“Ordering you?” I asked with a grimace.
“We haven’t had much alone time this week. I’m totally cool with bossy when I haven’t seen Deacon Junior for almost a week.”
I covered my ears. “La la la.”
Ella looked sheepish at my discomfort. I hoped to one day pay her back for it. I was dying to say, ‘Just you wait!’ The waitress was back with the leather envelope.
Ella tried to snatch the bill up. “My turn.”
“Nope, mine,” Jenna amended and snatched it first.
“You paid last time,” Ella said.
“No; I didn’t.”
“You totally did!”
“I’m paying this time,” Jenna insisted.
“Here.” Pippa handed a card to the waitress. “I’m paying.”
The waitress smiled. “Which one of you tips the best? How ‘bout we let that person pay?”
“I’m not about to turn up a free dinner,” I shrugged. “I might be the only sensible one in this bunch.”
Jenna claimed to tip the best, so Pippa gave an extra big tip to win the argument, and then we all left.
***
Lawrence Gale hit on me mercilessly and he did it, he said, not because he truly wanted into my pants (he said he had a gorgeous and very pregnant wife), but because it made me glow and made me even prettier for the camera.
“I flirt with every single model and every single one of you are special, you got that?”
I giggled and he snapped a photo then too. I had an absolute blast with the photo shoot. We started outside in a public park and only moved to his studio when I was comfortable. We shot the shit the whole time (in between his flirting) and he made it all very easy.
I’d driven my own Harley there and we used it in the photo shoot. He told me to bring a few sexy articles of clothing, which had me a bit flagged initially, but he assured me I would only pose in ways and outfits that I was comfortable with. He had a makeup and hair person there and we took pictures in my jeans and a crop top, and another racier one in a leather bra and mini skirt as well as a cop hat (he had a box of hats and other props) that he told me was calendar cover-worthy.
“Those curves, those eyes, and that smile? Fuck but you are one photogenic biker babe,” he said, shaking his head. “The fact that you actually are a biker babe who owns her own motorbike? No way you’re not my Miss August.”
“This year?”
“This year.”
I giggled and he snapped my picture again.
Before we got started, I signed a basic model contract (he said it was basic, anyway) and he held back an extra model release with a section highlighted in pink highlighter that said I couldn’t change my mind about the calendar once I signed. We waited on that section until he got a feel for whether or not it was a done deal.
Lawrence couldn’t take a chance being so close to publishing that another Miss August would back out. He told me, before I left, that I was not only Miss August, but that I was under serious consideration for the cover, too, the cover that would sell the calendar. Partly because I was photogenic, he said, but also because I was an actual biker babe, not just a babe that hung around bikers. Driving my own motorcycle and being family to a local MC would also help sell the calendar.
“What’s your preferred charity to pitch on your byline?” he asked. “We divide our charitable proceeds among the charities listed by our models. You want me to pick one or do you want to name one? It must be local, though.”
“Oh. That’s easy. Biker Big Bros, the charity my dad’s club started in memory of a fallen member.”
And I would’ve been paid a grand for participation but more if I got the cover, but I told him I wanted my money to go to charity, too. My chosen charity. He told me he’d make the check out to me, that I could do what I wanted with it but remarked that if I did want to set something up to hand it over, he’d make sure that he covered that as an event and posted it on the blog that he shot photos for, the blog that had originally covered the charity carwash and then went on to feature Spencer and Rider’s custom motorcycles.
I figured free press for the charity, for Luke Hanson’s legacy, it was a good thing.
I was wrong. I was wrong, because a week later, my father got a sample copy of the calendar layout sent to him with a pitch to buy advertising for Deke’s Roadhouse, the garage, and/or the bike dealership in the calendar. Actually, two of those pitches arrived, because they sent something addressed to Valentine Custom Motorcycles, too, meaning that it came with the names Rider Valentine and Spencer Valentine.
Oops.
Lawrence told me while we did the shoot that his wife did all the marketing. She put a list together every year of local businesses to ‘pitch’ for advertising and it never occurred to me that my father would get pitched, especially not so soon after my photo shoot.
But, of course we’d got put on there because we were definitely their target demographic and their customers were our target customers.
Yeah. Big oops.
But, before we get to that shit storm, there was Delia’s birthday party.
And it was a doozy.
6
I was the closest thing Aunt Delia had to a daughter.
Jet would’ve been her daughter-in-law if she and Edge had gotten married, which I think everyone assumed they eventually would, and the loss of Jet wasn’t just felt by Edge, it was felt in a major way by Delia who had gotten very tight with her.
Edge wasn’t Delia and Rudy’s biological child, but they’d called him their son for as long as I knew him. They took him in when he was a teenager living on the streets.
Jet was considered a problem child by her parents who sent her to the group home to knock some sense into her. She later moved back home with her parents, losing touch with Edge for a few years, but then they were together again and had been for a long time before she was brutally raped and murdered by the Wyld Jackals, her body left outside the Sioux Falls gates with the names of all the women that the Jackals planned to murder on her body. My name had mysteriously been left off.
Then again, they almost killed me – in error, supposedly – when they ran Luke’s bike off the road on that rainy night. And again when they launched a firebomb at Rudy’s house, though it was highly suspected to be about Edge. They were out there with a big problem with Edge, who had made it known in our circles that he had taken out Mantis, former Wyld Jackals Sioux Falls Prez.
***
We were around the firepots at the Sioux Falls clubhouse. It was dark and the flames of firepots licked at the sky. Bad Company was playing on low and the vibe was mellow. I was surrounded by most of my favorite people.
I was in an Adirondack chair beside Deacon and Ella. Ella was on his lap and they were snuggled up and whispering against one another’s mouths while Deacon played with Ella’s curly blonde hair.
Jenna and Pippa were huddled over Pippa’s phone laughing at something opposite me. Rider was away from the group and off to the side, talking to Brady about something. Brady was clearly tanked as he was being extra animated with whatever he was telling my brother.
Spencer was reclined, his feet on a log in front of him, looking at the fire with a look of peace on his face that made me so stinking happy I wanted to just happy-cry. It was so good to see my brother with a spring in his step because he wasn’t walking around weighed down by a chip on his big shoulders. Instead, he had a beautiful girl who loved him. His focus of making Pippa his had resulted in peeling away layers of bitter skin he’d grown in the past few years.