Easy (5 page)

Daisy saw a cherry red muscle car pull up in front of her motel room and had to do a double-take to make sure it was Abby. The tall redhead opened the driver’s side door and stepped out, dispelling any doubts.

“Nice ride,” Daisy called out as she locked the door behind her.

Abby grinned. “Thanks,” she replied, patting the hood. “This is my baby.”

Daisy settled into the front seat and ran her hands over the leather. “You know, a few years ago, I’d have fallen hard for any guy who cruised around town in a ride like this.”

Abby looked at her over her sunglasses and put the car in reverse. “How about now? Have you seen the error of your ways?”

Daisy laughed. “Hell no. I just traded up. Nowadays it’s a hot guy on a hot bike.”

Abby joined in her laughter. “Can’t say I’m any better. My car- not my baby, mind you, a different car- crapped out on me on the highway on the day I came into town. Tex rolled up behind me on his huge, black Harley, and I just about wet my panties.”

“A guy like that would make any girl’s panties wet,” Daisy teased.

Abby giggled, slapped Daisy lightly on the arm, and pulled out onto the main road. As she drove through the city, Daisy leaned her head back against the seat. “Matt doesn’t have a bike. Or a muscle car. Just a beat up truck. Should’ve been my first clue his priorities were screwed up. You know how some guys you can look at the way they treat their cars and you can see how they’d treat you? Should’ve picked up on that.”

Abby smiled. “I know what you mean. The way Tex goes over every inch of his Harley, polishing it, testing it, I never wanted to be a motorcycle so badly in my
life
.”

“So, you’re Vegas from Vegas,” Daisy ventured. “I take Tex is from Texas?”

Abby nodded. “They all met in the Army. They’re all ex-Rangers.”

Daisy gave a low whistle
. “Yikes,” she muttered.

“Shooter was a sniper,” Abby informed her, “as you might guess. Hawk’s into computers. Tex knows about eight languages and has a psych degree on top of that. Doc, Caleb, has emergency medical training, but he’s a cop now.”

Daisy glanced at her. “A cop?” she asked and tried to keep the waver out of her voice.

“Yeah. I think he’d had enough of the blood and guts on tour. He’s an officer now. I was surprised he’s not interested in becoming a detective or anything like that. He’s happy on the streets, I guess.”

“So, he’s pretty straight and narrow,” Daisy guessed, and couldn’t tell if that was a good or a bad thing.

But Abby surprised her and shook her head. “Not really,” she said quietly. “I mean, he wears the badge, but... I get the impression that he’s not all about the rules, you know.”

Daisy scowled. Even worse was a cop who thought the rules didn’t apply to him. She made a mental note to stay far away from Caleb.

“And Jimmy-” Abby glanced at Daisy to see if it was okay to talk about him. Daisy just shrugged.

“Jimmy’s got a degree in mechanical engineering. I guess he loves seeing how things work and putting them back together. He’s not a bad guy,” she insisted. “I think he just came out of it the worst, you know? Makes sense that he’d take the longest to recover.”

Daisy watched the downtown area give way to warehouses. “Maria said it was a bomb.”

“Took out half their unit,” Abby explained. “And they were all pretty close. They’re the only ones left so they decided to stick together.”

Daisy nodded to herself. “Like a family.”

“It
is
a family. They think of themselves as brothers, which means they support each other through everything.” She sighed. “Of course, it also means they fight like brothers, too. And they don’t pull punches, literally or figuratively.”

“Are they violent?” Daisy aske
d cautiously. She’d seen some one percenters get into it at Sturgis. Some of them were ex-military; all of them were pretty much crazy.

“No,” Abby assured her. “Only with each other. And not seriously. No one’s ever gotten hurt.”

They pulled into a large circular driveway, and Abby parked in front of the log cabin style house. “Wow,” Daisy muttered, taking in the view of the place. Her whole trailer could fit in the garage.

“It’s great, isn’t it?” Abby replied. “They love it.”

“It’s beautiful out here,” Daisy commented looking at the wooded areas surrounding the house.

Abby rounded the car and headed up the front steps. “South Dakota isn’t anything like the desert,” she told Daisy, “but it has its own kind of beauty.”

“Better than Nebraska,” Daisy pointed out. “It’s just corn and cows.”

Abby opened the front door and ushered Daisy inside. The living room was two stories high with a large fireplace and not a stitch of shag carpeting to be seen.

“Hey!” Tildy gushed and swept Daisy into a hug.

Tildy’s man sat on the couch, nursing a beer
, and nodded to her. Daisy could totally see why even a girl as bambi eyed as Tildy would want a tattoo that reminded her of him.
Lord
, she thought, and wondered if he was that big all over and how a girl as small as Tildy managed to take it.

Ther
e were two she didn’t recognize seated in chairs across the room. “I’m Chris,” one of them told her. “This is my place.”

He looked slightly older than the others
, but it looked good on him. So did his jeans. Daisy was beginning to wonder if she wasn’t quite out of her dry spell yet, because every man in here was mouth-wateringly delicious looking.

Tex, whom she hadn’t officially met but recognized because Abby had pointed him out, gave her a warm smile as he leaned up against the wall. Daisy smiled back. She figured the dark, broody one might be Caleb, the cop, and only gave him a cursory nod before looking away quickly. He didn’t
seem all that interested in her anyway, which could only be a good thing.

“Something sure smells good,” Daisy declared.

“I’m trying to help Sarah in the kitchen,” Tildy replied.

“Well, I don’t cook,” Daisy announced. “But I can wash dishes. If-”

At that moment, Easy rounded the corner. Daisy had known she’d run into him here, but apparently her indignant brain had made her mental image of him uglier and far less attractive than RealEasy, who stood out as the hottest guy in a room chock full of them. The imaginary punch to the gut nearly knocked the wind out of her.

Then she realized he was holding the baby Sarah had brought into the bar earlier. Hop
e was snuggled against Easy’s chest, taking up real estate that Daisy found herself wanting to occupy, despite it being a very, very bad idea.

“What is
she
doing here?” he demanded, dispelling any idea Daisy had of Round Two.

She narrowed her eyes at him, feeling a little embarrassed that she’d let herself fantasize, however briefly, about him. It hadn’t taken long for him to remind her why it was never going to work in the first place.

Easy was an asshole.

“I was
invited,
” Daisy shot back. “They like me.” She indicated Abby and Tildy. “Probably because, you know, they got to
know
me. Don’t worry,” she sneered. “I’m not here because of us.”

Easy bristled and shifted the baby
a little in his arms. “There is no ‘us’,” he growled.

Daisy laughed. “Oh, you’re right about that. It isn’t a relationship by anyone’s standards. Not even mine,” she added
, because she could practically hear him judging her.

It irritated her that he’d called her out like he couldn’t just forget it happened and move on. He had to point out that she wasn’t good enough, not only for him, but to even join their circle of friends.

“She should leave,” he declared.

“
She
has a name,” Daisy replied.

He sneered at her. “Yeah, sorry. I didn’t care then
, and I don’t care now.”

“Jimmy!” Abby scolded.

He shrugged. “It’s not like she asked me for
my
name, either.”

“Well, I
tried
,” Daisy pointed out. “Earlier, if you remember. But you were too busy acting like an asshole to notice.”

Easy snorted. “So, you just bone assholes on a regular basis?” he asked, trying to shift the focus back to Daisy.

“Pretty much all of them have been, yeah,” Daisy responded coolly. “From the one that cheated to the one that knocked out one of my teeth and the ones in between. Yep, all assholes. You’re just the one who doesn’t know my name. And to be honest, that doesn’t put you very high on the list. In fact,” she informed him. “A two-minute schtup standing up in a bathroom where I didn’t even
get off
doesn’t even deserve to make the list at all. So, why don’t you forget it happened? I pretty much have.”

Someone whistled, but Daisy didn’t look around to see who.

“I’m new in town and I don’t have any friends. I’d like to make some. And right now something in the kitchen smells awfully damn good, and, seeing as how I’ve been living off of bar food and trashburgers for weeks, this will be the first time I’ve had a home cooked meal in... Well, honestly, my mama’s not exactly the Nebraska Martha Stewart, so unless ravioli from a can counts as home cooking, then I’ve never had it. So, do you think you could find it in your too-small Grinch’s heart to let me get a decent meal and talk to someone who isn’t ordering a beer?”

Daisy crossed her arms and waited for him to decide. She was totally aware that everyone in the room was looking at her. Even Sarah had come out of the kitchen to see what all the fuss was about. Daisy didn’t care. She’d learned long ago that you couldn’t hide who you were
, especially not in Delay, Nebraska. Everyone knew you were from the trailer park. Everyone knew your daddy got your mama pregnant and took off before you were even born.

No amount of church-donated clothes and shoes would let you fool anyone into thinking you were anything but Poor White Trash. Over the years, she’d also discovered that being open about it and yes, occasionally wielding it like a weapon of sorts could make things easi
er on herself. Now Easy had to decide if he was going to be the guy who wouldn’t let a broke-ass barmaid have a meal.

It wasn’t hard to be an asshole when you were surrounded by a group of them, but it was often difficult to be the only one. Easy shifted the baby in his arms and finally looked away from her. Daisy figured it was as close to a guy like him waving the white flag as she was ever going to get. She lifted her chin and walked past him toward Sarah and the kitchen beyond.

Easy couldn’t bring himself to look at her as she walked past him. He knew that none of this was her fault, anyway. It only bothered him that he thought of Brenda when he looked at her.

Her
, he realized, looking down at Hope, he didn’t even know-

“Her name is Daisy,” Abby told him quietly, as though she read his thoughts.

He had a vague memory of daisies tattooed on her shoulder. She had tried to talk to him, multiple times, but he’d been brooding over Brenda and hadn’t responded. Then he’d cornered her in the bathroom, but she hadn’t minded.
Well, she’s used to assholes
, he thought. Apparently, serious assholes at that.

Now
he
was the asshole. Wasn’t that always the case? Everyone was looking at him. He’d fucked up; he knew it. He didn’t need a lecture from his former lieutenant, or insight from Tex, or any damn thing else. He strode to Shooter and passed the baby to him then turned and walked toward the door.

“You’re leaving?” Abby asked, slightly panicked.

Easy ignored her and kept moving. He stepped out the door onto the front porch.

“He’s leaving?” he heard her ask the others. “He can’t just apologize? Is... is he going to make us
choose
?”

Easy didn’t wait to hear the rest as he descended the steps and headed to his truck. Fuck no, he wasn’t going to make them choose. At this point, they’d choose her.
Daisy
, he corrected. And who could blame them? Then he’d lose his family- again. He stepped on the gas and shot toward the country lane that led down the foothill. It was a fairly quick drive back into town, quick enough in the truck at least. Easy still couldn’t drum up the courage to ride his bike out this far.

He didn’t call it fear, not out loud. He simply told them his thigh got a little numb if he rode too long, which was not a lie. The damn temporary prosthetic wasn’t the greatest fit, but Easy still wasn’t too comfortable even driving outside the city limits. He’d sucked it up for Slick’s wedding in the Badlands, but that was it. For a while he’d had crazy visions of putting it down on the pavement and losing the other leg. That fear had now subsided until it was mostly just a nagging bad feeling in the back of his mind, but it hadn’t yet gone away.

As he hit the city limits he turned onto the road that led through town. He passed Maria’s, which looked slow, but then again it was only Thursday. He briefly considered stopping but really didn’t feel like being surrounded by people. He passed the motel and Burnout and turned down his own street and pulled in the driveway next to his bike.

He killed the engine and hauled himself out
of the front seat. It was early yet, he thought to himself as he looked up at the cloudless sky. Their poker games usually lasted half the night, a nice distraction from sitting at home, which until recently had been a perilous pastime. Inside he felt jangly, hot and intense, and recognized that he was on the edge. He stood, paralyzed, at the bottom of his own front steps.

Next to him was a bik
e, small and shitty as it was. It was a Harley to be sure but only just worthy of the name. Easy hadn’t wanted to invest a lot of money at the time, not when he was secretly unsure he’d even be able to ride again. Beyond the front door were other options as well. Such as Jack Daniels, who a year ago had felt more like a brother than the men he’d served with. Easy had, so far, not found a problem that Jack couldn’t solve, or at least make him forget about for a while.

Also
waiting ever so patiently was the box, a small bit of cardboard and silver Christmas wrapping paper replete with sparkling snowflakes- a gift to himself that he hadn’t yet opened. He stood on the concrete walkway with his keys digging into the palm of his hand. The booze, the box, or the bike?

He’d been off the hard booze for a while now
, and he wasn’t ready for the box. He turned around and strode to the BarelyHarley and swung his leg over the side. He kicked it to start and revved the engine a few times, warming it up. He backed it up out of driveway and aimed it at the street. Right about now he could probably use a helmet, he realized, but then again if he was going to wipe out, maybe it was best not to survive it.

He hit the highway at sixty and threaded through traffic until it thinned out to just a few stragglers. The night sky was littered with stars, easily visible now that the lights of city were so far behi
nd him. He’d bought Hope a star just after she was born, one of those silly internet things with a “deed” -more or less- and her name on it. As much as he’d wanted kids of his own, he didn’t know a damn thing about them. A star seemed as good a gift as anything else he could think of, which was not much given his inexpertise. He tried but couldn’t pick out the one that was hers, but he’d written it down for when she got older and wanted to see it for herself.

He still wasn’t sure about motorcycles in general. He’d ridden a few times before he’d enlisted. He’d liked it well enough
, and the freedom was exhilarating. Then, after Iraq, he’d been almost rooted in place, fighting off panic at the thought of being trapped in a vehicle as the other members of his unit had been. He recalled the freedom of the bike, but the idea of nothing protecting him from other vehicles or the road had been equally terrifying. He could tolerate either type of vehicle at this point, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever actually like them. At this point driving
anything
was just a way to get from point A to point B, not something he enjoyed the way he used to.

By t
he time he reached the Badlands the moon was hanging over it. He parked the bike and walked to the edge of the scrub where the ground started to get rockier and eventually gave way to canyons beyond. He didn’t know how he felt about this place, the sterile wasteland that seemed both beautiful and terrifying at the same time. Slick and Shooter had gotten married here, right on this spot. Easy had never seen two people happier. Tildy had almost died near here, violently, and her smile dimmed just a bit any time they rode out here for a picnic. Easy figured the Badlands were just like life, embodying both the best moments and some fucking horrific ones.

He wondered, not for the first time, if all his best moments might be behind him.