The Biker's Hidden Heiress

Chapter Three — Raven Creek

Margaret is exactly what her name sounds like.

Sixty something, sharp eyes behind thick glasses, a cardigan that has seen better decades, and the kind of expression that tells you she has heard every possible story a person can walk in with and is not easily impressed by any of them.

She opens the door before we even knock.

I say we because Cole is the one who walked me here. Kael did not come himself. He just sent Cole with a look that apparently communicated everything that needed to be said without a single word. Cole knocked on my stool, said "ready?" like we were old friends, and walked me three blocks through the rain with an umbrella that was slightly too small for two people.

Margaret looks at me. Then she looks at Cole.

"Another one," she says. Not a question.

"Just for a few nights," Cole says. "Kael says to put it on the club tab."

Margaret looks at me again. Longer this time. Like she is reading something written in small print across my forehead.

"You eat?" she asks me.

"I am fine," I say.

"That is not what I asked."

I think about the last thing I ate. A half sandwich at my desk this morning. Before my whole life collapsed.

"Not recently," I admit.

She steps back from the door and waves me in without another word.

The room is small and clean and smells like lavender and old wood. There is a single bed with a white quilt, a window that looks out over the empty main street, and a radiator in the corner that knocks twice before settling into a steady warmth.

It is the most comforting room I have ever been in.

I sit on the edge of the bed and I do not move for a long time.

Margaret brings up a plate without asking. Soup and bread and a glass of water. She sets it on the small table by the window and looks at me with those sharp eyes and says nothing at all. Sometimes people know that words are not the thing you need. She is one of those people.

She leaves and closes the door softly behind her.

I eat every single thing on the plate.

Then I sit back on the bed and I look at the ring in my palm.

My mother's ring. Silver and old, with a small engraving on the inside of the band that I have tried to read a hundred times. It is worn down now, the letters rubbed soft by years of handling. I can make out what looks like the beginning of a word but never the whole thing.

I used to ask my mother about it when I was small.

She would always smile and say it was a family ring. That it had been passed down. That one day it would make sense to me.

It never made sense to her either, I think now. Or maybe it did and she just did not know how to explain it to a child without frightening her.

I close my fingers around it.

Keep it close. Do not let anyone see it.

The way Kael looked at it tonight sits in my chest like a stone I cannot shift. That flash of recognition. The way his whole body went still for just a second before he pulled himself back together.

He knows something.

I am certain of it the way you are certain of things you cannot yet prove.

The question is what. And why. And how a man I have never met in a town I found by accident knows anything at all about a ring my mother gave me on her deathbed.

I do not have answers tonight.

I put the ring back around my neck and I lie down on top of the quilt without bothering to change my clothes and I close my eyes.

Sleep takes me faster than I expect.

I wake up to sunlight and the sound of someone sweeping the pavement outside.

For exactly three seconds I forget everything. There is just the white ceiling, the warm room, the smell of coffee drifting up from somewhere below.

Then I remember.

Marcus. Camille. The bedroom doorway. The silence.

I breathe through it. In and out. Slow and deliberate like my therapist taught me two years ago during a difficult season I do not think about anymore.

You are okay, I tell myself. You are in one piece. That is enough for right now.

I sit up.

The main street of Raven Creek looks different in daylight. Smaller. Quieter. A handful of shops with hand painted signs, a diner on the corner with a chalkboard outside, two old men sitting on a bench doing absolutely nothing with great dedication.

It looks like a town that time passed over gently. Not forgotten. Just unhurried.

I find the bathroom down the hall, splash water on my face, do what I can with yesterday's appearance, and go downstairs.

Margaret is behind the small kitchen counter with a coffee pot and an expression that suggests I should sit down and not argue about it.

I sit down and do not argue about it.

She pours coffee, pushes a plate of toast toward me, and sits across the table with her own cup.

"How long are you planning to stay?" she asks.

"I am not sure yet."

"Running from something or running to something?"

I look at her. "Does it matter?"

"It matters for how long you will need the room," she says practically.

I almost smile. "Running from something."

She nods like that is a perfectly reasonable answer. "Most people who find Raven Creek are. The ones running to something usually have a map. The ones running from something just drive until they stop."

I wrap both hands around the warm mug. "Is that what happened to you?"

She looks at me over her glasses. "I stopped here forty years ago. Never found a reason to leave." She pauses. "That can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the day."

We drink our coffee in a comfortable silence.

"The diner on the corner," Margaret says after a while. "Dolly who runs it is looking for someone to help with the lunch and dinner shift. It does not pay much but it pays honest."

I look up at her.

"You are going to need money if you are staying," she says simply. "And you look like a woman who needs something to do with her hands."

She is not wrong about either thing.

"I will go talk to her this morning," I say.

Margaret nods and stands up with her coffee cup. Conversation over. Decision made. That is clearly how Margaret operates and I find I do not mind it at all.

I finish my toast and look out the window at the quiet street.

Somewhere in this town, Kael Draven is awake.

Somewhere in this town, he is keeping a secret about a ring I have worn around my neck my entire life.

I do not know what it is yet.

But I am going to find out.