Fire & Dark (The Night Horde SoCal Book 3)

by Susan Fanetti

  Pilar insisted on warming up, so he swung his arms around a few times while she went through a whole stretch routine. And then they were ready. “Ladies first.”

  “Fuck that. You really think I’m dumb, don’t you? Whoever goes first sets the mark. Going second is like home field advantage.”

  “Okay, then, I’ll go first.”

  “No. It should be straight-up fair. I don’t want you saying you let me win. We should flip. Trick, you got a quarter or something?”

  Trick dug into his jeans pocket. “Yeah. Cordero, you call it.”

  “Tails.”

  He tossed the coin and caught it, then clapped it onto the back of his other hand. They all looked when he lifted his hand. Tails. “Connor, you’re up first.”

  Connor jumped and grabbed the pull-up bar, and then he got started. They’d agreed on underhand style. He wasn’t stupid, so he didn’t show off. She was a cocky little shit, and he was serious about showing her her limits. So he just did pull-ups, ignoring everything around him. To their credit, both Pilar and Trick stayed quiet.

  Fifty was no big deal. He routinely did sixty when he worked out. He started feeling it at seventy-five. By ninety-five, his arms were on fire. He was pulling up two-hundred-twenty pounds of muscle. By one hundred, he was shaking and puffing.

  Then Trick and Pilar both starting cheering him on. That pissed him off, so he got some mileage out of it.

  He hit failure at one-thirteen. And dropped like a rock to the floor. “Fuck. Beat that, baby.”

  “Damn,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

  He had trouble getting his arm up to get water to his mouth. “You concede?”

  “I didn’t say that. I’m just impressed.” She stretched a couple more times and then jumped to the same bar.

  He knew fifty barely broke a sweat for her, so while Trick counted, as he had for Connor, Connor sat on a bench and just relaxed and enjoyed the view of that amazing body, flexing with effort. In their relative positions, he could see her face, and it was nearly blank with concentration. She’d simply gone away.

  At eighty-five, she looked exactly the same, and he started to worry a little.

  Trick came over to him. “Eight-nine”—He leaned down and muttered, “Damn, bro. This woman is something.” Then he stood back up—“Ninety.”

  Yeah. She really was.

  She was past one hundred before she looked noticeably fatigued, and Connor knew he was screwed.

  At a hundred and eight, she broke her rhythm and struggled to get it back, and he stood up, reclaiming the possibility that he’d win—and also kind of worried for her. Each pull-up after that, she struggled, her arms shaking, her face tense and red. And he found himself cheering her on, as she had him.

  She hit one-fourteen and beat him. And then she hit one-fifteen. And one-sixteen. When she was still trying to drag herself up to one-seventeen, he went over and wrapped his arms around her thighs. “Enough already! You beat me. Point made. Now it’s just sad.”

  She let go of the bar and sagged into his hold. “Ow.”

  His tired arms weren’t exactly thrilled with holding her this way. Letting her slide down his body, he caught her again so she could wrap her legs around his waist. “Not everything has to be a competition, baby.”

  “You’re one to talk.” She grinned. “But I win! And now you owe me karaoke.”

  Trick came over. “Wait. What? That’s the wager? The Conman is singing karaoke? Oh, please tell me it’s true.”

  “Fuck you, asshole,” Connor snarled. He had almost a week before the stupid Karaoke Idol thing. Maybe he’d die before then. He could hope.

  “Haha! That’s brilliant. Cordero, you have restored my faith in humanity.”

  Connor ignored him. Setting a triumphant Pilar back on the floor, he bent down and kissed her, keeping it light, knowing she didn’t much like an audience. “Come on, baby. We both need a hot shower.” He considered sweeping her back into his arms and carrying her to his room, but just the thought made his muscles ache more.

  And anyway, as much as she liked getting thrown around, she didn’t like getting carried around.

  So he took her hand. She linked her fingers with his, and they walked to his room together.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “I hope you like steak. We’re a steak and potato crowd around here.” Bibi filled a glass with red wine from a box and handed it to Pilar.

  “I eat anything, and this all looks delicious. Is there something I can do?” She was standing in the middle of Connor’s mother’s kitchen, and Bibi and Faith, who was a family friend or a relative or something, were both doing cooking things, moving around the kitchen in a rhythm that seemed well practiced. Faith’s baby girl was sleeping in a swing off to the side. The men—Connor and Hoosier, his dad, and Demon, Faith’s husband or old man or whatever, and their little boy, Tucker—were all in the back yard. Connor had introduced her, tripping over whether to call her Pilar or Cordero. He’d landed on Pilar, and she hadn’t corrected him.

  She had to get her head around why she was getting all weird about her name. Normally, when she first met someone, she introduced herself as Pilar. Like a normal person. Her friends were the only ones who called her Cordero. But since she’d decided she’d wanted Connor to call her Cordero, and then wanted him to call her Pilar again—which was odd as hell, she knew that—the use of her given name felt more intimate. She was developing a complex about it.

  She wasn’t going to figure all that out here and now, though. So she hadn’t fussed when he’d introduced her as Pilar, even though it made her twitch inexplicably. And then he’d grabbed a beer and abandoned her to the women.

  This was not a situation she was comfortable with. She got along better with men; she always had. Most women found her hard and bitchy, and she found most women vain and insipid. In her heart of hearts, she liked girly stuff, sparkly things and pretty clothes, but there was only so long she could talk about shoes.

  She looking longingly out the French doors to the patio, where the men were sitting, drinking, talking, and grilling. Tucker sat on the patio amidst their feet, rolling cars over the stonework.

  She was at Connor’s parents’ house for Sunday dinner. Barely more than a week since they’d decided to be serious. Pilar’s head spun thinking about the change in him. Once he’d decided they were trying this, he was immediately and fully serious. He’d even said as much: If I’m in, I’m in.

  Even though she’d gone for him, the speed they were moving now freaked her out a little. Everything about him, at first glance, even second glance, read shallow and lighthearted. He should have been the perfect fuck buddy—volcanic sex and nothing else. But almost from the first, she’d felt that there was much more to him than met the eye, and that…essence…she couldn’t see had captivated her. Now she was learning that that core of his self was steady and serious—and not buried as deeply as she’d thought.

  Bibi poured Welch’s grape juice into a wine glass and handed it to Faith, who was apparently not drinking. Faith answered the question Pilar had asked. “Everything’s about done. We usually eat a little earlier.”

  She’d just come off a thirty-six—had come straight here, in fact. “Sorry about that.”

  As Faith said, “No, no,” Bibi waved her apology off. “Please. You were workin’—and important work. We’re happy to wait a little to have you with us.” She checked the range. “Green beans are about done. Would you mind settin’ the table? Everythin’s stacked on it already.”

  “Not at all.” Pilar felt stilted and strangely defensive. She was not good at this meet-the-family stuff.

  When she’d been a little girl, family of one sort or another had been everywhere. There was always a party, always a dinner, at their apartment or their grandmother’s, or that of one of the Assassins—they’d been a highly social crowd. The birthday party at which her father had been shot down had been boisterous. Her memory of that day was nothing more than a few faded,
random images, but every one of them was full of people: kids clamoring under a pink piñata shaped like a puppy; a crowd watching her father sit her astride the Barbie two-wheeler that had been her best present.

  People shouting and running out of the yard. Her abuela grabbing her up and running into the house. She never saw her father again.

  After that, life had quickly picked up where it had left off, the only change the man who sat at their table in the morning. She’d had friends, family. Lots of people she called Tia and Tio. But when Renata had moved them away, it all stopped. From the time she was twelve, birthdays were celebrated at home, with just Hugo and Nana. There had been no more parties. There had been few friends. And certainly no expensive quinciñera when she turned fifteen. Nana had circled the wagons.

  She hadn’t missed any of that, not really. Her attention had been on Hugo and on helping her grandmother. Hugo had missed it much more and found ways to seek out the social interaction he’d needed, but Pilar had been content, or at least resigned, to be the responsible one.

  But she didn’t know how to stand in a kitchen with women and socialize. She’d actually been thrilled to get the job of setting the table, because it gave her something to do. She drank down her whole glass of wine and hurried in the direction she’d been pointed.

  She could only imagine what the talk about her would be later tonight: Wow, Connor really picked a winner there. Real charmer, that one.

  She was not good at this stuff.

  ~oOo~

  Once everyone was around the table, it got easier. This kind of conversation—around a big, full table—she was used to. And these were not formal people. Hoosier had dropped a big plate of steaks in the middle of the table. There were twice-baked potatoes and a green bean casserole, a big basket of rolls, and corn on the cob. It was a redneck feast.

  She laughed to herself as she watched the men reaching across the table to grab food. Connor, the tray of potatoes in one hand, lifted an eyebrow at her. “What’s funny?”

  Not about to say out loud what she’d been thinking, she shook her head. “Nothing. I’m just enjoying myself.” And that was almost true now.

  Tucker was at the table with them, and Demon made him a plate, cutting the portions into small bits. Rather than eat, though, Tucker drove his roll around his plate, making engine sounds.

  Demon took the roll out of his hand and set it next to his own plate. “C’mon, Motor Man. Don’t play with food. Eat your meat.”

  “How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?” Connor said, smirking.

  Tucker stopped trying to get his roll and stared across the table at Connor. “Pudding? I want pudding!”

  “Asshole,” Faith muttered at Connor’s side.

  “Sorry, Bambi.” He didn’t look the least bit sorry.

  “Double asshole.” She looked at her son. “There’s no pudding, Tuck. Granny made cookies. We have cookies for dessert.”

  “I want pudding with Unca Con!” Just then, the baby, Lana, still in her swing, started to cry, and Tucker’s budding tantrum was averted when his head spun around in the direction of his sister. “Uh-oh, Mommy. Lala needs a boob.”

  Everybody laughed—Pilar loudest, probably because she was the only one who’d been surprised by that. Tucker grinned, looking proud and a little confused. Then, at another cry from his sister, he scowled. “Mommy!”

  “Thanks, buddy. I’m on it.” Faith set her napkin on the table and went to her daughter. While she was gone, everybody went back to filling their plates. Demon got Tucker to take a bite of steak.

  Around a mouthful of steak, Hoosier asked Pilar, “Connor says you were working a thirty-six-hour shift today. That’s a long stretch. How’s it work?”

  Before she could answer, Faith returned with Lana and opened her shirt at the table, setting the baby to nurse. Pilar saw Demon give Connor a pointed stare and then, when Connor shrugged and put a forkful of steak in his mouth, Demon stabbed at his dinner. Hoosier made note of Faith, too, his eyes sliding in that direction and then skittering away. He shook a little and then refocused on Pilar.

  She laughed again. Men.

  They did community outreach at the station, so she had pat answers to pretty much everything any regular person ever thought to ask about firefighting. “It’s not thirty-six hours of nonstop work. We do a lot more than go out on calls. We maintain the barn and the equipment, do public service and community outreach, training, fitness. But we also bunk during that time, unless we have a busy watch. We eat meals, have rest periods. This watch was pretty quiet. We worked a school fair yesterday. And we only had three calls, all of them pretty low-key. So we got our eight in the bunks.”

  “You ever been on a fire a whole shift?”

  Pilar chewed and swallowed before she answered that one. The food was really good. She took a drink of wine—not that good, but okay. “Yeah. Wildfires. The Forest Service leads those, but we can get called in on all-unit calls, and then you’re there until it’s contained. Five minute breaks every four hours.”

  “Jesus,” Faith said, sounding a little bit in awe.

  “Fire moves fast.”

  “It’s a badass job.” Demon smiled at her, and she smiled back.

  Pilar thought so, too. But she knew it was rude to say so, at least in this company. So she smiled and said, “It’s not boring, that’s for sure.”

  The conversation moved on from her, but with that little interview and the familiar chaos that had preceded it, Pilar had found the rhythm with Connor’s family. No longer feeling defensive or stilted, she asked questions of her own. It was a good night.

  By the time she and Connor left, Pilar had learned that Faith was an artist—and also a pretty cool chick. She’d learned that Faith and Demon lived not far at all from Joshua Tree, which was also Demon’s favorite spot in the world, and that they had a big property with a menagerie of orphaned animals.

  She got invited to see said menagerie and accepted the invitation.

  She’d seen that Hoosier and Bibi still had mad, NC-17 love for each other, after more than forty years together, and seeing that gave her some insight into Connor’s initial reluctance to commit and new enthusiasm for it. His parents had taught him how to love, and he was holding out for what they had.

  That had been a heady realization.

  She’d learned that Connor was a mama’s boy, but in the totally hot way of loving and respecting the good woman who raised him, not in the creepy way where she still did his laundry.

  The club girls did his laundry. The whole ‘club girl’ thing was a little squicky, to be honest.

  As they stood at his big bike, strapping on their helmets, he leaned down and kissed her. “Thank you.”

  “What for?”

  He stopped and frowned a little. “I don’t know. I just…it was good to have you here. And I feel grateful, I guess.”

  She grinned and grabbed hold of his kutte, giving it a shake. “That’s weird.”

  “Yeah,” he laughed, “it is.” He kissed her again. “Let’s go fuck.”

  ~oOo~

  Three nights later, the night before her platoon was scheduled for their next watch, Pilar sat at The Deck. Her firefighter buddies and Connor’s biker ‘brothers’ were sitting with her, together for the first time, having shoved a bunch of tables into a group. The joint was hopping; it was time for Karaoke Idol. Trick had told everybody in the Horde about her bet with Connor and that she had won, and now there were eight mostly large men in leather sitting with her, drinking and being rowdy.

  She hadn’t told Moore and the others, but she hadn’t dodged the question about where she’d be tonight, so her usual suspects were all accounted for, too. When Connor had swallowed down a pint of beer, kissed her, grabbed a backpack from under the table, and headed behind the stage to the crows and hoots of his brothers, only then had her crew put it all together.

  It was safe to say that their misshapen collection of tables was the rowdiest area in
a rowdy bar.

  Pilar didn’t know what he was planning to sing or why he’d needed a backpack—or even where it had come from; they’d ridden here together on his Harley, and he hadn’t had it then. She expected him to get up on stage and mutter into the microphone for a few minutes and try to act like he just didn’t give a fuck—she knew what the macho cover for embarrassment looked like. She’d had a few twinges of guilt to be causing that embarrassment.

  But then she’d remember what his terms had been for her side of the bet, and the guilt died off.

  This was Karaoke Idol, so it wasn’t just random drunks wandering over to the signup sheet. People had had to register ahead of time. A lot of them rehearsed and had little stage shows. The grand prize was only a hundred-dollar gift card to Blue Sky, but some people took this straight-up seriously.