Page 15 of Blue-Eyed Jacks (Destroyers MC: Skilletsville PA #1)

I t’s just a summer job. All teens got one.

It was a normal part of growing up. Each sentence clawed at my heart.

“Why the ice cream shop?” It was one of the major tourist stops quaintly situated at the end of the bridge on a very picturesque part of the harbor.

No matter where you sat outside, you had a view of the islands and ocean.

Where everyone could see you.

Zoe looked at me like I was an alien with two heads. “Mom? It’s an ice cream shop. It’s not some hotbed of organized crime or even a place that that kind of people frequents. I’ll be safe and Mayor Hank is right there.”

That was a good argument. Hank waved from his rocking chair parked out front. But I had to try one more time to dissuade her from taking such a public-facing job. “I suppose your boyfriend is working there.”

Gah. Sixteen, a boyfriend, and slowly but surely flying away from the little nest I’d built for her and me to hide in.

Her face flushed red. She got that from me. “Sometimes, but it’s a real job. I’m not taking it to flirt with him.”

“You have a real job that lets you take off summers,” I reminded her. Maybe I shouldn’t remind her of that. So far, I’d lucked out and had a wonderfully obedient daughter.

“Checking on houses isn’t a real job.”

“I beg your pardon?” Crystal and I made a decent income by “checking on houses.” The more people discovered our pristine little island, the less pristine it got, but the more money we made.

So far, growth had slowed to a few dozen mansions on the south-facing coastline.

There was one practically in our backyard.

Two more stood on the point by the cove.

But there was a plan for about seventeen developments in the next five years which would hem us in on the east. That I didn’t like.

It felt like there was a noose slowly wrapping around my neck.

And I got more nervous with each new stranger.

But short of moving to climates even colder than this, it was the plight of every coastal town, eventually.

Global warming couldn’t come fast enough. And with that morbid thought, I addressed Zoe’s biggest issue. “I don’t want you walking to and from there alone.”

“I've got my intermediate license. Let me borrow the car.”

My heart skipped. “That leaves me without one.”

“Duh.”

What if we have to run? I swallowed that fear down. “I should drop you off and pick you up.”

“No! It’s only for this summer. I’ll have my own ride next summer, promise.”

My motherly radar blipped on a target. “Oh, I get this now.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Oh, yes, I do.” Chris had a motorcycle. And like most things inherited, Zoe loved that more than her boyfriend. Although, maybe the whole falling for biker bad boys was my fault.

“Mom…” she warned.

“Zoe,” I countered and then clarified. “A motorcycle is not a mode of transportation I want you on with or as an inexperienced driver. Especially not during tourist season. Even the best riders get blindsided by stupid people.”

Her face settled into a silent, fuming mask that reminded me of Jackson so much it hurt. I could still remember that expression when he talked about going back. It was something he hated, yet resigned himself to doing.

Or maybe I was making up that memory, and he really was angry with me for keeping him too long. I didn’t know. He hadn’t been around to ask.

There was a compromise needed here, and I had a feeling that no matter what I did or said, it would be a losing battle for me.

So, I had to lay out rules. “My car, three days a week, on weekdays when traffic isn’t so bad.

Weekends, I drive you there and back, no exceptions.

” Freedom with boundaries. “And don’t cross the causeway or the bridge. ” Both were dangerous for a new driver.

Zoe frowned. “I use the causeway all the time. You taught me on the way to school.”

“Excuse me? Did I stutter?” Damn. That was right out of Shock’s vocabulary. I shoved that uncomfortable thought into a pit of flaming ashes.

“Mom, what if I want to have some fun with my friends?”

Of which she had few. Why? I didn’t know.

All I understood was that Zoe held grudges for a long time.

The children she went to school with not only teased her about being an only child, but illegitimate as well.

Which was stupid because quite a few of them were from broken families.

I’d only bypassed the whole divorce factor.

And if you had to parse facts, technically, Zoe was born from a married woman.

But that was my secret, and I’d take it to the grave and pull a few in with me if forced to admit it.

Maybe she was making more? “Do I know them?”

“Maybe.”

That was a bad answer. “Local or out-of-towners?”

Her thin scowl told me that answer. “When they leave, what happens then?” I didn’t give her time to answer. “They go back to their regular lives, which may include very real boyfriends and or girlfriends and you, my dear, are shelved somewhere with a summer memory.”

She glared at me. “Was that what Dad was?”

“Zoe,” I warned. We talked about him occasionally, but in the “yes, you have a father, and no, he’s not in the picture” sort of way.

“Is that why you’re so angry and worried about out-of-towners, because I was a summer fling?”

I swallowed. Technically, she might be correct.

It was barely four days. Four amazing, sexy days when I didn’t feel scared all the time because Jackson was right there.

“It wasn’t a summer fling.” It was a wild ride, a blip in the messed up nightmare of my life, and a shining memory I would never forget.

“Why isn’t he here then? Why doesn’t he visit? Why don’t I know my own father ?” Her tirade hurt my ears. I fought the urge to cover them.

“He lives far away.”

“There’s this invention called airplanes, Mom.”

“The nearest airport is Bar Harbor.” Funny the things you learn when researching escape routes.

“Car rentals.”

“Zoe.”

“Mom.” She fired back at me, mimicking the warning tone I put into her name. “I want to know the truth, okay?”

This day came too soon. I always thought it would be a school project or bullying, or later, when she was an adult and finally tracing her history. But not in the middle of an argument. Not when I was already defensive and frightened.

“I was raped.” That came out wrong.

She paled.

“Not with you, or that’s not how… oh geez. What I’m trying to say is your father saved me.”

The hope on her face killed me. Not because I hated it, but because it mirrored everything I wanted but had lost.

“First, he set me up with a shelter in… another state. When my… husband, who is a horrible man, mind you, found me there, your father helped hide me again. So, you see why he stays away?”

“No.”

I took a step back, blindsided.

“That doesn’t make sense, Mom. He hid you but didn’t stick around?”

“If he had, he would’ve led Shock right to us. And, he’d be dead. We all would be. Maybe. Or worse, not dead. That’s definitely worse.” I couldn’t look her in the eyes. My cheeks were overly warm. A dead giveaway that they’d flushed red in shame.

“Wouldn’t he—Shock—what kind of name is that?”

“A biker name. Keith Shock Weaver. Of Pittsburgh.”

She blinked at me. “Your last name is Brown.”

I shook my head. “It’s an alias.”

Her face went from confused to scowling. “We live next door to a cop. He’s my godfather.”

“John knows. He helped me pick your last name.”

“Our last name.”

“Yes, ours .” Calling myself Katherine Jackson was too close to the truth, so I had to give up that name almost as quickly as I’d used it.

She mulled that over. “I have a social security number.”

“Yes.”

“Do you?”

Zoe deserved an honest answer. “Not one that I can use. I’m sure he’d track it down.”

“That’s why you work for Crystal.”

I nodded.

“Does she know?”

“Yes, she does. She knew your father when he was younger.”

The shift in her demeanor was unnerving. “How well?”

That I could not answer. Crystal hinted at sleeping with Jackson’s father, but she didn’t stop there.

When I first suspected, it put up a wall of distrust between us.

And she noticed. He’d gotten his experience from his mother’s hooker friends.

That circle included Crystal. We both decided not to delve into details to maintain our own friendship.

“Ew, Mom.”

“Zoe, don’t. Crystal is a good friend. Just because she wasn’t a saint doesn’t mean you need to yuck on her. I’m not a saint, either.”

At my admission, she measured me with her gaze. “Was Dad a biker?”

“Is. Another reason he can’t be here. They’re in the same organization.” I used the word deliberately, as in organized crime organization.

“Which one?”

“If I tell you, what will happen? Will you ask questions, lead them here?”

“No. God, no.”

“I want you to be careful around all bikers, okay? Especially those who wear club patches on their coats, three-part rockers. Do you know what I mean by that?”

She nodded. Despite being tucked away on an island in Maine, we weren’t isolated completely.

There were clubs and problems occasionally.

Mostly farther south in urban areas. But every once in a while, riders would loop around the islands and check out the scenery.

Most of them were just average everyday people with a love for riding.

I couldn’t fault them for that. Before Shock, I’d enjoyed riding on the back of my high school boyfriend’s bike.

But that was exactly why Shock noticed me.

We went to the wrong party when it was the wrong time because my father owed him a favor.

“Would he ever come up here? My dad, that is.”

“No. He said he’d stay away so no one would connect him to this place.”

Zoe frowned. “I want to meet him someday.”