Vindication: A Motorcycle Club Romance Read Free

out of the common room.
     
    “What’s that?” called back Ghost
sarcastically. “Help myself to whatever I find? Sid, you’re a gem!”
     
    He could hear the men laughing at him
behind his back as he headed down the hall, twirling the keyring in his fingers
and whistling Def Leppard to himself. He’d been to Sid’s room once or twice,
but still took two wrong turns around Shadyside before he found the right
hallway. Everything looked so uniform, he found it wondrous that the residents
found their way around at all—especially the ones that weren’t all there.
     
    There were only three keys on the
ring Sid had given him, and the second one opened the door to his room. Ghost
carefully entered the small apartment and closed the door behind him. Sunlight
filtered in vertical towers across the living room floor, shining through the
sliding glass door and its hanging shades. A bloom of colorful flowers wafted
gently in the breeze on the deck outside. Ghost poked around the living room’s
warm wooden furniture, sneaking peeks in candy jars, tiny drawers, and glass
bowls filled with pocket paraphernalia, but didn’t see Sid’s beautiful silver
box lighter.
     
    He changed his whistling tune to the
Black Eyed Peas and decided to try the bedroom. A small, Tiffany-style lamp was
on next to the bed in the otherwise dark, tidy room. Something about the place
felt very much like a woman lived here—or should have lived here. Ghost
couldn’t quite tell if it was the furniture itself, the way the rooms were so
carefully and tastefully decorated, or the tiny impractical accents that men of
Sid’s generation just didn’t seem to give a shit about unless they were trying
to please a woman. Sid had been married once, and Ghost wondered if he had just
replicated the world he lived in with her, piece by piece, even though he was
on his own. He figured there were worse ways to deal with heartbreak.
     
    By the light of the lamp, Ghost searched
the places in the bedroom most likely to hold his treasure, and after just a
few minutes he found the lighter nestled in the pocket of Sid’s night jacket, a
plaid, well-worn thing hanging patiently on the bathroom doorknob.
     
    “Goddamn, I’m good,” Ghost said to
himself, wrapping his hands around the lighter.
     
    “Yeah? You better fucking hope so.”
     
    The voice behind him was feminine—and
angry. Ghost stood and whirled, expecting to find one of the nurses. Some of
them had never quite taken to him and would hassle him any chance they got. But
what he found instead was someone he’d never seen before.
     
    She was tall and lithe, built like an
athlete, her blonde hair falling like shining fabric across her shoulders. Even
though her outfit was professional, there was aggression in it—the solid blacks
and grays, the heavy boots, the pants instead of a skirt. She stood in the
doorway to the bedroom, blocking his exit, her fists clenched at her sides. A
brown leather messenger bag that reminded him of something Indiana Jones would
carry hung at her side.
     
    Ghost was stunned. She could have
been a supermodel. But it was the blazing anger in her bright green eyes that
made his heart stop—and his dick swell. Eight out of ten women would have
already turned and fled at the sight of a strange biker poking around a room
where they didn’t belong. But it looked like that thought hadn’t even crossed
her mind.
     
    She squared her jaw. “Just what the
hell are you doing in here?”

 
    ~
TWO ~
    Bridget
     
     
    A migraine had been pulsing, teasing at the base of
Bridget’s skull since lunchtime. Fridays always had a special energy and chaos
to them, and today was no exception. Once she saw Xander Trudeau upchuck an
entire carton of chocolate milk in the lunch room, she knew it was going to be one
of those days. As she stared, furious, at the rough-looking man snooping around
her grandfather’s apartment, she felt the headache start to fade away under a
wash of rage-fueled