When Dove Cries by Beth D. Carter Page B

unique appeal.
    John Draven was tall, muscular, with electric blue eyes and sandy blond hair. Cade was a little older, some gray peppering his dark hair. She loved the dimple in his left cheek that constantly appeared whenever he talked. And his dark eyes were full of warmth. But their physical attractiveness was only part of it. The other half was a fluttery sensation inside her, as if something exciting was just about to happen.
    Still, she couldn’t rule out that she was just attracted to them because they’d saved her. She didn’t know the technical name for it, but she was sure some shrink would love to dissect her every thought and all her emotions. She probably had daddy issues as well. After all, what other twenty-one-year-old woman would choose to live at home and take care of grown men instead of venturing forth into a life of her own? Yet it wasn’t as if her father had never given her options. He’d sent her off to college, but after two semesters, she’d known it wasn’t what she wanted. Academia just wasn’t her cup of tea. She had moved back home and picked up the slack of taking care of a household full of men, and she’d liked it. That was where she’d wanted to be. When they’d died, well, she’d lost everything, including a sense of purpose.
    Was she now going to live with the bikers? Was this trading one group of men for another? And would Draven and Cade even want her with them?
    The nurse finished taking her vitals and gave her a tight smile. “You’re being discharged in the morning,” she said.
    “Not fucking fast enough,” Draven muttered.
    “John,” Cade warned in a low tone.
    Draven gave him the finger then resumed his place in his chair by her bed once the nurse had fled.
     
    * * * *
     
    That evening, Cade left to get them burgers and fries for dinner. The cafeteria had been shut down for so long that they couldn’t recover quickly enough, but Dove didn’t mind. It had been so long since she’d had a burger that the smell made her mouth salivate with pleasure. Her dinners had mainly consisted of bland, soft food that the doctor had thought would best suit her stomach. By nine o’clock that night, Dove began yawning, and she begged both men to sit by her so they could talk.
    “I want a bedtime story,” she murmured sleepily. “What made you become bikers?”
    At first, neither of them seemed to want to go first, and she looked back and forth as if she was watching a tennis match. But then Draven sighed and crossed his arms.
    “I didn’t know what to do with myself after I got out of the military,” he admitted. “I was drinking a lot, toking up. I tried my hand at odd jobs but couldn’t make anything stick. Then one night I met up with North, who’d gotten patched into the Red Wolves a couple of years before. I’d gone to school with him, but he was a few years older, and he talked about how freeing being part of the club was. It was a brotherhood, and I really missed that. I suppose I really wanted that sense of belonging again.”
    “I know that feeling,” she said. “I used to take care of my father and his men. What branch of the military were you in?”
    “Navy,” he said. “But don’t get the idea I was a great sailor. I passed basic A-okay, but on my first assignment, I got so seasick they stuck me into doing KP duty. I basically peeled potatoes and opened vegetable cans my entire eight years with them.”
    “You were vomiting, and they stuck you with the food?” Cade asked, incredulous.
    Draven shrugged. “They thought it would cure me.”
    Cade chuckled.
    “What about you, Cade?” Dove asked. By this point, her eyes were mere slits.
    He sighed. “Nothing so noble as John, I’m afraid. I patched into a club that I didn’t fully understand, and after some time, I began disagreeing with certain policies, so I decided to go nomad. I’ve traveled around and happened to run into John in Vegas for the charity run and asked if I could come to