I dropped my head back and looked up. Maybe if I prayed for divine intervention? I did that a lot with Memphis. She would fit in well with the flock, I was certain of that. The thought brought a shiver up my spine as visions of sex parties and drunken nights flooded me. Did I want to see her dressed in just her bra and panties? Nope, nope, and nope.
“There is a funeral at the club tomorrow, and we need to get back for it,” I told her in a quiet voice. It didn’t matter how quiet I spoke around her because she heard everything. Her hearing was beyond brilliant, her best sense.
“Oh, Creed, I am so sorry. Who died?”
“Darth’s woman.”
“Vegas? But how? Is Darth okay? You should be with him now, not here with me. We can do this another time, Creed.”
God, she was so fucking sweet. Her first instinct was to always put others before herself. It was her best quality.
“I will, Angel, tomorrow. I want you to come with me back to the compound. Will you?” I ignored the endearment that just slipped out. I shouldn’t have referred to her in that way, but well, she was a fucking angel—sweet and kind and far too beautiful for her own good or for a broken bastard like me.
I got down to her level and put my fingers under her chin, lifting her face to me.
“I need you with me for a while, Memphis. There is shit going down that is putting the women of the club in danger, and somehow, that danger has found you. Can you close the store for a while and come with me?” I held my breath and waited for her to answer. I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. She was going back with me, but I wanted to know if she wanted to. Fuck if I knew why that was important. It just was.
“Shiloh? Is she in danger, too?”
Of course, she was worried about Shiloh. Memphis had never met her, never laid eyes on her, but whenever I came to visit, she would make me sit and tell her stories about my brothers, their women, and of the club’s princess. And there were plenty of those. That kid had everyone wrapped around her fingers and toes. I was well and truly wrapped with a big red bow on top. I loved her more than my own life, and she was the only person I had let in my heart, other than Memphis, after Lila Rose. Ever since the day Shiloh was brought home to the compound by a nervous Deck, all wrapped in pink and green camo, I had loved her. The pain of not being able to hold my own child was made just a little better by her presence. My brothers thought it would be hard on me to have an infant around, and I guess, in a way, it had been at first, but when I walked the hallways on my first shift with a colicky one-month-old Shiloh, I was a goner—hook, line, and sinker. She owned me and always would.
“Yeah, Angel, she is. All the women are, and now you are, too. So please, stop busting my balls, get up, and do what we have to, then pack your shit up, and get moving.”
“Okay, Creed.” She wiped the tears from her checks and held out her hands to me, the softness in her tone hitting me dead centre like always.
I grabbed her hands in mine and got us both to our feet.
“Thank you. I will get one of the prospects to come in one of the club’s SUVs to take you, Apollo, and whatever you want to take back to the compound,” I said as I pulled out my phone and pulled up Seb’s number. He was the most trusted of the prospects, the girls liked him, and he took their security seriously. I should have organised it before I left, or I should have driven here instead of riding. I never took a pillion passenger—ever. I guess with the stress of what happened at the club and what was going to happen today, it had slipped my mind.
“It’s not like I will go broke if I close for a while. I have had three people walk in the store this week. One was looking for a comic and another, a Playboy magazine.” Memphis laughed. She was so fucking easy going, full of life and trust. I just hoped I didn’t drain that out of her.
I grunted. Just as well I hadn’t been here at the time. She might not see her appeal to the male population, but I sure as fucking did. I tucked her hand in the crook of my arm while I held the phone to my ear with my other hand. I turned and walked us towards the back of the store that led to the backyard.
Where my fate lay waiting.
Chapter 2
MEMPHIS
He smelled so good, like the ocean, clean and fresh with a hint of warm sunshine. I smiled at my description of Creed’s scent. How would I know what the ocean smelled like let alone looked like? My parents took Lila and me there when I was a very little girl, but the memories had faded so much that all I really remembered was the sand and how it felt in my toes. Small snippets of colour flashed in my mind, but that was all. Blues, I remembered blues and greens. The best colour I remembered, though, was a deep onyx black, the colour of Creed’s eyes. I loved that memory, and I called upon it every night when I went to sleep, every time I missed my sister or my parents. It calmed me and helped me through the lonely days without Creed.
When my sister was fourteen, she had brought home a boy from school. Creed. I was only four at the time, but I took one look at him and announced to my parents and sister that Creed was my best friend. I had even asked him to marry me right there in my parents’ lounge room, aged four. Instead of laughing at me or being cruel, Creed got down on his knees right in front of me and smiled at me.
“Sure thing, kid. I will marry you, no worries,” he’d said and ruffled my hair.
From that moment, I loved Creed Stephens. Of course, he was ten years older than me, and I had no idea what love was. And there was the fact that he was my sister’s boyfriend, but none of that mattered. Creed was my friend. He never left me out, pushed me away, or thought of me as a pest. My whole childhood consisted of Creed and Lila. They took me with them most places, and when they got older, they spent time just the two of them, but they never forgot about me.
When my sight left me for good at the age of seventeen, caused by severe Glaucoma and my parents’ abhorrent neglect, Creed became my protector. He didn’t think of me as a pain in the arse or Lila’s annoying sister, not once, not Creed. He helped me figure out how to find my way around the house by counting how many steps it would take me to get to the bathroom or my bedroom. He mourned the loss of my sight along with me when my parents wouldn’t.
My mum and dad were true products of the sixties, hippies if you will. I mean, what rational, normal parents called their kids after flowers? Or, in my case, after their favourite singer’s birthplace and a flower.
I mean, please, Lila Rose Willow was a beautiful name. Me, I got Memphis Hyacinth, only two names, not three. Was that even Elvis’s favourite flower? My guess was nope.
They believed in free love, free spirit, and learning about life’s hard knocks the hard way. That meant no vaccinations as children, and no doctors’ visits when my sight started to go poorly. It took a few years, but I finally went completely blind, and as we were home-schooled, there were no concerned teachers to help me, and no school nurse to send home a letter to my parents about my sight issues. My father’s suggestion had been to offer me some weed—to mellow out he had told me. I hated that part of growing up with my parents, their blasé attitude to raising Lila and me. With her being so much older than me, she became more of a mum to me than a sister, and after our parents up and left us in the middle of the night when I was sixteen, Lila and Creed got me to a doctor, but unfortunately, it was too little, too late. So I went completely blind. Okay, it hadn’t been as easy as that. My blindness had been a hard process, soul destroying for not only me but also my sister, but we had support. Creed moved in with us, and we never heard any more of my parents until the day after my eighteenth birthday when we heard they had died.
They had hooked up with a group of free spirits, much like themselves, somewhere near Byron Bay. The building they had been squatting in caught fire and all had perished.
Three years later, Lila died.
Then it was just me—and Creed, of course, just a different version of him. He stopped smiling, stopped laughing, he just stopped everything. Lila had been his life, and suddenl
y, he had nothing. It hurt so much that he lost his spark, but it also hurt that he thought he had nothing left. He had me, but it hadn’t meant enough, so he asked to be deployed back with his team a week after the accident, leaving me and the memories of his wife behind to build another world with his team, his club. I had yet to meet any of them, but I felt like I knew them all already. Creed hadn’t left me, left me. He’d visited all the time to check up on me, do maintenance around the store and the house, made sure I was okay, that sort of thing, but he essentially had another life without me.
After today, I was not sure how I was going to fit in.
“Angel, are you okay? Are you having second thoughts?” Creed’s question snapped me out of my melancholy trip into the past.
Second thoughts? Was he nuts? No way was I having second, third, or fourth thoughts. An off the cuff offer from a teen Creed to a four-year-old girl made in jest was about to become my reality. No way was I going to second guess it.
“Nope, not at all,” I replied, looking to my left where he was standing, his hand laced with mine. The warmth of his grip flowed through me as it always did when Creed touched me.
“All right, then. Let’s go get married.” The way he said the words sent a shiver of both hope and dread up my spine. He was never going to be mine in the real sense, just on paper. He was in love with his dead wife, my sister, the best person I ever knew. Why would he care that this was the most special moment of my life? He was just marrying me to help me out, and he had no idea that since I could remember, I had loved Creed Stephens and always would.
I smiled and nodded my head. “Let’s go get married,” I agreed softly. My free hand was tucked against my side with two fingers crossed. I hoped that my heart would stay in one piece, but somehow, that wish was going to be an unlikely one.
Chapter 3
CREED
The weight of the gold band on my finger made me feel nothing but guilt. I was betraying my wife, her memory, her love, our vows to forsake all others until death do us part. Death had, in fact, parted us, but it did nothing to stop the roaring betrayal I felt as I stood in front of Memphis, our hands clasped together, wedding bands on our fingers.
“Creed.” I heard Memphis hiss at me.
I shook my head slightly and trained my focus back to the moment.
“Creed, you may now kiss the bride,” Patty, the marriage celebrant, said.
The invitation to kiss my new wife had sweat beading on my forehead. Kiss another woman was something I had not done since the day I held Lila Rose’s limp, mangled form in my arms, my lips pressing to hers in a desperate, useless attempt to breathe life back into her somehow. Fuck, I hated those memories. They always took me to a dark place where I deserved to be forever. The simple fact was I lived, and she died, although what I had been doing for the last five years could hardly be called living.
I took in the sight of Memphis pulling her bottom lip in with her teeth. She was nervous. This would be our first kiss as husband and wife, but I had to disappoint her, though. I leant down and brushed my lips across her soft cheek. The scent of something soft and floral filled my nostrils as I did. Not peaches, thank God. I couldn’t handle that. She looked so much like the love of my life that smelling like her, too, would gut me.
I didn’t miss the disappointment that briefly crossed her features as I pulled back and stood straight, releasing our laced hands as I did.
“Congratulations to you both. I hope you have a long, happy, and love-filled life together,” the celebrant said as she tucked the small notebook she’d read from under her arm and then shook both our hands.
The large knot in my throat only allowed me to nod my head. Memphis, though, had absolutely no problems saying her piece.
“Thank you, Patty. You know this is for appearance’s sake only, right? This guy wouldn’t be interested in me under normal circumstances.” Rattled, her hands flapped around the place as she spoke, which Memphis did a lot. She saw with them, too.
Patty spared me a knowing glance. “Of course, hon, I understand,” she replied kindly, then turned and walked around us towards the back gate.
“Okay, then, what do we do now?”
The answer of fucked if I know didn’t seem appropriate—although it certainly fit the question. I knew what we weren’t going to be doing—the customary wedding night. Me marrying Memphis was just to help her out, nothing more, nothing less. I had no intentions of getting married for love ever again, so marrying for convenience so Memphis could hold onto her grandparents’ home was the least I could do. Memphis lost her last family member when Lila Rose died after her parents had split and taken off to fulfil their own dreams—fuck, I hated those two. What they allowed to happen to their own daughter pissed me the fuck off.
“Creed, are you sorry? I know you never wanted to get married again, and I know how much you still love—”
“I’m fine. We have a lot of packing and shit to do before leaving at first light in the morning. I need to get back to the compound,” I said, interrupting her.
There was no way I was going to talk about my wife, my first wife, on the day I married her sister. Not on your life.
———
I slept like shit.
Memphis and I had stayed up all night packing, and she had a lot of stuff she needed to take with her. I told her she could be staying for a month or more, so basically, everything she owned was coming with us, even Apollo. I wasn’t too sure how the other animals back at the club were going to take the new intruder, especially Winnie. That cat hated just about everyone. Poor Trigger spent most of her time under the pool table these days, hiding from the fluffy she-devil. Shiloh was going to love him, though, and I could almost see her in my mind riding the Newfoundland like a pony. He was just as bloody big as one.
“Brother? Wanna tell me what the fuck is going on?” My VP’s voice interrupted my thoughts about huge dogs.
It didn’t surprise me to see him instead of Squid standing on the front porch, not one little bit. My sudden disappearance from the club the previous morning would have piqued everyone’s interest. With what went down with Vegas, I needed to be there since the club was on lockdown.
I called Booth late last night and explained enough about my phone call with Rogue and how I needed to check on Memphis to appease his annoyance at me for leaving the way I did. I, of course, left out the getting married part, that could wait a little longer.
He was shocked to hear I had been visiting her all the times I left on my own and a little hurt that I had kept her hidden from the club, too. It wasn’t something I wanted to get into on the phone with him, and I promised to get everybody up to speed in the war room after the service for Vegas. There were going to be a lot of questions asked, that much I knew, but I just wasn’t sure how much I wanted to tell. How did I explain that I didn’t want any of the danger to touch Memphis when all my brothers had endured their own women being at risk time after time?
“Steel, good to see you, brother. How’s Mia?” I avoided his question by talking about Mia, which was a safer bet, believe it or not. Steel and I had gone toe to toe on more than one occasion over the pretty brunette. The right guy won, but it left a slightly bitter taste in my mouth. I couldn’t fault his love and devotion for her, but it had been touch and go there for a while. She tempted me more than once, that was for sure, and the memory of her drunk and begging me for sex was an image I would not forget. Another reason the right guy won her heart.
“Steel, let’s not do this right now, okay? When we get back, I will tell everyone the whole story. Has Seb packed up the car?” I massaged my temples, the headache that had threatened the day before had finally made its appearance.
Steel looked at me for a long moment with a look I knew well. He was trained just as I was to look and observe, to miss nothing. To see the target and find the weak spot, the best way in, so I wasn’t at all surprised when his eagle eyes landed on my hand and my ring finger.
“Fuc
k me, brother. This is big,” Steel said, stating the fucking obvious.
“You have no idea, brother.” There was so much more to the clusterfuck that had become my life—so fucking much more, including a part that I had been deliberately trying to forget about.
Steel opened his mouth to say something, but a movement to our left stopped him. His head turned just in time to watch Memphis make her way into the room. Because of the mess of boxes all over the floor, she used her white cane, the normally uncluttered path she used compromising her safety.
“Creed, I heard other voices. Are your brothers here?”
“Holy fucking shit,” Steel whispered in complete shock.
You don’t know the half of it, brother. I shook my head at him. Memphis might not be able to see, but her hearing and other senses were unbelievably honed.
I cleared my throat, and then I said the words I never imagined I would ever say again. “Steel, this is Memphis, my wife.”
Chapter 4
MEMPHIS
My insides did a happy dance when Creed introduced me as his wife. Yes, I was indeed his wife, under duress on his part, but on my part, it was a whole different story. We had history, oodles of it, and he knew me better than I knew myself at times.
“Where?” I asked Creed. He knew what I wanted, always did—well, not my inner secret wants.
“Arm’s length to your left.”
I reached out, and my hand found a hard wall of muscle. By the feel of the indents, I estimated this was Steel’s abdomen. Slowly, I traced a path up until I felt the stubble on a well-formed, strong chin. My other hand joined in, and for a few seconds, I learned the new face. Chiselled jaw, blunt nose—not too big—and strong cheekbones. Movie star looks came to mind as my hands travelled to silky hair that, by the feel of it, sat just on his shoulder.
“Wow, you are good looking. I can’t wait to meet the rest of the club members,” I said excitedly. I was always excited to meet new people. I knew everyone in my small town, the ones I knew from when I could see, and those I had since met. I had learned all their faces. Meeting new people, especially Creed’s people, was going to be thrilling.
His Angel: The Wounded Souls Series Page 2