“Obviously,” I told him. “I just saw the show.”
He sighed and then wrapped his arm around Leanne. “We’ve been seeing each other, and didn’t want to say anything until we knew for sure it was going somewhere.”
Well, that shocked the shit out of me. “And is it going somewhere?”
Leanne’s grin was answer enough, but my father confirmed it when he leaned in and kissed the top of Leanne’s head before resting his chin there. “Yeah, it’s definitely going somewhere.”
“Okay, well you’re both adults, so do what you want,” I told them.
“You’re not upset?” Leanne finally asked.
“No, I’ll be upset if he hurts you, but other than that it’s your life, your choice. I know you, and I know it probably took a lot for you to go there. I’m not going to judge that at all or wish it away for you. That would be ridiculously selfish even if I did have an issue with this,” I swirled my hand in the air before me indicating the way they were leaning on one another.
Leanne sniffed and then asked a silly question. “What if I’m the one that hurts him?”
I just laughed. “Unlikely, and no offense, but I’ve seen my dad over the years. I don’t think that’s how it will play out.”
My dad’s lips turned down then. “You haven’t been around for a while Jamie,” he stated coolly.
“No, I haven’t. Fair warning, you treat her like a whore and I will come for you. I don’t care if you’re my father. She’s like a second mom to me, and I won’t have her treated without the utmost respect by anyone.”
My dad grinned then. “You don’t have to worry about that, kid. I have the greatest of respect for her already.”
“Okay well, Sweet and I are going to be shacking up. We decided this morning. There, now everyone’s dirt is on the table,” I called out and Tash burst out laughing.
“Sweet Jesus, your family is crazy dysfunctional.”
“We already established that, Tash. Now, tell me what’s going on with the information we gathered yesterday? Where’s Keys? Did she find anything?”
“We did,” came Quickshot from the stairs my father and Leanne had descended moments ago. A blushing Keys was following down just behind him. Those two were looking almost as disheveled as my father and his new flame.
“I’m thinking I missed a memo on the club merger everyone else was having last night,” Tash teased.
“You just hush your sassy little mouth Tash,” Keys retorted. Once she got closer she leaned in and damn near whispered to us. “We should go somewhere private to discuss this.”
I glanced around seeing a few of the women from the riding club sitting around with their men. I agreed, because I didn’t know all of the men that well yet, and after seeing the way the RC members were dropping like flies for disloyalty I didn’t want to chance critical information being overheard.
We all made our way to the conference room and took seats at the table. It was a round table so no one was able to take the head position, but I found myself wondering if my father or Sweet would have automatically tried.
We all took seats and then got down to business trying to figure out how we were going to manage to get to the woman who had been taken from Paramour almost two months ago. I had no idea what Katherine was going through or if she was even still alive, but I knew that none of us would rest until we found because she had been taken on our watch, from our place of business. We were supposed to protect her and we failed. That failure would not go unanswered.
“So what did you guys figure out?”
“According to some of the dancers over at Paramour, Kat talked about being on the run from an abusive ex who she claimed was the devil incarnate. Her son’s father doesn’t know he exists and she told the women there if he ever found her and found out about their boy she would pay with her life and he would take her son,” Keys explained.
“Well, that doesn’t sound promising. Where is the kid now?”
“He’s been passed around between the girls from Paramour because there’s no family coming forward to claim him. Kat said more than once that she didn’t have any family.”
“Shit. Okay, let’s see what we can do about that to give the kid some stability until we can find his mom and bring her back.”
“MiMi might take him. It would keep her busy enough that she won’t go off half-cocked looking for anyone anymore. Plus, we have The Snake in lockup,” Tash tossed the idea out there and it wasn’t a bad one. MiMi needed someone to care for and a purpose in her life.
“Let’s set that up. What else do we know? Have we found anything on this Reardon guy?”
“We found a trail on Reardon. Turns out he was stupid enough to go there in his own vehicle yesterday. Timothy Reardon is not a nice guy. He’s been linked with investigations into drug and human trafficking though he’s never been arrested or convicted. He was rumored to have married four years ago, but then the wife disappeared out of the blue and no one ever spoke of her after that. Maybe that was your Kat.”
I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath. “I’m beginning to wonder if Winter’s Renegades tried starting up in this area because they were pointed here by someone else,” I spoke my thoughts out loud, but it was clear looking at everyone else’s reactions that they had been thinking the same thing. She was the reason they’d come to our area. Reardon was the puppet master pulling everyone’s strings.
“Do you guys have a finger on the financials?” This was asked by Ghost who was sitting back and tinkering with a pen he found on the table.
“What we’ve found is next to nothing in comparison to what the government thinks he has available.”
“He’s been under investigation, why hasn’t he been picked up?”
“He’s been linked to investigations, but they’ve never had more than circumstantial evidence linking him to anything, and from what we saw last night most of that evidence has been tampered with or disappeared. The guy is slick and he appears to be well connected while keeping those connections at a distance so as not to tip his hat about who is helping him.” Quickshot shrugged. “He’s running human trafficking and drug rings, his reach could be astounding.”
I sighed. “I’m thinking he’s going to find out about the kid eventually and then this will not be over.”
“Let’s do this for now,” Sweet spoke up. “We need to get our clubs together, let them blow off some steam, and we’ll keep working on Reardon. See what we can dig up, and if we can track down places he may be hiding out. Until we have a solid lead on him though there isn’t shit we’ll be able to do especially if he has people high up pulling strings for him and making it easy to disappear.”
“Considering how you ladies feel about some of our club women, maybe we should host this get together so the guys still have their entertainment,” Quick suggested. I rolled my eyes at him and he just grinned back. “Besides, Jamie owes me a rematch.”
“Aw, looking for a little more humiliation in your life, Wallace?”
“You know it, sis!”
“Fine. I think it’s a good idea. Let them all celebrate destroying the WRs. We’ll drop the bomb that this was only the beginning of this war once we know exactly who the goddamn enemy is and how the hell we’re supposed to combat ghosts.”
Chapter 15
We were enjoying the festivities later that night as our two clubs got together once again to party and mingle. It was a great deal less stressful now that we were working on our relationship with the Aces High MC. A lot of that had to do with me being able to work out my own issues with both Sweet and my father. I was seeing now that my stubbornness in the beginning could have held us back from maintaining a strong alliance with them. That would have been a tragedy, especially considering all we’d learned over the past couple days.
Sweet had gone off to handle something in the office, and I was sitting at the bar watching everyone enjoying themselves when Keys marched up. “I like him,” she informed me in her no-non
sense way.
“Okay?”
“I like him, and I think I want to give this a try, but I don’t want to step on your toes or create any problems for you since he’s like your brother. If you tell me no, then I will back off right now before I start liking him a whole hell of a lot more than I already do.”
I just grinned at her. There was no way I would tell Keys to back off of any man that she finally managed to be interested in after dodging them for so long. “As long as you’re happy, that is all that matters, honey. Go for it. Just remember, Wallace has never really done the serious thing before that I know of.” I shrugged thinking that it was definitely time to catch up on everything I’d missed in the past 7 years of being away from my old family. “Be patient with him, and I think you’ll find he’s worth it.”
As we were speaking Leanne came to find us and sat down beside me. “Jamie, I need to know that you’re really okay with your dad and me.”
“I’ll tell you the same thing I just told Keys. I only want your happiness. If that’s what makes you happy, then go for it. My dad was once a great man when I was younger and my mom was alive,” I explained. “My mom adored him. He was the model for the type of man I wanted when I grew up, because I saw how happy he made her. Maybe he can find himself like that again with you. Maybe you can find that with him and, if you do, I know you will be the happiest woman alive, because my mom used to be, and he did that for her.” Leanne smiled weakly up and over my shoulder.
“Damn it, kid,” he muttered before he wrapped his strong arms so tightly around me that I thought he was going to cut off my air supply and blood flow all at once. “I love you,” he mumbled into my hair.
“Love you too,” I answered back, which forced another tight squeeze out of him.
“I need you to look over here for a minute baby girl,” my dad finally said as he sniffed and removed one of his arms from around me to swipe at his face. Then he turned me so that I was facing the rest of the room that had grown still during our interaction. It was at that same time Sweet entered the room and was prowling toward me with a cocky grin plastered to his face.
When he was close enough to us he dropped down in front of me causing me to look around to see if something had fallen and then his hand came up with a box in it. My eyes went wide, because I knew that box. It wasn’t just any box. It was the one that used to contain my mother’s engagement and wedding rings. I glanced from the box to my side where my father now stood, eyes still brimming with tears and back to the man holding the box.
“Jamie, we’ve taken the long road here. We were supposed to elope after your birthday that year. I had everything planned out for us, and I had a ring too. He reached up to the necklace I often saw hanging around his neck and pulled it from beneath his shirt and kutte. There sat a diamond ring with the chain looped through it. “This one is mine now as a reminder to never let anyone take away what’s mine. It’s a reminder to never allow anyone to think something of me that isn’t true. And most importantly, it’s a reminder that I lost you once and I need to cherish every moment we get together from this moment forward. It’s also a reminder of the time that’s been lost, and I don’t want another minute to go by without making right something that should have been done so long ago.” He removed the engagement ring from the box and handed the box to my father who took it without pause.
Sweet then took hold of my left hand and kissed the finger where the ring would sit just before he slipped it on my hand. “Life without you was no fun, Jamie. Now that you’ve grown into Angel Girl too, I can’t imagine missing a moment of seeing you all bad ass and in charge the way you are. I love you, and I want us to be together the right way this time with our families surrounding us with love too, instead of working against us.”
I nodded my head and moved in to straddle his waist, knocking him off his feet in the process and then my hands wrapped around his face and brought his lips to mine before I leaned in closer and whispered in his ear, “Yes.”
Part Two
Note:
Part Two was originally supposed to be the novella Sweet Angel, and adds in Sweet’s perspective.
There are still bonus scenes at the end of the book from Sweet’s perspective for Part One of this book! Enjoy
Chapter 16
Are you ready for this, man? You two have been through a lot over the years, I know, but this wedding business came up fast.”
“I love her, Quick. I would have married her back then if that cunt friend of hers hadn’t fucked it all up.”
“I get that, but not so many months ago you were cutting out all your side action to make Becca happy.” I glanced up quickly, knowing he’d see the shock written in my features. He only grinned. “Everyone else might have been oblivious, but I noticed man. You were about to get serious with her until you got sent on all those runs back to back and then ended up here.” He was right, of course. I had already let Alice go months before, and turning down club whores was no big deal.
Becca and I had spoken at the beginning of the year about making it official soon. I told her I had an extended out of town run to do to help out with another chapter of the MC in Charleston, South Carolina. I was supposed to announce her as my old lady when I got back. Only, I never really wanted it. She was just someone constant I could tolerate and use to avoid the bullshit banging other bitches caused. As it turned out I was bounced back out almost immediately to represent our club in Tallahassee, where the local chapter had just lost a brother to some violence involving a rival club down there. I stayed longer than I needed to, and helped with the problems that they were dealing with concerning the other club. I may have been in on their revenge too. The thing was, I didn’t want to go back home. There was this gnawing in my gut that kept telling me not to go back. Maybe I was just afraid of what Becca wanted. A part of me knew it would mean finally giving up on Jamie, but also, I knew she would never make me feel like Jamie. I didn’t know if I was capable of just settling anymore.
Before I could even bounce back home again, word came down that I needed to stop off in Sierra High, Georgia. Wherever the fuck that was. We were forming a new chapter there and the tentative club prez for the area was having some issues getting the new chapter off the ground. It was something to do with another club in the vicinity not wanting to share territory. That trip changed everything. I glanced at Quickshot as he straightened his tie, waiting for me to respond.
“Becca was a placeholder that helped keep the others at bay when I was tired of the drama,” I told him. “I feel bad about using her, but that’s all it ever was. She made things easier, convenient pussy, nice enough girl, very little drama from her. If I had to settle for something, I guess she would have been me doing that. I always had that gnawing feeling eating away at my gut though.”
He nodded sagely. “I’m not saying you ever looked happy with her. I remember what it was like when you and Jamie were actually hanging out and doing your thing for a while there before she left. Hell, that same look has been all over the both of you again since you finally got your shit figured out and pulled all the skeletons out of the closet to show one another.”
“The day I landed in Sierra High, and saw Jamie, I sent Becca a text telling her we were done. I wasn’t busted up about it. Never even gave her a second thought, dude. Like I said, she was just a low drama chick to pass time with.”
Quickshot cringed then. “A text, man? That’s cold. You might not have been busted up about it, but that girl adored you for some reason.”
I sighed then. I knew what he was saying was true. “Hell, I barely even talked to her while I was gone on the runs. I think I texted her maybe twice just to let her know I wasn’t coming back yet, and only because she wouldn’t stop blowing up my phone. I never claimed to feel anything for her, even when we were together. Hell, I had still been sleeping with Alice up until a couple months before I left on those runs that brought me here anyway. She knew about Alice. She knew about the hookups once in
a while with the sweet butts too, man.”
“Oh, I get that she knew all that, but she thought she was finally done biding her time waiting for you to grow up,” he chuckled. “The minute you even entertained the idea of calling her your old lady and talking about announcements, the girl had stars in her eyes.”
“Fuck, dude. Why did you have to bring her up today? Now I feel kinda bad. No regrets at all for what I’m doing now, but I was an asshole, and definitely could have handled all that better.”
“I get that, but I’m just trying to make sure you aren’t going to flake out on Jamie the same way if you decide it doesn’t feel right with her after a little bit.”
“Quick, you of all people should know, it’s always been Jamie. Hell, Becca never stood a chance against Jamie’s ghost, because that was whom she was competing against, you know? Jamie is my everything. I got her back, and there’s no fucking way in hell I’m ever letting her go again. Not fucking ever, dude.”
“I hope so, because I found Becca wandering around earlier. She’s in the room across the hall, and you better be glad I found her when I did man, because I’m pretty sure she was looking for Jamie, not you. She looks like she has a hell of a story to tell too, brother.” With that cryptic bit of information, he moved away from the door and I went through it to see why Becca was suddenly showing up here, on my wedding day, of all days.
She was seated in a chair beneath the window with her legs pulled up in front of her when I opened the door. Becca’s blond hair was loose and draped softly over her shoulder. The memory of running my hands through those golden strands came back to me in an instant, but the image paled in comparison to the raven-haired beauty I would be marrying in just a couple hours.
“Becca?” She glanced up then, finally noticing my presence as I called her name. A small smile warmed her face as she sat up a little straighter. “What are you doing here?” I asked in a neutral tone causing her face to fall as she tucked her hair back out of her face and behind her ear. A habit she had when she was nervous about something.
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