Page 4 of Summer's Edge

I haven’t told anyone about where I’m from or that my dad’s a member of one of the most notorious outlaw biker clubs in the country. I certainly didn’t tell them that the MC is currently in the middle of an all-out war and that we’re all in danger of becoming casualties in said war. Especially us children.

Hunter almost died, Chance survived only because he’s the luckiest guy alive and bullets seem to just bounce off him, and Harper came so close to being sold off I don’t even want to think about it.

But isn’t that all the more reason to live it up now, while I still can?

“You’re not chickening out on me, are you?” Marcia asks.

I shake my head and smile. “Nah, we’re good. I can’t wait to get to know Mario and Paolo a little better.”

She nods approvingly.

My dad’s not wrong about me needing to be careful.

But who’s gonna look for me in Tijuana? It’s all tourists and college kids partying hard down here. I blend in perfectly.

* * *

Tijuana is not just beaches,it’s actually a city of two million people. But you’d never guess that from the side of it Mario and Paolo showed us. They’re actually neighbors and we started the night at their houses where they spent an hour getting ready, while Marcia and I sat on plastic chairs in the back yard talking to their grandpas, and moms, and a bunch of cousins, some barely a year old.

Then they took us for some real Mexican tacos, which were so hot and spicy my mouth’s still burning hours later. Then it was tequila and dancing. The Latin passion is something I could get used to very fast. I danced more tonight than I had in my whole life before.

I’m sitting at one of the outside tables of a small dance club called La Copa, enjoying the breeze on my overheated face and sipping water. I have a good view of Marcia and both the guys, dancing a slow dance on the nearly deserted dance floor just inside the club. Most of the patrons have come out to the sidewalk for a breather and no one seems in a hurry to get back to dancing. It’s almost two AM. I’m dead on my feet and I’m thinking I could just let Marcia have both of the guys tonight.

They’re nice, attentive, and passionate. But here I am, wishing I was surrounded by those brooding, gruff bikers that never look at me.

It’s just my way to want what I can’t have.

Since the party is dying down, it’ll soon be time to go. Either to another club, or, as Mario has been suggesting more and more loudly, to his house. I don’t know how to tell Marcia I’d rather just go back to the resort.

“You got a cigarette?” a hoarse voice asks, sending shivers down my spine. The voice belongs to a bearded guy with biceps for days, wearing a leather cut over a black t-shirt and baggy jeans. He’s kinda hot, though there’s an unforgiving kind of iciness in his eyes too. I go wishing for brooding bikers and one appears. But this one looks a little too brooding for my taste.

“No, sorry,” I say. “I don’t smoke.”

“Good for you,” he says and sits down on the stool next to me, bodily blocking me from leaving the table with his hugeness.

I stand up anyway and try to get past him. “I should go back to my friends.”

He grins and eyes me up and down. “Come on, stay a while. You’re the prettiest woman I’ve seen all night.”

“Yeah, right,” I say. Because that’s a blatant lie. The women around here are all much prettier than me, both the locals and most of the tourists.

“You don’t like being called pretty?” he asks, disbelief in his cold eyes.

All the warnings my dad’s been filling my ears with since I took the job in Hollywood are a jumbled mess in my brain. My face is overheating all over again and the breeze isn’t doing anything to cool me. I raise my hand to wave to Marcia and the guys, but the biker grabs my wrist and lowers my arm back down. And now it really is panic city in my head.

“I don’t want to hurt you, but I will,” he says in a hissing whisper. “You’re coming with me.”

“The fuck I am!” I yank my arm from his grasp, splash the water I was drinking in his face and try to duck past him.

But he just laughs as he wraps his arms around my waist. “You’re a feisty one, I like that.”

“Let me go, you fucking psycho!” Heads are turning our way, but Marcia and the guys are still just dancing inside, flailing their arms around and laughing.

“Nothing to see here,” the guy tells the onlookers. “She’s just had a little too much to drink.”

To my horror they go back to drinking their drinks and talking with their friends as if nothing’s happening. As if the guy’s not carrying me towards an all-black van. The kind nightmares are made of.

I scream and thrash around, but I might as well be perfectly still for all the good it’s doing.

---