Hadley flinched. “But you’re the VP. Can’t you do something?”
Goddamn it. My frustration and guilt came out as anger before I could stop it. “What the hell do you expect me to do?” I yelled. “I’m the VP, but I’m not God. I’m outnumbered.” I stopped for a moment to get control of myself, and then said more calmly, “It’s good money for us, Hadley. Easy money. Not everyone wants to give that up.’
She took a deep breath and let it out. She glanced over at me, her eyes shining, and then she looked away. “One of my friends. Lucy. Her cousin is addicted. They think they’ve lost her.” She shook her head. “It’s terrible.”
“A buddy of mine from high school is addicted, too,” I answered. I was silent for a moment. “It’s bad. I know. Hadley, believe me, I wish we weren’t involved in it at all.”
I looked at her to see if she believed I was telling her the truth. She gazed up at me, and our eyes locked. For a moment, the electricity that was between us flashed. Her skin flushed, and her breathing grew shallow. She looked away quickly.
“I can’t believe you can’t do anything,” she said, a little breathlessly. “You’re the VP.”
“Hadley,” I said, as gently as I could, “the club votes on these things. I can only do so much. Jimmy is one of the main ones who wants the meth trade. He and I aren’t exactly close friends.” Even without you between us. “Believe me, he’s never gonna agree with me on this. Neither is Stick, or some of the others.” I was watching her face when I said Jimmy’s name, to see her reaction. Was she with him? Had he reclaimed her as his?
“Jimmy’s behind it?” she asked.
“He’s not the one who came up with the idea. But he wants us to get deeper in.” I was treading on dangerous ground here. Club members didn’t discuss business with non-club members. Even old ladies.
Not that Hadley was my old lady.
As much as I wanted her to be.
The thought sliced through me like a knife. I had never thought about any woman that way. Women, generally speaking, were a distraction. Fun to have around when you were horny and looking for some action, but it was better to keep them at arms’ length so they didn’t cause problems.
Hadley, I realized, had broken through something inside me. I wanted things with her that I had never wanted with other women before. When I thought about her, which was often, I thought about fucking her within an inch of her life. But I also thought about other things. I wondered what she looked like first thing in the morning, with messed up hair and sleepy eyes. I wondered what it would be like to wake up next to her.
Shit. I shook myself out of my reverie and tried to remember that she was my stepsister.
“What about my dad?” she asked. “How much does he want to be in it?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “It’s not so much that he wants the meth business, I don’t think. It’s that it’s lucrative and he sees no reason to stop.”
“Because it doesn’t affect him,” Hadley said, her tone bitter.
“I suppose,” I nodded. But even as I said it, I flashed back to what Lon had told me a few weeks ago, when Hadley had come back. Hadley’s mom had died from a drug overdose. And Hadley didn’t know. It felt weird, sitting here with her and keeping such a big, important secret from her. I knew it wasn’t my place to tell her, but I felt like I was lying to her. And I didn’t like the feeling.
“Will you talk to him about it?” she asked suddenly. “About stopping?”
I didn’t tell her I had been trying to think about how to do that for months. “What makes you think he’d listen?” I asked.
“Well, you’re his VP. And you’re his son,” she said, smirking ironically.
I laughed. “Yeah. His son.” I smiled back at her and nodded. “Look, Hadley. I’ll do what I can. I promise.”
She smiled up at me, a dazzling smile that lit up her face like Christmas. “Thank you, Ryker,” she whispered.
“Of course,” I nodded. I mimicked her smirk from a moment before. “Anything for my sister, right?”
She let out a short laugh in response, but then stopped. She looked into my eyes again. Her expression was a mixture of sadness and something else. With a jolt, I realized it was desire, raw and naked. My cock sprang to life as I returned her gaze.
“Hadley...” I murmured. A lock of her wild, dark hair had fallen partway into her face and I reached up and brushed it back. Her eyes closed briefly as my hand made contact with her skin. Her nostrils flared slightly as her head tilted back. I grabbed her, roughly, and my mouth came crushing down on hers. She moaned as I forced her lips open, devouring her, my mind a blank except for the feel of her, the heat of her. Our tongues danced as we drank each other in. I took her in my arms and picked her up, lowering her to the grassy ground.
With a gasp, Hadley opened her eyes. “No!” she cried hoarsely. “We can’t do this.” She looked at me, desperate, the pupils so large her eyes looked almost black. “Let’s go back,” she pleaded in a whisper.
That was just the trouble, I thought as I helped her up. I couldn’t go back. Neither of us could. There was no place we could go back to, where this fucked up situation didn’t exist. All we could do was try to move forward, and try our damnedest not to bring everything crashing down around us.
Neither of us spoke on the way back. We didn’t have to. Hadley’s arms were around me again, but this time her hold on me was more intimate, and more tinged with regret. Or fuck, maybe it was just my imagination. When I pulled back into the parking lot at Cooper’s, she got off the bike, handed me her helmet, and gave me a look that was at once sad and apologetic. Wordlessly, she turned toward her car. I watched her drive away.
I realized I would always be watching her drive away.
Chapter Thirteen
Hadley
Ryker.
I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Something had shifted between us since our conversation out on the bluff. I didn’t know if I was crazy, or what, but we weren’t just avoiding each other because of the sexual attraction anymore. I was almost sure of it.
Five days had passed since then. I had seen him a few times, at the club and at the house. But I was having a harder and harder time trying to stay away from him. We had a bond now. We shared something. A goal. Something we knew that no one else did. Every time our eyes met now, I could see every second of what had happened out on the bluff written all over his face.
It was torture.
I had been turning over in my mind the idea of going to talk to Lon about the meth situation. I was stalling, though, because frankly, I didn’t know how. I couldn’t tell him about my conversations with Jimmy or with Ryker. I knew better than to tell my dad that either of them had said anything to me about club business. And part of me was afraid to approach him at all – afraid he’d just blow me off, or worse, get angry. The world of MCs is a world of men. The opinions of a woman don’t count.
I was also really struggling in general with trying to figure out my relationship with Lon now. The last time I’d seen him, I’d been a little girl -- a rebellious one to be sure, but still, just a kid. Now, I barely knew how to interact with him as an adult. If I was honest with myself, I still felt a little like he had thrown me away, all those years ago. Deep down, I knew that he had sent me away because he wanted something for me than he felt he could give me. But I didn’t know what that meant now that I was back in Cheyenne. Did he want me to leave again? Was he counting down the days until I said I was going back to my other life? And this was the other reason I was afraid to bring up the meth situation: I was afraid that if I angered him too much, he would tell me that it was time for me to go back to where I came from. And I realized I didn’t want to leave Cheyenne again.
Not yet.
I had been continuing to halfheartedly search for work. One day, Lucy told me that she had overheard someone at Crouse’s talking about there being an opening for a receptionist at one of the local psychology and
counseling clinics. Of all the jobs in the area I had considered applying for, this one at least was close to my field of study, so I decided to go for it. A couple of days later, I got a call from a Barbara Hensley, the office manager for the clinic, asking me to come in for an interview.
It wasn’t until we had set up the time for me to come in that I realized I had absolutely nothing office-appropriate to wear, so I used what little savings I still had to go out and buy myself a professional outfit. The day of the interview, I sat in the reception area in a brand new navy blue pencil skirt and cream-colored blouse, strangely nervous and trying to concentrate on the magazine article I was reading instead of fiddling with my hair.
“Ms. Cooper?” I looked up from the page and saw a middle-aged woman with salt and pepper hair pulled back into a no-nonsense bun, wearing a no-nonsense black blazer and matching pants. I stood up and followed her into a back office as she directed me to do.
I sat across from her on the other side of a wide desk filled with paperwork. As she seated herself and picked up the copy of the résumé and cover letter I’d sent her, she asked me if I’d like something to drink. “I’m fine,” I replied, smiling back at her with what I hoped was a nice, normal, “I’m the perfect person for the job” expression on my face. I willed myself to ace this interview and blow Barbara Hensley out of the water. I wasn’t sure why I wanted this job so badly, but I did.
Okay, I did know why I wanted the job. Although I hated to admit it to myself, I wanted to stay in Cheyenne. At least for a little while. And I wanted to have a reason to stay here that didn’t involve Ryker Stone.
“So, Ms. Cooper, I see from your résumé that you are originally from Vermont. What brings you to this part of the country?”
I had anticipated this question, thankfully. “I spent some time here as a child, and always loved this area,” I said carefully. “When I graduated college out east, I always had the intention of coming back here.”
The little white lie I was telling felt strange on my lips, but I had practiced it until it sounded natural. Luckily, I had been gone long enough that most people not connected with the MC wouldn’t immediately recognize me as being the daughter of The Throttle’s president. My last name was common enough that no one put two and two together. I wasn’t sure what Ms. Hensley’s reaction would be if she knew I was Lon’s daughter, but I’d rather not find that out until after I’d been hired and had the chance to make a good impression.
“It says here that you speak Spanish,” Ms. Hensley continued, looking at the bottom of my résumé.
“Yes,” I nodded. “I studied it for two years at school, but I also had quite a bit of contact with the Hispanic population through my college jobs. I would say I’m definitely competent.”
“That would be a plus for us,” Ms. Hensley said. “We do have a number of patients whose English is limited. One of our counselors speaks Spanish, but it would be helpful to have a receptionist capable of helping those patients with appointments and billing questions.”
“I’m sure I could handle that,” I replied.
We chatted for a while longer about my psychology degree, my work experience, and the clientele of the clinic. Apparently, they had been seeing an uptick in substance abuse cases, and had recently hired a counselor with that specialty. I struggled to keep my face neutral as she told me this. I knew that the club had been at least partly responsible for that increase.
At the end of the interview, Ms. Hensley – who told me to call her Barbara – said she would be making a decision about the position within a week. “But,” she added, “I don’t mind telling you that you are our top candidate as of now.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” I said truthfully. “I would love to work here.”
“I’ll need to check your references, of course, but assuming there are no problems there, would you be able to start by the first of the month?”
“Yes, definitely.” I smiled. “Thank you so much!”
I walked out of the clinic in a daze. I realized as I walked back to the car that I felt more grounded at that moment than I had in years. Since I was fourteen, I hadn’t really had a home to speak of, just a series of places where I was currently living. Maybe, just maybe, Cheyenne could be home again, at least for a little while.
Chapter Fourteen
Ryker
The sound of my knuckles rapping on the door was loud in the empty hallway.
“Yeah?” Lon’s gruff voice called from the other side of the door.
I turned the knob and cracked the door open. “You got a minute?”
“Yeah, come on in,” Lon said easily. He reached his arms over his head and stretched back in his chair with a grunt. “Just lookin’ at some parts orders for the next month.”
I slid into the wooden chair next to the desk. The arms of the chair had been worn smooth from years and years of people sitting just where I was. “Lon, I gotta talk to you about something.”
“What is it, brother?”
For months, I had been trying to figure out a way to maneuver the club away from meth and toward something just as lucrative but less shitty. But up until now, I’d never brought any of it up with Lon. For better or worse, it was time I did.
For Hadley.
I cleared my throat. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this for a while. I’d like us to think about moving the club away from meth distribution.”
Lon frowned. “You worried about the Chrome Warriors?” he said, puzzled. “We can take the heat, Ryke, you know that. They stay on their side of the line, we stay on ours, and there’s no problem. If they don’t, well, we’ll give them a reason to back off.”
“No, it’s not that.” I shook my head. “I don’t like what it’s doing to Cheyenne.”
“Whaddya mean?” He seemed genuinely surprised.
“We’re bringing in substance abuse problems. It’s fucking up families. And it’s gonna eventually bring us problems.” I leaned forward in my chair. “It’s gonna mess with our equilibrium. Right now, the town respects us. The cops leave us alone. That’s gonna change if we keep bringing shit in here that spills over onto the citizens.”
Lon was eyeing me now. He cocked his head. “Is this about Jimmy?” he asked. Lon knew Jimmy and me didn’t much like each other, and he was a shrewd guy. What had happened the other day at chapel certainly wouldn’t have escaped his notice.
“No,” I said truthfully. “But it is about him wanting to up our involvement. I think we oughta be going the other way, Lon. There’s other ways to make money than bringing a drug problem into Cheyenne.”
“Such as?” he challenged.
“Fuck, man, anything.” I spread my hands wide. “Open up a bar. Strip clubs. Shit, whorehouses. Booze and sex sells. And we could partake of our own product without putting ourselves at risk,” I added with a smirk.
Lon grunted noncommittally. “Why the fuck do you care about this?” he muttered, cocking his head at me.
I wasn’t sure whether he was pissed or just skeptical. “I was serious when I said I think that fucking up Cheyenne will end up biting us in the ass,” I replied. “Things continue the way they are now, eventually someone will turn up the heat. We don’t need that kind of scrutiny. Especially when the meth isn’t our only source of income. Hell, it’s what, twenty-five, thirty percent of what we bring in, give or take? Why would we put the rest of our business at risk for that, when we could turn in another direction and make just as much, if not more?”
He frowned. “Anyone else feel this way?”
Hadley, I thought to myself. “In the club? I think Gonzo, probably. Wrench, too, maybe. I dunno, I haven’t talked to them. I wanted to talk to you first.”
Lon nodded approvingly. He was quiet for a moment, considering. I figured I was getting through to him.
And then I fucked it up.
“Thing is, Lon, I got a friend from when I was a kid who’s a meth addict now. It’s breaking his mother’s heart. And I was t
hinking about what you told me about Hadley’s mom. About how she died from an overdose. I don’t want that kind of shit on the club.”
Lon looked up sharply. Shit. I had gone too far. “What are you, my conscience?” he snarled out. “Fuck you.”
Goddamnit. I knew Lon well enough to realize that he had just shut down. I had hoped bringing up Hadley’s mom would make him want to get his hands clean of the meth business. I hadn’t thought about the fact that maybe he would take it as me blaming him for his wife’s death in some way.
I sat there and opened my mouth to apologize, but then I thought better of it. I knew Lon. Anything I said now would just make him more pissed. There was no point in trying. The best thing to do would be to let it go, let him mull it over on his own time. I stood up. “Just think about it,” I said. I closed the door behind me as I left. I’m sorry, Hadley, I apologized silently to her. I knew I might have just guaranteed that Lon would stay in the meth trade out of sheer stubbornness.
Chapter Fifteen
Hadley
A few days later, Barbara Hensley called to tell me I had gotten the job at the clinic. Inwardly, I breathed a sigh of relief that she hadn’t somehow found out my connection with the MC. I knew it would have to come out eventually – hell, being the daughter of the president of an outlaw motorcycle club wasn’t something you could hide forever -- but I hoped that it would be after I’d had a chance to prove myself. Barbara had seemed like a tough but fair boss, and I just had to hope that she wouldn’t hold my background against me once she had formed an opinion of my competence.
I waited for a day or two to break the news to Lon and Randi. Randi, I knew, would be thrilled that I was planning to stick around for a while. But frankly, I was kind of afraid of my father’s reaction. I knew he was happy enough to have me around for a visit. He had told me more than once how good it was to see me again. But I didn’t know if that extended to having me in Cheyenne indefinitely.
Throttle MC: A Stepbrother Romance Page 8