“Yup,” Logan answered.
“Rush says I can’t ride on a bike,” she announced, and looked from Logan to me. “That’s my brother,” she explained. “He’s older than me and thinks he knows everything.”
“I suspect most older brothers do,” I shared ruefully, like I felt her pain.
“He’s stupid,” she proclaimed. “I’ll ride what I want.”
“How ’bout you wait about fifteen, twenty years before you do that?” Logan suggested, a smile deepening his voice.
“Well, duh!” she cried like the next word she wanted to use but knew better than to use on a biker was silly. “I can’t do it now,” she went on. “Even if I had an old man, I can’t get my arms around his middle.”
I swallowed laughter but Logan didn’t bother. I heard his chuckle.
“You ever think of getting your own bike?” I asked her.
She tipped her head to the side and stated contemplatively, “Maybe. When I can reach the grips.” She righted her head. “Do you have your own bike?”
“Nope,” I answered.
“Want your own bike?” she asked.
“Nope,” I repeated.
“You like ridin’ with your old man,” she proclaimed knowingly.
“Yep,” I stated, and Logan’s arm around me tightened.
“Tabitha!”
I tensed at the shrill noise, Tabby’s body jerked and whirled, and Logan straightened but didn’t let me go.
I looked up just when a redheaded woman, who was pretty but she had an ugly look on her face and it was directed at the little girl in front of me, shrieked, “Get your ass over here!”
“Gotta go,” Tabby mumbled, and did it hightailing it over to the shrieking woman.
“Naomi,” Logan said, and I looked up at him to see his eyes still directed to the redhead. “Woman’d be okay, ’cept she treats her daughter like shit. Kid’s ’bout five years old.” He shook his head. “Do not get that.”
I didn’t either and didn’t get the chance to comment on it because something took my attention and I turned my head the other way.
There I saw a man Logan had introduced me to earlier called Tack.
He was looking at the redhead, too, and you could tell he didn’t like the way she treated her daughter either.
Not at all.
“Naomi’s Tack’s old lady,” Logan said, and I looked back to him to see he now was gazing down at me. “Loves his little girl like crazy so don’t see that lastin’.”
“What?” I asked. “Her treatment of their daughter?”
He nodded. “That and if he can’t put an end to it, then what’ll end is Naomi bein’ his old lady.”
“Good,” I murmured, looking back to Naomi who was bent over Tabby, wagging a finger in her face, her own expression like thunder.
I watched, wondering what the kid had done. She was just talking to us, and I hadn’t been keeping tabs on her, but before that, she was just talking to other people.
The finger wagging stopped when suddenly Tabby wasn’t standing in front of her mother, head tipped back, face pale, lower lip quivering.
Instead she was in her father’s arms, and without a word, he turned and walked away.
Watching it, I decided I liked Logan’s brother Tack.
Naomi stared daggers at their backs, visibly huffed, and then stormed off in the other direction.
I decided I didn’t like Tack’s old lady, Naomi.
“She’s it,” Logan stated, and I looked to him again.
“What?”
“Naomi. She’s it. Only bitch a’ the bunch.” He bent toward me. “All the rest, all good. Good folks. Good family.”
He wanted me to like them.
I smiled, twisted, and leaned in to him so my breasts were brushing his stomach.
“There’s always one.”
He cupped my jaw, eyes to my mole, and muttered, “Yeah.”
I’d learned what Logan’s eyes to my mole meant and I liked what it meant.
But I had a few things to say.
“I like that there’s kids here,” I told him quietly, and earned his gaze.
His warm, happy gaze.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“This isn’t what I expected of bikers,” I admitted.
And it wasn’t. Sunny day. Grill fired up. Table groaning with food. Coolers filled with ice and packed tight with bottles of beer and cans of pop. Loads of people around. Kids in the mix.
I didn’t know what I expected, but something this laid back and friendly was not it.
“Lotsa different kinds of families, Millie.”
I nodded.
He was right and it appeared, away from the one he left behind in Durango, he’d found a good one.
And the fact that was what he’d do, find a family, said a lot about him, all of it good.
I leaned deeper in to him and dropped my voice even more. “Thanks for bringing me here, Logan. I don’t want this to sound corny because I mean it. But I’m honored you did.”
The warm tunneled into his eyes, going deep.
“Means a lot, beautiful,” he replied.
I grinned and lifted a hand to curl it around his wrist. “Good.”
Finally, he bent, touched his mouth to mine, and I let him.
“Yo! Low, Millie!”
Logan lifted away and we turned our heads toward a brother I’d met called Black who was manning the grill.
“Burger. Dog. Brat,” he shouted. “Call it now, they’re goin’ fast.”
“What you want, darlin’?” Logan asked me.
“Brat!” I yelled to Black.
“Got it!” he yelled back. “Low?”
“Burger and a dog,” Logan replied.
Black lifted his chin and turned back to the massive half-barrel grill.
“Fresh ones.”
This was muttered from our sides and I looked to the man introduced to me as Big Petey, a guy probably in his forties, an older member of the Club, which was definitely multi-generational, just as he slid the warm bottle of beer out of my hand and put a cool one there.
He grinned at me and winked while he did it.
Then he, too, jerked up his chin to Logan as he did the same with Logan’s beer.