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ONE

Bolton, California

Kayla

Mel’s Dinerwas nearly empty. Al, an elderly man who rarely spoke and drank his coffee black, was the only patron left for the night. Which wasn’t surprising, seeing as it was past midnight on a Tuesday evening in December.

Glancing at my watch, I realized I had nearly an hour left to my shift and sighed. No customers meant no tips. Great. Just what every struggling college student who can’t afford to go back home for the holidays wants to hear at the end of her double shift.

When I heard the door jingle, I perked up. Maybe it was a party of good looking men who tipped well and kept their hands to themselves, coming for a late night snack after a fun work party? My heart sank when I saw who it really was.

No! What was he doing here? He hadn’t been around for months and I’d taken that to mean he was gone for good. TheDevil’s Riders, the MC my friend’s boyfriend belonged to, had seen to that for me.

Ghost, the Road Master for the Watchmen MC, stepped into Mel’s Diner like he owned the place. Much like an apex predator, his cold gaze darted around the poorly lit room looking for something. Or someone. When his arctic green eyes landed on mine, my heart bottomed out and my pulse began to thump wildly.

What the hell was I supposed to do? Kim, the only other waitress on shift, greeted Ghost. Handing him a menu, she directed him to my section. Not because she had a death wish for me, but because it was my turn to be seated. Her last customer had left five minutes earlier and she was only being a considerate coworker by giving me this one.

“Kayla,” she called over her shoulder, “you got yourself a customer.”

Since I couldn’t yell across the room that I didn’t want him, I swallowed my fear and made my way over to his table with the same enthusiasm as an inmate embracing their last steps over to the electric chair.

“Welcome to Mel’s,” I began, my eyes too nervous to reach his and hovering at table level. “Can I get you something to drink while you look over our menu options?” The speech, something I’d uttered a million times before, nearly stuck in my dry throat as I forced it out.

Ghost didn’t speak. After several seconds of silence awkwardly stretched on, I was forced to look up. A terrible mistake. That’s what he’d been waiting for. The biker was staring at me harder than anything on the menu. His gaze consumed me from head to toe. I’d never been so uncomfortable in all of my life.

It wasn’t that the man was ugly. Far from it, in fact. Ghost, the biker whose real name I didn’t know, was actually very goodlooking. However, there was something so dark living inside the man that it was all I could do to endure his presence for mere seconds, let alone the many hours a date would require. Which was something he’d insisted we do, over and over again, despite my telling him I wasn’t interested.

“I’ll give you some time to decide,” I told him, wanting to run in the opposite direction, jump into my car, and speed back to my tiny apartment where I could lock the door and hide under the covers for the rest of the night.

As I turned to go, Ghost reached out and snagged my arm. His fingers tightened around my wrist, immobilizing me in place. “I know what I want,” he told me, his thumb stroking the pulse point at my wrist as I just stood there like a mouse caught in a steel trap. “I always know what I want.”

I swallowed, wondering how I should proceed. “Okay, I’m listening,” I replied, licking my suddenly dry lips.

“Are you, Kayla?” he ominously returned, his fingers inching up my arm. “Are you listening to what I tell you? It doesn’t feel like you are.”

Ghost’s mind games had creeped me out before. Now they downright terrified me. There was just something so vacant about his expression, that, for all his good looks, height, and bad ass biker status, left me feeling coldly repelled.

“Do you want coffee or a soft drink? You like Pepsi, right? I’ll go get you one now,” I prompted, willing to do anything to get away from him before the terrifying biker dragged me into the booth beside him, which I could feel was what he wanted to do.

Ghost smiled, but it had an even more chilling effect than if he hadn’t. “You remember what I like to drink, Babe,” he noted with satisfaction, as though we’d been lovers once and I was reminiscing fondly with him about it.

Far from it.

Ghost used to ride his bike past the public pool I lifeguarded at during the summer. Every shift I worked, he would stop and buy a Pepsi at the vending machine nearest my guard tower. At first, I thought he just really liked Pepsi and the location was convenient. I soon realized the soda was just an excuse to talk to me. And, after I told him I wasn’t interested, a convenient way to stalk me.

“Get something for yourself, too,” Ghost ordered, his green eyes looking right through me. “I want you to sit down and talk with me for a bit. It’s been a while and I want to know what my girl’s been up to.”

His girl. What the fuck? I knew Ghost wasn’t right in the head but those words let me know he was downright certifiable.

“I can’t sit with customers at work,” I told him, blaming my reluctance to socialize on my job to shift his anger away from me.

“If your boss says anything, I’ll have a talk with him,” he lowkey threatened.

“That’s not necessary,” I quickly returned, worried that I’d actually endangered my kind boss in this epic mess. “I’ll go and get your Pepsi.”

When I tugged on my arm, Ghost held it for a few extra seconds before letting it fall down to my side. “Be quick,” he warned.

Heart beating a mile a minute, I ran back into the kitchen and began pouring a Pepsi. Kim, a trim blonde twenty years my senior who appeared so much like me she could have passed for my mother, took one look at my shaking hand and said, “You all right, kid?”

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