Reaper's Stand

by Joanna Wylde

  “Just remember, Friday night is mine.”

  “Friday night is yours,” I repeated.

  Then I climbed on Reese Hayes’s bike, wrapped my arms around him tight, and let him carry me off into the sunset.

  It was full dark by the time we reached my place.

  I didn’t want to get off the bike and step back into reality … there was something incredibly thrilling and powerful about riding with Reese, and I wanted to enjoy it while I could. Whatever he might have said earlier, I wasn’t exactly holding my breath that this would turn into a real relationship. The odds weren’t in our favor. But until things fell apart, I’d let myself savor the moment—giving up control and trusting him to keep me safe was the most liberating thing I’d done in six years.

  When he turned off the Harley, I couldn’t seem to make my hands let go of him. This didn’t seem to bother Reese. He caught them in his own and pulled me tighter against his back. I smelled the leather and felt his strength between my legs. Surreal.

  Then he let go.

  I climbed off the bike and back into reality. The porch light came on and the front door opened to reveal Mellie. She stopped dead when she saw Reese, and her jaw actually dropped.

  Fair enough.

  Last time she’d seen me, I’d been dating a deputy sheriff. Now I’d come home with an outlaw biker, and I’d be willing to bet that anyone seeing us would know we’d been together. There was an intimacy between us that hadn’t been there before. I felt it in the way he put his hand on my back protectively, and the way I found myself leaning toward him.

  Oh, and it probably didn’t help that I’d lost my bra—the night air was cool enough to nip me out in a big way.

  Mellie had always been shy, so I was surprised when she stepped off the porch and started walking across the lawn. The kid must’ve been even more upset than she sounded on the phone. I’d just started toward her when a horrific burst of sound and heat and light exploded out of the house. Reese tackled me to the ground, covering me with his body.

  Everything fell perfectly, utterly silent.

  What the hell had happened?

  Reese lay on top of me for long seconds. I couldn’t hear his voice but I felt the vibrations of his yelling through his body. Why couldn’t I hear him? After an eternity, he rolled off me and I looked up to find an inferno where my house had been, flames licking up toward the sky.

  I realized my house had exploded.

  My house had fucking exploded!

  An instant later I remembered how close Melanie had been when it went up, and my heart stopped.

  “Mellie!” I yelled, grabbing Reese’s arm, jerking him toward me. “We have to find Mellie!”

  He yelled something back at me, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Then he was on his feet, running across the lawn. I staggered upward, trying to figure out what the hell was happening. Neighbors were pouring out into the street all around us. Slowly sounds took shape—mostly an unpleasant ringing—and I realized the force of the explosion had temporarily deafened me.

  Reese was a dark silhouette against the fire, searching through the debris. He stopped suddenly, and I saw him lift Mel’s still form, carrying her toward me. Then he was laying her in the grass and noises started filling my ears again. I fell to my knees next to her body.

  Oh God. Mellie …

  She looked dead.

  “I’m calling nine one one!” someone yelled behind us, startling me. I was still stunned—I couldn’t seem to think. I needed to check her pulse, make sure she was breathing. Old training kicked in, and I could have cried in gratitude for the CPR classes I’d taken over the years. I found her pulse. Weak, but definitely present. Then I leaned my face into her mouth and nose, praying I’d feel her breathe against my skin.

  Air tickled my cheek.

  “She’s alive,” I whispered. Tears rolled down my face.

  “Thank fuck for that,” Reese muttered, pulling me into his arms as one of my neighbors knelt next to Melanie, covering her with a blanket. The wall of safety came crashing down around me and I started to shake.

  My house was gone. I’d almost lost Melanie … What the hell could possibly explain this?

  The wailing howls of emergency vehicles filled the air. I heard a car screech to a stop, and out of the corner of my eye I vaguely noticed that a man in a sheriff’s uniform had stepped out, speaking into his shoulder radio urgently.

  Then a fire engine rumbled down the street. Firefighters ran past me, dragging their hoses with them, and EMTs swarmed Mellie’s still form.

  To my relief they weren’t doing anything that looked serious and scary like you see on TV—no chest compressions or IVs or shocking her with shiny paddles. Instead they monitored her vitals, voices calm as they methodically got a neck brace on her before rolling her onto a backboard. Seconds later they lifted the entire apparatus—backboard and all—onto the rolling gurney and started back toward their vehicle.

  “That board won’t do much good if you already paralyzed her. Should’ve left her where you found her,” I heard a familiar voice say. I looked up to find Nate standing over me, his voice full of venom. I pulled away from Reese and stood slowly. Nate reached a hand down to help me, but Reese caught my arm.

  “Stay the fuck away from my woman,” he growled. Nate’s eyes went wide.

  “Guess that cunt’s not made of gold after all?” he commented. Reese lunged toward him and without thinking I jumped between the two men.

  “I don’t have time for this,” I shouted, staring them down like two little boys who needed a time-out. “I need to check on Mel. Reese had to get her away from the fire, Nate. If you’d been here, you’d have done the same thing. She was practically on top of it. And Reese? What happened between me and Nate is between me and Nate. I’m a big girl and I can fight my own battles. I’m going to follow Mel to the hospital, and you better fucking behave yourselves because I’m not in the mood.”

  Both men gaped at me. I didn’t care—these weren’t normal times and I could give a fuck about their little pissing match. I decided to ignore them and follow Melanie.

  “Is she all right?” I asked the EMT, who was busy securing the gurney in the ambulance. She glanced over at me but didn’t miss a beat.

  “Dunno,” she said. “They’ll check her head at the hospital. Looks like she hit something hard. You have any idea what happened here?”

  “None,” I said, my voice grim. “But we’re really damned lucky to be alive. She was just coming out of the house when it exploded.”

  “Definitely lucky,” she said. None of this added up.

  “Houses don’t just explode. Do they?” I didn’t realize I’d asked the question out loud until the woman answered me.

  “I’ve seen stranger things,” the EMT said. “Are you a family member? We’re headed toward Kootenai. There’s another bus coming, they’ll be able to check you out—she’s higher priority and we need to get her in. I’m going to close the doors now. Step back, please.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” I said anxiously. I turned to find Nate and Reese still in their standoff, staring each other down in the flickering light of the flames. My neighbor, Danica, walked up to me and wordlessly wrapped a blanket around my shoulders.

  “You okay?” she asked. “Can I do anything?”

  “Can you give me a ride to the hospital?” I asked, the words broken by a sudden, harsh cough. “I need to make sure Melanie is okay.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Do you want to check in with the police first? I’m sure they’ll want to talk to you, probably have a ton of questions they need to ask.”

  “The answers will still be the same after I make sure Mellie is okay,” I said tightly. “Just get me out of here.”

  “You got it,” she said. “Car’s parked behind the house, back in the alley. Good thing, too, because everyone on the street is blocked in. Um … I couldn’t help but notice that big guy over there was with you. And that the other one used to be
with you. You want to touch base with them before you leave?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, shaking my head, frustrated. “They can play caveman without me. All I care about right now is getting to the hospital.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  REESE

  “Here’s what you need to know,” I said to Evans, clenching my fist because I’ve never wanted to hit a man more in my life. I wasn’t exactly used to holding back. “London is with me now. You don’t talk to her, you don’t touch her, you don’t think about her. Otherwise we’ll have another discussion, and that one won’t happen where you have a thousand cop buddies to save your ass. Got me?”

  Evans studied me and shook his head slowly, the flickering light of the fire throwing his face into shadow.

  “I don’t want her. I could give a shit about London Armstrong.”

  Yeah, and my next bike was gonna be a Honda.

  “Then you won’t mind staying the hell away from her,” I said. “Things won’t get ugly and I won’t find myself diggin’ a hole down in the Bitterroots.”

  His eyes went big.

  Yeah, fucker. You heard that right.

  “Just to be clear—you just threatened a cop with murder? Not smart, Hayes.”

  I laughed.

  “You got a great imagination,” I told him. “I think we’re finished here.”

  His expression turned ugly, and I thought I saw a glimpse of something like hatred in his face. Fair enough—feeling was mutual. Then the sheriff himself stepped between us, smacking me on the back before gripping my shoulder meaningfully.

  “You okay, Pic?” he asked.

  “Still here, Bud. Kind of concerned about my woman’s place, though. Houses don’t usually blow up,” I said, holding my gaze fixed on Evans. “Not too impressed with your boy, either. He called London a cunt. For the record, she’s the owner of this property.”

  “Evans, get back to your car,” Bud snapped. Deputy Dick gave him a mock salute, then ambled off. “Goddamn but I hate that man. I think he’s gonna run for sheriff next election, too.”

  “He can run,” I said, my voice cold. “He ain’t gonna win.”

  “Not so sure about that,” Bud replied. “My Lavonne met up with Jennifer Burley at the casino last week. Jen said that Nate’s dad has already started talking about mounting a campaign for the boy. Fund-raising.”

  “If you had any balls, you’d fire his ass.”

  “I fire his ass, the commissioners will have mine,” Bud said bluntly. “You know that. I don’t think there’s a politician in the county his daddy doesn’t have something on.”

  “Well, maybe you should’ve been more careful,” I told him, losing patience. “Might be time to throw yourself on your sword, you ever consider that? He’ll do a lot more harm before he’s done.”

  Bud’s eyes narrowed and I shrugged off his hand. Fucking coward. I’d had just about enough of this shit.

  “So that your woman’s place?” he asked, jerking his chin toward the burning house. “Falls under my jurisdiction. Just outside the city line limits. Anything I should know?”

  “Yeah, that’s my woman’s place,” I said slowly, the words feeling strange in my mouth. “But we’re a new thing. This wouldn’t have anything to do with the club, even if it wasn’t accidental. What’s your gut read?”

  “Probably a gas leak and buildup,” Bud said. “That’s what the firefighters think, and they got good instincts about this kind of shit. Nobody’ll say anything official until there’s a full investigation, of course, but all the signs are there. We’re damned lucky it’s not full of crispy critters. She have a gas stove?”

  “She did,” I said, shrugging. “Last time I was here, I smelled it. She said she was cleaning the oven. No big deal.”

  “Looks like a pretty big deal to me.”

  “No shit.”

  “Off the record, EMTs think the kid’ll be fine. Wanna check for internal bleeds, spinal trauma, all that shit. But it’s just routine. We’ll need to talk to both of them, of course.”

  “Of course,” I responded, noticing for the first time that Mellie was gone. Damn, where was London?

  “She went to the hospital,” Bud said dryly, clearly reading my expression. “Saw her leave while you were pissin’ over her with Evans. Somethin’ to consider next time you feel like fighting over a woman instead of taking care of her.”

  I turned on him, my face grim. How had I missed her taking off? And since when did Bud have the balls to lecture me? Then I realized the bastard was right.

  Fuck.

  I was out of practice with this relationship shit, but the pissing matches were all but hardwired into my DNA after so many years in the club.

  “Headin’ to the hospital,” I told him shortly. “She’ll be upset, confused. I want updates, but you won’t question her until tomorrow, got me?”

  “Yeah,” Bud said, nodding. “No real reason to, so far as I can tell. Nothing that can’t wait. That’ll change, we find any evidence this wasn’t an accident.”

  “You find any evidence it wasn’t an accident, you call me,” I told him, my voice cold and serious. “First call you make. You scared Nate Evans’s daddy’ll go after your job? I’ll go after your fucking family. We clear?”

  Bud smiled, his mouth tight.

  We were clear.

  LONDON

  It was around ten p.m. when Reese sat down next to me in the hospital waiting room, handing over a cup of coffee without saying a word. Wasn’t sure how I felt about him being there. Sure, we’d had great sex. But the whole showdown with my sort-of ex? I was a grown-up. I didn’t need that kind of complication, no matter how fabulous he was in the sack.

  On the other hand, he had thrown himself over me when the house blew up. He definitely got points for that.

  “You over your snit with Nate?” I asked him, rubbing the back of my neck.

  “I think we cleared things up,” he said. “You hear anything about Mellie yet?”

  “They think she’s probably all right,” I told him wearily. I’d had a hell of an adrenaline rush, but it was starting to wear off. “They’re doing some scans to make sure, but sounds like a mild concussion. Might keep her overnight.”

  “Her dad show up?”

  I snorted.

  “Her dad was too drunk to understand me when I called him,” I admitted. “I think he said she wasn’t welcome at his house but it’s hard to tell. He wasn’t making a whole lot of sense. I can’t let her go back there. She can stay …”

  Shit.

  That’s when it hit me—I had nowhere for her to stay … or for me. I had to find somewhere to live. Immediately. I remembered someone saying something about the Red Cross and a hotel room, but the details were blank. Reality hit me all at once—I looked at Reese, eyes wide.

  “I’m homeless,” I whispered. “Oh my God, I don’t have anywhere to live. Jessie is flying back home tomorrow and there’s no home.”

  He reached out and took the coffee he’d just given me, setting it on the little table in front of us. Then he pulled me over onto his lap, wrapping his arms around me. One hand caught my head, pulling it down against his shoulder and stroking soothingly.

  I resisted at first—I didn’t like the idea of being dependent on him, or him thinking I needed him for anything … but maybe just this once.

  “Just let me be strong for you for a minute, okay?” he said softly. “You’ve held on for a long time, sweetheart. Nobody can say you haven’t been strong. But it’s been a hell of a night, so why don’t you let me hold you and help you right now.”

  It took me a minute, but then I nodded because he was right. I’d been strong for a very long time and now I’d have to be stronger. Oh, God. What was I going to tell Jess?

  “You’ll come back to my house tonight,” he said. “And if they let Mellie go, she can sleep upstairs in Kit’s room. Tomorrow you’ll pick up Jessica and she can stay at my place, too. Fuck, I’m used to having a house full of gir
ls. That’ll give you the time to figure out what your next step is. I’m assuming you had insurance?”

  Insurance. I’d forgotten about insurance! Woo-hoo!

  “Of course,” I said, sitting up so quickly I almost fell off his lap. “I have insurance. I need to call my agent—I think it even pays for an apartment or something.”

  “Okay, that’s a start,” he said, then smiled at me. It hit me hard, the way those bright blue eyes crinkled at the corner, and I felt a very inappropriate wave of lust sneaking up. Even if the house had blown up, it didn’t change the fact I’d finally gotten laid and it kicked ass.

  Something stirred under my butt. Guess I wasn’t the only one in lust.

  Leaning forward, I whispered, “I feel sort of like a pervert.”

  He laughed, rubbing his nose along my cheek.

  “Ms. Armstrong?”

  I looked up, full of that sudden, guilty, caught-in-the-headlights sensation I remembered from the time the PE teacher at my high school caught me making out with Troy Jones behind the bleachers. We were supposed to be running laps.

  See? I wasn’t always a good girl.

  “I’m London Armstrong,” I said quickly, standing up and smoothing my clothes—a pointless task if one ever existed, because they were muddy and disgusting from Reese’s protective tackle earlier. My hair wasn’t much better, although I’d managed to get the dirt off my face in the bathroom sink.

  “Melanie’s done with her scan now,” the ER nurse said, a hint of humor in her eyes. Glad someone could appreciate the situation. “She’d like you to come back and wait with her.”

  I started to follow, Reese one step behind. The nurse paused and frowned.

  “She didn’t mention him,” she said. “Are you family?”

  Reese shook his head.

  “I’m here with London,” he said. “If Mel doesn’t want me in there, I’ll leave. No arguments. I don’t want to make her uncomfortable … but I’d like to talk to her if she’s okay with that.”

  The nurse looked skeptical, but she nodded.

  “If she doesn’t want you in the room, you’re out.”