Vindication: A Motorcycle Club Romance by Sienna Valentine Read Free Book Online Page B

her pulse.  “But you’re just dying to find out if I
am, aren’t you?” he whispered.
     
    For a split second, Bridget closed
her eyes as she inhaled sharply. Her skin flushed again, and she licked her
lips as Ghost pulled back and leaned over her face. She opened her eyes and
looked at him. Her glare was trying to be angry, but in her eyes was pure,
unadulterated lust.
     
    “Go to dinner with me,” said Ghost.
     
    “No,” she said, with absolutely no
heart in it.
     
    “Why not?”
     
    “Because I don’t date soldiers.”
     
    “Who said I was a soldier?”
     
    Bridget gave him a look. “You guys
are nothing but trouble. I know you up and down.”
     
    “You can’t say that in front of a
school!” he teased, then leaned in and added in a lower voice. “Say it again.”
     
    Bridget laughed and gave his shoulder
a little shove. “Seriously, I don’t meld well romantically with soldiers.”
     
    “I’m not technically a soldier,” he
said. “You really think I’d take orders from someone?”
     
    She hummed. “Good point. But don’t
you have a boss at your biker club?”
     
    “Oh, yeah, I guess I do,” said Ghost,
rubbing his neck. “But that’s not the same. Any drill sergeant would crucify me
for saying the shit I say to Henry. In fact, Henry might crucify me one day for
it.”
     
    “Sorry, was this part of you making
your case for why I should go out to dinner with you?” she said with a
disbelieving smile.
     
    “Delete all that!” Ghost waved his arms
around and dirt from the flowers scattered across the walkway. “I’m serious,
though. Let me take you out. I promise, I’m not some military jagweed.”
     
    Bridget didn’t reply. She was looking
up at him with those big, blue eyes, thinking. He could almost hear her
brilliant mind turning.
     
    “I have to run out of town for the
next few days. Let’s have dinner when I get back. And if you don’t say yes,
I’ll come back here and make Toby give you love notes every day until you
surrender, or until I’m bankrupt. And then I guess I’ll just become a
panhandler outside the school.”
     
    Bridget gave a cute little giggle.
“You know these kids are rich, right? He’s probably just going to use those
twenties to wallpaper his treehouse.”
     
    “See what I’m already sacrificing
just to get near you? This is the total package, babe,” said Ghost, doing a
little twirl on his boot heels.
     
    Bridget rolled her eyes, but she had
really never stopped smiling, not once during the entire visit. She looked off
into the distance for a moment, thinking, until a high-pitched artificial bell
sounded in the schoolyard. She gazed casually toward the kids as they began to
gather up to return to class.
     
    For a moment, she just looked at
Ghost, watching him, like she was trying to translate something. Then she
glared, and snatched the flowers out of his hand. Dirt showered on the
cobblestone at their feet.
     
    “Gimme your hand,” she said.
     
    Ghost smiled and held his right hand
forward. Bridget took it in hers and he felt a jolt of fire race along his
nerves, through his chest. He watched her as she pulled the black sharpie from
the lanyard dangling around her neck and wrote her phone number on his hand. His
eyes traced the delicate line of her jaw and neck, and he imagined nibbling on
both of them.
     
    Bridget said nothing, but only gave
him a sassy look as she recapped the marker on the lanyard. Ghost looked at the
number, and then back at her with a satisfied grin. She turned and sauntered
back into the school without looking back at him, and Ghost couldn’t remember
the last time he’d felt so lightheaded around a woman.
     
     
     

 
    ~
SIX ~
    Bridget
     
     
    Heels clacking on the burnt orange tile, Bridget
headed down the hallways of the Academy, smiling to herself and feeling a
million miles away. That feeling became a bit more literal when she looked up
and realized she’d taken wrong turns back to her