Page 6 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies

“Do you speak that way to everyone,” I ask, “or only to confectioners under duress?”

He looks at me for a long breath. The rain streaks behind him in ropes. “Only to the ones who make something stand in a storm.”

A thin shiver runs over my skin. He puts the petal’s twin down on the edge of the tray like a coin left in a church then steps away as a man shouts “Saint” from the far tent.

The wedding absorbs him again.

Then I feel it, the attention I pretended not to notice thickening, as if the string lights have pulled me into the center of them.

I look down to fix a ribbon and I feel the pull again, so I give up and lift my head and there they are.

Roman stands with his arms folded across his chest, rain slicking his hair back, a cut on his cheekbone he has not bothered to wipe.

He looks like a cathedral built out of muscle and rules. Beside him is Deacon with the engineer’s gaze, holding a toolbox like a priest carrying a book, measuring the places where the tent groans.

His eyes are the color of a river in winter, not unkind but not warm, clear and cutting. Right in front of me is Cruz.

It’s apparent he is the warm one.

The wind shifts and blows through the tent, carrying a smell that reminds me of summers I spent on rooftops in Brooklyn, a mix of hot tar, a neighbor’s basil, and the iron taste right before rain.

It makes me think of my family all the way downstate and the fights we left half-finished on kitchen floors.

Reminds me of how I got here, which was with my stepbrother Nico’s borrowed van and one good apron and a playlist full of Christmas songs because December weddings have a way of pretending to be both festive and holy.

The thought makes my chest ache, so I choose the simpler thought, which is that I need to save the meringue kisses now before they suck the weather into their bones.

“Here,” says Cruz, appearing like warmth does, sudden and welcome. He holds a plate heaped with food in one hand and a folded linen napkin in the other.

He has flour on his sleeve.

I do not see an oven anywhere near us, which makes me wonder if flour follows him because it wants to be better dough.

“Trade you. One plate for ten minutes of sitting down.”

2

MARISA

“Take it,” Cruz says, not a demand but an easy invitation.

The plate he holds out is heaped with food I didn’t have time to even glance at when it came out of the kitchen—roast lamb sliced paper thin, grilled vegetables glossy with olive oil, a tangle of fennel and orange salad, and a hunk of rosemary focaccia still warm enough to steam the air between us.

The other plate is already tucked into his own hand, balanced against his palm like he’s been carrying two on purpose.

My first instinct is to protest.

I have trays to manage, people circling, weather turning against me. But the smell of the food hits—savory, herbed, rich in the way only something cooked slowly can be—and my stomach answers before my pride.

“Where did you even?—?”

“Trade secret,” Cruz says, and tips his head toward the far corner where Roman and Deacon are already waving us over.

We take the driest table under the tent, the one closest to the band, where the lighting is low enough to make the rain beyond the canvas look almost romantic.

Roman has a plate too, piled high with what looks like prosciutto and marinated artichokes.

Deacon’s is mostly cheeses and bread, methodically arranged like he’s conducting a private tasting.