Free CURSED - CHOSEN FEW MC ROMANCE: BOOK ONE by Nessa Connor Page B

intentions. For that matter, she wondered about her own.
    He didn’t have all the qualities of the man of her dreams, but then Dirk came up short in some ways himself. Her perfect man, her ideal man, probably combined the best these two had to offer. Strength, compassion, being fearless and manly… thinking you’d find one guy with all those qualities… how unrealistic was that? And if she had to chose one combination?
    Dirk was overwhelming but unable to share who he was with her. As a protector, he offered comfort. And he was sexually exciting.
    Greg’s steadiness offered a different kind of comfort. He didn’t so much arouse her as reassure her, and now, on the run, and seemingly dumped by Dirk, she craved reassurance.
    She saw that he liked her, perhaps wanted her. Her heart ached for Dirk, to have him tell her what was wrong, but she had no idea how long she might have to wait to find out. She had no idea if she’d ever find out. Whatever damage had been done, it might be permanent. Maybe sleeping with him had driven a stake through the heart of any chance they’d had to be together.
    And Greg simply touched her arm gently and smiled. In a moment when she was overwhelmed with thanks and affection she reached over and wiped a smudge of grease from his cheek. Seeing the grease on her finger, Greg laughed.
    “Hey, you’ve removed my main identifying mark. Now no one will know who I am.”
    She stared at the finger. “I can put it back if you like but I thought bikers used tattoos for that.”
    “Not the ones who hate needles. Besides, I can’t keep the shit off my face. I’m always poking my nose into engines, even when they’re working. I just love the damn things, and you can’t do that and avoid grease. I had an old lady for a while who called me Grease Nose—in private, not when we were around the guys.”
    Picturing a girl riding with Greg came automatically, and she wondered what she’d be like. Probably a lot like Trudy or Meg, she guessed “What happened to her?”
    “She outgrew the thrill of the life. Decided she wanted a guy who would be about a home and kids and an SUV, not some stupid biker with nothing but a bike, some tools and a serious thing about the open road.”
    “That sounds romantic.” It did.
    “She thought it did too—for the first five years and fifty thousand miles, but when the warranty expired, she found she was pretty much right where she started and that scared her. When she hit her early thirties she realized that while we’d been a lot of places, there were things she wanted to do that we hadn’t even attempted.”
    “Like having kids?”
    “Kids? Yeah. We didn’t even have a permanent place and I didn’t want one. Dirk and I are alike that way. We might have a place for a while, but the open road is where we belong. Can you see me and my old lady with a papoose hurtling down the road? Besides, I’d be a shitty father.”
    Audra thought he might be a wonderful father but kept that to herself. “Did she find what she wanted?”
    Greg considered the question. “Hard to say, but she did hook up with a guy who works for a big company. They got married and bought a house and I heard she was pregnant. So I guess she found the road she thought she wanted. I’ve always hoped it worked for her.”
    “But you didn’t stay in touch?”
    He laughed. “That would be a classically bad idea. What good could come of it? If her guy sees me hanging around and if he’s got half a brain, he calls the cops. I might screw up whatever she’s found. Besides, once you’re done, what’s the point in reunions anyway? I’m not much on talking about the great times we had and others we might’ve had if things had been different. I’m more about what’s happening now.”
    The look in his eyes, his tone of voice, resonated in her. Audra found herself thinking a lot of Greg. Inside the biker mechanic lurked a warm and somewhat charming man, whether he wanted to own up to it or