WHAT? “You’re dating Cordelia.”
Both of the men gape at me.
“You know her?” Bear asks.
Forever and a day. “Yeah.”
Bear walks over and grabs a chair. “Tell me all about her.”
“Bear…you weren’t invited to lunch.” Bram glares at him.
“But she knows Cordelia.” The bear man is funny. His name fits him so well.
“Greer doesn’t know you. That means she isn’t going to share anything interesting about her friend with you.”
“I’m a good guy. All I want to know is how she comes up with her recipes. And how I can talk her into delivering to our clubhouse. See, there’s nothing nefarious about that.”
“So you two really aren’t dating?” Because if they are, the club needs to know about this…STAT!
“Mostly, sort of, no.”
Fly leans forward. “That means yes.”
“You guys are funny.”
“And they’re about to go away and leave us in peace. Right?”
Fly grabs on to Bear’s jacket and pulls him away. “You guys enjoy your lunch.”
How can we not after that little bombshell was dropped? I have all the questions to ask Cordelia.
“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” I probably should have kept the conversation to small talk for after Bear and Fly left, but Bram is quickly becoming a good friend.
“Should I be worried?”
“Not yet.” I wink at him. “This one isn’t really hard. It’s just personal. Why did you join a motorcycle club?”
“Ahh. I wondered when you’d get the nerve up to ask me about it.”
A polite person would have ignored that fact and kept up the bookstore professor vibe, which he’s totally rocking right now with the sweater and tweed pants he’s wearing. “It’s just, you don’t seem to fit the motorcycle club stereotype.”
“You’d be surprised. I’m one of the least nerdy of our bunch. Most people see the cut and think we’re outlaws living on the fringes of society.”
Um. Kind of mostly. “Guilty as charged.”
“There are a few outlaw motorcycle clubs, but Children of Chaos isn’t one of them. Most of us are doctors, lawyers, and mechanics on weekdays. On weekends, you’ll find us riding bikes and living free.”
Really? “Couldn’t you do that without joining a motorcycle club?”
“Yeah, I could, but what I couldn’t have done is found a sense of community, a sense of family, like I did with Children of Chaos. Though it might have been fun if we were a bunch of outlaws. Instead, we became family when many of us had none. I always know I’ll have a brother at my back. Mix that with bikes and some of the best booze, and what could possibly go wrong?”
“Booze but no half-naked women, drugs and rock&roll?”
“We wouldn’t complain about half-naked women, but our old ladies might.”
Old ladies. “You let grandmothers join? I thought motorcycle clubs were all boys.”
His grin gets wider. “Old lady is a term of endearment for the woman we choose to spend our life with. Though some bikers do weddings and all that formal stuff, all a guy needs to do is to invite a woman onto the back of his bike to make a formal statement to the club about his intent.”
