I looked beyond him to see that Wood was already halfway to us. I forced my feet to stay planted and not turn and take flight.

Pop turned and announced, “Lauren’s here to see you.”

Wood hit us, his eyes didn’t leave me as he replied, “Take a hike, Pop.”

“No respect,” Pop muttered good-naturedly but walked away.

I was too busy freaking out to react to their exchange.

“Hey,” Wood said.

“Um…” I replied.

His eyes narrowed. “You okay?”

“Um…” I repeated.

His eyes stayed narrowed. Then they un-narrowed and he grinned at me. He did it slow and I watched his mouth while he did it.

My heart started racing and I bit my lip.

“You work tonight?” he asked.

I found my voice. “These days it seems I work every night.”

He got close, wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and then he pulled me close. I put a hand on his chest.

“Then Bubba’s just got itself a new regular.”

I smiled up at him.

* * * * *

Wood didn’t lie.

For the next week he was a regular and he always sat in my station. I took my breaks with him and we walked to the diner to have a quick bite during my dinner break.

I didn’t know he worked so early because at three o’clock at night I was on his bike and he took me home.

He kissed me the first night, right outside my hotel room door. It wasn’t a Tate kiss but it was a great kiss, far better than any of Brad’s so I felt I was still coming out on top.

He also kissed me the next night.

And the next.

I was off the night after that, Wood took me for a ride where he took me for a steak dinner at a nowhere joint which was a nowhere joint because it was in the middle of nowhere.

The steaks were fabulous.

I told him why I was in Carnal which meant I told him about Brad.

He told me about Maggie who got custody of their two kids and moved to Gnaw Bone. He had them every other weekend, alternating Christmas and Spring Breaks and four weeks in the summer. He also told me it sucked his kids were growing up essentially without him. But he said it sucked more, living with Maggie, because she was a bitch. Further, he told me she was a shit wife but a good Mom and his kids needed her to be a full-time good Mom and not see her being a most-of-the time shit wife and all-of-the-time bitch.

When he took me to my hotel, I let him in and the kissing turned to fooling around.

The same the next night.

The night after that, I was wiped and so was he. He spent the night but we both slept in our clothes on top of the covers. That was when I found out he worked as early as he did and that was when the spending the night at his house verbal dance began.

I was able to resist twice.

Then he had me.

* * * * *

Now it was now, Carnal had become home, I was in Wood’s bed more than my own (even though we had yet to do the deed) and Tate was still gone.

But for me, he’d always be gone. I used to pretend he didn’t exist; now he simply had.

Any man who slept with a married woman he knew was married and didn’t care didn’t exist.

And any man who could take me for a ride like that, kiss me like that, in less than an hour changing my world, then walk away without looking back and not even call, not for days that turned to weeks that turned to a month definitely didn’t exist.

I peeled off the new bathing suit I bought with Wendy in the shop-a-thon we had the day Dominic, the g*y stylist to all Carnal biker babes, gave me a new look. Wendy had gone with me and had been so overawed by my transformation she forced me to go to the mall with her.

“I gotta admit,” Dominic had said at the time, standing behind me and fluffing my hair while looking at me in the mirror. “I’m thinkin’ you’re my masterpiece.”

I was looking at me in the mirror too and thinking he wasn’t wrong.

He’d taken my dark blonde hair which I hadn’t had cut in over six months and given it bright highlights around my face, some in the back. The effect was dazzling, especially against my tan. I’d always worn my hair just passed my shoulders but it was now down my back, nearly to my bra strap. He cut it to frame my face with a deep, heavy bang and the rest of it in chunky layers that flipped here and there in a glamorous and saucy way that, coupled with the highlights, made even Stella, the Premier Biker Babe’s hair look dowdy.

“You’re a miracle worker,” I breathed as I stared into my hazel eyes that suddenly looked startling green.

“You aren’t the first person who’s said that, darlin’,” Dominic told me without the least hint of humility.

Wendy barely let me pay him (and give him an enormous tip) before she had me out the door and in her CR-V and we headed two towns over to the only mall in the vicinity. Luckily it was a big one and it was a good one because Wendy was determined to get me “out of those clothes that just do not fit you, sistah!”

And she did. We filled her little SUV with bags – skirts, jeans, shorts, t-shirts, tank tops, camisoles, blouses, shoes, boots, underwear and pajamas.

A whole new wardrobe except two sizes smaller.

It was good I was working nights, Bubba’s was busy and I was getting great tips or that shop-a-thon would have bit huge into my nest egg.

But I had to admit, it wasn’t just Wendy. It was me being tan, having fabulous hair, being a biker babe with a biker who liked me on the back of his bike and, most of all, being two sizes smaller.

It had been over five years since I was that size. Before Brad started f**king Hayley and my life disintegrated. It felt like a rebirth mainly because it was.

I tossed my new bathing suit into my new laundry hamper (wicker, I bought it at a cute little country shop that had opened in town the week before). I had five new suits, two tankinis and the only bikini I’d ever owned – it wasn’t a teeny weeny bikini, but it was still sexy (at least I thought so) and therefore it worked for me – for laying out by the pool and two suits for swimming. Then I jumped in the shower. I got out, toweled off, lotioned, spritzed perfume and put on a pair of my new matching undies. They were deep purple with lots of black lace.

I did my makeup (I’d settled on halfway between Krystal and the Old Me and it was working for me), blow dried my hair with a roller brush like Dominic showed me, pulled on a dusty lilac tank that was half tank, half camisole because the straps were thinner than tank but not spaghetti and if I wasn’t careful, my bra straps showed. The tank looked great with my tan, not being conceited or anything but even I had to admit that. I yanked on a new pair of jeans, a wide, thick dark brown belt and my new purple strappy, stiletto-heeled sandals. It took nearly the whole month to get used to traipsing around in high heels for hours – but I didn’t even feel it anymore and the effect on my tips was astounding.