Hard Charger: Jake & Sophia: A Hot Contemporary Romance by Tracy Fobes Read Free Book Online Page A

then decided against it.  This wasn’t the time or place.  “I’m okay.”
    “Got a suggestion for you,” his uncle said.  “Join the Guardians.”
    “What?” Jake barked.  “Are you serious?  That fucking motorcycle club took my father away from me.  It robbed my mother of her husband.  You’re insane to even mention it.”
    “Easy,” Martin said, and made pressings motion with his hands, as if he was trying to push Jake’s ire down.  “I know what happened to your dad.  He was my brother, too.  It killed me to lose him.  But that happened twenty years ago.  The club’s different now.  If you join, you’ll get that sense of camaraderie you had in the service.  You’ll get that sense of purpose back.”  His uncle paused and then gave Jake a considering look.  “Alex joined, you know.”
    Jake barely suppressed a scowl.  “Alex has lost his mind.”
    “We could use a guy like you: a decorated Airborne Ranger.” his uncle pressed.  “We’d be lucky to have you, in fact.”
    Jake looked at his uncle for a moment and wondered at the older man’s purpose.  Martin knew he’d never join the same motorcycle club that had destroyed his family.  Why was he trying so hard to sell it?  “The Guardians are nothing but a bunch of old has-beens who sit around bragging about their Harleys, smoking cigars, and drinking all night,” Jake observed. 
    Martin shrugged.  “Not true, but okay.”
    “You guys are barely strong enough to keep your Hogs off the ground on a sharp turn,” he added, his voice bitter.  His father’s old Harley was sitting nearby, and he strolled over to kick its rear tire.  “Is that why you have his Harley out?  You think I’m gonna join the club and start riding this thing around?”
    Martin slanted a glance at Jake’s CB450. “That would sure as hell be an improvement over your rice burner. If you can get it up over 100 MPH, I’d be surprised.”
    “Well then, be surprised,” Jake replied.  “I tore the engine down, installed bigger pistons.  I had the engine bored and mounted a more radical cam.  I swapped the chain sprockets out for a smaller rear sprocket and a bigger front one.  The result?  A sweet gear ratio and 150 MPH, easy.”
    His uncle lifted his eyebrows and pressed his lips together.  “Impressive, I suppose.”
    “You’re damned right,” Jake muttered.
    “So you’re not going to ride your father’s Harley.”
    “No, I’m not.  And you should get off yours, too.  No one wants them anymore.  The people who ride them aren’t real bikers, they just want to be tough guys.”
    Martin frowned.  “You’re going to let his bike rust down to nothing, then.”
    “I’m going to strip it for parts,” Jake corrected him.
    His uncle’s frown deepened.  “You’ll be dishonoring your father’s memory.”
    “I have no memories of my father that are worth keeping.”  Jake narrowed his eyes.  “To be honest, I couldn’t care less about him. Now how about we get some shut-eye?  I have to be up in less than five hours, so I can get down to the construction site.”
    Shaking his head, Martin put the kickstand up on the Harley and started to roll it back into the garage.  “Go ahead, Jake.  Sleep as much as you want.  But let me know when you’re ready to wake up.”
     

Chapter Four
     
     
    The alarm on his cell phone seemed to wake him up the moment his head hit the pillow.  Jake groaned and shut the damned thing off.  To say he was in a bad mood would be putting it lightly, given all that had happened the previous night.  He dragged himself out of bed, got dressed, grabbed his work boots, and went downstairs to the kitchen. 
    His mom, Laurie, was already in the kitchen, pouring herself a cup of coffee.  She had a bathrobe on and had put her hair up in a ponytail.  Jake thought she looked years younger than fifty-nine.  Her skin was still smooth, with only a few wrinkles around her eyes. Her hair had a soft,