Whiskey Neat (The Uncertain Saints MC Book 1)

by Lani Lynn Vale

  Jenna sucked as a mother, too.

  Which was why Remy’s kids ended up spending quite a bit of time at my place when I was off.

  If I wasn’t around, they went to Remy’s parents’ house.

  Frankly, I wasn’t sure Jenna watched them at all. Well, unless Remy was in town.

  “Where are your kids right now, Mrs. Wickes?” Griffin asked.

  Jenna smiled darkly at him. “With my husband.”

  “And why are you here instead of with them?” He asked, challenging her.

  Jenna’s smile froze on her face.

  I’d actually heard from Remy.

  He invited me to go fishing with him and the kids, but I’d declined because I’d been too concerned about my business.

  “They’re having some daddy and daughter time,” she snapped.

  I smiled.

  “You do know that he invited Lenore to go, and apparently not you?” Griffin asked.

  Ouch, right through the heart.

  I didn’t bother to ask how he knew that, either.

  I just waited to see where Griffin was going with this.

  “He always does that. Which is why I’ve found my own things to do while he does his,” she hissed.

  She immediately saw she made a mistake running her mouth like that as she looked around hoping nobody was listening.

  She wasn’t that lucky.

  Everyone had heard that declaration.

  And not one of us was naïve enough to think she meant anything other than she was cheating on her husband.

  A husband that was a son of the community. Uncertain’s golden boy.

  Everyone loved Remy.

  He was always available to lend a helping hand when it was needed.

  He was literally that guy who’d give you the shirt off his back.

  And Jenna most definitely wasn’t.

  “Shit,” she hissed, turning her glare onto me. “You’re such a bitch.”

  I leaned back, smiling. “I didn’t start this today, you did.”

  She flipped me off. “Do you know how hard it is to live up to you? Remy loves you. He hates that I won’t go hunting with him and loves that you will. Hates that I won’t go fishing but you will. Hates that I can’t cook and you can. It’s like I’m constantly fighting your shadow, and you never even had him!”

  I blinked.

  “Do you think that if you actually tried to do these things with him and for him that he’d be happy? But you haven’t ever tried, though. How do you know you won’t like it if you don’t even try it? I don’t really like fishing, either. But I go, and I sit there with him. It’s about the companionship, and it’s not my fault that I’m willing to do those things with him that you won’t,” I told her softly.

  Her eyes flared.

  “What would be the point? He doesn’t ask me,” she said.

  I raised a brow at her.

  “I’ve been there when he’s asked you before,” I called her on her lie.

  She narrowed her eyes on me.

  “Let me clarify…he doesn’t ask me first.”

  With that she got up and left, tossing down a hundred-dollar bill for a meal that was probably about ten bucks at most.

  I just shook my head.

  She really had no clue about the money situation.

  If she only understood how hard it was on Remy to do the week on, week off thing he was doing, I wondered if she’d be throwing down a ninety-dollar tip.

  Griffin sat down and his eyes were wary.

  “We’re not in love with each other,” I blurted again.

  He nodded. “I know.”

  I raised my brow at him.

  Seemed I’d been doing a lot of that lately.

  “How do you know everything about me?” I asked once he sat back down.

  He smiled. “Trade secret.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You’re not spying on me, are you?”

  He raised a shoulder, but didn’t answer.

  I thought maybe I should look around my house later to see if I could find any hidden cameras.

  That’d be like him to do.

  “I can’t believe she’s cheating on Remy. He’s going to be devastated,” I said morosely.

  “You’re not going to tell him,” Griffin said.

  Both of my brows rose. “Oh really? You’re not the boss of me.”

  He gave me a look. “That’s not something he needs to hear from you. You’re his best friend…but he’s going to deny it if it comes from you. You need to let him hear about it by himself. I’ll tell him.”

  “He’s not going to like hearing it from you. He doesn’t even know you,” I said with affront.

  “Trust me on this,” he said. “He would be better off hearing it from a man. If what you say about being his confidant is true, he’ll come to you anyway. But you need to give him time to investigate it before he tells you. It’s embarrassing as hell to find out.”

  I blinked.

  “Someone cheated on you?” I asked softly.

  He nodded once.

  “My wife.”

  “You’re married?” I semi shrieked.

  He snorted. “No, I’m most definitely not married. I’m so far from being married that I can get. At least to that whore.”

  “Shit,” I sighed. “What happened?”

  He shrugged. “The usual.”

  I placed my chin in my hand and looked at him until he sighed.

  “I worked long hours, much like your Remy,” he answered, but I didn’t correct him when he called Remy ‘mine.’ “But my wife thought she was smarter than me and she wasn’t. I found out about two hours after her first time with her now husband, Justin. Waited for her to tell me for about twenty-four hours before I kicked her out.”

  I blinked.

  “That was nice of you to wait twenty-four hours…but were you sure?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Came home early from a job to find her and the man in our fucking bed, going at it so loudly that I swore my neighbors could hear,” he said, nodding to Fran as she placed two glasses of water down in front of us. He waited for her to move out of earshot before he continued. “Was able to watch the whole damn thing without them even knowing. Got his name and info while they took a nap. Called his wife to let her know what was going on. Made myself a sandwich.”

  My eyes widened the more detailed he got.

  “And they didn’t hear all of that?” I asked, dumfounded.

  He shook his head. “Nope. Not a single thing. She came out of our bedroom about two hours after I’d arrived home and froze.”

  My eyes were getting wider and wider.

  “What’d you do?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Acted like I didn’t know a thing. I said, ‘Hey baby. How was your nap?’” He said.

  My mouth fell open.

  “And she still didn’t tell you?” I gasped.

  He shook his head.

  “So how did they get him out?”

  We both paused as we gave our orders to Fran, and I turned back to him and snapped my fingers.

  He grinned.

  “That was the funny part. Our room was on the second story. So I watched on the surveillance as he tried to shimmy down the lattice outside our room.” He laughed then, and I smiled.

  “He hurt himself, didn’t he?” I whispered conspiratorially.

  He nodded.

  “Broke his leg. But damned if that fucker didn’t crawl the fuck away. I show the video from time to time to my friends who don’t believe me,” he answered. “I also threaten to give it to the press from time to time, too.”

  I blinked.

  “The press?” I asked.

  He inclined his head.

  “He’s a Texas state senator.”

  I leaned forward until my chest hit the edge of the table.

  I was nearly stretched out over the top of it.


  “Senator Justin Hayes is the man that your wife cheated on YOU with? He’s uglier than my Uncle Murral,” I whisper yelled at him as I slapped my hand down on the table in shock.

  He shuddered.

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “Wait a cotton-picking minute,” I said, recalling a story that’d been in the paper last week. The same day I’d seen a paper clutched in Griffin’s hand as he angrily stormed out of the diner. “It was your son.”

  His eyes closed.

  “Yeah, that was my baby.”

  My eyes instantly welled up in realization of all that this poor man had been through.

  “Oh, Griff. I’m so sorry.”

  He lifted a shoulder indifferently, but I knew he was affected.

  Now I knew exactly what had caused that ‘just-don’t-give-a-fuck’ attitude that seemed to envelope him most of the time.

  He’d lost his little boy.

  From what I’d read in that article, it had been reported that the little boy was shot outside of his school and that it appeared to have been intentional.

  Dear God, someone had murdered Griffin’s son!

  Chapter 7

  Dear teenagers complaining about life: You’ve only felt the tip of life’s dick. There’s a lot more to go. Pull your big girl panties up and hold on. It’s gonna be a rough ride.

  -Words of Wisdom

  Lenore

  The next day it was like the words at the diner had never happened. Griffin had done a wonderful job at hiding all those emotions he’d shown me the day before.

  “What do you have to do today?” Griffin asked as he walked with me up to my front door, my hand in his.

  I’d just gotten in from doing a supply run for the shop, and had been surprised to see Griffin in the store as well.

  He’d followed me home without a request from me, and then kissed me silly the moment my feet hit the ground outside of my car.

  I let go of his hand to reach into my purse for my keys when the front door was opened.

  Remy was standing there with an odd look on his face.

  I could hear his girls playing somewhere beyond the living room, and I smiled at him.

  Griffin’s hand was on my back as Remy and him silently stared each other down.

  “Move out of the way, Rem. I have to pee,” I ordered him, unsurprised to find my house occupied.

  They were always showing up out of the blue.

  Remy moved slightly to allow me entrance, but moved back over just as quickly to stop Griffin before he could come inside.

  “What are you doing here?” Remy asked Griffin.

  I turned around and elbowed Remy.

  “Ouch,” Remy cried.

  I glared at him.

  “Move out of the way so Griffin can come in,” I admonished him.

  Remy moved with the utmost reluctance.

  Satisfied until I could go relieve my unbearably full bladder, I darted to the hallway bathroom, only to turn when I saw Maddison in it.

  “Shit,” I hissed, making my way to my bathroom.

  That’s where I found Macynn.

  “Get out of my makeup!” I yelled at her.

  Macynn was five going on thirty, and Madison was eight.

  They were both little trouble makers that took after their father a little too much.

  I slammed the door to the toilet and took care of business, coming out two minutes later feeling like a new woman.

  “Didn’t I tell you to get out of my make-up?” I asked Macynn.

  “Yep. You did,” she confirmed.

  I rolled my eyes. “Then why are you currently using my eye liner as lip stick?”

  She looked at the eyeliner in disgust before tossing it down.

  “Nobody tells me anything!” Macynn cried. “How is a girl supposed to learn to do this if her father won’t teach her?”

  I laughed.

  Macynn was also a bit of a drama queen.

  “Maybe when you’re ten I’ll teach you how to do all of that,” I said, washing my hands and drying them on the towels that my mother told me were only for decoration.

  It drove my mother nuts when I did it.

  My argument was still valid.

  If I had the ‘decoration’ towels up, then what the hell was I supposed to hang my ‘non-decoration’ towels on?

  “Let’s go,” I ordered Macynn.

  She let out a long sigh and jumped down off the counter, following behind me as we walked back into the living room.

  “Who is that?” Madison asked from where she peeked around the corner of the hallway.

  I smiled.

  “That’s, umm…” I hesitated.

  “Her boyfriend,” Griffin said, startling all three of us when we realized he was staring at us…and could hear our conversation.

  Wait, what? He’s my boyfriend?

  Holy shit!

  We hadn’t spoken much after what he’d revealed about his son. He’d been lost in thought, and I’d been too worried to broach the subject anymore.

  But I guess he really meant what he’d said as we were walking into the diner.

  I was his.

  Did that make him mine?

  I’d be sure to ask him when Remy left…which would hopefully be soon.

  My mother yelled from the kitchen. “Who wants to try my cobbler? It’s going to be slammin’!”

  I rolled my eyes at my mother’s use of the ‘hip’ language as she liked to call it.

  My mother wasn’t old…per se.

  She was, however, very stuck in her ways as a Southern Lady.

  She used please and thank you, said ‘bless your heart’ and ‘you’re kidding’ way too much.

  But I loved her anyway.

  “I’ll try it,” Remy offered almost immediately.

  “We will too, YaYa!” Macynn squealed.

  I felt Griffin’s presence at my back, and looked up at him over my shoulder.

  “Do you like peach cobbler?” I asked him.

  His eyes, those beautiful baby blues, shined with mirth.

  “Peach cobbler is fattening,” he told me.

  I raised a brow at him.

  “That didn’t answer the question,” I observed.

  He grinned. “No, it didn’t, did it?”

  I elbowed him softly in the belly.

  It wasn’t a surprise that he would call that fattening.

  With the way I remembered his body feeling pressed up against my back, it wasn’t in the least bit surprising that he’d be conscious of what he put into his body.

  I pulled Griffin with me into my kitchen to see Remy, my mother, and the two girls crowded around my kitchen island.

  “Who are you?” My mother asked excitedly as she looked up and saw Griffin.

  “That’s Auntie Lennie’s boyfriend, YaYa!” Macynn crowed. “He’s hot!”

  I covered my face with my hands and laughed into them as my mother came over instantly.

  “I really wish my daughter would tell me about these important life decisions she makes. A couple of weeks ago she told me she was gay…you are most definitely a man. So I’m confused,” my mother said.

  I laughed harder into my hands.

  I had said that.

  But only because she kept pestering me about finding a man.

  It’d been only days after I’d first met Griffin. He’d rocked my world twice. Once by fucking me into oblivion, and second by holding me through the night.

  I’d been in denial.

  I didn’t think it’d ever be possible to go back from that.

  Which was why I told my mother I was pretty sure I had to be gay if this thing with Griffin and me didn’t work out.

  Because no one would be able to live up to all that was Griffin.

  “My name is Ronda Lenore Drew. What’s your name?” My mother asked, extending her hand to Griffin.

  I sighed and removed my
hands from my face where I’d been peeking out at my mother.

  Griffin shook my mother’s hand and said, “I’m Griffin Storm.”

  “And what are you? A cowboy?” She asked, eyeing Griffin’s outfit.

  He was dressed head to toe in his Texas Ranger’s gear.

  Boots. Jeans. Cowboy hat. And Badge.

  Although she couldn’t see the badge, yet.

  “I’m a Texas Ranger,” he said, moving out from behind me so my mother could see his sparkly gold badge and gun at his hip.

  My mother’s eyes widened.

  “Holy cow, Lenore! You’ve hit the jackpot!” My mother cried loudly.

  At that, I grabbed Griffin’s hand and led him into the kitchen.

  I pointed to a seat at the end of the island, the only one left after Remy and his two girls took theirs, and walked around the counter into the kitchen.

  “What does everyone want to drink? I have milk, water, tea, and coffee,” I said.

  “Coffee,” Remy said.

  “Water,” Griffin rumbled.

  “Milk!” Both girls yelled.

  I rolled my eyes.

  I could’ve guessed all of those.

  “So where did you meet my daughter?” My mother asked.

  Griffin looked at me with amusement before he said, “I needed batteries and Uncertain Pleasures was the only thing open.”

  My mother blushed as she dished up Remy’s plate first, followed shortly by the girls.

  My mother didn’t disapprove of my business, but she also didn’t go blurting out what I did to everyone.

  She was the quintessential Christian, always going to church every Sunday.

  However, she was also proud of her daughter and supported her any way she could.

  Even if she’d never stepped foot in my store once all the dildos were out on the shelves.

  “Why didn’t you go to the store down the street from there? The Dollar Store is always open,” Remy murmured around his fork filled with cobbler.

  “Closed due to power outage.” Griffin murmured, his eyes on the cobbler my mother was giving him.

  She scooped a healthy amount onto another tea plate and set it down in front of him.

  Griffin looked up at me with humor shining in his eyes, but nonetheless dug into his cobbler, finishing it even before Remy.

  “Well, how is it?” My mother asked.

  “Good,” Remy muttered. “I think the breading is a little too thick, though.”