Page 7 of Iron Will
Through the opening, I see the mother perched beside her on the bed. The girl turns and gives him a wide, beaming smile. “Thanks, Rourke!”
“No problem. I’ll catch you later, little one. Okay?”
“Okay!”
He pulls back from the door and gives us both an angry look. “Keep an eye on her, for fuck’s sake. That scumbag boyfriend of her mom’s is no good.”
Then he turns to me. He scans my face, eyes lingering for a long moment.
Somehow, my insides feel like they’re turning into molten liquid.
“See you around, Laney the social worker,” he murmurs.
I can actually feel my heart thudding inside my chest as I watch him turn on his heel and go back into the room across from Paisley’s.
Beside me, Katie blows out a breath.
“Whoa. He’s hot,” she exhales. “But scary. I can’t believehewas calling the mom’s boyfriend a scumbag. I mean, hello? Pot, meet kettle!”
Before I realize my mouth is even open, I hear myself snap: “Just because he rides a motorcycle doesn’t make him a scumbag, Katie.”
Katie shoots me a surprised look. “Wow. Okay, sorry. You’re actually defending him?”
“Well, he protected that little girl, after all,” I retort. “Didn’t he?”
“I mean, yeah, I guess,” she concedes, clearly not happy about it. “But who’s to say he isn’t some sort of weird perv or something himself?”
I shake my head in disbelief. “That’s… just silly, Kate. Why would you think that?”
“Um, maybe because he looks like a total criminal?” She wrinkles her nose. “What is up with you? Are you into him, or something?”
“No.God, no.” I laugh weakly. “I just think he, you know, deserves some credit for what he did. Don’t you? Besides, if you were that worried about him, why did you leave the little girl alone with him?”
That shuts her up for a moment. “I went to get security,” she fires back finally. “So yeah, I thought the boyfriend was the bigger problem. That doesn’t mean I thought the biker guy wassafe.”
I open my mouth to protest some more, but then close it again. Why am I insisting on this? Why am I so irritated that she’s judging him? After all, just a couple of minutes ago, I was basically doing the same thing.
“Okay, fine,” I say irritably. “Let’s just forget it. It’s over now. Come on, let’s go in and talk to the mom.”
“Fine,” Katie mutters back. She does a barely perceptible eye roll that I catch but decide to ignore. Suppressing a sigh, I let her open the door to Paisley’s room and fall in behind her.
Katie’s words echo in my head as I follow her inside:
He’s hot, but scary.
It’s true, there’s something about him that’s definitely a little frightening.
But what’s scaring me has less to do with the possibility that he might be a criminal.
And everything to do with the fact that when he looked into my eyes, for just a moment I might have done almost anything he asked me to.
3
Rourke
“How’s Bear?” Axel asks as I climb off my bike in front of the clubhouse.
I came directly here from the hospital. My prez is standing next to his own motorcycle, having a smoke.