“Step. The fuck. Back,” Zach ordered harshly, his voice brooking no room for argument.
It was either the guy stepped back, or Zach was going to make him, and I had a feeling that the guy wasn’t going to like how Zach accomplished that.
The guy stepped back, putting him closer to Zach and taking himself farther away from me.
I took a breath, feeling the burn of my lungs as I did.
Holy shit, that was scary.
Granted, shit probably wasn’t going to happen when we were in the middle of a store, but the guy had been huge, and he could’ve squashed me like a bug.
Though Zach was tall—six-foot-three—the guy that he was now facing was taller, just as bulky, and had fists the size of dinner plates.
He also looked cowed as he stood staring at Zach, who was so pissed that I could see a vein throbbing at his temple, just below his hairline.
“I didn’t mean anything by it, man. Didn’t know she was yours,” the guy that’d just been intimidating me said.
“You didn’t mean to scare the shit out of her?” Zach asked, sounding even and calm, but his vein throbbing said anything but.
The man looked at me, blanched, and then looked at Zach, a look of pleading in his eyes.
“Didn’t realize it was that big of a deal, either,” he promised. “If I knew that I scared her, I would’ve backed off.”
Liar.
The guy knew that he was scary.
I could tell that just by the way he’d blocked me in the aisle.
Zack was pissed at his lie, too, and calmly started to explain as he pushed his way past him and came toward me.
“You need to learn to read fuckin’ body clues, man,” Zach growled, reaching forward and hooking his finger around my belt loop.
The guy nodded once then skirted away, avoiding the piles of patches on the floor that I hadn’t realized had fallen until right that moment.
“You okay?” he asked.
I swallowed hard, looking at Zach, and felt a wave of calm roll over me.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “I’m okay.”
His hands cupped my face, and I didn’t even comment on the slight dampness to them because I could see something strong and worrisome crossing his features.
“Would kill a million people just to make sure you don’t get a single scratch on your body,” he murmured, then pulled his hands away.
I felt emotion welling inside of me, but just before I could reply he said, “And that’s not pee on my hands. They didn’t have any paper towels in the bathroom.”
I burst out laughing, then threw myself into his arms, hugging him tight around the neck.
“Are you even real, Zach Caruso?” I asked into his ear.
He winked. “As far as I can tell.”
I rolled my eyes and leaned forward to wipe my damn cheeks on his own.
He laughed and hooked me around the waist, tugging me closer.
“Did you find anything to eat?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I can’t eat anything here. The diet program I’m on is fairly strict. I looked for nuts, but they’re all salted.”
He sighed. “You have the willpower of steel. I can’t believe that you’re able to go from eating what you want, to such a strict diet regimen, in such a short amount of time.”
I shrugged. “Years and years of practice, I guess. It’s something that I’ve always done, and slipping back into the routine is fairly easy for me. But, just sayin’, after my long run tomorrow, I’m going to expect food. I hope that your parents don’t mind when I shovel it into my mouth like a Shop Vac.”
He chuckled as we walked hand in hand out the door to his bike.
It was when we were walking up to it that I realized his bike wasn’t alone any longer.
It had two other bikes parked next to it, one actually using the gas pump that Zach was still parked at and leaning on his bike.
“Your bike’s a piece of shit,” the man doing the leaning on Zach’s bike called out.
I blinked in surprise.
The man was old. And when I say old, I mean olllllld. Like, he could be just about to keel over, old. He likely once resembled a very jiggly old man with a white beard. Now he was losing that volume. His clothes were slightly swimming on him, but the most obvious part of how he’d used to look was in his motorcycle cut. The massive black cut looked like it hung on his smaller frame.
His shoulders were slightly rounded with age, but his eyes. Those eyes were sharp, and his hands still looked strong.
“Them’s fightin’ words,” Zach drawled, walking as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “What the fuck do you want?”
“I hear you been in prison,” the guy drawled.
“Yep,” Zach chirped, his tone easy and his hand in mine tight, but not too tight. “Went down for murder.”
The older man’s head tilted slightly, and his long white beard brushed the top of his belly.
“Was it worth it?” he asked.
I hissed in an angry breath, words forming on my tongue before I could stop them.
I growled. “It’s none of your freakin’ business.”
At least I hadn’t said fucking.
The old man’s head tilted with amusement, and the hand around mine squeezed lightly. “It’s okay.”
“That one’s got teeth,” the man teased.
I was getting angrier and angrier the more he spoke.
“She does,” I growled. “And if you don’t stop asking him about that time in his life, I’m going to shove you backward over that motorcycle.”
That’s when there was a dark, husky, rusty chuckle from behind me.
I stiffened even more, turning to find another man behind me.
This one much different looking than the one in front of me.
I now saw where Zach got the ‘tall, dark and deadly’ from.
His father, Cleo, was an exact replica of him.
In twenty-something years, if this was what I had to look forward to when it came to Zachariah Caruso, then I’d be living the dream.
I felt my cheeks heat as I offered the man my hand. “My name is Crockett Archer.”
Cleo, Zach’s father, walked forward and took my hand, his eyes intense as he said, “Cleo Caruso. Nice to meet you.”
He didn’t bother with any more words as he jerked his head toward the road.
“Let’s go.”
“I don’t know if I can ride with a man that isn’t wearing the Dixie Warden colors,” the old man continued.
I glared at him, still not very happy with how he’d teased Zach earlier, even if it’d all been in fun. Even if the man had practically helped raise him.
Zach still wasn’t ‘all right’ with that part of his life. He was coming to terms with it, yes, but I could still tell that his actions for a woman that hadn’t appreciated it bothered him. He’d lost his career, part of his life in prison, and she’d dumped him like the selfish cow that she was.
To make matters worse, she’d come back months later trying to reconcile with a man that just wasn’t the man that she had left behind any longer.
“First you have to heft your ass off that bike and mount your own,” I found myself snarling. “Can you even do that by yourself? Should you be riding a bike at your advanced age?”