically had the chance to consider it. Her dad had made it clear there’d be no money for after she graduated high school, and he’d been true to his word, forcing her to get a series of part-time jobs to pay for food, clothes, the bus, and her phone. The only thing he’d done to help her was let her keep living in her bedroom. Some favor that’d turned out to be . . .

  “And I’m no dummy. At some point, you’re going to move in with Dare.”

  Haven’s gorgeous face went immediately and cartoonishly red.

  Cora flew into a sitting position and gaped. “No freaking way!”

  Looking like she’d swallowed her tongue, Haven sat up more slowly, the pretty waves of her hair falling over her shoulders. “So, this was one of the reasons I’ve been dying to talk to you.”

  Cora bounced up onto her knees, her grin nearly making her cheeks hurt. “No freaking way, Haven. Are you serious? Details, woman. I need all the details! When did he ask you? What did he say?” She picked up a pillow and smacked her friend’s shoulder with it. “Start spilling now!”

  Haven laughed and yanked the pillow away. “It was Monday morning right after you called for a ride. We were at his place getting ready to come here and I was packing my bag from the weekend. And he said that he never minded me having things of my own to do, but that he absolutely hated that I didn’t come home to his house every day after doing them. And that he wanted his house to be my house, too. To be ours.” She reached into her jeans pocket and held up a set of keys on a little silver ring. “And then he asked me to move in.”

  “Oh, my God, you have keys to a house, Haven. And a man who loves you so much. Wow,” Cora said, her heart overflowing for her friend. “I never doubted for one minute that Dare would be good at the sexin’, but who knew he’d be so good at the romancing, too?”

  Haven hugged the pillow to her chest as a little blush turned her smiling cheeks pink. “I know. It’s really true.”

  “Wow,” Cora said again, the reality that Haven was truly putting down roots here in Frederick—roots separate from Cora and the escape plan they’d hatched when they’d run from Georgia so many months before—really sinking in. “So when are you moving in? Why are you still sleeping here?” She sucked in a breath. “Please tell me it’s not because—”

  “I didn’t want to leave you here alone,” Haven said, finishing Cora’s thought.

  An uncomfortable whirl of emotion settled in Cora’s belly—jealousy, irritation at herself for being jealous, panic over what she was going to do with her own life, uncertainty about where she belonged, and even a little feeling of abandonment, too, as unfair and ridiculous as that was when truly she was happy for Haven, too. So she masked that whole mess with sarcasm and humor, as she always did. Cora pointed her thumbs at herself and arched an eyebrow. “Big girl over here. A big girl who will hate you forever if you let her hold you back.”

  Haven grasped her hand. “You could never hold me back, Cora. Hell, if it wasn’t for you, none of this would even be real. I’d still be stuck in Georgia, either trapped in my criminal father’s house or married off to some equally criminal dirtbag in a marriage over which I had no say. You’re my best friend. I wasn’t making this decision without at least talking to you first.”

  “But now you’re free from all that, Haven. And you deserve to be happy and have all the things you want. And that starts with Dare.”

  “I always thought we’d get an apartment together,” she said, blue eyes so earnest.

  Cora smiled and swallowed the selfish disappointment she felt, because she’d thought so, too. “Yeah, well, life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. Right? Besides, Dare lives ten minutes away. We’ll still see each other here, and it’ll be easy enough to visit. And when I finally get my own place, the door will always be open to you.” Hesitation still colored Haven’s expression, and Cora wasn’t having that at all, so she pushed a little harder. “By this weekend, you’ll move to Dare’s, and then on Monday, you’ll start laying out the plans for your own bakery. I’ve got it all planned out. Consider me your taskmaster.”

  Haven laughed. “Slow that down a little, won’t you?”

  “No way. You have a man willing to do anything for you, a safe place to live, a God-given talent you can’t waste for one more day, and you’ve inherited enough money to get started with a business. Why go slow?” Cora asked, so badly wanting her friend to have all the things about which she’d dreamed. The only good thing Haven’s dad had ever done for her was die and leave her that money to start a new life. At first, Haven had hesitated to accept it, because it was clear that at least some of it was ill-gotten gains from her dad’s various illegal activities, but then she realized all the good she could do with it—and not just for herself. She’d donated some of it to the Ravens to assist in the protective duties the club undertook on behalf of people in bad situations with no other way out.

  People like they’d once been.

  “Well, for a couple of reasons,” Haven said, putting her arms around her knees. “First of all, just being totally real here, I don’t have any experience in running a business. I can bake the heck out of anything and make it pretty amazing, I’ll admit, but I don’t want to jump in without having the first idea what I’m doing. So I’ve been thinking about applying to the culinary arts program at the community college, and maybe taking some business classes, too.”

  Cora nodded, a slow smile spreading on her face. “I’m liking this new take-charge Haven Randall. I think this is really smart.” Cora meant every word. It was so gratifying to see her once timid and shy friend become so confident and brave.

  “Yeah,” she said, grinning. “It’s too late to apply for the fall semester, but I think I can start in January.” Her eyes went wide. “You could totally take so
me classes with me. How fun would that be?”

  It was all Cora could do not to roll her eyes. “Haven, I can’t afford coll—”

  “I knew you were going to say that, which is why I would pay for the classes.”

  Cora dropped her face into her hands. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “No way.”

  “Yes way. Come on, look at me.” Cora did, and Haven gave her the sternest glare she could manage. “Your dad worked for mine, which means he helped make some of the dirty money I inherited, which means some of it is rightfully yours, too.” She arched a brow, her expression daring Cora to challenge her logic.

  Instead, Cora changed the preposterous subject, because Haven’s father had taken too much away from her for Cora to even contemplate taking any part of the one thing he’d given. “Okay, so what else? You said you had a couple of reasons to go slow with the bakery idea . . .”

  Haven rolled her eyes. “We’re not done talking about that yet.” She stared until Cora finally nodded and waved her hand in a gesture to continue. “Well, for another reason, Dare is really twisted up over Jagger still being in jail, and worried about who Alexa’s ex hired to set him and the Ravens up. I don’t want to pile any more stress on him while that whole situation is still being resolved.”

  Cora shook her head. Jagger Locke managed the Ravens’ main business operations at the racetrack they owned, and he’d been arrested over two months ago on several counts of illegal dumping of oil and tires, which carried surprisingly stiff penalties in Maryland. But the thing was, he didn’t do it. The Ravens had already collected more than a little evidence that Alexa’s now dead abusive ex-fiancé, a man who unfortunately had held a lot of influence as the town’s biggest real estate developer, had hired someone to do the dumping to get back at the Ravens for helping Alexa. Cora didn’t know Jagger well, but she knew that he’d been right there with the rest of the Ravens ready to help her and Haven out when they’d been in trouble. “What’s happening to him is so unfair. Why the hell does it take so long to get a court date anyway?”

  “I know, waiting is driving Dare insane. But it’s two weeks now. Hopefully they’ll let him go on time served or just drop the charges altogether,” Haven said on a sigh.

  Just then, a knock sounded against the door. “Come in,” Cora called.

  “Hey,” Bunny said. “Any chance you gals wanna help an old lady cook dinner for a bunch of miscreant bikers?”

  They both laughed, because they’d fallen in love with Bunny McKeon in the time that they’d been with the Ravens. Bunny was the sister of the club’s founder and owner, Doc Kenyon, wife of another founding member, Bear, and Maverick’s mom, so she’d become something of a mother hen to all the younger guys. And she’d definitely become a mother figure to Cora and Haven, too. But with her wavy white hair, jeans, black T-shirt, and kick-ass black cowboy boots, she was the coolest sixty-something person Cora had ever met.

  “You know we’d do anything for you,” Haven said.

  “And for those miscreants,” Cora added.

  Bunny grinned. “I was hoping you’d say that. Because word is that it’s gonna be pretty busy in here tonight.”

  “Why can’t Cora come over?” Ben asked Slider in what was possibly the twentieth rendition of the question since he’d gotten home from his only full day of school this week.

  There’d also been: Is Cora babysitting? Why isn’t Cora babysitting? When is Cora babysitting again? Can we call Cora? And too many others Slider couldn’t remember, but all boiled down to this: his kid missed Cora Campbell. And maybe preferred her company to Slider’s.

  Not that Slider blamed him. Because he missed her, too. Her company, her positivity, her ability to distract Ben when he was cranky or bored or bickering with his brother. She’d been a lifesaver all week when Ben had been unable to make it through the school day and Slider had either been at work or sleeping after pulling an overnight shift. And when she wasn’t around it was as if her absence sucked all the life right out of the house. The lights seemed dimmer. The rooms felt emptier. The quiet seemed lonelier. And the boys’ smiles seemed fewer.

  Actually, there was no seeming about that one. It was true.

  “She’s not working tonight, Benji. She can’t always be with us,” Slider said, patting the boy’s feet, propped on Slider’s lap while they sat on the couch together watching TV.

  Footsteps padded down the hall, and Sam entered the family room only far enough to lean against the door, his arms crossed. “Why not?” he asked.

  Slider frowned. “Why not what?”

  Sam licked his lips and looked at Ben, and Slider caught some sort of silent exchange between them. “Why can’t Cora always be with us?”

  “Yeah,” Ben said.

  Talk about an ambush. How long had they been thinking about this? And what the hell was he supposed to say in response? After the night Slider and Cora spent together in that tiny bed in Ben’s hospital room, no way was Slider allowing this question inside the weakened defenses of his imagination. Because when he’d awakened to find Cora’s gaze sliding over his body like maybe she wanted to hold him down and ride him, he’d been tempted to invite her to do it. Right then and there. Nurses, doctors, and inappropriate time and place be damned.

  And that lust-drunk, throw-caution-to-the-wind attitude where Cora was concerned was a problem he neither wanted nor needed. Starting with a father who left and a mother who didn’t stay sober, the past had taught him too damn many times that people didn’t stick around—at least for him—that they couldn’t be trusted, and maybe even that he could never really know anyone else, even those he loved. Hell, maybe even especially those he loved.

  Kim’s betrayal and loss had left Slider wrecked enough. No way he was risking what was left of him. Because that belonged entirely to his boys. It had to. They already didn’t get everything they deserved from him as it was.

  The reality of that thought crept uncomfortably under Slider’s skin. Ben was going to be fine, but for a few minutes the morning he’d been hurt, Slider didn’t know what’d happened to him or how bad it was. Terror had flooded him at the possibility that he could lose Ben, just as he’d lost so much else. Given all that, shouldn’t Slider be doing more with the time he had? Shouldn’t he be doing more to pull himself the fuck together? If not for himself, then sure as hell for them.

  “She just can’t,” Slider said lamely, moving Ben’s feet off his lap so he could get up. The turn in his thoughts had him feeling like shit and craving a moment of solitude, so he made his way to the kitchen and got a drink of water. But the boys weren’t having it, and there was no missing the fact that two pairs of eyes had followed him and were burning holes in his back.

  “That’s not an answer,” Ben said. “Why can’t she?”

  Slider turned to find them standing shoulder to shoulder, a united front in their effort to demand this answer from him. Little carbon copies of him, the both of them, though they had pieces of Kim, too. Sam’s brown eyes and darker brown hair. The shape of Ben’s mouth and the freckles across his cheeks. Of course, the boys picked now to get along, and about something that made no fucking sense. “We can’t just ask Cora to move in with us.”

  “Still not an answer,” Sam said, brow arched.

  “Okay, first off,” Slider said, “she has her own place to live. Second, a babysitter is a part-time job, and we can’t expect Cora to give up her whole life for it, and it would be weird to even ask. And finally,” he said, his brain scrambling for more ammunition, “she’s not family. The three of us, we’re family.”

  A long moment passed, and then they were talking over each other as they fired off counterarguments. “Dad,” Sam said, “Cora lives at the clubhouse. That’s not really her own place. Do you even know how she came to be there?”

  Slider blinked, because what the hell did his ten-year-old know about Cora’s past? And why did he seem to know more about it than Slider?

  “Yeah, but Co
ra was here a lot more than usual this week,” Ben was saying in a tumble of words, “and I know she didn’t mind because she told me she was happy to do it because she didn’t have anywhere else she had to be.”

  Sam nodded and crossed his arms. “Besides, you’re not related to anyone in the Raven Riders, yet you always call them brothers. So I think people you’re not related to can be family if you want them to be.”

  Ben tried to mirror the tough-guy pose, but the cast on his elbow wouldn’t quite allow him to pull it off. “I agree with Sam.”

  Jesus. He was totally outnumbered here, wasn’t he? “You two practicing for your future careers as prosecutors, or what?”

  “Dad,” Sam said, his eyebrow arching.

  “Sam—”

  “Come on, you could use the help, and Cora could use a real house to live in. She could be, like . . . our nanny. It’d be win-win,” the kid said. Ten going on thirty-five, apparently. Which made them the exact same age.

  Sonofabitch. Cora, their nanny. It was crazy . . . but maybe not as crazy as Slider at first thought. And it wasn’t as if he couldn’t afford it. Kim’s life insurance had given them a decent safety net that Slider only dipped into when he had to. He scrubbed at his face, all his unkempt whiskers suddenly irritating him in a way they hadn’t before.

  “At least think about it, Dad,” Ben said, his tone a little defeated.

  And even though he knew it was bad for his resolve, Slider looked his son in the face and found those way-too-persuasive puppy-dog eyes in full effect. “Fine,” he said, really wanting to stop talking about the idea of Cora living with him. With them, he meant. “Now what do you want for dinner? I could make up some mac and cheese, or we have stuff for cold cuts.”