Free Faith: Biker Romance (The Virtues Book 2) by Davida Lynn Page B

after we leave here tomorrow. I think you’ll like Delores. She’s nice.”

    I rubbed my hands down my face, trying to wrap my head around it all. “We’re really doing this, aren't we?”

    “Unless you want to settle in Mesquite. I’ll get a job as a janitor at the high school, and you can raise us some kids and get fat. It’s up to you.” He had that cocky smile on his face as he swayed back and forth with me.

    I knew he was joking, but a part of me was intrigued by that future with Eddie. The fast lane was nice, but it took its toll. Sometimes that toll was the freezing cold wind of winter, other times it was far greater. I knew that the danger would catch up to us one day sooner or later, and I thought at the time that I was smart enough to be one step ahead.

    Eddie really didn’t strike me as the settling down-type. The Harley, the robberies, the incident at the gas station in Frisco—he was as wild as they came. I didn’t think I could break that horse. I didn’t know if I wanted to.

    Eddie swayed me in the direction of the bed, and we made love. Despite being a dangerous biker, he and I hadn’t gone all the way before then. He was very patient with me, but that afternoon, I was ready for him. He was rough, the way I quickly discovered that liked it, but I could see him watching my eyes for pain, real pain. He manhandled me and made me his woman the day before we planned to rob a small town bank.

    I remember hearing about Bonnie and Clyde when I was a girl. I hunted through the library for books about them, but only found brief mentions and footnotes. I knew they were bank robbers and lovers in the thirties. I didn’t think my mother liked my questions about them.

    I knew it was a romantic idealization, especially since they went down in a hail of gunfire, but as Eddie and I lay naked on the bed after making love for the first time, I couldn’t get that image out of my head: a modern day Bonnie and Clyde on a Harley in the deserts of the Southwest.

    We dozed for an hour or two before getting ready to set the plan into motion. I was going to talk with Dolores and get our alibi straightened out. There was no fear when it came to the robbery. Talking with the old woman who owned the motel, though? That scared me somehow. I was worried about giving us away or making her suspicious. Eddie reassured me, saying that the old was looking for any ears that would listen.

    He was right. He always had a way of being right.

“Vacancy. Come on in and stay a while,” read a carved wooden sign.

    I knocked softly on the door and opened it. A bell hanging on top jangled as I stepped into the small office. A radio was on playing classical music that was almost inaudible. Beside an empty water cooler sat two old chairs. The place looked like every hint of the recession fell into this one room.

    “Hello?”

    There was a desk in front of me littered and stacked with papers. I was sure I could flip through and find a newspaper exclaiming that we’d landed on the moon. An old, smoke-stained clock on the wall told me it was near quittin’ time, and the hands had succumbed long ago.

    Behind the desk, a door led to what was probably a back office, and if Mrs. Alison was hard of hearing, I was going to have to make sure she heard me.

    “Mrs. Alison?” I called out, hoping she wasn't asleep.

    After a second, there was a slight cough. “Just a second!” She sounded cheerful, and I waited near the desk as I heard her getting up from an unseen chair.

    The door opened, and an older lady stepped forward. Her voice was meek, but she looked like she had a perpetual smile on her face. It was the contagious kind.

    “You must be Ella. Jason was going on and on about you.” She made a show of cleaning off the desk for me. Three things changed from one pile to another before she washed her hands of it with a huff.

    It was so strange to hear myself called by a different name. If she had been calling me in a crowd, it