undeniably, him .
“You don’t have to do this, you know.”
“I know,” Colton said, as he threw a leg over his bike. He simply pulled his helmet from the handlebars and reached it to her, dark humour in his eyes at the thought of anyone making him do something he didn’t want to do. “You gettin’ on?”
Usually nimble fingers fumbled with the unfamiliarity of the buckle, but Callie put it on before faltering unsurely by her unexpected companion’s side. “Any advice for a first-timer?”
Colton shrugged. “Hold tight. Don’t fall off.”
Favouring him with a wry look, Callie shook her head and laughed, wondering what else she had been expecting from the notoriously stoic guy. “Sage words, Colt ... sage words.” And with a hand on his shoulder for balance, she slid onto the bike behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Let’s do this.”
***
Watching from the doorway as the Harley peeled away, Sketch shook his head and wondered if he’d done a good thing.
Usually the answer to that sort of question was, nine times out of ten, no. He tended to act first, think later. A bad enough habit when his actions only affected himself. But the thought of messing up when it came to Callie was, despite his tendencies towards nonchalance on most subjects, enough to cause him at least some concern.
The girl had somehow wriggled her way into his life until he’d come to think of her less as an employee and more like a kid sister – one he could wind up no end, but also back to the hilt against anyone else. He’d never want to smother the girl or push his nose into her business, but he couldn’t help feeling just a little protective. It wasn’t like she had anyone else.
And he and Colton went way back. Back before either of them had a record, when their biggest crimes had been the occasional joyride. That had been a once carefree past-time of their misspent youth, one which finally landed them both a stretch inside for grand theft auto. Everything had changed after that.
Sketch was shrewder than he often let on. You had to be pretty on the ball to come out of prison unscathed. So, while Colton was more than good at shutting out the world and keeping himself to himself, the tattooist had still picked up on the ever-so-slight changes in his demeanour when he was around the little blonde.
He was ... less on his guard, for a start. Of course, that meant he was still more closed off than your average guy – but for Colton to warm at all to anyone outside the circle of his beloved club, or the even smaller circle of acquaintances from his life before the Fallen Brothers, was worth noting.
It was true Callie was no longer just some chick to the biker – she’d earned his respect through her craft and at least a degree of trust over how she’d handled herself when it mattered most and how she’d stepped up for him. But it was more than that. Or perhaps the rest had come first, Sketch couldn’t be sure of that.
He had to hand it to Colton, there probably wasn’t much call for it round the clubhouse, but the guy could definitely be subtle when he wanted. It had taken him a while to catch on to the glances. At first, he’d actually thought the biker was just trying to figure the girl out. But eventually he’d looked beyond the reputation and realised that even the man who’d essentially become his club’s hitman was only human. And Colton always had been into blondes ...
Going back to his office to work on some designs, Sketch sighed as he doodled absently on a scrap of paper.
In so many ways, Colton was toxic – especially for a girl like Callie, nearly fifteen years his junior and harder than she looked but not nearly as hard as she liked to think. He was too used to the club’s usual female followers, though Sketch knew he didn’t exactly think highly of them. His attraction to Callie was probably due, at least in part, to the fact that she wasn’t just some cheap slut to be shared around
1796-1874 Agnes Strickland, 1794-1875 Elizabeth Strickland, Rosalie Kaufman