Wild Ride (Black Knights Inc. #9)
Julie Ann Walker
To all the BKI fans out there. This one’s for you.
If you are going through hell, keep going.
—Winston Churchill
Prologue
Red Delilah’s Biker Bar, Chicago, Illinois
From the corner of her eye, Samantha Tate saw him make a move.
He pushed up from the booth in the back corner where his friends and coworkers sat. She tracked his progress as he sauntered across the peanut shell–strewn floor, past the pool tables, and through a sea of female admirers. Seriously, every doubleX chromosome in the place turned to watch him go by.
Some XY chromosomes too.
Not that Samantha could blame anyone for eye-guzzling him. The man had one of those faces that managed to be both beautiful and masculine. Square jaw, defined lips, and eyes as blue as Lake Michigan on a windless summer day. Combine his mug with his boyish, flyaway blond hair, his half grin, and the kind of loose-hipped swagger that could only be pulled off by the supremely fit, and what you ended up with was the whole package. We’re talking the kind of package seen on the silver screen. The kind of package that—
Oh no, he didn’t.
As if he’d read her mind, he reached down and adjusted his package as he strolled past a table full of coeds. Samantha watched the young women zero in on the bulge behind the fly of his well-worn jeans before they dissolved into a fit of titillated giggles. When his half grin stretched into a full grin, Samantha realized he’d purposefully drawn the ladies’ attention to his unit. The lecherous cad.
With a roll of her eyes, she turned back to her drink. For having come from a rough-and-rowdy biker bar on the edge of one of the city’s sketchier blocks, her martini was surprisingly good. The redheaded bartender, the namesake of the place, had made it extra dirty. Just the way Samantha liked it.
She slid an olive off a blue cocktail sword and popped it into her mouth. While chewing, she studiously avoided eye contact with the bearded old biker at the end of the bar who kept waggling his bushy eyebrows at her, smiling to reveal tobacco-stained teeth. The crack of pool balls could be heard over the clinking of glasses and the music coming from the jukebox parked by the front door. The air was filled with an odd mix of smells…salty peanuts, motorcycle exhaust, and many decades’ worth of spilled booze. There was denim and leather as far as the eye could see.
All of this Samantha noted as an aside. Because even though she was no longer looking directly at him, her focus remained on the man and the journey he made toward the bar. If she could just get a couple of minutes alone with him, she might get him to answer a few questions. Then she could write the damn article—Correction! Damn puff piece—her editor had assigned her.
“They’ve been in business for a while, and we’ve yet to do a write-up on them. Just give me two good paragraphs and a quote or two from one of the employees,” Charlie had said. “This one’s a piece of cake.”
Yeah. Right. It should have been a piece of cake. Trouble was, nobody at the custom motorcycle shop known as Black Knights Inc. had returned her calls. So she’d been forced to do what any reporter worth her salt would do. She’d followed them to their local watering hole and covertly grabbed a barstool that afforded her an unimpeded view of the crew as they shared pitchers of beer and lively conversation.
It hadn’t taken her long to select her mark. Of all the hulking, rough-looking men in the back booth, Mr. Movie Star was by far the most animated. He also appeared to have a weakness for women, grinning that grin and flashing those eyes at everything with boobs.
Good news! she thought. I have boobs!
They weren’t anything grandiose. Certainly nothing like the bazoombas on the bartender. But they would do in a pinch. And just to make sure, she unbuttoned the top two buttons on her blouse and tried not to retch when the grizzled old biker licked his lips and leered.
“Hey, Delilah!” Mr. Movie Star hollered at the bartender over the din as he leaned one leather jacket–clad arm against the bar top. “Two more pitchers for the boys in the back booth! And I’m taking requests for the jukebox!”
The redhead slanted him a cat-eyed look, shoving a clean pitcher under the draft nozzle of Goose Island 312—a local brew. “If you have any love for me,” she yelled, “you’ll lay off the eighties!”
“Aw, Delilah.” Movie Star shook his head sorrowfully. “You know I love you! Why else would I ask you to marry me every time I come in?”
Samantha raised a brow at this, but the look on the bartender’s face convinced her the marriage proposal was nothing more than hot air. Figures. He seems the type.
“But right now, I cannot resist the siren’s call of a good hair metal band!” Movie Star continued. “So your choices are Van Halen, Def Leppard, Quiet Riot—” He ticked off bands on his fingers.
“Which means your invitation for requests was nothing but a tease!” Delilah harrumphed, handing him two pitchers full of perfectly poured beer.
“First of all, as Twisted Sister says, ‘I wanna rock!’” Movie Star winked. “And second of all, don’t pretend you don’t love it when I tease you!” He blew her a kiss before turning to make his way back toward the booth.
After depositing the pitchers on the table, he made a beeline for the jukebox, stopping along the way to lean down and whisper something to the coeds. Samantha watched the young women’s cheeks flush in concert as their mouths slung open…also in concert. Then Movie Star continued his journey toward the front of the bar, a knowing smirk on his lips. The coeds’ eyes dutifully followed his retreating back—ass?—and two of them vigorously fanned their faces with their hands.
Samantha gave in to another eye roll while grabbing her purse from the hook under the bar. She slung it over her shoulder and took a big gulp of martini. Come on, gin, you beautiful elixir of life, don’t fail me now. Hopping from the stool, she made her way toward the jukebox.
“Hi!” she yelled at the movie star without preamble, placing a hand against the wall and staring at the jukebox’s screen as though she had any interest in his song selection. She opened her mouth to add something witty to her utterly mundane hi, but the words stuck in her throat when he turned to her.
To be the object of his full, undivided attention was…wow. Just wow.
When he gave her a quick once-over, his eyes lingering briefly on her newly exposed cleavage, she knew she should feel insulted. But she didn’t. Somehow, the way he looked at her wasn’t lewd or lascivious. Instead, it was highly complimentary, like an artist eyeing a model. As if he saw, appreciated, and enjoyed the female form in all its various shapes and sizes and was genuinely pleased just to be able to stand there and behold it. Behold her.