That’s ridiculous. He’s not a date, for God’s sake. Just stop it and put on what you’d normally wear to hang out at home.
Yoga pants and a T-shirt it is, then. Though I admit, I choose a T-shirt that’s fitted, and definitely put on a flattering bra under it. As casual as I’m trying to be, letting the girls hang loose is a bridge too far. I pull my damp hair up into a messy bun on top of my head. My feet slide into a pair of slippers that cover up the fact that I could use a pedicure.
Good enough. Now stop fussing.
As I descend the stairs, a thump and a loud bark from the living room tells me Bert is in there playing. I go to the doorway, and find Striker on his knees, the two of them wrestling with a rope toy. It amazes me how quickly Bert has taken to this near-stranger. He and Mark never played like this. Then again, Mark never really wanted to.
Striker hasn’t noticed me yet as he tugs and roughhouses with my dog. His eyes crinkle as he laughs and tussles with Bert, his expression completely transformed from the intense, watchful man I’m used to. Right now, he almost seems like someone who doesn’t have a care in the world. My heart squeezes at the same time my skin starts to tingle. A wave of desire hits me hard, tinged with a longing that’s just bordering on painful. I must make a noise, because Striker looks up. His eyes meet mine, but move downward, taking in all of me at once.
“Bert here was in the kitchen, looking at me like he wanted to be fed,” he says, his voice going gruff. “I didn’t want to rummage through your stuff, so I figured I’d play with him for a bit.”
The way he’s staring at me right now makes my heart thud in my chest. “It is his supper time,” I manage. “I totally forgot. I’ll go take care of that now.”
Bert understands English when it suits him, so he immediately lets go of the rope toy and comes bounding after me. I go to the pantry where his food is and scoop him out his ration. Once he’s happily scarfing it down, I call out to Striker, who I presume is still in the living room. “I thought I’d just make us some pasta, if that works for you.”
“That’s fine,” he says. I turn to see him standing at the kitchen island. “Whatever you have on hand. Hey, while you’re doin’ that, do you mind if I look around? I didn’t wanna do that without your permission, but it would help if I knew the layout of your house and grounds a little better. Get a sense of where the points of entry are, and all that.”
“Of course,” I say automatically, relieved at not having to make small talk with him while I’m cooking. Even though I’m the one who invited him in, my introvert self is a nervous, self-conscious mess with him around.
“Come on, boy. Wanna come help me do recon?” he says to Bert, who has already wolfed down his kibble. My dog is only too happy to follow him out.
For the next twenty minutes or so, I hear the two of them wandering around the house, first downstairs and then upstairs, and then finally outside in the backyard. My pulse speeds up a bit when I think of Striker in my bedroom, but I shove that thought from my mind and concentrate on making dinner: a simple angel hair pasta with some pesto and a baked chicken breast on the side, which I do quickly in the convection oven.
Striker comes back inside through the back door, Bert on his tail. “Nice place,” he remarks. “Like bein’ in a home and garden magazine.”
“Not as nice as it used to be. We used to have a gardener, and a woman who would come in to clean twice a week. I have a black thumb, and I’m not much for housekeeping, either.”
“How come you don’t hire ‘em back?”
“I can’t afford it,” I say bluntly. “The mortgage is a lot for just one person.”
“Even a lawyer?”
“A family lawyer in my position doesn’t make as much money as you’d think.”
Striker considers this. “How come you don’t sell this place, then?”
“You’re very blunt, aren’t you?” I observe wryly.
“Yeah. Guess I am.”
I sigh, then reach into the refrigerator to refill my wine glass. “The divorce isn’t final yet. In fact, the paperwork hasn’t been filed. Until then, everything is sort of up in the air.”
“Why haven’t you filed the paperwork?”
“Like I told you, our separation isn’t public knowledge. Mark is concerned about how it will affect his business and his reputation.”
Striker scrutinizes me. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Are you worried about how it will look?”
I exhale. “No. I just want it to be over.”
He arches a brow. “So, file the paperwork.”
I pinch my lips together, raise the glass of wine to my lips. “It’s not that simple.”
“Why not? Are you hoping the two of you will get back together?”
The question takes me by surprise, and I choke on my wine. I start to cough, wheezing for breath and grabbing for a paper towel so I can wipe my eyes of the tears streaming down my face.
“Oh, my God!” I gasp when I can finally speak. “You have no idea how much I do not want to get back together with Mark!”
Striker has been watching me to make sure my spluttering doesn’t turn into something more serious. Now, he considers me with something almost like sympathy. “That bad?” he asks.
“Let’s just say marriage was a definite disappointment.” I clear my throat again, dab at my eyes a final time. “It was not for me, apparently.”
“So… why do you hold on to the house?”
Just then, the timer for the chicken goes off.
“Dinner’s ready,” I say brusquely. “Just give me a minute to plate everything.”
I never use the formal dining room anymore, so I serve us at the kitchen island. I pull one of the stools over to my side so I’m facing him as we eat. Thankfully, for the moment Striker seems to have let go of the subject of my former marriage.
“Hey, I noticed that picture in the living room of a kid and an older guy standing in front of an old Corvette,” he says between bites. “Is that you?”
My mind instantly flashes on the framed picture he’s talking about. It’s a cherry red Corvette convertible, with orange flames painted on the sides. It’s sitting on one of the bookshelves that flank the fireplace. “It is. That’s me and my dad. He had a thing for classic cars.”
“Nineteen-sixty?”
“Sixty-one,” I correct him. “God, he loved that thing. It was his pride and joy.”
“He still have it?”
“He died two years ago. My mom sold it. She didn’t even tell me she was going to do it until it was gone. I wish she had.”
“You would have wanted it?”
I feel a prick at the back of my throat. “My dad wasn’t a very materialistic man. It was one of the only possessions he ever cared about. I wish I could have had it to remember him by.”
I loved my father so much. I wish every time I look at that picture that I could talk to him again.
“Enough about me, though,” I say. I don’t want to talk about my father anymore. “What about you?”
“What about me?” Striker rumbles.
“Have you ever been married?”
Striker bursts into loud laughter. “Yeah, no. Marriage ain’t my scene.”
“I guess that makes two of us,” I say drily. “What about your family? Tell me about them.”
“Don’t have one.”
“What? You mean, no one?” I ask in disbelief.
He shrugs. “Well, I got a couple cousins out there somewhere, I guess. But we don’t keep in touch. The club’s my family. Tank’s my best friend. So I guess he’s the closest thing to a brother I got.”
Striker glowers as he says that last sentence. It seems pretty clear that he doesn’t like to talk about himself much.
“Tell me about Tank, then,” I ask.
Striker pauses for a moment, like he’s thinking of what to say.
“Tank is one lucky son of a bitch, is what he is.” He takes a drin
k of water, pushes away his plate. “That was a really good meal, thanks. Tank’s got a good woman, and a good little girl. He knows the value of what he’s got, too. And that he almost lost them.” Striker stops then, and narrows his eyes at me. “You said they told you about what happened?”
“Bits and pieces. Cady told me that Wren came to them not talking. And that Tank didn’t even know he had a daughter until Wren’s mom dropped her off on Tank’s doorstep and skipped town.”
But Striker shakes his head. “That’s not what I’m talking about. They tell you about the kidnapping?”
Whoa. “What? No!” My fork stops halfway to my mouth, and I just manage not to drop it with a clatter. “Are you kidding me?”
His jaw tenses. I almost think he’s going to change the subject. But then he starts talking again.
“The two of ‘em — Wren and Cady — got taken by a guy who had a grudge against the Lords,” he continues in a low tone. “We saved them before some pretty gruesome shit was about to go down, but yeah. If we hadn’t found them…” He sucks in a breath, closes his eyes for a moment. “Well, let’s just say they wouldn’t have survived. And it wouldn’t have been a quick death for either of them.”
“Oh my God.” I gape at him, my mind reeling.
“Yeah. So he’s earned the right to be overprotective of them. He has people watching Cady and Wren, just like he has me watching you. Cady doesn’t know it, though. Or if she does, she’s not saying anything about it. I think Tank is trying to keep their lives as normal as possible, while still making sure they’re safe.”
I set my fork down, my appetite suddenly gone. This whole case has been such a roller coaster already. Now this new information, coming from Striker, makes me see it all in a totally new light. For the first time, I seriously consider that maybe Tank’s fears are warranted — that somehow, just by virtue of my temporary proximity to the club, I might actually be in some sort of danger.
I take a deep breath and contemplate the dark, inscrutable man sitting across the kitchen island from me. He seems to conceal lifetimes in that guarded expression of his. I’m realizing there is so much more to Striker than meets the eye, and I know almost none of it.
I should want to run. I should want to push this entire situation far away from me, fire Cady and Tank as clients, and refuse to have any further association with the Lords of Carnage. But I can’t. Not now, knowing what I know. I feel like I need to help them.
And I feel like I can’t betray the trust that Striker has placed in me by telling me their story.
Deep down inside, I sense that it’s already far too late to extricate myself from the universe of the Lords of Carnage.
12
Striker
In the course of having dinner with her in her house, I’ve learned a few things about December Wells.
For one thing, she loves and misses her deceased dad, and doesn’t feel very close to her mom. For another, she is married to a dirtbag who makes her feel like shit about herself, even though she doesn’t really know that part.
She’s got this habit of fiddling with the hem of her T-shirt when she’s nervous.
And worst of all, her lips part in the most fucking distracting way when she’s listening to me answer a question.
Cool-as-a-cucumber, buttoned-up December lets down her defenses with me and becomes hot-as-fuck Ember somewhere between her second and third glasses of wine. Oh, she doesn’t do it on purpose. She isn’t flirting. Not consciously, anyway. If anything, it seems like she’s enjoying just having someone talk to about some of the shit she usually keeps buried.
I get the feeling Ember Wells doesn’t have a lot of people to talk to. She tells me about this chick who works as her receptionist and paralegal, named Margot, who is her best friend but also her ex’s cousin, and so sometimes Ember feels like she can’t tell her about some stuff. Like how broke she is. Or how her ex keeps showing up in her life like he’s waiting to see her fail at shit so he can swoop in and convince her to call off the divorce.
“What sucks most,” she sighs toward the end of the night, as she’s finishing her third glass of wine, “is that I still have to see him socially from time to time. Like, there’s this charity gala in a couple of weeks that I have to go to. It’s the sort of thing the two of us used to go to together.” She wrinkles her nose. “I hated those things then, but now it’s even worse, because I have to make nice and pretend everything is fine, when I really just want to go home, lock the door, and turn on Netflix.”
“Why do you have to go, then?” I ask.
“Connections.” She rolls her eyes. “Lawyers work on referrals, especially in a relatively small community like this. I can’t afford to alienate any of the people I know. My livelihood depends on it.”
“Sounds like a shitty way to live,” I remark. “Having to make nice with people you don’t like.”
“Oh…” Ember waves a hand. “They’re not all bad. But I admit, they’re not really people I’d choose as my main social circle. If I had a choice, that is.”
I almost point out that she does have a choice. But it doesn’t really seem like she wants to hear that right now.
The hours pass faster than I realize. As well as being easy on the eyes, Ember is easy as hell to talk to. As the wine loosens her tongue, it also loosens her mannerisms. She sprawls on one end of the long couch, and I sprawl on the other. She asks me some questions about the MC life, and I answer the ones I can. I crack a few jokes, and she laughs at all of them, tipping back her head so the pale skin of her throat is exposed to the low light. Her laughter is low and intimate, with just the hint of a rasp. It’s like a gift — something she doesn’t give out to just anyone. But more than anything, it reminds me the two of us are alone in this house. It makes me wonder what she’d sound like in bed. What noises she makes when she’s turned on.
By the end of the night, I’m revising my opinion of her. She’s not a stuck-up rich bitch. Mostly, she seems like a smart-as-hell chick who just got caught up in a life that doesn’t really fit her. Like an expensive suit three sizes too big that she’s afraid to throw out.
Ember shifts on the couch, lying back further, and slides her legs onto the back cushions. One thing I know about her by now is she doesn’t do this shit to tease. She just simply doesn’t know how fucking hot she is. Those yoga pants she’s got on are almost worse than nothing at all. I’m aching to slip my hand under the thin fabric, to find her soaking core. I want to make her throb, hear her whimper and moan. I want to see those dark eyes of hers flutter closed as she begs me to make her come.
I spend the last hour trying to talk my dick into seeing reason, and reminding myself I promised Tank I wouldn’t screw this up for him by fucking his lawyer. Somehow I make it to midnight, when Jude texts me right on time to let me know he’s outside for his shift. By then, I almost want to send him home. Not because I’m worried enough about Ember’s safety to want to do the job myself.
But because I don’t want to leave her company.
I do a once-over of the first floor, making sure all the doors and windows are locked. I say goodnight to Ember and Bert, and remind her to call Jude or me if anything strange happens.
Then I go home, sit in the dark on my living room couch, and pour myself three fingers of whiskey into a lowball glass.
Even with the lights out, the contrast between my living space and hers is striking. Ember told me she’s not much of a housekeeper, but to me her house is immaculate. Everything is in its place, set up like a professional decorator took care of the whole thing. I suppose a lot of women would be proud as hell of a house like that, but she barely seems to notice it. She’s not attached to the house itself, that much is clear. It’s more like she’s just perched in it.
A bird in a gilded cage, who hasn’t noticed the door’s open yet.
My living room, on the other hand, is still the same hot mess it was when Tank came to see me. The mail he threw on the couch is still sitting here next
to me. The only difference is that I’ve added a few more days’ worth to the stack.
Bills are piling up. I still have electricity, and water, but I wonder if they’re gonna be shut off soon. Pretty sure I’ve seen some “final notice” language on a couple of these envelopes. It ain’t that I don’t have the money to pay ‘em. Though maybe I don’t, I don’t know. I haven’t really checked my bank balance lately, either.
It’s that I don’t fuckin’ care.
Squinting, I survey the room I’m in. There’s enough moonlight and street light coming through the window to show me the empty takeout boxes, the half-drunk coffee cups, and a couple overflowing ashtrays. This is the house of a loser. A fuckin’ has-been.
Which means I’m the loser.
I look down at my glass, which I’ve somehow emptied without even noticing. I lean forward and reach for the bottle, then pour myself another two fingers.
“You’re out of control, brother.”
Tank’s voice echoes inside my head.
Fuck. He doesn’t know the half of it.
The two fingers of whiskey go down as fast as the first three did. When the glass is empty again, I push up off the couch and stand. I have a choice right now: either go to bed right now, or keep drinking. And I know that if I keep drinking, I’ll be useless as tits on a boar tomorrow morning when I gotta take over for Jude.
I owe it to Tank to make the right choice for once.
And as much as I hate to admit it, I’m looking forward to seeing Ember again. Somehow, I don’t want her to see me hung over and hard up. So I take my lowball glass into the kitchen, set it on the counter, and call it a night.
That doesn’t mean I go to sleep right away, though. Ember’s in my head too much. Her scent, her flashing eyes. Those lips. The way she doesn’t seem to realize she makes me hard on the rare occasions when she rewards me with that throaty laugh of hers.
STRIKER: Lords of Carnage MC Page 8