Free Meet Your Mate (A Good Riders Romance Book 1) by Jacie Floyd Page A

way. Annabel wanted to wave back, one final farewell, but her
hands refused to unclench from their death grip on Max’s jacket.
    When they turned a corner and the
house disappeared from sight, she closed her eyes and buried her forehead
against the wall of black leather in front of her. The relentless rumble of the
engine filled her ears and echoed around inside her helmet, accompanied by a
tremor that rattled her brain and pounded against her eardrums.
    During what seemed like an
eternity, she took a quick inventory of her life and her unfulfilled goals. She
really should have tried to patch things up with her sister. She’d never have
the chance to study with cinematographer Lance Foreman as she’d always wanted
to do. And the dream of living and working in New York or LA would remain just
that—a dream, not a reality, or even a possibility. Suddenly, it seemed like an
unendurable loss that she’d never seen Paris, France. Or Versailles,
France. Or even Versailles, Indiana, for that matter.
    And wouldn’t it be a travesty to
win the Community First award posthumously?
    At the very first stop, she should
call Carly and tell her she loved her...and remind her where to find the key to
the safety deposit box.
    Just as Annabel decided they must
be near Columbus by now, the bike decelerated and the vibration decreased. She
ventured a peek to see if she recognized her surroundings.
    And she did.
    They idled at a traffic light not a
mile from her house.
    “Stop.” She tapped Max on the
shoulder, and he turned his head to look at her. “Stop,” she shouted, motioning
for him to pull into a filling station on the corner.
    With a twist of his wrist and an
energetic vroom, he obeyed. While they rolled to a stop, she put her feet down,
scuffing the toes of Carly’s boots and almost ripping her feet from her ankles.
She slammed into him with an ooph ! and
scrambled to regain some distance between her chest and his back. Okay, she
admitted grudgingly, so sometimes he was right.
    He cut off the motor. “What’s
wrong?” His voice sounded distant and sinister behind his dark face mask. Like
Darth Vader without the cape.
    Her hands shook as she lifted her
Plexiglas face covering. Breathing deeply, she savored a moment of peace and
quiet and immobility. “How fast were we going?”
    “Only about seventy,” he drawled.
“I can’t really crank it up until we’re on the highway.”
    “Seventy!” Annabel jumped off the
bike onto solid ground. “That’s reckless and dangerous! Give me my purse and
I’ll walk home from here.”
    He lifted his shield and she could
see his grin. “You’re so easy to rile, Morgan. I stayed within the speed limit
the whole time, which on this street is thirty. Now, get back on, or we’ll be
late.”
    “Oh, sor-ry .”
Hiding her deep-down feeling of foolishness behind sarcasm, she accepted his
hand and climbed back on. “I didn’t realize the Hells Angels were such rigorous
schedule-keepers.”
    He shrugged. “You know how it is.
Villages to pillage, towns to plunder.” At least, this time she recognized his
lame attempt at humor. He pulled her arms around him, then joined her hands
together in front of him. Holding them in place, he turned to look at her. “Try
to keep an open mind,” he suggested. “You don’t know half as much as you think
you do.”
    Wasn’t that the truth? She’d
been raised to live a respectable, responsible life of suffocating decorum. Her
job as a documentary editor suited her perfectly, isolating her in safety while
she observed and edited the reckless activities of others. From a safe
distance, she could decide what footage could be kept and what could be cut.
    She’d hardly experienced anything
firsthand, and she knew without asking that firsthand was the way Max
experienced everything. Determined to do this for herself, for her
stepdaughter, and to show Max a more interesting side of her, she’d try living
life his way for just one day. She nodded for