by Bella Rose
A traitorous portion of her brain remembered just how much fun she’d had riding on the back of Griffin’s bike as they’d followed that twisty road between the inn and her house. That wasn’t important. It was time for her to act like a grown up. She had a teenager to finish raising, and her mother wouldn’t have wanted her to give in to her wild-child urges and screw up the whole thing.
Leah knew something was wrong as soon as she opened her car door. She could hear the yelling coming from inside the house. Someone hit a pitch that made the windows seem to shiver. Setting her jaw and preparing herself to be non-biased, she grabbed her purse and a little overnight bag out of her passenger seat before marching up to the front door.
It started the moment she walked inside. No sooner had the door shut behind her than Griffin appeared in the living room. “Good. You’re back. You can help me tell Thorn that he needs to go put in a few hours in the barn doing actual work. If he’s going to live here, then he’s going to contribute like everyone else.”
“There’s no fucking way I’m working out there like some loser!” Thorn belted out, not even saying hi before launching into the rest of his tirade. “Dad never made me work! Why should I work now? I don’t have to! This is all mine! All of it. If I wanted to throw their asses off the property right this damn minute, I could! That means you all work for me!”
It was like watching a demented debate or a full-contact tennis match or something equally insane. She could barely catch her breath much less muster an argument. Then something Griffin had said caught her attention.
Griffin wasn’t done, however. “Leah, would you explain to Mr. Entitlement that this place does not belong to him? He needs to understand that he’s going to have to work for a living if he’s going to survive in life.”
Leah frowned at Griffin and moved to stand between him and her brother. “There’s no way in hell that I’m letting my little brother go work in that barn! Are you insane? He’s a kid, for goodness sake!”
“Yeah!” Thorn crowed. “I’m a kid, Griffin. I don’t have to work. I’m just supposed to play. You guys are here to take care of me, not the other way around.”
“What!” Griffin stormed. He looked three seconds away from losing his temper. “That’s your idea of raising him? You’re just going to teach him to be some lazy bastard that lets everyone else work for him? Nice. So you’re just a chip off the old block, huh?”
“If you think I’m letting my brother work in your meth lab, you might as well walk your ass out that door!” Leah shouted. She got right in Griffin’s face and put her finger in his chest. “My brother isn’t going to make your drugs.”
It was weird, but everything in the room stopped at that moment. Griffin’s eyebrows shot up and he opened his mouth, but no words came out. Thorn’s silence only lasted for a few breaths before he started cackling like a hyena. In fact, her brother was howling so loudly that she was sure she had missed something vital.
“What?” Leah demanded of Thorn. “Stop laughing and explain what’s so funny!”
“Come here.” Griffin grabbed her arm in one hand, and Thorn’s in the other.
He marched the two of them out the front door, down the driveway, and up the hill to where the old, red barn perched. The fencing was gone, but one of the double doors was pushed open as if someone inside was trying to enjoy the breeze. Leah kept waiting to smell the horrible acrid scent of a meth lab, but the only thing she caught wind of was metallic with tinges of rubber and burnt plastic.
“Meth lab,” Griffin muttered. “Seriously?”
What else would they be doing out here? It was the reason she had assumed they needed the property and why the cops wanted to push them off the land so badly. What else would they be doing up there?
Griffin tried not to be furious with Leah. Back when she had left the compound, Deacon’s main business had been exactly that. He had grown pot and brewed several other designer drugs. The old barn had been one of the first meth labs in the county. But that was before. Things had changed, and Griffin hoped that they would continue to do so.
He pulled Thorn and Leah into the barn and enjoyed the moment of truth. Of course, Thorn already knew what was up here. He just hadn’t wanted to contribute anything. Leah, on the other hand, had no reason to know any of this.
“You guys have a motorcycle shop?” she said in wonder. “Do you just do repairs?”
“No.” Griffin couldn’t help the shot of pride he felt in the entire operation, which had been his brainchild from the start. “We do custom builds, repairs, and even modifications. It’s a full-service shop.”
“Wow.” Leah sounded genuinely impressed.
Griffin had a good feeling about her willingness to be open minded. That boded well for all the things he was going to ask of her in the near future. She needed to see that things were not the same as they were back when she had left with her mother. The Hellfire Crew had evolved in their own way.
“I can’t believe you thought it was a meth lab,” Thorn said to Leah. He was still laughing, snorting and chuckling as he looked around with the obvious arrogance of assumed ownership. “This is my nest egg, man. Someday this is going to be mine, and I’m going to make fucking bank!”
Leah spun angrily and glared at her brother. Griffin took an instinctive step back. Then she smacked Thorn on the shoulder. Once. Twice. On the third time her brother put his hands up to defend himself.
“Hey!” he whined. “Child abuse!”
“Child abuse?” she snarled. “Are you kidding me? What about your asinine statement just now that you were going to make tons of money off of other people working for you?”
Thorn smirked. “Capitalism, baby. It’s called owning a business.”
“You don’t own shit!” Leah told him. “I’m so ashamed of you right now I’m ready to disinherit you just so you never have a fucking penny without having to work for it!”
“What?” Now Thorn looked alarmed. “You can’t do that.”
“Watch me.” Leah wasn’t kidding around. Her expression was deadly. “Look at all these people!” She gestured to the workers on second shift. Everyone was pretty much staring at Thorn and Leah for now. “These people are working their asses off! You think they’re doing that because they want some spoiled little boy to be able to sit back and fart around for the rest of his life? No! They’re doing it because they’re part of this organization and this man—” She gestured at Griffin. “This man has managed to make a way for everyone to be profitable and make an honest living.”
“Leah,” Thorn whined again. “You’re being a bitch.”
“No. It’s time you understand a bit of the real world, Thorn.” She crossed her arms and gave him a sharp stare. “This place is not yours. It’s mine. I don’t have to give it to you. It was never Dad’s. I inherited it from our mother’s family. And I will stipulate that you never inherit unless you start working and chipping in around here like everyone else.”
“What?” Thorn’s outrage was plain and simple. “I’m not working!”
“You are too!” she argued right back. “You can work two hours every day after school without it interfering with your homework.”
He scoffed. “Fuck homework. I don’t do that shit.”
“Yeah?” Her look of disgust twisted Griffin’s heart. She really loved the kid, and he was so oblivious. Then she poked Thorn right in the chest. “You don’t graduate high school—on time—then I’m keeping this place.”
“That’s not fair!” Thorn shrieked. “I hate you! I wish you had died instead of Dad!”
Thorn bolted from the barn. Griffin started to go after him, but Leah grabbed his arm. “Let him go. He needs a minute. It’ll be all right. Even if he leaves, he has no place else to go.”
Griffin disagreed, but there was time enough to talk about that later. Leah had no idea what her younger brother was really into, and it was time that she learned. But first he needed to make a point.
“We don’t
make, deal, or use drugs out here,” Griffin told her firmly. He reconsidered. “Okay, so there’s some definite recreational weed smoking going on, but that’s it.”
Leah actually laughed. “I appreciate that. I just…” She bit her lip, looking confused. “You guys still wear that one-percent patch on your arm. I just always thought that’s what it was referring to.”
“At this point I think we’re a hereditary outlaw gang,” Griffin admitted. “It’s really hard to change a rep like that. Especially since Deacon wasn’t interested in trying to alter anybody’s opinion of us. If we’re considered dangerous, people leave us alone. That’s pretty much what most of us want.”
She gestured around them at the motorcycle shop. “But this is a big deal, Griffin. I mean really, it’s incredible. I can’t believe you got all these people who pretty much do their own thing to do shift work out here.”
“Not everyone does. Some of us still have regular jobs out in the community.”
“Like the bar,” she guessed.
He grinned at her. “Like the bar.”
“I think I need to completely rethink my assessment of you, Griffin Prentiss,” Leah said softly.
Griffin wondered if there might be hope for them after all.
Chapter Seventeen
Leah had never felt so very confused in her life. It seemed as if every single assumption she had made about this place and its residents was wrong. Griffin wasn’t a drug dealing thug on a Harley. He was a thoughtful man who had put together a way for the people under his care to scrape out a living in a very tough economy.
She wasn’t deluded enough to believe that her father had been behind all of this. Deacon liked easy money. He’d married her mother to get the land, and he’d used the land to start a criminal enterprise. The Hellfire Crew predated their marriage, but the land had been the only reason that Deacon had been able to make a bid for leadership of the gang.
“What are you thinking?” Griffin asked.
They were walking back toward the house from the barn. Twilight was beginning to overtake the afternoon. Days were getting shorter and shorter. Soon the wind would whip through a body leaving behind icy chills. The humidity made for some damp, bone penetrating cold. It would be time to curl up in front of a warm fire with a cup of hot chocolate. It was strange, but Leah was actually imagining herself in that house in front of that fireplace with Griffin and Thorn. Maybe they would play board games or read or watch the old TV. It was a cozy little picture.
She gave a little sigh and glanced up at him as they walked. There was gold stubble on his chin and cheeks. She liked it. Something about the roughness of his appearance appealed to her. “I guess I’m just trying to imagine myself living here. It’s different, you know?”
“I’m sure you never expected to come back,” he agreed.
She swallowed back the lump in her throat. “How much do you know?”
“About your parents and why your mother left?” He threw her a sideways glance and then returned his gaze to the path. They were walking beneath the old pecan trees. Someone was at least trying to harvest the nuts lying on the ground. There were tarps and baskets strung about.
“You knew, didn’t you?” she guessed. “It’s so embarrassing to think that there were people who did. Yet what really gets me is that if people knew, why didn’t they help?”
“It’s hard to stick your nose into someone else’s business,” he reasoned. Griffin stopped walking and turned to face her. “I’m not excusing all of those people who stood by while you were hurt, Leah. I wouldn’t do that. I wanted to do something, but my parents told me to stay out of it. It wasn’t our business. And there was nothing worse than making Deacon mad at you. The man could hold a grudge like nobody else.”
“I tried to contact him,” she admitted in a whisper. “He sent my letters back with the word ‘refused’ scrawled across them.”
“I’m so sorry.”
She shrugged it off. “I got over it a long time ago.”
Griffin wanted her to know that he understood what it must have cost her to try and contact Deacon to begin with, much less to have her efforts crushed. He opened his mouth to speak, but Curtis was hustling in their direction. Griffin had a bad feeling about why.
“He’s gone,” Curtis said without preamble. “The little shit used that back road and gave us the slip.”
Leah tugged on Griffin’s arm. “What’s he talking about?”
“Thorn,” Griffin told her grimly. “I have my guys follow him because he’s constantly trying to leave. We were doing this even before Deacon passed away. Toward the end, the old man was completely out of his mind. He was useless about keeping track of his son, and Thorn fell in with some bad people.”
“What?” Leah’s high pitched voice sounded near panic. “What bad people?”
Curtis gave her an appraising look. Griffin knew his friends didn’t know what to think of her now. In school, they’d at least been casual friends. Since graduation she hadn’t spoken to any of them.
“Tell me,” Leah demanded.
Curtis shrugged. “He’s taken up with the Demon Lovers.”
“What?” Leah’s shout echoed off the hills. “Are you kidding me? Why would he hang around with those losers?”
Griffin chuckled in spite of himself. Leah might not think she was a part of Hellfire life anymore, but there had been too much of the doctrine and tradition drilled into her head as a girl for her to leave all of it behind. The long-time rivalry between the Demon Lovers and the Hellfire Crew was a good example.
Curtis scratched his chin and looked thoughtful. “Griffin has a theory about that.”
“Go ahead,” Griffin urged. “You started the conversation.”
“The Demon Lovers have been jealous of this land even before your daddy managed to convince your mama to marry him.” Curtis was just warming to his topic. “See, the legend goes that the Demon Lovers’ leader—Joe Turnbull—had a thing for your mama.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Leah muttered. “Star-crossed motorcycle gang love triangles?”
“Pretty much.” Curtis gave a decisive nod of his chin. “Your mama picked Deacon, and Joe was pissed ’cause he wanted your mama’s family’s land.”
“So now Joe is trying to get the land by enticing my brother away from the Hellfire Crew,” she guessed. Her eyelids fluttered closed and her face paled several shades. “And my idiot brother is just arrogant enough to believe that bringing the land to the Demon Lovers will make him the big man.”
Curtis grinned. Then he looked at Griffin and waggled his eyebrows. “She always was the smart one, you know?”
“Apparently not a lot of that trickled down to my brother,” Leah muttered.
Griffin gently touched her shoulder. “Give the kid a break. He just lost his dad. You’re a stranger—an outsider. He’s looking for importance and things just aren’t going the way he thought. Deacon and I were rivals as much as we ever worked together. It’s not a surprise that Griffin sees my involvement in this whole thing a complete infringement on his rights.”
Leah could not believe this man who had such reason to be irritated with her idiot brother was defending him. There was no hiding from the truth anymore. Griffin Prentiss was a good man. He might be the boss of an outlaw gang of bikers, but he wasn’t a lowlife.
“Okay.” She put the heels of her hands against her closed eyes and tried to think. “Is there a way to find him?”
Griffin and Curtis looked at each other and shrugged. “We can go hunting.”
“Hunting?”
Griffin motioned to Curtis, who took off running back toward the barn. Curtis was whistling in a tone so shrill that it made Leah’s ears ring. Then she started to see people appearing from seemingly nowhere and everywhere at the same time.
“What’s happening?” she wondered out loud.
Griffin’s arrogant smile should not have given her that weird tummy drop sensation, but it did. He was so damn go
od looking. “Curtis is calling the crew,” he informed her.
“So we’re going to ride out and go look for him?”
“That’s the plan.” Griffin pressed his lips together. “It’s what we’ve done in the past.”
“This happens a lot?” Leah was starting to feel panicky. “How am I supposed to take care of a baby brother who hates me so much that he tries to go behind my back and make deals with devils?”
“I believe they call that parenting,” Griffin quipped.
She slugged his bicep. He started laughing and danced away from her reach as she went to hit him again. She followed along, batting at him in much the same way she had when they were children.
“Get back here, Griffin Prentiss!” she shouted. “If you’re going to be a smartass, I’m going to treat you like one!”
“Is this how you discipline your students?” he teased, still backing away and now putting the trunk of a pecan tree between them. “Because I feel like that’s an outdated method. They don’t hit kids in school anymore! You’re supposed to talk with me about my feelings and help me process my anger.”
“Ugh!” She couldn’t believe he’d just thrown that child psychology crap at her. “Where on earth did you learn that?”
“Maybe I’m just naturally smart.” He ducked left around another pecan tree.
She sped off after him, feinting right and then going left. Finally, she managed to grab his arm. He was so much larger than she that he used her grip to swing her around and into his arms. She thumped up against his chest and there she stayed as he wrapped his arms around her.
“You are so incredibly beautiful. You know that?” he told her softly.
Her heart was hammering her ribs, and she felt as though she couldn’t draw breath. She was excited and nervous all at the same time. Mostly she wanted him to kiss her. She imagined what it might be like to take Griffin’s hand and return to the house under the darkening twilight sky as if they were a normal couple.