“No.” Casey swallowed. “She passed away two years ago. When I finally landed a good job at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, I started sending her money every month and kept doing it until she died.” She stared at her glass. “I miss her.”
Rags nodded. “I’m sure you do. It’s tough to lose someone you love.”
“Yeah. You know, she wasn’t rich,” Casey said, a small smile tugging at the bittersweet memory. “But she made it work. Somehow there was always something for dinner. Most of the time it was just cheap cuts of beef, pork, or chicken. She could make a meal out of nothing and stretch it for days.” Her eyes flicked up to his. “She had a big vegetable garden, too. We ate fresh food in the summer, and she canned and froze what was left. I learned a lot from her.”
“That’s why you know so much about plants and fertilizers.”
“Yeah.” She nodded once. “My grandma was my mentor, my friend, my parent… my everything.” Her mouth tightened. “She tried to become my guardian, but my mom flipped out. She didn’t want to lose her food stamps. She used to sell them for drugs. I always left my grandma’s house with dread in the pit of my stomach. I never knew how long I’d be with my mom. Sometimes it’d be for a couple of months, sometimes longer. It was always a gamble on how long my mom would stay clean and sober and how long she’d stay away from men.”
“That had to be so fuckin’ hard, babe,” he said, the words rough.
She shrugged. “It was the only life I knew then. The Dollar Store was our supermarket along with food banks. A lot of dinners were ramen noodles and potato chips.”
Rags reached across the table again, slower this time, as if he were giving her space to refuse. She didn’t pull away, and he took her hands and brought them to his lips. “I would’ve liked to have met her,” he said. “The woman who kept you standing.”
Casey’s fingers tightened around his. “My grandma’s smiling down on me. She always insisted we do our schoolwork, and I held onto the belief that getting an education was my way out of the poverty that crippled my family.” An image flashed in her mind—her younger self doing homework at the coffee table while her mother shot up in the bedroom.
“And you did it,” Rags said. “You got out.”
“I refused to be a victim of it. I can be quite stubborn and determined.”
“Really? You could’ve fooled me.” A slow smile spread across his face.
The waiter set down their dinner plates, a basket of bread, a glass of pinot grigio for Casey, and a draft beer for Rags.
“The prime rib is beyond delicious,” she said, popping another morsel in her mouth. “How’s yours?”
“Awesome.”
“Now it’s your turn.”
“Not yet. Did you move here from Denver?”
“Not exactly. I took a job with a theatre complex in Boise, Idaho. It was a good step for me. It was more money and responsibilities. My friend Jacob, you met him at the theatre, helped me get the job there and here.”I don’t want to get into JT and all that crap. Enough of memory lane.
“Oh yeah, that fuckwad. The one giving you a massage during work hours. He’s another one I wanted to beat the shit out of.”
“Is that the way you resolve your anger?”
“If the situation warrants it.”
Before he could dig deeper into Boise, Casey looked over the rim of her wineglass and changed course. “Besides running your own business, what keeps you busy?”
“Club stuff. We got several businesses members are required to help with. Some brothers work full-time and get a salary; the rest of us pick up shifts when needed.”
“Besides the mandatory strip bar, which Iknowyour club has, what else?”
“Besides the strip bar Dream House,” the side of his mouth tugged up, “there’s the dispensary, Big Rocky’s Barbecue, a strip mall in West Pinewood Springs, Burgers & Beer Joint, and a building named Mountain Skies with shops on the main floor and four floors of apartments.”
“That’s impressive. And I love Burgers & Beer Joint. I had no idea an MC owned it. It has the best burgers in town, and I’ve tried most of them. I’m a cheeseburger-extra pickles-onions-ketchup kind of woman.”
He laughed. “I’ll remember that.”
Casey, sipping her glass of wine, gazed into his hazel eyes. The way he listened, the way his shirt clung to his chest, the way his lips quirked had her body tingling, every nerve on alert.Maybe it was the two dirty martinis and wine, but everything about him exuded sex.I bet he has a special woman, maybe a club girl, who holds his attention.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked, the question slipping out before she could stop it.
He jerked his head back. “No way.”