by Jadyn Chase
Now here she was, in my house, talking to Anna like she belonged here. All over again, we were back to that night we spent together in my room. She felt right here. I didn’t want her anywhere else and I didn’t want the house without her in it. I didn’t want my life without her in it.
Was I really thinking that? Was I really letting myself feel that way about her? What about all those impossible complications she mentioned?
I could see us solving them together. I could see her moving in here and living happily ever after. She said she didn’t care about the dragon thing. It was just the motorcycle club that bothered her, but maybe that was a little wrinkle for her to work out within herself kinda like the sex.
What if she could? Would I be ready to throw down with her and put all my eggs in the same basket with her? Was I ready to leave behind the past and start thinking about the future again—a future beyond just raising Anna and keeping a roof over our heads?
My heart and soul screamed, Yes! But another shadow clouded my vision. Would Maya want me to leave the club? Did I want to leave the club? If I left the club, Los Diablos would come after me to bury their secret. That would put all of us in danger, not just Maya.
I wandered into the kitchen. For some reason, I always wanted to keep my distance when Maya hung out with Anna. I didn’t want to intrude on that relationship. I didn’t want them liking each other for my sake. I wanted them to care for each other because…. well, because they cared for each other. I didn’t want to turn it into an obligation.
I didn’t understand half the stuff I was thinking. I cracked the fridge just to give myself something to do. Anna said she was hungry and the clock on the wall showed six o’clock. Dinnertime.
My body still screamed in protest, but the instinct of years of taking care of home overpowered its objections. I pulled out a package of ground beef and tossed it into a pan with a can of tomatoes. I added herbs and spices and onion and garlic. I warmed up some tortillas and cut up lettuce and fried some beans.
I put everything on the table along with three plates, three glasses, and three sets of cutlery. I made a pitcher of lemonade and put that in the center. I couldn’t explain it, but for the first time in years, making dinner made me indescribably happy. I wasn’t doing this because I had to. I was doing this for….
Mi familia. I hesitated to formulate those words in my mind, but they did arise. This was my family, the family I always wanted. That little nightmare about Laura getting taken away was nothing but a temporary hiccup. Now we were back on track.
I checked myself. I couldn’t start thinking like that. This was the second time I got together with Maya outside of the hospital. She said she wanted to see me again, not spend the rest of her life with me. We hadn’t even touched the issues she raised.
I still experienced a sudden pang of exquisite happiness at having her here. I didn’t want her to leave, and that meant she would need to eat meals here with the rest of us. Maybe she might even start keeping a toothbrush or hairbrush here sometimes.
“Dinnertime,” I called out. “Come and get it while it’s hot.”
Maya stood up and draped her handbag strap over her shoulder. “I should go. I’ll let you get to your dinner.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” I told her. “Sit down and eat.”
She raised her eyebrows. “But I…. I didn’t mean to impose on you when I came over. I just wanted to tell you….”
I pointed to the table and shifted into my The Boss voice. “Sit down.”
13
Maya
Anna traced her finger over a triangle on the page in front of me. “And you take the tangent this angle and divide it by the length of this side to get the length of this side.”
I gaped first at the drawing, then at her and back to the diagram. “Isn’t this a little complicated for you?”
“Not really. Carlos showed me how to do it. It’s actually pretty easy when you understand it.”
My eyebrows flew up. “Carlos showed you that?”
“Sure.” She bounced on the couch cushions. “He’s smart. He knows a lot of things. He knows more than probably anyone else in the club. He even knows more than Papa.”
I cast a glance at Roman kicked back in the recliner across the room. I hoped her comments didn’t hurt his feelings, but he only laughed. “All right, sweetie. It’s bedtime. Put your geometry away and go brush your teeth.”
“Aw, Papa!” she moaned. “Just another ten minutes. Please!”
“You had another ten minutes half an hour ago,” he told her. “Come on, it’s late and you need your sleep if you want to have fun at the zoo tomorrow. You know how you get when you’re tired.”
She groaned and complained all the way, but he marched her down the hall. Their voices drifted farther away until they vanished into Anna’s room. I cast a wary glance around the living room.
After a stupendous meal of some of the best tacos I ever ate, I enjoyed hanging out with Roman and Anna a lot more than I should have. I only came over here to apologize for pushing Roman away. That turned into a three-hour visit and now Anna was going to bed.
I should make a graceful exit while I had a chance. I didn’t want Roman to think I came over here for a booty call. I didn’t want to think that about myself, either, even though I didn’t come over for that. I never really thought I would hook up with Roman again. I didn’t want him to see me as an easy lay.
I got up and put my handbag over my shoulder all ready to leave as soon as Roman returned. It took a lot longer than I expected. Maybe he had to read her a bedtime story.
While I waited, I meandered around the living room. A few framed family photographs sat on a shelf by the couch. I guess Roman didn’t destroy them the way he scratched out his wife’s picture on his chest. I suppose he couldn’t really do that with Anna around. She needed to see her mother’s picture. It would damage her to get rid of them even to protect him.
Then again, these pictures faced a part of the room where he could ignore them most of the time. He didn’t have to see her watching him make dinner or talk to anybody.
I heard Roman coming back and went back to the front door to make my escape. He sauntered over to me. “She’s gone.”
“She’s really bright if she’s learning all that geometry.”
“That’s nothing for her,” he replied. “She’s always learning something that blows my mind.”
I looked toward the door. “I should go. You should get some rest, too. You’ll need it tomorrow at the zoo.”
“Why don’t you come with us?” he asked. “Anna would love it if you came along.”
“I don’t know.” I shifted my weight to my other foot. “Maybe it’s not such a good idea.”
“It’s a great idea,” he countered. “You said you wanted to see me again. Here I am inviting you to the zoo. Nothing can happen there. You’ll be perfectly safe.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m not worried about anything happening there.”
He grinned. “Come on. Say you’ll go. We’ll call it a family date. You can talk to Anna the whole time if it makes you feel better.”
I lowered my eyes to the floor. My cheeks burned standing alone with him in his living room. “I don’t know.”
He dropped his voice to a subtle murmur. “Would you feel better going out with me alone?”
My head shot up and his eyes locked me into him. “What?”
“Like we did last time,” he breathed. “Just the two of us without Anna around. Would you prefer that?”
I shook my head, but that did nothing to clear my thoughts. I didn’t know what I wanted. I wanted to see him again, but the prospect of spending time with him, either alone or with Anna, confused me so I couldn’t think straight.
He took a step toward me. When he spoke, his breath brushed my burning cheeks. He smelled of spices and food and….and home. “You said you wanted to see me again and I want to see you again. What’s wrong with the zoo? Y
ou know I have a daughter and you two get along, so why not spend time with both of us?”
“Look, Roman, I….” I began.
He moved before I could begin to think of stopping him. He swept across the last few inches holding us apart and slipped his hand against my cheek. His fingers trailed into my hair, and in a split second, he had me in that overpowering grip the way he did the other night. His eyes held me enthralled and his voice burrowed into my core.
“I want us to be a family, Maya,” he whispered. “You might not want that, but if you spend any time with me at all, you ought to know that’s where I’m going with this. I want you with us, for better or for worse. I want you and me and Anna to be together, not just tonight and tomorrow but always. Do you understand?”
I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t will myself to speak. Did he really just say that? What could I say in response that made any sense? Always? That concept didn’t even exist in my world. I never considered for a single second saying Always to any man, especially not one as complicated as him.
I just told him at the hospital I couldn’t have anything to do with him as long as he was in a motorcycle gang. Did those words mean nothing? Was I so weak that I would turn around and say Always so quickly just because he wanted it?
He sailed toward me through space. I saw him coming closer. I couldn’t stop him. He would kiss me and we would probably fall into bed the way we did before. He held me in the palm of his hand. Every straying caress of his fingertips would rocket me to oblivion where I would no longer question what I was doing.
I wouldn’t question until tomorrow morning when I saw what I’d done in the cold, clear light of reason. Then I would understand that any connection between us had no future at all. He could say Always until he was blue in the face. It meant nothing in the end.
His lips drew close to my mouth. My heart cried to kiss him, to put my arms around him, to erase all those problems. His hands commanded me to submit to the mystical power he held over me. His immaculate lips touched mine and the deluge of emotion and crushing intensity swallowed me.
His fingertips grazed my ears and sizzling desire pierced my brain. I sagged into the delicious perfume of his kiss. I couldn’t resist it. My arms floated upward to hold him.
My palm touched something wet. The sensation contradicted everything I thought about this moment. I broke off his mouth and glanced down to find blood smeared across my hand.
I gasped and jumped back. I gaped at the red stain darkening my fingers. “Roman! You’re bleeding!”
He flinched and shot out one arm to support himself against the wall. He folded forward and clutched his stomach. “Yeah. I got a little shot yesterday.”
“Shot!” I shrieked. “What happened?”
I gaped at the spot on his side where I touched that blood. A dark wet stain glistened on his t-shirt. The nurse in me took over. I lunged at him and yanked up the shirt. A wide swath of taped gauze circled his ribs and abdomen, and a large spreading red blotch discolored the white fabric.
I sucked in my breath. “Holy fuck!”
“It’s nothing,” he croaked. “It’s just a little blood.”
“You bastard! Why didn’t you tell me?” I seized him by the shoulders, spun him around, and shoved him toward the hall.
“Maya, come on,” he chided. “It’s not that serious.”
“Shut up! You got shot and you didn’t tell me? How could you keep something like that from me?” I pushed him into the bathroom and tore open the cabinet under the sink. “Where’s your first aid kit?”
He collapsed against the wall and slumped onto the edge of the bathtub. “It’s in that drawer. I’m telling you it’s nothing. The guys stitched me up. I’ll be fine. It’s just bleeding a little.”
I pointed to the bandage. “Do you call that bleeding a little? Sit down and don’t talk.”
I unzipped the first aid kit. When I saw what was inside, I smacked my lips. “This is pathetic. You would think a gang that can stitch up their own members would have something a little better than this. Stay here. I have to get something out of my car.”
I charged for the bathroom door. Roman reached out a hand. “Maya, come on…..”
I didn’t hear the rest of what he said. I didn’t care. He was bleeding. He was probably bleeding a lot worse than that and he didn’t even have the decency to tell me.
I marched out to my car and got my own first aid kit—a real first aid kit. I stormed back to the bathroom to find Roman still parked on the edge of the tub. He glanced up when I entered and laid out my kit on the floor. “What are you going to do?”
I took hold of his shirt and tugged. “Take this off.”
I peeled the shirt off and tossed it into the tub. It thumped against the porcelain, so that tells you how much blood soaked into it. I got out my scissors and started cutting off the bandage.
Roman winced, but he didn’t argue. I cut through the dense cloth and tape and pried the bandage off like a sheet of plate armor. It weighed more than it should have from all the blood in it. I threw that on top of the shirt and turned my attention the wound.
Whoever sewed him up did a pretty good job. I couldn’t have done better myself, but one of the sutures had pulled through the skin and left a gaping bloody hole. Gore dripped down his abs and would have trickled into his waistband if I hadn’t caught it with a gauze square.
“Christ, you’re a mess!” I murmured.
“It’s all right,” he snarled, but he spasmed again when I pulled out the fragment of the suture.
I pressed the gauze to the wound. “Hold onto this while I get my needle threaded.”
“Just leave it alone,” he began, but he exploded when I put pressure on the source of the bleeding. “What the fuck!”
I let him hold the square and got out my suture kit. “How did it happen? And don’t give me any bullshit about how it’s none of my business. Tell me the truth.”
He looked away and grumbled under his breath. “We went after the guys that popped Kane. You want to know the truth? They ran him down on the freeway along with another one of my brothers. Kane got thrown off his bike and flew off an overpass. The other hombre got dragged under a truck and killed. We went after them to get payback. One of them shot me.”
I glanced up from knotting my thread. “What about the other guys? Were they Longtails? What happened to them?”
He sniffed, but he wouldn’t look at me. “One of them got away.”
“How many didn’t?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t count them.”
I pursed my lips. “Did you kill them?”
He leveled his sharp eyes at me. “Yes, I did, and I’ll most likely kill more of them before I’m through. If you don’t like that, you should go now. I can call one of my brothers to sew me up again.”
For a second, I faced off against him as well as I could while kneeling on the floor at his feet. He was right. I already knew he was in a dangerous gang at war against another dangerous gang. More people would get shot and killed. Most likely, I would get called on to care for them when they got brought into the hospital.
Even if I let myself get involved with Roman, I would probably wind up taking care of Los Diablos’ enemies in the course of my job. Could I handle that?
I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t use my skills to take care of Roman. Tending to patients in the hospital was one thing. If I stayed in this house one more minute, if I used my skills to stop this bleeding, I had to accept what he was. I couldn’t keep playing both sides of the fence.
I already knew the answer to that, though, didn’t I? I kissed him. I even slept with him. I wouldn’t keep coming back if I didn’t want something more—a lot more. I already knew that and I never walked away from a bleeding man in my life. I wasn’t about to start now.
I stretched the suture thread tight and got up on my knees in front of him. “Lift your arm.”
He took the gauze away from his side and pried
his elbow above his head to expose his side. I bent over the wound and got to work. I closed the hole and wiped the blood away. Then I covered it with fresh gauze and taped it up as good as new—well, not quite.
I threw all the bloody gauze in the tub. “That should hold it, but you shouldn’t move around too much. You need to rest until it scabs over.”
He stole a peek at me. “Does that mean I can’t go to the zoo tomorrow, nurse?”
I couldn’t help grinning. “You shouldn’t, but I guess you’ll ignore that like everything else.”
“Anna would kill me if I finked out on her now.” He scooped up his t-shirt from the bathtub and tossed it into the laundry hamper.
“I think she would understand if you told her you got shot.”
“She already knows.” He cocked his head when I stiffened. “You don’t think she doesn’t understand about our life? She knows more than anyone. She knows our people are in danger from the humans every single day. Every child grows up knowing that.”
I bowed over my first aid kit and made a show of putting my stuff away. “I guess I never thought about your people being in danger from us. It’s so easy to think we’re in danger from you.”
“You’re not in danger from us,” he replied. “We never harmed any human in all our history. It’s always humans going off hunting dragons, never the other way around.”
I looked up at him. I knew what he was, but I still found it difficult to accept that he was really a dragon. He was just a man. How could he ever be a danger to anyone?
For once, he didn’t hold my gaze. He looked away first. What was he thinking?
Then he got up and started fidgeting around the bathroom. I didn’t see what he was doing. I finished packing up my kit and zipping it closed before I got to my feet.
I met him coming back down the hall from somewhere. His eyes darted away to one side before he came back to looking at me. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
I nodded. I couldn’t think of anything to say but, “I better go. It’s getting late.”