Kyle only talked to me once about joining the club. I listened patiently while I was repairing a cracked cylinder head on a 1988 Sportster and tuning in to only about half of what he said. I heard things such as camaraderie, riding free, wild parties, and all the free pussy you could ever want. While my ears perked up slightly over the abundance of pussy within the club, it just wasn’t something I was interested in. I was only interested in doing my job and riding in my spare time, providing a good life for Zoey, and trying to figure out what the fuck I wanted to do with my life.

Yeah… had no clue what I wanted to do, but I certainly knew what I didn’t want to do, and that was to be a cattle rancher. While I loved certain aspects of the job, it just wasn’t what I wanted to devote my life to. It was expected of me to following in my dad’s footsteps. However, a part of me was holding out hope that my younger brother would step up to the plate, take an interest in the family business, and alleviate me of the responsibility.

Up ahead in the distance, I see a long bridge spanning over a wide body of water, which I know from the map I had looked at earlier was the Roanoke Sound. I knew just on the other side of that bridge we’d officially be on the barrier islands known as the Outer Banks and for the first time since we left Raleigh after lunch, I was starting to get a small feeling of excitement. It would be nice to take a break and fuck… I can’t remember the last time I took a vacation just for myself. Ever since Zoey was born fourteen years ago, I’m not sure I’ve done anything just for myself.

Which is fine by me.

Zoey is and always will be my number-one priority. She comes first in all things.

I follow along behind Kyle as we rumble down the highway and cross over onto the island. We head north toward Nags Head and the ocean opens up on my right, the midday summer sun sparkling on the blue-green waters.

I’m no stranger to the Atlantic. I was stationed for a brief time in North Carolina, just a few hours south of here aboard Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base, which abuts right up to the ocean. It was my first duty station after I got out of boot camp, and it’s also where Bri got her first taste of the East Coast as I brought her and Zoey out here to live with me when Zoey was just six months old. We stayed here for almost two years until I was sent to Camp Leatherneck in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan and Bri and Zoey moved back to Wyoming to live with her parents during that eighteen-month deployment. I spent the rest of my enlistment in San Diego, where… before I knew it… my time in the military had come to a close, and I was once again faced with the prospect of joining the family cattle business or finding something else that would keep me out from under my father’s thumb.

Now, it had never been my original intent to marry Brianna. It was not something I remotely wanted to do. I had dated her for a few months after I graduated high school, but it only took those few months for me to realize she was bat-shit crazy. And apparently, it only took the same amount of time for her to end up pregnant so when she showed up on my doorstep claiming I would be a father in less than eight months, I panicked. I wasn’t ready for fatherhood. I sure as shit didn’t want a wife. I was enlisting in the military to get far away from my current life, and now I was saddled with responsibilities I didn’t want.

Some would say that with a young wife I detested but a beautiful daughter who I adored, it would have been stupid for me to turn down my father’s offer of joining on at the ranch again. I’d have free housing and a good paying job. It was the smart decision to make.

Instead, I took the job as a mechanic at Teton Choppers and have been somewhat satisfied with my life. It doesn’t pay what ranching pays but it paid enough, and I was able to support my family just fine.

That worked out for me for almost nine years, during which time I ascended among the ranks to become ZZ’s top mechanic and I shared management duties over the shop with Kyle. During that time period too, I finally wised my ass up and realized I didn’t have to be married to a woman I didn’t love only for the sake of sharing a child. I finally wised up enough to realize that I wasn’t teaching Zoey what a healthy relationship would look like, and I was doing her no favors by continually putting up with her mother’s shit just to keep the peace in the house.

But… after nine years, I am not feeling that full measure of satisfaction any more. I’ve been itching for something different, and this is made more so by the fact that my dad has been pressuring me to come back into the fold. My brother has decided he doesn’t want to grow up apparently, and my father wants someone to pass the business on to.

I have a decision to make.

Go back to ranching or figure a way to do something with my life that will have enough meaning to sustain me personally and professionally.

I’m hoping my buddy, Nix Caldwell, can help me reason this shit out. He’s in New Jersey so I’ll make a quick trip up there so we can discuss an idea I’ve had brewing, which has really been consuming my thoughts since I’m considering a move to North Carolina.

Kyle’s brake light comes on, pulling me out of my thoughts, and he starts to slow down as I see a teal-blue Jeep on the side of the road up a ways. As we get closer, what becomes even more interesting than the Jeep is the woman that’s standing behind the vehicle with her emergency flashers on.

Leave it to Kyle to want to pull over and help a damsel in distress, but fuck… how can I blame him? The woman is beyond magnificent.

We cruise slowly past her to pull over in front of her Jeep. She tilts her head to the left to watch us cautiously and in that brief glimpse, I catch golden-blonde hair that comes down to her mid-back. It’s all windblown and messy with whiter streaks of highlights filtering throughout. She’s got on a pair of the tiniest cutoff shorts I’ve ever seen, cut so high in the back I can see the crease of where her ass cheeks meet the backs of her legs, a spot on a woman I find to be so fucking sexy.

Long, long, long tanned legs spill downward out of those shorts, and a quick glance back up her body reveals a gorgeous C cup set of tits mounded nicely under a tight white tank top.

But what really catches my interest is her face as we idle on by her.

It’s stunning. I mean fucking runway model-like.

High cheekbones, straight nose, sweetly puffed lips slicked with gloss, and crystal-blue eyes. Her skin is golden everywhere, and there is a slight dusting of freckles over her nose and cheeks. She looks like the all-American cheerleader blessed with the body of a Victoria’s Secret model.

No wonder why Kyle was pulling over to offer assistance, but there’s no doubt I would have pulled over myself had I not been with Kyle. This woman was too fucking gorgeous not to stop and render assistance to.

Chapter 3

Casey

My first indication that I had a flat tire was the fwapping sound that made me first think a helicopter was flying overhead. It took only a few seconds and a brief glance upward since I had the top off my Jeep to know it wasn’t.

I pulled over and having no clue what to do with a flat tire, immediately called Hunter before I even got out to look at the damage. When I reached his voice mail, I left a brief message. “Baby sister here. I’m stuck on 158 with a flat tire. As soon as I can get some stud to stop and help me change it, I’ll be in to work. Or, you could get your butt out here and change it for me. I’m just about a quarter mile south of Wilby’s. Later, gator.”

When I hung up, I called Brody. It paid to have two helpful older brothers.