by Mia Malone
He felt the muscles in his belly tighten and had to fight to keep his hands relaxed. Jenny partied with the Wolves?
“Yeah?” Gibson muttered when Paddy didn’t say a word. “She’s her own woman, Doug.”
“And a fine, fine woman at that,” Doug said. “Taken some of my men to her bed.”
“Don’t you start –”
“Paddy,” Doug cut him off harshly. “No one is badmouthing Jenny. Not me. Not a single one of the men. Everyone knows what kind of woman she is, and my men were fucking beside themselves when she ended things, all of them. Crying on my shoulder like fucking pussies.”
What in the hell? He hadn't thought about it much because it was something he did not want to have in his head, but of course, Jenny would have… Shit. He couldn't even think the word sex in relation to her without feeling how his pulse started beating.
“You need to stay away from Jenny Tucker,” he ground out.
Gibson moved slightly, which was a clear warning for him to calm down but the thought of Jenny and the man in front of him had his blood boiling. Doug was his age, and Paddy knew women found him handsome with his long, jet black hair in a braid at the nape of his neck. His Native American heritage was written all over him, and Doug was not a young man anymore, but still muscular and agile the same way Paddy was. He was also a good man. And he needed to stay the fuck away from Jenny.
“You’re not related, Paddy, so you have no grounds for warning me away from her,” Doug said, suddenly hard-faced and serious. “Unless…”
***
Paddy was speeding into Wilhelmine holding on to the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white. There was a strange buzzing sound in his ears, and he had to fight to keep his focus on the road in front of him.
“Pad,” Gibson said.
“Do not talk to me,” Paddy barked.
They’d had this exact conversation five times since they walked out of the Wolves’ compound and it had ended the same way each time. In silence.
When they reached the big, white sign with the name Jenny's in simple letters, Paddy parked the car half on the street and half on the sidewalk, making a man take a quick sidestep to get out of the way. The man worked on Paddy’s crew and was about to call out, but he caught the look on Paddy's face and walked away immediately.
All Paddy could see was the door to the diner and then the entrance to the kitchen, and he stalked through the place with long steps.
Jenny was stirring something in a huge pot, and Lee was sitting on a table to the side, laughing at whatever they talked about. He'd seen them like that often, but this time, he didn’t let the warm, soft feeling of their friendship wash over him. He focused on the tall, slim woman with her back toward him.
“The Wolves, Jenny?” he barked and watched her back straighten. “What the fuck?”
She turned and hissed at him, but he kept walking.
“What the fuck, Jenny?” he roared.
“Paddy,” Gibson said quietly behind him, and he heard Lee move.
“Get out, both of you,” he barked without turning.
Lee was saying something, but it faded away, and he knew Gibson was moving them out of the kitchen. Jenny was scowling at him, but all he could focus on were her big green eyes. Eyes he'd seen in his dreams since he was a small boy.
“Jenny,” he said warningly.
“You do not get to come to my place of work and start shouting about shit that is none of your business, Paddy Callaghan,” she snarled at him.
What the hell was she angry about? It wasn’t him who had – well, okay. He had been to those parties and had taken women to his bed at them. Or wherever since the festivities were not prudish in any way. But this wasn’t about him, it was about Jenny.
“I sat down with Doug Hanes today, Jenny,” he growled.
“So?” she asked and tilted her head back to glare up at him.
“You like him?”
“He’s a good man,” she said.
What the hell did that mean?
“You want to be his old lady?” he ground out, wondering what the hell he’d do if she said yes.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Answer my goddamned question!” he roared in her face.
“No,” she yelled back, but lowered her voice as she hissed, “I do not want to be Doug’s old lady.” She took a step back and stated angrily, “I don’t want to be anyone’s old lady.”
He followed her until she had her back against a huge fridge and he was towering over her.
“That’s too fucking bad, Jenny. Because as of this afternoon, you have the choice of being his old lady…”
He leaned in even closer and saw her eyes widen when he did.
“Or mine.”
***
Jenny
I stared at him and could not come up with one single thing to say. Old lady? His? Doug’s? What the hell was he talking about?
“What?” I wheezed out, and he stepped back with a frustrated sound. “Paddy, please. What?” I added in what I hoped to God was a reasonable tone.
Paddy was the calmest in their circle of friends, and the way he behaved was strange, to say the least. I knew he had a temper and could get enormously pissed off, but unlike the others, he rarely let it explode. There was a small muscle high up on his cheek which twitched a little when he got mad, though, so it was easy to tell even if he smiled and seemed perfectly relaxed. I wondered if the others knew about that tell, and they probably did because they’d known each other forever.
He wasn’t so relaxed now, though.
“Padraig,” I said softly, and that got through to him.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Jenny…”
I remained where I was, leaning on the fridge while he stalked a few steps away, stopped and turned toward me. We watched each other in silence and then he sighed.
“Can we sit down?”
“No,” I answered.
I might have reined in my anger before he did, but I was still not happy with the way he’d barged in and started roaring for no reason at all. We were also in my restaurant kitchen, and there were no chairs.
“Okay.”
I waited.
“Jenny…”
I waited some more, not willing to cut him any kind of slack at all.
“I shouldn’t have shouted at you,” he said finally.
“No, you shouldn’t have,” I agreed.
“I got caught off guard, and I lost it. I’m sorry Jen.”
His face was suddenly full of remorse which looked good on him, so I tried to hold on to my anger, but as usual, I had no willpower when it came to Paddy, and it melted away.
“Fine,” I said with a snap in my voice which I knew he saw right through because his eyes softened. “Can you tell me what this is all about now?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he sighed, pulled his hand through his thick hair which was in serious need of a hair-cut I wished he wouldn’t get.
He’d had long hair when he was young, and it had looked good on him.
“I had a meeting with Doug Hanes, talked about some shit. There's a nasty group of people moving our way, and we agreed to work together if they decide to settle in close to us.”
I nodded slowly. The way Paddy and the others had decided to deal with all kinds of criminals was not unknown to me. My brother was a part of the group, so we talked about it, and Paddy didn't know, but I had helped them with information more than once in the past. People gossiped while they ate, and I was in no way deaf, so I'd passed on things to Joke as it passed by me.
“Then Doug started asking about you. Asked why you hadn’t been to one of their parties in a while.”
“Okay,” I said and tried to stop myself from blushing when he stopped talking and just looked at me. “I’m a grown-up Pad,” I added and could have kicked myself for the defensiveness I heard in my voice.
I was very much a grown-up, though. When my seriously sucking marriage went down th
e drain, it took me a while to find myself again, but once I did, I’d found out that I liked sex. A lot. It wasn’t that I had it a lot, but I liked it.
“I know. I just didn’t think you’d –”
He cut himself off, and we ended up in an uncomfortable silence.
“Jesus, Paddy,” I said when the silence stretched out. My voice was a little bit angry again, but it was mostly from feeling like I had to explain myself when I knew well he'd been to the Wolf parties himself. “I'm a grown-up, and I like sex, okay? I'm not gonna spend the evenings getting myself off with just a goddamned dildo, so yeah. I’ve been to their parties, and I liked being there, not that it’s any of your business.”
He made a weird, hoarse sound as if someone had punched him in the stomach, but I was on a roll, so I kept talking.
“What happened after you and Doug had concluded that I was a total slut?”
“Jenny,” he barked, anger seeping into his eyes again and the muscle on his chin twitched. “No one said that. Doug said his men were sobbing like pussies when you broke it off with them. Said he missed having an old lady and asked about you. I lost it and told him he needed to stay away from you. Then one bloody thing led to another, and I left.”
The… what? Sobbing? He left?
“What?”
“Yeah,” he grunted. “Said he couldn’t have you because you were already my old lady.”
I blinked.
“Say again?”
“Might not have been the best thing to do,” he murmured and watched me with a rueful grin. “I –” he paused, and since I was too stunned to get a word out, we stared at each other in silence for a beat. “If you want him then I'll figure something out, Jenny,” he finished softly.
I blinked again.
I did not want to get involved with Doug Hanes. I liked the man, and I’d seen him in various stages of undress, so I knew he was seriously hot. And well equipped. But I did not want to start dating him, or having sex with him, or whatever the two delusional men had discussed.
“So, yeah,” Paddy concluded. “I fucked up a little, and you’ve got a choice to make. Him or me.”
“Uh,” I wheezed out.
“Jenny?”
“I can talk to Doug,” I suggested, and his face darkened.
“I don’t think there’s any need for you to talk to Doug Hanes.”
“Of course there is. If you give me his number, I’ll call him. Get him to back off. I’ll just explain to him that I’m a free spirit or something.”
The anger on his face disappeared to be replaced by something which looked like calm humor.
“You don’t have his number?”
“Why the hell would I have his number, Paddy?” I asked.
“You’ll tell him you’re a free spirit?” he asked instead of answering.
Yes. There was definitely humor in his eyes now.
“Or something,” I added for clarification because there was no way I could make Doug believe I’d suddenly become some kind of hippiesque woman who smoked God knows what and jump-skipped through life like a bumble bee. Or whatever free spirits did, which was something I had no clue at all about.
He suddenly watched me in a way I couldn't interpret, and I had watched Paddy Callaghan my whole life so there were very few of his expressions I couldn't decipher. This made me nervous, and I bit my lower lip, wondering if I should say something else. The kitchen was suddenly too silent, and the mood had changed from angry to… I didn’t know what. I was used to the heat from the burners, but it suddenly felt as if the warm air was caressing me and my addled mind didn't understand what was going on, but my body liked it. A lot.
“Jenny,” he murmured and walked back to stand too close to me again.
His voice had deepened which was something else I didn’t recognize, and its deep rumble vibrated through me in a way I wasn’t used to, which incidentally also was another thing my body liked a little too much.
“Here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna go and deal with shit. You’re gonna handle the diner. While you handle the diner, you'll also think about this and make your mind up. Tonight, we're at my place. Dinner. We'll talk then.”
I tried to process what he was saying and couldn’t get a word out.
“Okay?” he asked and moved his index finger slowly over my cheek.
I felt my nipples harden and fought the urge to look down to make sure my thick apron would hide this fact at the same time as I wanted to kick myself. Getting all worked up from the tip of a finger was ridiculous, wasn’t it?
“Do you want me to bring dinner?” I heard myself say.
I should probably kick his ass to the curb for trying to walk all over me. Except, it was Paddy. And my mind had started to catch up. He’d given me the option to be his… I didn’t know what exactly, but I had wanted to be his something my whole life.
“One of my best friends is the finest cook in the whole county and my daughter trained in the Paris that isn’t in Texas,” he murmured softly. “They both rubbed off on me, so I think I can handle dinner without embarrassing myself.”
I opened my mouth to respond but lost my voice when he brushed a strand of hair off my cheek and tucked it behind my ear.
“See you at seven, Jen,” he said with a small grin.
Then he turned and walked away, raising a hand as he walked through the door but not saying anything else.
My knees were a little shaky suddenly, and I just stood there unable to process anything at all.
“Jenny?” I heard Lee say.
“That rabbit hole,” I rasped out.
“What?”
“When Gibson bullied you into moving into his guest room… You know when the roof caved in on your cabin? You said it felt as if you’d fallen into a rabbit hole and ended up in an alternate universe?”
“Yes?”
“I think I just fell down that hole, Lee.”
Chapter Two
Padraig
When he’d stopped the car outside Gibson’s house, it felt as if all energy just drained out of his body and he leaned his forehead on the steering wheel. What the hell was he going to do now?
If she told him she’d changed her mind and wanted to explore things with Doug Hanes, then he'd go to jail because he'd surely kill the fucker. If she said she'd be his… what? Old lady was a term they used in the clubs, but he and the others had always found it a bit ridiculous and never used it, so what would she be? His girlfriend? Woman? Lover?
“Don’t go there,” he muttered to himself.
Jesus. If that were where this whole damned charade went, how the hell was going to hold back? She’d told him straight to his face she liked sex, and that she used a –
A loud knock on the window made him twitch, but he still didn't move. It would be Gibson, and he could wait until he'd pulled himself together.
“Barn,” Gibson grunted, and Paddy looked at the open door next to him, which he apparently hadn’t locked.
Gibson was not in the mood to wait, it seemed.
Fuck it.
When he closed the door to the big barn behind Gibson’s home which now was converted into Gib’s training space, he was handed a glass.
“Drink.”
“You have whiskey in here?”
“Drink.”
“It’s just past noon, Gib.”
“Either you drink that shit and sit down and talk to me, or I’ll throw you around some after which you will sit your fucking ass down and talk to me, Padraig.”
The only ones who ever used his full name were Gibson and Jenny. They were the only ones who ever figured out how to say it in a way that didn’t grate his nerves, so he let them. He was Paddy to everyone else. He’d never told either of them how much he liked it when they used his full name so Gib couldn’t know how adding it to his calm order soothed him. The liquor burned its way down his throat as he sat down on the couch. Gibson remained standing.
“You pissed at me, Gib?” he said, tryi
ng for calm humor.
“Depends on what comes next.”
“What?”
“I’m gonna tell you what I think is going on here, and true or not, you’re not gonna like it. Depending on how you handle shit, I may or may not be pissed at you.”
Paddy looked up at Gibson and saw in his eyes that he knew. Maybe not everything, but enough to guess most of it.
“I love her, Gibson. Always have,” he whispered, and closed his eyes, squeezing the empty glass with both his hands at the same time as it felt as if a weight he’d carried around for-fucking-ever slid off him.
“Paddy…”
Gibson was suddenly crouched in front of him, and Paddy had to swallow when their eyes met. Why hadn't he told Gib before? There was no judgment, no mockery or scorn in his friend's eyes. He saw only calm acceptance.
“I fucked up, Gib,” he said and felt his mouth twitch with the inadequacy of that statement. “I loved her, and I fucked up.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, man?”
“What was I supposed to say? Felt like a bloody pedophile as it was.”
“Pedo –”
“Gib, no,” Paddy cut in and shook his head slowly. “Bad choice of word. It wasn’t like that. Always liked her, and always felt good when I was with her. You know we’ve always been close, but it wasn’t like that.”
He looked to the side and felt how his lips moved with a soft smile as he remembered.
“Then one day… or night really. I was on a fucking date at the diner. Penny Swither of all people. Jen came out, put the plates on the table and told us to enjoy. I called out something after her, and she turned to grin at me over her shoulder. You know, that grin where her nose scrunches up and her eyes are so goddamned happy. And it hit me. She wasn't just Joke's baby-sis. She was Jenny.”
He turned and looked at Gibson, still smiling a little.
“She’d turned sixteen three days before.”
“Jesus Fucking Christ,” Gibson said, and Paddy snorted.
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you say something? And why the hell didn’t you do something?”
“What was I supposed to say?” Paddy repeated. “We were twenty, and you know what it was like. We were all making our rounds, fucking anything and everything. It hit me from nowhere, and I wasn’t sure it even was for real. So was I suddenly supposed to share that I might have changed my mind and preferred to jack off thinking about a sixteen-year-old?”