Chapter 4: June's Casserole

June Tarrant came up the garage driveway in her farm truck at noon.

A casserole dish rode on the passenger seat with the belt across it.

I was on the stairs when I saw her.

She climbed down in her barn coat, all five foot four of her.

Her reading glasses were pushed up into her gray hair.

She looked at Rafe's bay, at Rafe, and at me.

Then she looked at the phone in my hand, with the photo on it.

"I saw it," she said. "Somebody's wife sent it to me at five this morning."

She snorted.

"I called her back and told her where she could put it."

I started to laugh and it turned into something else.

June came up the steps and held me, with the dish still balanced in one hand.

She smelled like woodsmoke and coffee.

For fifteen years that smell had meant somebody was on my side.

"Where's your bag?" she said into my hair.

"I don't have one."

"Then I brought you one."

In the truck bed was a duffel with my winter clothes in it.

She had packed my good boots, the maternity jeans I'd bought in March and my mother's quilt.

She had gone into my house and taken them while her son was at the shop.

"June, how did you..."

"I've had a key to that house since you moved in." She sniffed. "I've never once used it without knocking."

She shrugged.

"This morning I knocked quietly."

I looked at her.

She looked back, and her eyes were wet.

"I heard what he did to you at that rally. He is no son of mine today."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Biker Who Drove Her Away from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.