by Wolfe, Layla
Corinne was surprisingly easy about it. “I know. Listen, I just want you to know. You’re a really fantastic man. I don’t approve of lots of the things you and your guys do, but that’s not really my business. You’re banging hot as all get-out, I mean you’re just a smoking piece of man candy, Torino.”
“I get that,” he said tersely, giving an old lady the stink eye.
“But you know what the breaking point was for me? That whole Tay-Sachs thing you just dropped in my lap. I’m twenty-six, Torino. I need to have children. I can’t have it hanging over my head that one of my kids might wind up a retard in a wheelchair.”
Ford squeezed his eyes tight with patience. “If it’s any consolation, if you’re not a carrier, which you probably aren’t, our children would not be retards.”
At least two elevator riders gasped loudly at this.
“Whatever, Ford. I really can’t take that risk, if you know what I mean. I need ultra-healthy kids who are going to be football stars and homecoming queens. I hope there are no hard feelings between us. I will always think of you fondly. Oh, and can I have that bronze cowboy statue in the front entry hall?”
Ford had barely been holding it together, and now he exploded. “You can have the fucking Remington statue when I beat an impression of his spurs against your fucking skull, woman!”
The doors opened, and those inhabitants couldn’t scurry fast enough away from Ford. Not many of them probably heard him add, “My fucking mother just died, you self-centered bitch! I’ve got more important things to worry about.” Ford pressed the END button so violently he nearly broke his thumb.
He was glaring angrily at the phone when he stepped off the elevator and smashed face-on into someone.
“Excuse me,” he said automatically, and stepped to one side.
She stepped to the same side.
They repeated this dance once more until the woman cried out, “Ford!”
He finally looked at her, and it took a few seconds for it to sink in.
Holy shit.
Madison Shellmound.
She grabbed the front of his black leather cut and squeezed it in her sweet little fists. Normally that would be grounds for a beatdown, but in this case it only encouraged Ford to wrap her in his arms.
They hugged the living daylights out of each other. They had not parted on good terms.
Madison had succeeded in convincing her brother Bobby not to prospect in to the Bare Bones. Ford had no idea why she seemed to have suddenly turned on the club. Was she really that mortified he had kissed her? True, the run to Mormon Lake had gone sideways. Ford’s IED performed exactly as planned, and ATF would trace the nails back to an Ace Hardware receipt and empty box of nails he had slyly planted in the Cutlass’ clubhouse.
But Bobby had failed in his job as a lookout. The only warning they’d gotten that a couple of Cutlasses were coming was the gunshot of a forty-five. Luckily Bobby fainted when he saw the men, so his head wasn’t in the bullet’s path, but the Bare Bones brothers had barely gotten out of there with their skins.
Madison had vanished the next day. Why would a botched job make her leave town without a word? Ford had looked high and low for her, pestering her friends, Robert, June. It took months for Bobby to report that he’d found his sister living in Flagstaff with a guy named Moe.
Who the fuck was Moe? Ford beat on Bobby until he got an address out of him, and he even got a Fast Riding Award burning rubber up to Flagstaff. But what could he do? Aside from appearing stalkery, all Ford accomplished was discovering that Moe was indeed, as his name suggested, a mild-mannered guy who ran a Starbucks, and if Madison wanted to fuck him, she had every right. His brothers offered to bury Moe, but Ford resisted their efforts. Putting Moe down would have upset Madison.
“Oh, my God,” Madison gushed, pulling Ford aside so people could get on the elevator. “Was it even possible for you to get handsomer? Yes, it was possible. Damn, Ford. You just got handsomer. Whoever married you is one lucky woman.”
“Married?” Ford pulled Madison even farther from the elevator, into a corner by a potted plant. He doubted he was handsomer with his burned, scarred face. Plastic surgery had done a good job but it still looked like he had a layer of Saran wrap over his jaw. “Who the fuck said I was married? Fact, I just broke up with my old lady, ah…” He looked at his phone. “Thirty seconds ago.”
Madison dropped the smile. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry.”
Ford grinned wryly. “I’m not. She was more of a citizen wife, you know, the type for show. Cropper thinks that now I’m V.P. of the club I should act like an upstanding citizen like him, go golfing and join the Lions or something.”
Cropper had left Ingrid shortly after Madison had vanished. That was no shocker, but the hangar on Mescal Mountain wasn’t ready, their trucking company wasn’t together yet, so at eighteen Ford had joined the Navy. Since Robert didn’t patch in to the Bare Bones, Ford hadn’t had any connection to Madison for a long, empty time.
“It’ll be good for you, boy,” Cropper had said, clapping Ford on the back heartily. “They’ll probably want you in the SEALs. Just think—no one’ll ask how you know so much about blowing shit up.”
“Oh yeah, I can completely see you golfing in your leathers. How long have you been out of the Navy? I heard you were some rough and tough SEAL in Afghanistan or Iraq.”
“Both those places, yeah. Special Ops go everywhere. But as you can see, fate caught up with me. I tripped an IED and got burned and discharged ‘cause I can’t hear shit out of this ear. Fact, let me stand over here so I can hear you. How did you know I was a SEAL?”
Madison looked coy. She was always adorable when looking coy—adorable when looking any way, actually. She had blossomed and matured into a ripe and tasty treat of a woman. Looking official in her flowered nurse’s smock and the lanyard around her neck with her ID card covered in plastic only made Ford hotter for her.
Not one day had gone by in the past twelve years that he hadn’t thought of Madison Shellmound. Her picture was still on the wall behind the bar at the Bum Steer, although they’d long since stopped using that as a clubhouse. So the same picture—of her in her trademark push-up bra, white wifebeater, and microscopic cut-offs—was now on the wall of his Veep’s office at the Citadel on Mescal Mountain. Except a youthful Ford himself was in that photo, shirtless except for his cut, with his arm around her. He’d never forgotten how warm her shoulder had been against the sensitive skin of his inner arm.
“Oh, I’ve got my spies.”
“Speed.” Ford used her brother Bobby’s road name. He’d popped back up a year or so ago, sick of being an army grunt, sick of being a car mechanic grunt, wanting to be a biker club grunt. Ford had instantly sponsored his prospect status. Speed had been doing well, knowing he had to commit or roll over like a bitch.
“Is that the idiot’s new name?” Madison sounded amused now, hugging her little clipboard. So she wasn’t down on the club any longer. “Yes. He told me you’ve got quite the spread up there on the mountain.”
“The hangar? Yeah, it’s a sweet setup. Game room, chapel, offices, even a dining room and kitchen. It’s all self-contained. We theoretically never have to go anywhere.”
“Except your house in P&E. Bobby said it looks like an entire pueblo from the outside, with the exposed beams and watch towers and all. Well, I admit I looked on Trulia because I didn’t believe him. Very impressive, Ford. I like what you did with the kitchen countertops. I should say what you had Speed do with the countertops.”
Ford was proud. He knew that Madison’s opinion shouldn’t mean that much to him, but it did. He was proud of what he’d achieved since the bitch had vanished, leaving him seriously in the lurch. The VP patch meant that everything even halfway important came down on him. He’d been out of the service for a good four years running the club’s operations out of the Citadel.
“Yeah, I basically run things—Illuminati Trucking, the streaming studio, the brothels. We’v
e even got a marijuana dispensary but of course Turk runs that. There’s an indoor archery range, if you can believe that. We host Boy Scouts there. Cropper’s got a new citizen wife who’s very big on the country club scene, so he’s barely ever at The Citadel anymore.”
“Seriously? I thought you were kidding about that. So now Cropper wears the plaid pants?”
Ford chuckled. “Not hardly. Listen, I was just on my way to the chapel. Do you want to join me? I hope you don’t have something urgent you’re rushing to do.”
“No, I’m on lunch. Yes, that should’ve been my first question. Why are you here? Something to do with your service injuries? There’s a quiet room down the hall connected to the chapel. Let’s see if no one’s using it.”
Ford was thrilled beyond all reason when Madison took his arm to steer him in the right direction.
He was crestfallen beyond all reason when she stopped touching his arm. That was how he knew that he was still in love with Madison Shellmound.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MADISON, 28 years old
I was reluctant to let go of Ford’s arm.
I never wanted to let go of him again.
I was overjoyed to hear he’d just split with that cunt, as Bobby—Speed—had described her. Corinne was a gorgeous cunt who treated everyone with disdain, as though she’d just discovered them stuck to the bottom of her Louboutins. She wasn’t trashy like so many sweetbutts and even old ladies were. I would never forget the sweetbutt who soaked her tampons in alcohol. It bypassed the liver that way and got her drunk. Of course she was one of Riker’s favorites.
According to Speed, Corinne literally held her nose high, especially when around Riker. I couldn’t blame her for that, but jealousy burned a hole in my heart when Speed told me Corinne had moved into that pueblo mansion that was so big it actually contained three separate suites.
I wondered who else lived there. I wondered whether the cunt would be moving out.
Why do I care? Am I still in love with him? I’d been carefully protecting some old prints of him for over a decade now, moving them from house to house whenever I moved. I tried to avoid looking at them because it wrenched my heart too badly. Ford Illuminati would forever be “the one who got away” to me, proof that I wasn’t good enough to nab him for myself.
“Why am I here? Shit, you asked a mouthful, Maddy.”
My heart literally flip-flopped when he called me Maddy. Walking next to him—having had his arms squeezing me tight again—was like turning the clock back twelve years ago to the week before I’d split my mother’s house. The carefree, happy days when we’d swum in the pool, gotten inked together, riding two up on his Softail…passionately made out in the pool.
We had reached the quiet room, and as luck would have it, it was empty. There was a lovely view here of snow-dusted Humphrey’s Peak and the Coconino forest, the slopes blanketed with ponderosa pines in the frigid February weather. When I sat next to Ford I wanted to take his hands in mine, but I knew it was wrong.
I had abandoned him. I knew from Speed that Ford had been violently upset about my disappearance. He had beaten my address out of Speed, and I’d even seen him sitting astride his bike across the street from the condo I shared with my old buddy Moe. But I’d hidden from him.
I couldn’t tell him why I had left, because that would have defeated the purpose.
Telling him about his father’s disgusting molestation of me would have resulted in Ford taking out Cropper. As much as I loathed the disgusting man, I didn’t wish him dead. At seventeen, Ford had done time in juvenile hall and already had the “Filthy Few” patch on his cut that meant he’d killed at least one man. I didn’t want to be responsible for the fratricide that would give Ford another patch, or whatever patch they gave serial killers.
I had been about to move anyway come the fall. I didn’t necessarily want my old friend Moe to be the one to deflower me, but the price of rent was right—free. I knew what it took to get ahead. I wouldn’t hesitate to use my attributes and skills to succeed in life—to get away from Cropper and my equally loathsome mother.
“Why am I here? God, it’s rough.” Ford rested his forearms on his thighs and looked at a spot on the floor between his boots. The scarring from the IED burn wasn’t as bad as I’d been led to believe. He was so devastatingly handsome anyway. It would just lend a tougher aura to an already tough-as-steel visage. It was his traumatic brain injury that worried me. That could be tough to deal with.
“Well, my mother just died a couple hours ago. That’s basically why I’m here. She’d been ill for a month in intensive care with multiple organ failure, and she finally died just two hours ago. I was holding her hand when it happened. Just like they show on TV. The monitor flatlined and made that beeping sound and the nurses came rushing in and…”
I did grab his hands now. I sat on the edge of my chair and brushed my cool, dry hand against his pitted jaw—he had haphazardly tried to cover up the burned skin with a sort of permanent heavy stubble and goatee that made him look even more handsome. Yes, such a thing was possible. “Your mother? I thought she was some…” I tried to be tactful, as I’d learned after years of nursing. I was going to say “club old lady who went down the wrong path” or some such crap, but Ford beat me to it.
“Fucked-up drug addict, yeah, you can say it, Maddy. I found out a lot more about her. Some brother in our Flagstaff chapter alerted me to her situation. Well, you know she vanished when I was like three so I barely remembered her.”
“Right.” I knew from the ICU nurse’s chatter that Rebekah Quail was in a terminal condition. She had no insurance but because she was of the White Mountain Apache tribe, she was being taken care of by the Indian Health Service. She seemed to have no one visiting her aside from a handsome son who had the nurses all atwitter. I had been longing to cast eyes on this devastating charmer. Now I knew why.
But I hadn’t known Ford was part Apache.
Apparently he hadn’t known that, either.
“Well, it wasn’t her drug addiction that made Cropper kick her to the curb. You’ve seen my brothers, Maddy. They’re no strangers to substance abuse, that’s for sure. I was only spared from addiction because I’m so allergic to most of the substances. And you’ve seen the sweetbutts who give my brothers wine enemas. No, I don’t think drug addiction broke up my parents.”
I could be frank with Ford. “Was it…the fact that she was Apache?”
Ford looked at me grimly. “You noticed that? Are you an ICU nurse?”
“No, I’m attached to Cardiology. But I know the ICU nurses.”
“Yeah, that might’ve been part of it. I didn’t always accept that I was so dark-skinned due to Cropper’s Italian heritage. You know how most club members frown upon the ‘browns.’ Come to find out I’m one-fourth brown myself. But that’s not all.”
What could be worse? I knew the club wasn’t too amenable toward people of color. It was just the way of biker clubs. They’d had a brother, Russ Gollywow, who they mostly just called Gollywow. He was undoubtedly white but he had a fascination with the Philly Soul group, The Stylistics. He often went on the road performing as a backup singer for a Stylistics-type group, wearing various shades of powdery suits and spinning in sync with the actual backup singers he worked with. Gollywow earned no end of disrespect for this hobby, even though he was quite good. I had seen him once performing in Mesa. He would mercilessly beat the shit out of anyone who heckled him, waiting until after the show because he was a professional.
“Last week my mother told me something. The reason Cropper kicked her to the curb is she hadn’t told him she’s a carrier of the Tay-Sachs gene. He must be, too. I turned out okay, although I might be a carrier.” He took a deep breath and couldn’t look at me anymore. He looked back at the floor. “But she had another kid after me, a son. He was affected. That’s when Cropper booted her with nothing, no money, no nothing.”
“You have…a brother?”
“Had. He died w
hen he was four, living in some shithole over at Fort Apache. Was in a wheelchair, blind and deaf, could barely move. It was a blessing that he kicked, according to my sainted mother. She knew she had the gene, just didn’t know Cropper had it, too, so she kept popping them out until she got a lemon.”
Tears flooded my eyes. Being a nurse, you see a lot. I’ve had to deal with irate shrieking relatives who either want to kill the patient, say for leaving them out of a will, or for some deathbed confession. You get people storming down the hallways with machetes, lamp bases, hammers, I mean, you wouldn’t believe. Nurses do so much more than give people drugs. There’s the entire tolerating-a-buttload-of-shit that most people don’t think about when they think “nurses.”
I’ve seen many people just ripped apart when someone they love has died. Dealing with death is a whole facet of nursing unto itself. Truth is, we get kind of blasé about it. I was only twenty-eight and I felt I’d seen it all.
Until now. This week had been hell on Ford, the man I loved, the man I was falling in love with all over again. I slid my cool fingers around the back of his hot neck, stimulated to feel his thick, silken hair again. I scooted as close to him as was possible, our thighs pressed together. Not only had he discovered who and where his birth mother was, she had just died, and he already had a dead brother. Oh, and he may be a carrier of the Tay-Sachs gene. And his girlfriend had just left him. He was in dire need of some serious loving. I sat so close, the shelf of my boobs pressed against his upper arm. It was in the forties outside, and he wore a hoodie under his cut—the same cut that was now emblazoned with a “V. PRESIDENT” patch over his right pec.
“I can’t begin to know what you’re going through,” I started off lamely. It was always a lie to pretend you could commiserate with some of the most massive clusterfucks people had to deal with in hospitals. I really couldn’t commiserate. I’d never had anyone close to me die before. “You can be tested, find out if you’re a carrier. It’s a simple blood test.”