Page 14 of My Christmas Biker

“I should have. You still have that beautiful shade of red in your hair. It’s just my memory didn’t allow for a woman’s figure.”

Huh? “What are you talking about, Brick?”

“I’ve been so blind. My ma said you looked familiar.”

“Brick?”

He pulled over on the side of the road and parked. His chest heaved as he sucked in a breath. He seemed to be struggling, and it didn’t make sense.

“It’s been fifteen years. Forgive me, Ginny. I didn’t realize it was you.” He turned, facing me after landing that bombshell. “I’m Brick. Hesh’s club brother. Brick Mayfield.”

Brick. Mayfield. Oh my God!

My eyes widened as I gasped. My Brick. The young, handsome biker I had a crush on at twelve. He was one of my father’s closest friends, and they were inseparable. Brick spent more time at our house than his own.

In my girly fantasies, he was my knight in shining armor. My savior when the boy down the street teased me and threw dirt in my eyes. He bullied me for weeks before I finally said something. My father was so pissed he almost throttled the kid. But Brick? He took the boy aside, spoke low into his ear, and grinned when he backed away, nearly falling on his ass in a scramble to get away.

To this day, I still don’t know what Brick said to him, but he never bothered me again. In fact, no one did. A part of me always wondered if Brick had something to do with that after my father’s passing. Had he been a dark angel watching over me?

I blinked, staring, I meanreallylooking at him for the first time, beyond his sexy smile and short beard peppered with gray, and into his familiar blue eyes. Eyes I should have recognized because they’d hardly changed in fifteen years.

How could I be so blind? I should have noticed who he was. Lowering my head, I dropped my face into my hands.I’m an idiot.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

“I feel stupid.”

“For?”

“For not seeing that it was you,” I confessed.

“Ginny, baby, we haven’t seen one another in fifteen years. Neither of us looks the same. You were thirteen. I was twenty-five. We’ve both changed since then.”

Me? A lot. Brick? Not much other than the beard and lines around his eyes. He seemed hardened a bit since my father’s death. Some of the light in those blue eyes had dimmed. I justnever expected to see him again. It never occurred to me that the Brick I just met would be the same one I knew as a girl.

I pulled my hands away, staring at his leather vest. I never looked at the back—or Dagger’s. I was constantly distracted by the storm or the guys were facing me. They never walked ahead of me, only behind me for protection. Something I knew club members took seriously. Women had value in their world. At least to my father’s club, the Saint’s Outlaws MC.

How the hell did it never occur to me to look when we visited Nan? Why did it only seem to matter now?

“Turn around. Please,” I added as his brow arched.

Brick unbuckled his seatbelt and twisted his body, revealing the logo I knew well. The skeletal face stared back, proving the truth. When I last saw him, Brick had been a new member, patched into the club after prospecting under my father as the sponsor. The details were vague, but I remembered it. As Brick turned, I saw the Sergeant at Arms patch on the front and his road name—details I had overlooked until now.

“You’ve done well. He would have been proud of you.”

Brick placed a hand over mine. “I know. I really wish he was still here, Ginny. I’d give anything to have him with us and not missin’ out on the beautiful, amazing daughter he has.”

“You don’t know enough about me to call me amazing,” I pointed out with a smirk. “Just flirting like you have since we met at the airport.”

“Can’t fault a man for appreciating a gorgeous redhead.”

“One he used to know as a skinny girl,” I reminded him.

Wasn’t the age difference inappropriate? Or was that nothing now that we were both consenting adults?

And what about the fact that Brick and my dead father were once best friends?

“That was a long time ago, Ginny.” He leaned forward, brushing a strand of hair back behind my ear. “And I made a promise to your dad.”