Ride Dirty (Raven Riders 3.50)

It was eight o’clock by the time Emma returned home, the night bitter cold but clear. Christmas Eve’s Eve. As she sat in her living room, Chewy on her lap, a little pang of sadness squeezed inside her chest. Her grandmother had been such a lively, kick-ass kinda lady. Always cooking and telling stories and wanting to learn new things right up until the end—like the guitar lessons she’d started taking two months before she died because she’d read an article about how playing an instrument helped keep seniors’ minds sharp. She was always helping people and had a kind word for everyone she met, whether she knew them or not. She’d always made Christmas so special for Emma, and maybe that’s why Em suddenly missed her so bad.

And that little bit of sadness was why Emma called it a day and went to bed before nine o’clock.

She woke up in the middle of the night, unsure what she’d heard but sure she’d heard something. Chewy confirmed it, because he sat alert amid the rumpled covers, his ears perked, his tail giving a few lazy wags. “What was it, boy?”

The dog didn’t seem alarmed, so she took some solace in that as she slipped out of bed. The LED screen on her alarm clock read one AM. She went to the front windows and peered out. Darkness stretched in both directions along the street, interrupted only by circles of light cast by the street lamps and the traffic lights she could just glimpse down at the intersection.

All was quiet.

She went to step back from the window when she saw it. A motorcycle. Parked on the opposite side of the street from her house. Branches from the tree right in front of her house prevented her from seeing it clearly, so she went downstairs, Chewy rushing ahead of her, curiosity making Emma need to know: Was it Caine? And if so, why was he here?

Sure enough, her living room windows gave her a better view. It was Caine’s motorcycle, the all-black frame familiar to her from the night he’d sat at her curb, but he was nowhere to be seen. She frowned. What the heck was he doing? It couldn’t be coincidence that he was parked near her house, could it?

Thump thump.

Emma froze, and the hair rose up on her arms under the sweatshirt she’d worn to bed. She turned, her gaze raking over dim rooms she knew so well. Padding quietly through the living and dining rooms, she strained to listen. But everything was quiet.

She peered out the dining room window that looked down on the narrow walkway running between her and the next row house, a cut-through from the street to the alley. And then she went to the kitchen and flicked on the back porch light. Nothing.

“What did you expect? Stop freaking yourself out, Em,” she said, the sound of her own voice comforting in the quiet.

One last time, she returned to the tight space between the tree and her living room window when her eyes caught movement on the street. A figure with a hood up over his head stepped out of the shadows. The height, the lanky swagger, she knew it was Caine before he even straddled his bike. Her pulse spiked at seeing him, at remembering what they’d done the last time they’d been together, at the mystery of what he was doing now.

Of course, her instinct was to go out to him. To ask. To invite him in out of the cold. But she shoved that instinct into a dark room and locked the door. Because she’d been the one to make a move first quite enough. Inviting him in to wait that first night. Getting word to him through Haven and Dare that she wanted to talk. Inviting him to stay for dinner. Flirting with him until he’d let himself off the leash and came at her with all kinds of pent-up want.

Every step of the way had been thrilling.

But after the way he’d left, she didn’t want to be the one to put herself out there again. It was his turn to decide he was interested and make a move.

Would he really be out there if he wasn’t interested? And if he wasn’t interested, what other reason did he have to be hanging out near her house?

Nope. Nopenopenope. She did not want to know what was behind door number one or door number two, thank you very much.

So she went back upstairs to bed and pulled the covers over her head, literally and symbolically. And when she woke up on Christmas Eve morning, Caine was gone. Emma had no idea what to think.

Luckily, a day of shopping last-minute Christmas sales with Alison helped take Emma’s mind off Caine’s strange behavior, at least until Alison asked about him over lunch. Emma hadn’t been fully honest, saying only that she’d seen him again when he’d dropped off the cookies. She’d hated holding back on Alison. It was just that Emma was so unclear on exactly what was going on that she wasn’t ready to try to explain it. To anyone.