Chapter Four
Aubree
I’m running late. The Aunt Beth’s babies were cranky this morning. I took care of them and little Hunter this morning. I can’t make myself call Hunter, Bart or BB like everyone else does. That’s why I’m here. I mean I’m going to the party tomorrow for sure. I love Beth and Katie, and they’ve been really decent to me considering what my sperm donor did to put them through hell. But, the real reason I’m here is to help with the kids while they organize everything for the birthday party.
It’s just today is the day I have to take my SAT’s. It’s probably a waste of my time. I have zero interest in going to college. I don’t know what I want out of life, but I know that’s not it—another four plus years of school, no thanks. Sounds corny I guess, but I’d be happy with my life if it turned out like my aunts’. Married to a man I love and spending all my time with him sounds like a dream come true. I’ve never had big aspirations of a career or going abroad like some of my other friends. I like it here. However, to keep Pops from having an aneurism I agreed to get ready for college and to keep the peace, I am.
Pops has been good to me. Before him I didn’t have crap. I pretty much raised myself. I cooked my own dinners from the time I was nine years old. It was that or starve. Before that I made a lot of peanut butter sandwiches. I used to be mad at Pops and everyone in the Chrome Saints, until I realized very few people knew I existed. Viper, my sperm donor, kept me in a house away from the club and only one or two people knew I was even alive.
When Pops found me, he cried for days. I did too, but for different reasons. His tears were from the shame he felt that his granddaughter was forced to live the way I did. Mine were from the relief I felt when I was rescued. I fought hard to go to public school. I had been homeschooled by one of the club whores, and I wanted out. I wanted to breathe fresh air and meet other kids…be normal. Pops did everything he could to give me the normal life I craved and he continues to give me a lot more. The addition of my aunts only helps me to feel…ordinary. Say what you want, but being ordinary is amazing.
But, right now I’m running late for my SAT’s. I finally got the kids happy. It took my singing along with their favorite cartoon and building a big tower of blocks and pretending I was a monster knocking it over, but I got them settled enough to get in the car. I left Beth’s and brought them here to the club. An older woman that the girls trust, Mattah, is going to take care of them while I take my test. So, before I was late, now I’m really late. Added to that, I rush back to my car, only to find that for some reason it won’t start. I was only in there three minutes, tops! The car was fine before!
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” I mutter, slamming my car door shut.
“Problems?” a deep voice asks.
I look up and it’s him. The man from yesterday. The one who made every feminine part in me stand up and take notice, even from a distance. The man I dreamed of last night. His voice is deeper than I imagined—huskier. I can feel shivers of awareness run all through me.
“Uh…yeah,” I say stupidly. I’m having trouble thinking, all I can do is stare at him. He’s taller than I noticed last night. I stand 5’7” and he makes me feel small. He towers over me. A fact that is clearer when he walks closer to me, and I have to keep looking up to find those dark brown eyes. Brown. His eyes are chocolate brown, dark and mysterious. His dark hair has touches of silver peppered throughout and somehow that makes him even sexier. It gives him an edge. His hair is cut short on the neck, but the top is shaggy with waves appearing unkempt…like someone has been running their fingers through it. I wish it had been me. Is it as soft as it looks? He’s got a beard that’s trimmed and neat, but looks sexy. I’ve never liked men with hair on their face, but he could make me change my mind. He’s broad, and big, but somehow skinny at the same time. He has an air of danger about him, but yet I don’t sense darkness in him. Believe me, after living with my sperm donor I’ve seen darkness and evil.
“You okay?”
“Okay?”
His lips move into a smile, and I catch a glimpse of perfect white teeth before he shakes his head. He moves around me and goes to my car, getting in and popping the hood. I don’t do anything to stop him. I’m too busy concentrating on the way those jeans stretch over his ass. How that faded gray t-shirt gives me just a peek of his skin under it, and how said skin is tanned a beautiful golden bronze color, just like the rest of his body. That quiver in my lower belly just got more intense.