Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Saint

Pretty Miss Red doesn’t run screaming, I’ll give her that.

She doesn’t point at me and accuse me of being a stalker, which in all fucking fairness, it could look like.

Hell no, she blushes. From under the Peter Pan collar of her top with the buttoned black sweater, the blush rushes up her throat to the roots of her hair. It curls soft and sweet around her face.

She’s even prettier than I remember, not because I can see her slender legs in the black tights. It’s not that she’s just wearing tights, or leggings, or whatever those things are women like to wear. She’s got a black-and-white-check skirt on too. The inside of her coat is burnished gold in color, so it shows her off perfectly.

But no, none of that’s why she’s prettier than I remember. She just is.

Her face, her demeanor, the smile that lights her from the inside out. I get the feeling Miss Rosso is a nice person.

Shit, she’d probably coo over that evil spawn of a cat that stole my dinner last night, so I had to make do with chips, chocolate, and nuts from the vending machine at the motel.

“You took me up on the spot for rent here,” she says, sounding pleased.

“Yeah?” I go to my bike and unstrap the bag I have attached to the sissy bar. “Fancy yourself a wheeler and dealer?”

“Absolutely. Just as soon as I find an area that’s totally me,” she says.

“Real estate.” I open the door and usher her in. “You could go into real estate.”

“I’ll become a mogul. Rent out crumbling apartments one by one. Make a whole five dollars on commission.”

“You’re selling yourself short,” I say, heading to the apartment that Lance Hastings outfitted with a cheap as fuck bed, TV, and sofa.

Fine by me. I don’t need much more than that. Give me a fridge with food, maybe beer, though I’m more partial to Jamaican rum, and a place to lay my head and I’m good.

“You could make a whole eight dollars, maybe nine.”

She laughs and it’s only then I realize she’s following me. I stop and turn, and she almost runs into me before rearing back, horror all over her face.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean . . . I’m not . . . I thought?—”

“You want to come in for a beer?” I ask smoothly, putting her out of her misery. Although it was fucking cute. “Seeing as you’re following.”

“We were talking. Also, for the record, I’m not some busybody,” she says, just like a nosy fucking nagging bitch would. I want to smile. “This is the super’s apartment.”

I open the door and gesture to her to come on in, dumping my bag in the hall.

She’s all big eyes and little kid energy. The kind of little kid who’s been taught to be polite but is busting at the seams with curiosity that’s infectious. Belle doesn’t go opening doors or poking into places she shouldn’t. Not that I have anything she shouldn’t poke into.

Her innocent gaze is something that soothes my senses. It relaxes me and I adjust my librarian take to something else. Maybe daycare or nursing. No, she doesn’t dress like one, and it’s twice now she’s home around the same time, in clothes that tell me Belle was at an office or something professional, not of the lifesaving variety.

Teacher?

Grade school. If she works with kids, it’s probably little ones. No high school teacher dresses like her.

“I’m not the super,” I tell her.

“Oh, we haven’t had one in ages. Last one left about a year after I moved in. That was four years or so ago.” She glances around, and I go into the kitchen to grab a beer for the both of us. “You don’t have much.”

“So noted,” I grunt and hand her a can of the Porkslap Ale, some New York brewery shit, and lean against the wall as she perches on the arm of the sofa. It’s black and white striped and covered in that cheap, brushed, shiny fabric. “I don’t need much.”

I watch her as she glances around and shivers slightly.

“I had to open up the windows, air the place out some,” I find myself explaining the reason for it being cold as hell in the apartment even with the heat I’ve got blasting.

“Fine by me,” she says in the kind of voice that makes her sound like she hikes mountains in winter in her underwear. “Not a problem. Pity you’re not the super . . . a new one, I mean. It’d be nice to have one again.”

“I’m only in town for a month or so.”

Her nose wrinkles as she smiles. “Hence the decorating by Serial Killers R Us?”

“Not a serial killer either.”

She looks up at me from her perch, all straight-faced and innocent. “I’m not saying you are. Just that the store has discounts on account of how bloody the furniture gets.”

“They have a no-return policy.”

“Yes,” Belle says, running a finger along the top of the unopened can, “but a lot of return customers and a high and fast turnover of stock.”

“Their designs are less than desired.”

“It’s more about cost than making Architectural Digest.” She pauses. “Unless it’s the underground one.”

I take a swallow of the beer. “For murderers?”

“You know it?” she asks.

“Subscription.”

“Me, too.” She bursts into laughter and then pulls the ring, opening the can. She takes a sip, and her nose wrinkles a little at the bubbles and, quite possibly, the taste because she doesn’t strike me as a beer drinker, but she gamely sips it. “You’ll be here for the holidays, then?”

“Not sure,” I say, hedging.

There are plenty of things I could say, tales I could spin, and some of them would be true if I wanted them to be. Family sprinkled across the country always has a place for me, and I found family’s family, just like blood and sometimes even more so.

I lift the can and drink some more. I don’t say more.

Belle nods, smoothing a hand down her skirt, her cheeks turning that pretty pinkish red of her blush. “I sound pushy, nosy, I know. Thing is, I’m just like that. I want everyone happy and cared for.”

“A caring murderess?”

Her lips turn up. “It’s the only way to murder.” Then she turns her can and studies the two leaping pigs on the front. “There are lots of people who either don’t have anywhere else or have to work too much over the holiday to make it home, so we do something here.”

I take we to mean her.

The thing is, if this Lance has his way, there won’t be anyone left or not enough because I can’t see Miss Rosso ever being late with a bill or rent.

Fuck, two minutes in her presence, a man starts to feel a little domesticated.

Pathetic.

“I’ll see how things go,” I say, leaving all that out. It’s shit she probably knows, anyway.

It’s a city, but it isn’t big.

She nods. “I’ve got an early morning and homework to mark. Also, a bus to try and catch.”

“Bus?”

“My stupid car isn’t working. It’s the one-half in its parking spot because that’s where it decided to conk out.”

“Might want to get it seen to,” I say, fingers itching to get at a motor. “On account, you need a car that works.”

“After I get paid.”

I don’t push it because, though she doesn’t dress like someone struggling to make ends meet, I also don’t know her or her situation.

I remind myself that I’m not really going to.

She finishes her beer with long swallows that allow me to appreciate her throat. The delicate skin, the way it moves as she drinks, and I can’t fucking help but think of her swallowing other things, of my di?—

I shut that majorly inappropriate line of thought down.

Belle looks about for somewhere to put the can, but I push off the wall, come over to her, and take it.

She rises at the same time, and we’re close, too close. I’m hit with the faintest scent of honeysuckle and rosemary, fresh and sweet. Like a morning walk through a garden in bloom.

The heat of her warms me. I’m not sure how, but it does, like a transference through osmosis. As her tits rise and fall, tits I know are bigger than they look and soft as sweet fuck from the ride home with her pressed in against me, I want to see how soft the rest of her is. How inviting.

The urge to touch her hair is almost overwhelming. It looks like curling silk, and it hangs down her back to below her shoulder blades. Her baby bangs, the type that no doubt add to the buttoned-up deliciousness of her when her hair’s pulled up.

“I’ll walk you to your door, Belle.”

“Oh, I live right above you.”

It’s not a no. It’s not a yes. It’s a breathless little knock sideways of surprise that invites me in.

There are all types of women who get off on the rough and tumble image of a biker, of what we represent in their minds. Outlaws, secret societies, wild sex. Crime. I’ve seen them all before, from all walks of life, wanting one or all of those in me.

I can give them wild sex. I can give them my own rules and laws, but I’m not the criminal type. I don’t usually go for the woman worked up over what she perceives me as.

There’s an unconscious invitation in Belle, but I don’t think it’s from anything like that. I think it’s her and the spark of awareness in the air.

“So, I can bang on my ceiling if you get too loud?”

Her blush is so fucking worth it.

I almost tuck a strand of hair behind her ear when a meow shatters the mood.

We both turn.

There, on the windowsill, like it rose right up from fucking hell, is that damn black cat. It looks at me and yawns.

“Oh my God,” she says, holding out a hand to the cat. It jumps down and saunters up to her, rubbing on her leg and headbutting her hand. She scratches it behind the ears, and the fucking little monster purrs loud. “You have a cat. What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. It’s not my cat.”

“Sure seems like your cat.” Her attention is completely on the furry black cockblocker. “You’re a cutie, aren’t you?”

I swear the fucking thing gives me a feline-smug side eye.

Belle spends a few minutes coddling the stray, and finally, she rises. “I’ll see you around, Saint. Glad you’re here.”

With that, she’s out the door. I shut it and turn. The cat sits, one leg out as it calmly licks it.

“Fucker,” I mutter. “You can go too.”

It issues a small growl followed by a pitiful mew.

“Yeah, I know, it’s cold out. Fine.” I stomp into the kitchen and open the fridge. I was going to make some burgers or tacos, but instead I make a sandwich and grab two bowls from the cupboard.

This Hastings really pulled out the stops with outfitting the place, right down to the budget Serial Killers R Us—funny Belle—crockery and silverware.

The cat followed me in and is sitting, looking up at me, swishing his tail as I fill a bowl with water and set it down. Then I grab the ground beef from the fridge and put some in the other bowl, which makes the smug look fall away into one of worry, like I’m putting the meat in the fucking bowl for myself and not the overgrown rodent.

“This is a one-night deal, and only because it’s getting colder out. I don’t have litter or anything so you’ll have to go when you eat. Got it? Good.” I put the bowl down, and the cat dives in face first.

First, I can’t fucking believe I’m talking to a cat, and second, I’m pretty sure the cat’s a bit of a nomad like me. He’s somehow found me again, wormed his way into a place with food. While he’s not like those grizzled toms who spend their nights fighting, he’s got the skills of a survivor, and as much as he pisses me off, I have to admire him.

Even if he did pull one hell of a cockblock.

Not that mine was about to get anywhere near pretty Belle.

I take the sandwich and head out to the living room. “When you’re finished, you’re out, cat. And I mean it.”

The cat’s gone by morning, but there’s a cat-shaped dent in my duvet when I wake.

Who the fuck even knows how the thing managed to find me. I could pretend it wasn’t the same cat, but it was. Then again, don’t cats like to roam like I do?

“Who even cares,” I mutter.

I shower, dress, and go over the messages from Lance Hastings. He’s paying me, but not that much. I’ll take the free roof over my head, and a month’s stay in one place is about near my limit these days.

Better, if I know two of the bikers in town, I’ll know more, and word spreads. I’m a good mechanic, and that means good money.

There’s an unease that turns slightly queasy in my guts. Jobs like this, they never sit that well with me.

Being a big guy and a biker, even with my name on the back of my jacket isn’t about to instill the residents with comfort.

Residents other than Belle who apparently have no sense.

I get ready for the day, as I need to drop by a few places and get the word out that I’m open for business.

Mechanic business.

The rest here is just being around and making sure rent is collected at the end of the month. Be seen. I don’t break skulls or intimidate in the ways that Hastings hinted at, but the rest I can do. He wants me to run middleman for complaints, which is something I can do.

I shut the window, head out, and come to a stop as Belle’s blue hatchback catches my eye.

“Leave it,” I mutter.

And I’m going to, I really am, only the angle pisses me off and the color. And the stupid car itself.

She’s locked it, of course, but it takes me almost no time to break in and hotwire it.

Soon, I’m working on the car for absolutely no reason other than I like to fix things.

Near me, a cat meows.