Free Checkmate With Bishop: A Hellions MC Novel by J. A. Hornbuckle Page B

hotel in Missoula but it wasn’t the worst.  Yet it was the one Stan had recommended J.R. and I stay in.
    It had been a long day, leaving Casper at six in the morning before the sun arose.  But even with the various stops we’d made for potty breaks and to refuel on convenience store junk food, we’d gotten to Missoula in twelve hours.  Twelve long hours that found me stiff and aching from sitting in one position for so long.
    “J.R.?” I called, unhitching my seatbelt while turning to look at the boy-man seated next to me, sleeping with his face propped in the taunt length of the strap that held him captive.  “We’re here, little man.”
    “I asked you not to call me that,” he mumbled without opening his eyes but removing the earphones of his iPod.
    “You want to come in with me as I register?”
    I saw his eyes roll beneath his lowered lids, which I took as a ‘no’.  Opening the car door, and with unused joints creaking as I twisted, I found my feet, taking my purse with me.  The hotel, even after so long a time away, was much as I remembered it.  They’d updated the outside color from deep mustard to a grayish-blue and replaced the old wooden railing with a more modern metal but on the whole not much had really changed.
    “Hi, I’m Dory Leone.  I have a reservation,” I told the stout, heavily made-up platinum-haired woman behind the desk.
    “Hey, Dory!  Long time, no see!”  And I watched as the lady lifted a portion of the counter, quick in her haste to get to me.  “We’ve all been so excited for you to get here!”
    Her hands went around my back in a fierce embrace, pinning my arms to my sides.  “It’s been too long, girlfriend!”
    As soon as was gracefully possible, I pulled back and glanced at the nametag affixed to her large, overflowing bosom before my eyes went back to her face, mentally taking away all the makeup.  “Ally?”
    “That’s me, sugar!  Gosh, how long has it been?” she gushed on a twittering giggle.  It was her giggle that brought forth the memory of her.
    Oh my god.  The portly woman I still held in a loose embrace was Alexandra Haas who had been one of my friends in high school.  But without the name tag I wouldn’t have recognized her since the additional fifty to seventy-five pounds she was carrying, as well as all the makeup she now wore had changed her appearance.
    “Fifteen years, I guess,” I muttered, dropping my arms instead of dropping my jaw at how she looked.  God!  Back in the day, she’d been a stunner, one of the girls all the guys noticed and wanted to get with.  “Man, Ally Haas.  Wow!”
    “Ally Manning now, sugar,” she crooned, holding up her fourth finger on her left hand that was lined with rings.
    “So you married Mike?”  Mike Manning had been a year ahead of us and one of the guys that Ally had set her sights on.  I’d lost track of their romance, lost track of a lot of things after I’d starting dating Bishop in my sophomore year.
    “Twelve years now, can you believe it?  And we have five little Manning’s as a result,” she giggled as she went back behind the counter.  “What about you?”
    Damn!  I’d forgotten how Missoula operated, at how everyone wanted to be in the know about your life especially if they’d claimed you as one of their own.  Since I’d grown up there, I was still considered a part of them even though I’d extricated myself years before.  “No, not married.  I co-own a hair salon in Casper.”
    Ally’s carefully crafted and heavily penciled-in eyebrows rose and her smile got bigger.  “A business owner, huh?  And you do hair?  Which probably accounts as to why your hair is so short, right?”
    Wait…what?  Did she just slam my hairdo?  I blinked before realizing that the last time anyone in Missoula had seen me, my hair had been to my waist.  So perhaps it wasn’t so much of a slam as a comment about the changes Ally was noticing.  Much like I’d noticed her extra