by Evelyn Glass
As Stella turned into the drive, he recognized the house. Nothing had changed in the four years since he’d been here last. Even the car in the carport was the same, a white 2005 Buick LeSabre Limited. He parked behind Stella’s car and stepped off. He knew it was ridiculous, but he was actually tentative about meeting Stella’s grandmother. She knew Stella and her mother didn’t get along well after her father had died, so it was Connie he had to win over.
“Don’t be nervous,” Stella teased as she opened the door to Connie’s house.
“Does it show?”
“Only a little. Grammy! We have company!”
Connie Hayes appeared in the kitchen then froze, her eye fixed on Gabriel. He could tell she recognized him, but hadn’t yet put together where she knew him from, then he saw recognition dawn and her face hardened.
“Gabriel?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“He’s come to see Katrina.”
Connie’s eyes flicked to her granddaughter then back to Gabriel. “You told him?”
“Last night.”
She seemed to be waiting for him to say something.
“I’m glad she did. I’d have never left if I’d known,” he said softly.
“Easy for you to say now.”
That stung, but he refused to bite back at her. “I made a terrible mistake, I know that, but I want to try to make it right.”
Connie watched him a moment then softened. The fact he was here to see his daughter and admitting he’d made a mistake tempered her attitude toward him, and it wasn’t his fault he hadn’t been involved with Katrina. “I think there were plenty of mistakes to go around,” she said, looking at Stella.
He could sense there was some hidden meaning in the comment, but he didn’t know what. “That’s behind us now. The important thing is I want to do what’s best for Katrina. If that means staying away…” He paused and he could feel the wetness in his eyes. “…then I’ll stay away. But she’s my daughter, too, and I want to help however I can, even if it’s just financial. I don’t like Stella working two jobs.”
“I can’t make my car payment along with everything else from what I make at the store,” Stella said.
“I’ll finish paying off your car. I want you to turn in your notice, tonight.”
“I’m not asking you to do that! You can’t come in here and start ordering me around,” Stella snapped.
“I’m not ordering you,” he said softly. “If I pay off your car, there’s no reason for you to keep working. It’s for Katrina. Getting off at midnight then having to drag her home in the middle of the night? What kind of life is that? She needs her mother at home at a reasonable hour.”
Stella looked to Connie. “He has a point,” Connie said, holding her eyes.
“Let me help you, Stella,” he said softly. “You and Connie have managed alone these past four years, but you don’t have to do that anymore. I can help. I want to help. I want to be part of Katrina’s life. I want her to know her father.”
Stella looked between Gabriel and Grammy, then smiled. “Thank you.”
He smiled softly. “May I see her?”
“She’s still sleeping, but I was about to wake her up,” Connie said.
“I’ll get her,” Stella said as she moved out of the kitchen and deeper into the house.
After she was out of the room, Connie turned to Gabriel. “Why’d you come back?”
He didn’t know if Connie knew about the Iron Kings, so he decided to gloss over the details. “I was transferred from Charleston to Greenfield.”
“You’re working steady now?”
He smiled. “Yes. I work as a bond runner. I track down fugitives who skip out on bail, place them in custody, and return them for trial.”
“You’re a cop?”
“No, not exactly. I’m only licensed to track down people who try to evade trial.”
“That the only reason you came back?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to see my granddaughter’s heart broken again.”
“No, ma’am. I made that mistake once. I won’t make it again. Leaving her was the worst decision of my life and I have regretted it ever since.”
“Why didn’t you come back before, then?”
He smiled slightly. “Stupid. Then I didn’t want to hurt her again.”
Connie looked at him. He was obviously on his best behavior, as he’d always been when around her, but something was different about him. He seemed more comfortable in his skin than she remembered.
“Katrina, can you say hello to Mr. Gabriel?” Stella asked as she carried the bed-tousled little girl into the room.
Katrina turned away and buried her face in Stella’s shoulder, but not before Gabriel could see she had her mother’s coloring, large eyes and round face. Even though he’d only gotten a glance, he thought she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“She beautiful,” he breathed. He didn’t know the first thing about kids, but he wanted to hold her so badly he could barely contain himself. “Hello, Katrina,” he said softly.
“Can you say hello?” Stella asked, giving Katrina a little bounce, then grinned at Gabriel. “Give her a little time. She’s still half asleep, and like I said, she’s slow to warm up to strangers.”
He nodded. “I understand,” he said quietly.
Connie watched Gabriel and was amazed to see his eyes glisten with tears.
***
Gabriel spent the next hour trying to win over Katrina. When he could delay no longer and had to leave to meet his brothers, Katrina would answer direct questions, but kept her distance from him and wouldn’t engage in conversation with him, but he considered it progress and remained hopeful. He’d desperately wanted to kiss Stella goodbye, and would have had she stepped outside with him, but he wasn’t ready to kiss her in front of Connie. He felt like he’d made progress there, as well, and was treading carefully.
He’d roared into the parking lot of the clubhouse scant minutes before they were scheduled to hit the road. “I thought you weren’t going to make it,” Doc said as they stepped out of the clubhouse.
By the time he’s stopped by his apartment to throw on clean clothes and filled his Harley with gas, he had cut the arrival time fine. “Had things to do this morning. But I’m ready to ride.”
The men mounted up and their bikes barked to life. They pulled out of the clubhouse on a wave of thunder, and headed east and south on I-26. None of the brothers wanted to spend the entire day on the road so they hammered the bikes, riding ten to fifteen miles per hour over the posted speed limit of seventy.
The trip was a fast round trip to pick up the seed money for the club. The Greenfield chapter was receiving the one hundred grand as a loan from the mother chapter to giving them operating capital until they could get on their feet. Beginning next month, they would start paying it back at $2,100 a month for the next forty-eight months.
They were in the Charleston clubhouse less than a half-hour before the wheels of their bikes were rolling west, back along I-26, though they stuck much closer to the posted speed limits on the return trip. None of them wanted to try to explain to a cop why they were carrying one thousand dollars in cash, each $10,000 bundle neatly bound with its mustard colored currency strap.
The trip back to Greenfield was as uneventful as the trip to Charleston, and they rolled into the clubhouse a bit before seven. They gathered the money from the hogs and counted it quietly on one of the work tables in the room. Tony was still there, working around the bar that had been installed while they were gone, and they didn’t want to call attention to what they were doing.
Everyone agreed the money was all accounted for, and as Tony approached, Royal placed the bundles of cash in the safe and swung the heavy door shut, twisted the locking mechanism handle, spun the combination dial, then removed the key.
“I didn’t know you guys were opening a bank,” Tony teased as the door swung shut on the safe.
; Doc smiled. “We operate strictly on cash. If we can’t pay cash for it, we can’t afford it.”
Tony snorted. “You’d be surprised how rare that is. I have your first bill ready for the work that has been completed.”
“Let me see it,” Doc said, holding out his hand.
“Hang on, I’ll have to get it from the truck.” He stepped out, returning a moment later with an itemized bill. “This includes all the electrical and plumbing upgrades, and the work I’ve done through yesterday.”
Doc scanned down the list. “How are we on the budget?”
“A little over, but not bad. The plumbing was going to be the big hitter in the first bill, and it was. Of the $4,850, $3,600 is plumbing, as you can see.”
Doc nodded. “We’ll give you five grand, and you can just credit the overage to our next bill, okay?”
Tony chuckled. “Hey, that works great for me! Nobody ever pays in advance.”
Doc nodded at Royal. “Get it for him.”
Royal opened the safe, making sure his body blocked the combination, and pulled one hundred dollar bills from one of the bundles. He reclosed the safe, locked it, then counted the fifty bills into Tony’s hand.
Tony smiled then folded the money into his pocket and scrawled Paid on the bill before shaking both Royal and Doc’s hands. “Been a pleasure doing business with you. I’m going to finish trimming the bar before I leave tonight because the sheetrockers are supposed to start tomorrow. I don’t want to be in their way, and I don’t want to have to keep running outside to cut trim.”
Doc grinned as he looked over the gleaming bar. “Make sense,” he said as he dragged his fingers over the finely polished top. “It looks great.”
Tony nodded. “Yeah, it does. Wait until the mirror, cabinets and shelving goes up, then it will really pop.”
“Doc, I need to go if we’re done here,” Royal said.
“Safe locked?”
“Yeah, but I’ll check it on the way out.”
“See you tomorrow, brother.”
“Tomorrow.”
Royal walked out, the rest of the Iron Kings not far behind him, leaving Tony to return to his work. It took him almost two more hours to finish the trim around the bar, and as he flipped the lights off on his way out, he wondered just how much money they had placed in the safe.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Stella trudged into the diner. She was simply exhausted. She hoped it would be a slow night tonight.
“Jesus, you look like hell! You okay?” Tara asked.
“Late night last night.”
Tara grinned. “Is that a good thing?”
Stella smiled. “A very good thing.”
“Did you?” the older woman asked, her eyes full of mischief.
Stella smiled and looked down. “Yeah.”
“How was he?”
“Let me check my section, then I’ll tell you.”
She made the rounds of the tables, and was on her way back to counter for drink refills when Gabriel walked in. She smiled at him as Melissa seated him.
When she finished with her rounds, she stopped at his table, placing a glass of tea in front of him. “How was your trip?”
“Uneventful, which was good.”
“Glad to hear that,” she said, trying to keep it professional. “What do you want?”
“Besides you?”
She blushed. “To eat.”
“Besides you?”
She giggled. “Would you stop?”
He grinned, glad to see her smile. She looked exhausted and he felt badly for her. “I’ll have the open faced roast beef sandwich. And don’t forget to turn in you notice.”
“Don’t worry. They may fire me for snoring later. You kept me up too late last night.”
His smile softened. “I hope it was worth it.”
A warmth spread through her as she remembered how he made her feel. “It was.”
He nodded but said nothing, handing the menu to her. As she turned away, he noticed another member of the wait staff watching them.
“You two seem very cozy,” Tara sad as Stella stuck the ticket on the kitchen wheel.
“Yeah.”
“You took him home last night?”
“Yes.”
“And you two…?”
“Twice.”
“How was it?”
Stella smiled and looked down. “Unbelievable.”
Tara grinned. “Good. A girl needs her toes curled every now and then.”
She smiled. “He did that all right, five times.”
“Are you two going to give it another try?”
Stella shrugged. “I think we’re going to try, but we both hurt each other. He’s Katrina’s father but I never told him until last night.”
Tara’s eyes opened wide. “How did he react that that?”
“He was hurt and wanted to see her. I took him to see her this morning. Which brings me to another thing.” She looked down and shuffled her feet. “I’m turning in my two week notice.”
Tara smiled. She was surprised Stella had made it as long as she had. “I hate to see you leave, but I understand. It’s hard working two jobs, especially when one is a full time, and even more so with the hours you work. And being a single mom, too? Oy!”
“Thank you, Tara, for helping me out and understanding.”
“No. Thank you, Stella, for working with me. I wish I had four more just like you.” Tara pulled her into a hug. “Best of luck to you.”
Stella returned her hug. “Thank you. You’ve been a good boss and a good friend.”
“I’m still your friend.”
“I know.”
“And as your friend, I want to hear all the juicy details about last night,” Tara said as she released Stella.
“Let me check my tables, then I’ll tell you.”
When she returned a moment later, the entire wait staff, all four women, were clustered behind the bar.
“Hey, we want to hear, too!” Melissa said with a grin when Stella seemed reluctant to start.
With a smile, Stella recounted her escapades, starting with him picking her up outside the diner and finishing with him leaving her at Connie’s house.
Gabriel watched as Stella talked to the wait staff. He guessed she’d turned in her notice when she and the older waitress hugged, and she was saying her goodbyes now. She was obviously well liked as the women giggled and whispered conspiratorially, occasionally glancing his way.
“That’s so hot!” Alicia said as she fanned her face when Stella finished. “Why can’t my boyfriend ever wake me up like that?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Stella replied softly. “But I’m paying for it now.”
“But it was worth it, right?”
She grinned. “Absolutely.”
Gabriel’s meal being slid into the server window broke up their little confab. Tara smiled as Stella moved to pick up the plate. “I hope it works out for you.”
“Yeah, me too,” she grinned as she stepped from behind the counter with Gabriel’s plate and a pitcher of tea.
“It’s done?” he asked as she slid his plate in front of him.
“Yeah.”
“It go okay?”
“Yeah. No problems.” She grinned at him. “What were they going to do, fire me?”
He motioned to the other side of the table. “Want to sit down a minute?”
“I would, but we’re not allowed.”
He nodded in understanding. “What are they going to do, fire you?”
She giggled. “I know, but the place had been good to me and I don’t want to cause trouble.”
He shrugged and unrolled his utensils, his mouth watering over the smells emanating from his plate. He hadn’t eaten breakfast, and they didn’t stop for lunch. “I hope you don’t mind me eating. I’m starving.”
“It a diner, it’s what people do,” she said. She only had one other table to monitor, and they were winding down, but she moved off to check on them before retu
rning to his table.