“I hate to be the one to say I told you so…” I start once everyone is awake. “But I think I told you so.”
“No regrets,” Tessa mutters while lifting her coffee mug about an inch in the air, but no one else chimes in.
“How about I fix you all a big homemade dinner tonight to cheer you up?” I offer.
“Dinner…dinner would be good,” Sydney agrees with a big gulp. “I don’t think I can eat any lunch.”
“Agreed,” Bev says. “Thanks, Charlotte.”
“It’s the least I can do since I’m the only one not hungover,” I tease them, making them all groan as I get up to go back inside to take stock of what ingredients we still have and what I’ll need to grab at the grocery store.
The rest of the day is a blur of mixing, frying and baking before everyone sits down to eat the southern comfort food I made. They’ve all had time to take another nap, get showers, and put on a change of clothes, making them look almost normal again.
“Thanks for this, Charlotte,” Tessa says as she digs into her macaroni and cheese. “It’s delicious! And exactly what my yucky stomach needed.”
“It was my pleasure,” I say with my fork poised to finally dig in. “I hope you all enjoy it so much that you’ll handle the clean-up,” I joke just as the doorbell rings.
“Who could that be?” Tessa asks.
“No idea, but I’ll get it!” I tell them. “Go ahead and eat up,” I instruct them as I hurry to the door with a feeling of déjà vu.
A small, teeny tiny sliver of hope that it’s the hot biker-stripper again bubbles up inside before I yank the side door open…and find a policeman on the other side of the screen. The disappointment pops the bubble with more force than I expected.
“Can I help you?” I ask the officer.
“We received a call,” he says with a stern face that splits into a huge grin. “A call that a bunch of wild women wanted to party tonight!”
“Huh?” I mutter when I open the screen to let him inside.
His smile falters as he strolls inside and then he whispers, “I’m the stripper you girls hired.”
“What? No way,” I say as I study his lean frame, about half the size of the previous man. “Your biker guy showed up last night. And yeah, we were surprised he was a night early, but we rolled with it.”
“What biker guy?” the man asks.
“Tall, thick, black leather vest with like a skull patch or something on the back,” I quickly describe him. “Looked very authentic and was well endowed.”
The man in the police costume blinks silently at me. “Ma’am, I’m the only person on the roster during the off-season, and I don’t have a biker costume.”
“Well, you should probably check with your boss because he sent the biker.”
Pulling his phone from his back pocket, he puts it to his ear and holds up a finger. “Yo, Ralph. How’s it going? Yeah, I’m at the Tidewater beach house, and the gal here says you sent a biker for them last night.” He grins. “Here, let me let you tell her that I’m the only man on the payroll.” When he holds the phone out toward me, I take it because now I’m incredibly confused.
“Hello?” I say to the unknown man on the phone.
“Is this Charlotte Newsom?”
“Yes.”
“Hi Charlotte. This is Ralph, the guy who set up your appointment for tonight with Duke. So you say a biker showed up last night?”
“Yes, he did.”
“A biker as in motorcycle or bicycle?”
“Motorcycle, obviously,” I mutter. “Who wants to see a bicyclist strip?”
“And this biker, he took off his clothes and danced?”
“Ah, yeah, that is what strippers usually do, right?” I remark with a roll of my eyes. Jeez, these guys are dense.
“We don’t have any biker costumes, motorcycle or bicyclist, doll. What did he look like?”
“Like I told your guy, he was tall and muscular in black leather with like a big white skull patch on the back and some smaller patches on the front, you know, just like the guys wore on the Sons of Anarchy.”
“Oh shit,” Ralph mutters. “Was the skull a bearded king by chance?”
“Bearded king skull…” I repeat as I squeeze my eyes shut to think about it. “There was a crown on its head, and yeah, I guess there was a beard, maybe some crossed scepters too.”
“Oh shit,” the stripper echoes his boss and takes a step away from me.
“What did he look like?” Ralph asks.
“I told you, tall, muscular…”
“No, doll. Hair color? Any tattoos?”
“Oh, right. His hair was like a reddish-brown, curly and he had that same skull guy tattooed on his back along with some other stuff. Nice touch with adding those for authenticity…”
“Doll, that wasn’t a stripper. I believe the guy you’re describing is named Roman, the president of the Savage Kings MC. Give the phone back to Duke! I’ll send you a full refund. So, so sorry for the confusion!”
“Okay?” I mutter while giving the man his phone. He speaks quietly to his boss while looking at me with concern filling his eyes, like a doctor about to tell you that your condition is terminal.
When he hangs up the phone, he says, “Do you have any photos from last night?”
“Ah, yeah, I think so,” I admit with only a slight blush on my cheeks. A man that sexy doesn’t come around very often. “Just a second.”
I go and grab my phone from the charger in the kitchen. On the walk back, I pull up my camera roll and scroll through to a picture more focused on the biker’s face rather than his various body parts.
“This is him,” I say, holding up the screen for him to see.
“Whoa!” he exclaims. “It is him! Come to think of it, don’t the Savage Kings own this house?”
“Um, I don’t know who the Savage Kings are, but I rented it from a realty company.”
“That’s…I’m outta here,” he says. “Good luck, and lock the doors!”
“What?” I say as he rushes out of the house, the screen slamming behind him. I push it open to yell after him, “Who are the Savage Kings?”
“The bikers who run this city!” he yells back as he hurries down the wooden steps. “They own a ton of shit, hotels, bars, clubs.”
“Clubs?” I repeat. Like the one he invited me to tonight?
“Yeah, like Fluid, the nightclub down on the boardwalk. See ya!” the guy calls back before he disappears.
“Who was that?” Tessa asks when she comes over to the open door.
“That was…” I start, unsure how to explain this. “Last night, the biker, he wasn’t a stripper.”
“Sure he was! He was hot, he took off his clothes, and he did some dirty, dirty dancing for us.”
“Yeah, he did all that stripper stuff, but he wasn’t from the company, so what the heck was he doing here?” I ask aloud.
“Well, what did he say when he showed up?”
“Um, I think he started with, ‘I believe you know why I’m here’, and then it snowballed from there until I told him to go get naked. Do you think I bullied some guy into taking his clothes off for us?”