by Stacey Lynn
Or wanting to help her. Again.
But I also saw the way she took me in as I walked toward her, her eyes quickly scanning my body as if I had something she needed. And maybe I did. My hardening dick certainly liked the idea of that.
I only caught the name ‘Rob’ rolling off her lips before red began flashing at the outer edges of my vision.
That asshole was still bothering her?
“Who the fuck was that?” I nodded at the phone in her hand as she tried sliding it into her purse. “That the same guy who called you last week?”
Jules wrinkled her nose and her eyes darted to Sophie.
“Answer me.”
Her head snapped to mine and her eyes narrowed. “Pardon me?”
I grinned. Her formal question made me smile in spite of my annoyance over the fact that she hadn’t called for me to see Sophie and the simmering rage over some asshole bothering her.
And when in the hell was the last time I did that?
“The dick on the phone. That the same guy from the other day?”
She blew out a breath, as if annoyed with me. Fuck that. If anyone had any right to be pissed, it was me. I was still pissed at the way she’d thrown Scratch’s name last weekend when all I’d wanted to do was haul her ass into my room at the club. Fuck the fact she’d been with my brother. Fuck the fact I hated her and blamed her for his death. I’d spent twenty minutes with her heating up the cab of my truck with her own nervousness, and by the time we’d pulled into the club, I was boiling with need.
Even the club bunnies hadn’t helped during the week. For the first time since I’d joined the club and the men had let me have free rein on the free pussy, I hadn’t wanted it. Even Shania, or Shayla, or who-the-fuck-ever, with her perfect tits. They weren’t so perfect anymore. They were too big. Too fake. I suddenly found myself craving the small handfuls that had been in my bed.
And that pissed me off, too.
“Fine,” she huffed. “Yes, it was him. And no, it’s not a big deal. Just my ex, who won’t leave me alone. Happy now?”
Her hip cocked to the side and her hand clamped down on it. Jules trying to be a spitfire almost made me grin again. Then I caught a flash of bright pink in the distance and my skin paled.
“What the fuck? You let her do that shit?”
Jules snapped her head over her shoulder and laughed quietly. “That? She’s fine.”
Fuck if she was fine. The pipsqueak had to be fifteen feet in the air, scaling a fake rock wall. She could fall and break something. Or die.
My feet moved quickly toward Sophie while Jules followed me.
“She’s fine, Jaden. Sophie climbs like this all the time. Been doing it since she could walk at ten months and she’s never been hurt. I swear she’s part monkey.”
I didn’t care.
When I caught Sophie, my hands wrapped around her waist and I set her on the ground.
She looked up at me with wide, blue eyes and quickly hid behind Jules.
Typical reaction for whenever she caught me staring at her.
“She could be hurt.” That shit couldn’t be natural.
Jules laughed again. When I pulled my eyes from Sophie hiding behind her legs, she bit her bottom lip and shook her head. “Part monkey, I swear it. She’ll be fine. She just has an unnatural love for heights and all things dangerous.”
Like her dad. Shit. Scratch had been the same way. The daredevil between the two of us. Laying out his first dirt bike when he was six, scratched from toe to ear, and didn’t give a shit. He just got back on the bike and rode again. He crashed so many fuckin’ bikes in his lifetime, always laying them out trying to do crazy shit. He was always scratched up. Hence the nickname. The guy was almost always bleeding and scabbed over from some idiotic maneuver he hadn’t accomplished.
I blinked my eyes and my hands flew to my hips. Shit.
When I opened them, Jules was smiling at me softly. I ignored the glazed, teary-eyed look in her eyes as if she knew exactly what I was remembering.
“I Tophee.”
I looked down at the blond head of curls secured into pigtails, peeking out behind Jules’s leg.
That innocent look. Those huge blue eyes. My breath caught in my throat. Fucking hell, chop the long hair and it was my brother in pint-sized form staring back at me.
I squatted down to her level and reached out my hand. She put hers in my palm instantly. So damn trusting.
“Jaden,” I told her as her little pudgy palm warmed mine. Something foreign crept up my arm, slithered into my chest, and squeezed into my heart. I flinched from the alien heat invading my body as I stared into eyes that looked so damn similar to Scratch’s.
My head dropped as realization struck me. My head might not know what the hell to do about Jules, but Scratch would kick my ass and put a bullet in me if he saw me treating his kid the way I had been.
Jules’s hand came down slowly, her fingers gliding down Sophie’s neck as we had our first conversation without any words. She hid behind her mom’s legs, so similar to the way I first met her weeks ago, and yet so different now.
This was my chance to not fuck it up this time.
I swallowed, felt my Adam’s apple bob slowly as I said, “I’m your uncle.”
A strangled choke fell from Jules’s lips above us, but I didn’t look.
“Uncah Jaden.” Sophie’s lips pressed together into a pout and she frowned, as if testing the words on her lips for the first time and unsure of what they meant.
That made two of us.
I had never had to take care of anyone. Ever since my parents were killed in a shoot-out with a rival club when Scratch and I were just kids. Switch, my parent’s friend and a member of the club, took us in with his old lady, Marie, and raised us. Scratch had rolled with life, even then. I’d never had the freedom he did. Never felt the way he did. I was always more serious. More angry.
Something like recognition flashed in the half-pint’s eyes and she smiled. “You yuv my dad.”
A thickness exploded in my throat and I pushed it back. Jules’s hand tightened its grip on the back of her daughter’s head.
I dropped Sophie’s hand and stood up, my knees cracking as I pushed up from the squatting position.
“Yeah.” It was all I could choke out over the tightness clawing at me from the inside out. Loved her dad. Shit. I’d been an asshole. I probably deserved the bullet Scratch would have leveled at me if he were still alive.
I caught Jules’s eyes staring me with wonder, and possibly fear.
“You movin’ tomorrow?” I asked her, needing desperately to change the subject.
Her eyes widened fractionally before she understood and let me have it. “Yeah. Movers are coming at nine o’clock.”
I felt the pull of my eyebrows. “Thought I told you the men from the club would take care of that.”
She fidgeted on her feet, not looking at me. The way she avoided me rankled me and a muscle ticked in my jaw. “We don’t have a lot of stuff, so it’s not necessary.”
I glared at her, took a small step closer until there were only inches separating us. I jumped as Sophie’s hand brushed against my denim-clad legs, and I looked down at her.
She looked up and grinned.
I scowled back at Jules and nodded my head in Sophie’s direction. “Club takes care of its own.”
How in the hell did all that change so quickly?
“Tomorrow.” I pointed at her, removing Sophie’s grip from my jeans.
Then I got the fuck away from them as fast as I could.
My skin itched with the need to do something stupid like haul Sophie into my arms, press her cheek against my chest and never let go, all while I devoured Jules’s parted and shocked lips with my tongue.
“Not sure why they’re here helping. We already had everything set up.”
I rolled my eyes, keeping my back to my dad as we watched ten men from the Nordic Lords load up the small moving truck I’d rented for the da
y. When I moved back to Jasper Bay, I had everything shipped to my parents’ house and it had been stacked in their garage for the last six weeks, still packed up.
Moving would be easy, since besides some clothes and toys, I hadn’t unpacked a single box.
I still didn’t understand either, fully. But I couldn’t forget the determination in Jaden’s stare when he swore the club took care of their own. He hadn’t been talking about me; I knew that. Watching him acknowledge Sophie for the very first time, finally getting over whatever shit he believed in his head about her not belonging to Scratch, had my heart unwittingly softening toward him.
Gawking at the men from the living room window in my parents’ house, the warmth of my dad’s love behind me, left my head reeling. Every warning my dad had spoken in my direction for the last twenty-four hours about me and Sophie getting entangled in “Nordic Life” rolled off my back, completely forgotten.
Jaden’s corded arms, muscles bulging from the heavy lifting, left my body wanting to become completely entangled.
I sighed, rubbed a hand across my forehead, and turned from the window. “I’m going to find Sophie.”
“Jules.” My name left my dad’s mouth on a heavy, defeated sigh. As if he already knew the decision I’d made about what I wanted.
“Don’t say it.”
“Just… be careful.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded once before I left the room.
I found Sophie outside, playing with two baby dolls, pretending to rock and feed them both while she sat on the front porch. Her feet were too short to touch the next step down so her flip-flop covered feet swung lazily back and forth.
I smiled at the tiny amounts of hot pink polish on her toes.
Plopping down next to her on the front stoop, I ran a hand through her hair and pulled her in for a quick kiss.
“Hey, pumpkin.”
“Who dat?” She barely looked up as one of her fingers pointed at the men in general.
“Those men were friends with your daddy.”
I had never hidden Sophie’s dad from her. She had a scrapbook of photos of us together and some of just Scratch that we looked at every night before she went to bed. But still the mention of him always made me catch my breath.
“What dat?” she asked again, pointing at the motorcycles that lined the street at the end of my parents’ driveway. They were parked as bikers always did it: bikes backed up the curb at an angle, ready to make a quick getaway if necessary.
“Motorcycles,” I told her. “Black and silver, right?”
“Scary.” She pouted her lips at me and shook her head slightly. I frowned, looking down at her, not understanding why she said that. It wasn’t the first time she’d been around the men. We’d been to several parties where she had seen the bikes and the rough partying of the men who owned them.
“Why?”
She dropped her dolls and pressed her palms to her ears. “Dey loud.”
I chuckled softly. “Yeah, they are.”
We sat quietly for several minutes, Sophie playing with her dolls, me watching the men trudge up and down the ramp to the moving truck.
I tried to pull my eyes off Jaden as he and Ryker carried my couch up the ramp, but my eyes froze on him. And his arms. The way they flexed and tightened as he lifted the couch told me it was heavy, but the two men carried half of the large sectional as if it was a box of pillows.
On their way back out of the truck, the men now empty-handed, Jaden paused and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. His eyes closed as he inhaled a deep breath and tilted his head toward the sun.
It wasn’t hot out. It actually felt perfectly cool—the best kind of day for moving. But then again, I’d been banished from helping as soon as the group of bossy bikers had shown up at my house, and I wasn’t the one moving boxes and furniture wearing jeans and long shirts and leather vests.
When his head dipped down, he turned and our gazes met.
I tried to pull away, to focus on Sophie playing next to me, but everything else faded away as Jaden jumped off the back of the truck and began walking toward me. Or us.
Jesus. He probably just wants to say hi to Sophie.
He stopped at the bottom of the cement steps, his shadow falling over us. I instantly felt cool from the loss of the sunlight. Or maybe it was the way his eyes were fixed on mine.
I still hadn’t been able to pull my eyes from his. Stupid, I was becoming.
“We’re almost done.”
I stood up, brushed my sweaty, clammy hands down my thighs and cursed myself. Sweaty, nervous hands for Jaden? It was the epitome of ridiculousness.
“Okay, thanks.” I nodded and stood up straight. Even two stairs up from Jaden, I was barely at eye level. Had he grown since the park yesterday? His broad shoulders certainly seemed wider and stronger when his hands when to his hips and he tilted his head.
His eyebrows pulled in and he flashed me a look that screamed impatience. What had I done to annoy him now?
“We need your address.”
Oh. “Right.” I rattled it off, Jaden staring at me the entire time, and then he nodded.
“Got it. Are you going to follow us?”
Follow a caravan of bikers and a moving truck through town like some sort of parade? Seemed a bit too attention-inducing.
“We’ll be right behind you.” I nodded my head toward Sophie. “I have to finish getting some of her things packed. So, I’m um…” Why was my heart pounding wildly against my chest? I had no idea, but I couldn’t calm it and I didn’t want Jaden to see how much his closeness affected me. “I’m going to go do that.”
I turned to move, completely forgetting about Sophie sitting at my feet, and barely missed stepping on her fingers.
“Sorry, pumpkin.”
“It’s otay. I not hurt.” She didn’t stop trying to feed her baby doll from a plastic bottle at my apology.
My hand gripped the handle and I froze as he called my name.
“Yeah?” I turned and looked at him over my shoulder. Which was stupid. I should have known better than to look directly at him. All hard lines and angry scowls—
And a damn smirk on his lips that told me he knew exactly what I was feeling.
Crap.
He stuck out his hand, wiggled his fingers. “I need the key.”
“Key?”
He huffed. “To your apartment? Pretty sure you don’t want us busting the door down.”
Oh. “Right. I’ll be right back.”
He nodded and looked away, breaking whatever he’d spell he put on me. I flung myself into my parents’ house, slamming the door behind me. My back pressed against the wood, cooling my overheated skin.
Hell. Instant attraction to Jaden like that could only mean trouble.
From the kitchen, I saw my mom’s head dart through the doorway and I felt busted—as if she just caught me making out with Jaden outside the front door, late for curfew.
“Hey,” I said when I hit the kitchen, immediately reaching for my purse. With trembling fingers, I began twisting one of my new apartment keys off the ring. As I was doing it, I took off another and slid it to my mom on the kitchen counter. I had no idea why I needed six keys for an apartment with one door.
“Jules.”
I closed my eyes. That voice. The warning in it told me she knew exactly what I’d been doing with my back pressed against the door.
Fighting foolishness.
“Yeah?” I sighed. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at her.
Her sigh in response equaled mine in frustration and fear. “Be careful.”
I swallowed my nerves and nodded. “I will. And we’re only just across of town when you want to see Sophie.”
My mom grinned.
I leaned in and kissed her cheek.
“I’m still willing to babysit for you.”
“I know. But the agreement was I moved back and we were on our own. Like it should be.”
; Her warm palms came out and cupped my cheeks as she pulled me in and pressed her lips against my forehead. “I know, but you know where we are if you need us.”
“Of course,” I muttered and stepped back. “I need get back out there.”
I hurried out of the kitchen, away from her worrisome and loving eyes, and flung open the front door to the house. My breath got caught in my throat and I choked when I saw Jaden.
Big, scary-ass, angry and scowling Jaden, rocking a baby doll wrapped in a pink blanket and feeding the plastic, squished face a bottle of fake juice.
I snorted. My fingers flew to my mouth, but based on the warning look he shot me, he totally heard me.
“Don’t start.”
I grinned. I couldn’t help it. Sophie was practically sitting in his lap, feeding her own baby doll, and Jaden in his leather cut, mimicking her actions was too…
Perfect.
I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and caught Jaden’s glare.
“Don’t even think about it.”
Oh, I was thinking about it, all right. And doing it, too. I raised my phone and shouted, “Say cheese!”
Sophie’s head rose up and Jaden’s face turned purple. “Cheese!”
I snapped. Then I snapped four more times before Jaden launched himself off the stoop and stole my phone.
“It was cute.” I grinned, ignoring the fluttering in my belly from his closeness and the smell of his sweat. “Except for your purple face.”
He scowled. Typical. “Not funny.”
“Two minutes and she’s got you covered in pink. It is funny.”
He flicked his head back to Sophie and sighed. His head dropped like he’d been completely defeated. When he looked back at me, a look flashed across his entire face that almost left my knees buckling in shock.
Endearing. All of his harsh features softened in a way that left me breathless and unmoving.
I shook my head, snapping myself out of it. Life was so much easier when, even still attractive, Jaden was pissed at me.