CASSIDY
I knew arriving on the back of Chance’s bike was going to cause a stir when I turned up for my shift at the diner the next day.
Needless to say, Daisy lost her shit when she saw me on the back of a Kings of Mayhem motorcycle.
Thankfully we were busy pretty much as soon as I arrived, so I was able to avoid her rapacious need for details most of the day. But as soon as the diner cleared after the lunch crowd and we were alone, she cornered me.
What was I doing on the back of Chance fucking Calley’s motorcycle? How did I know him?
“Have you fucked him yet?”
“No!” I exclaimed as if the idea hadn’t been burning a hole in my head for the last two damn days. Especially last night, after he’d left my room and I lay in my bed with a body tight and hot with arousal. It’d only taken me a few minutes to bring myself to a mind-shattering orgasm with my hand.
“Are you insane? Man, I’d climb that man like a tree. Are you sure you’re not fucking him.”
I was pretty sure.
“He’s just a friend.”
“Friend? Uh-uh. The Kings aren’t friends with women. They’re either fucking them or helping them out.” Her eyes narrowed. Damn Daisy and her expertise in all things Kings of Mayhem. She folded her arms across her big bust. “If you’re not fucking him, then what is he helping you with?”
The less Daisy knew about me the better.
“Nothing. He’s just being kind.” I carried a tray of dirty dishes to the kitchen, but she followed me and sat down at the little table next to the walk-in pantry. She opened a packet of breadsticks while I started stacking the dishwasher.
“You know, you could do worse than Chance Calley,” she said.
“I’m sure that’s the case, but I’m not looking for anything.”
I avoided eye contact with her because I knew I couldn’t hide the lust in them. And it would be there. It was always there. Because every time I heard his name or thought about him, my skin tingled with heat and my head filled with crazy thoughts of kissing him until I was out of oxygen.
“Rumor has it, those boys are well endowed,” she said, biting into a breadstick.
“Like I said, I wouldn’t know.”
“I bet it’s true.” She dropped her chin to her palm, looking at me dreamily, and said, “I bet he has a big—”
“Personality,” Molly interrupted, walking into the kitchen and throwing her grand-niece a look. “If he is anything like his grandmother, then that boy is going to have a big personality.”
“You know his grandmother?” I asked, putting the last of the dishes into the dishwasher.
“Oh, darlin’, everyone in this town knows Sybil.” She smiled fondly. “I used to work for her back in the sixties. I was a trimmer at the cannabis fields they had out by the river.”
“Oh my God, Molly! You used to cut weed for a living?” I couldn’t help but sound surprised.
“I used to do a lot of things for the Calleys. I was twenty years old and they paid good money. I even babysat Griffin and Garrett Calley when they were just babes, running around butt naked out at the family cabin.”
The cabin I now called home.
There was something comforting in that.
She smiled wistfully. “Had myself a summer fling with Hank Parrish. It was the Summer of Love, and boy did that man know how to love.”
Daisy and I traded glances.
“Aunt Molly!” Daisy sounded shocked.
“What? I wasn’t always a seventy-year-old woman, you know,” she said, giving me a wink.
Daisy grimaced. “No details. Pleeeease!”
Molly ignored her and stared off dreamily out the kitchen window.
“He was little bit older than me, swept me off my feet, and gave me a summer I’d never forget.” She sighed and shook her head. “It broke my heart in a zillion pieces when he fell in love with Connie and married her not long after. Quit my job at the cannabis fields and started hitchhiking across the country. Hitched all the way to California.”
“You hitched to California?” Daisy sounded mortified. “Hello, Mr. Serial Killer. Yes, please let me climb in your car so you can murder me.”
Molly waved it off. “We weren’t worried about that kind of thing in those days. The term serial killer wasn’t even coined back then. And no one knew about co-ed killings or psychopaths killing people at random. We were all about peace and love.” She shook her head again, remembering the freedom of it all. “I hitchhiked up and down the California coast, stopping off at Woodstock along the way.”
“Um… you know the Manson murders happened around that time, right? Same state. Geez, Molly. You’re lucky you didn’t meet yourself a young buck named Charlie.”
Molly chuckled and began wiping down the benches.