It spooked him. His feisty girl didn’t like to let him in, see her vulnerable. But he would take whatever she gave him, even if it was given in the aftermath of something terrible.
He lathered her hair, worked at her scalp with his fingertips, and her neck went weak. She tipped forward, and let him massage her nape, then her shoulders.
She put her back to the spray to rinse, pale throat exposed, breasts thrust toward him, and trauma or not, his thoughts turned lascivious. Her face hovered just below his, skin pebbled with water droplets, flushed from the heat. Rivulets trickled down her neck, across the generous swells of her breasts.
Desire lanced through him. The sudden, overpowering urge to join with her physically and remind himself that she was alive and whole, that she loved him.
As if she sensed it in him, her hands came to his chest. Her eyes opened. “It’s okay. You can. I want you to.”
He kissed her and tasted a faint soapiness of shampoo residue. Cupped his hand against her belly, where the baby was, right where she’d shown him before he left for Knoxville.
She sighed against his mouth. Tucked her hips in tight to his thighs.
“I missed you,” he whispered, and the hot water coursed over them both.
~*~
Jenny
Show woke with a start, the smell of fresh blood hot in her nose. The room was dark, and for a moment, she panicked. Then it came back to her in a rush: Crockett’s house, Riley, the knife, the police arriving, Colin taking her into his arms.
She lay on her side now, facing him, swaddled in her robe, clean, warm, and only smelling blood in her memory.
Colin snored softly, the force of his great ribcage expanding sending tremors through the mattress.
Careful not to wake him, Jenny slipped out of bed and went barefoot out into the main living area of the sanctuary. As she’d expected, Candy was in his chair, smoking, glow of the TV catching the shine of Scotch in his glass.
He gestured to the TV. “Need me to turn that off?”
“No, it wasn’t what woke me.” She took the chair opposite. “Can’t sleep either?”
He raised his glass and swallowed down the Scotch.
“God, I could use some of that,” she sighed.
“But you can’t.”
“He told you?”
“Yeah. Then I punched him in the face.”
“Candy!”
“Not that hard. I didn’t even leave a mark.” He snorted. “I had to do something.”
She grinned, and it felt wonderful. “Am I gonna get the big bro lecture?”
“No.” Seriousness in his voice. “Not after…no.”
The brief flare of humor died in her chest. “Derek.”
“I should never have gone away and left you here.”
“You thought he was out of the way.”
“And I was a dumbass for thinking that. I knew better.” He found the bottle somewhere on the side table and it clinked against the rim of the glass as he refilled it.
“You couldn’t refuse Ghost.”
“Wrong.” He made a buzzer sound in the back of his throat. “Could have, and should have.”
“He’s the president of the mother chapter. He’s the president.”
“And you’re my family,” he shot back. “Do you think any member of this club is more important to me than you?”
She sucked in a breath. “Candy,” she said quietly.
“No. Fuck it. Is that not real presidential? Give a shit. I let…”
She stood and moved to sit on the arm of his chair, arm lying along his shoulders. “Stop,” she said, and thought of their mother for a moment. Her beautiful blonde head bent over Jack Snow’s as she kneaded the tension from his neck. “Stop, baby,” she’d always said. “You’ll drive yourself insane.”
God, she missed her parents.
“I don’t care about presidential,” she said. “You can tell me whatever you need to. You can ease the burden.” He needed, more seriously than he even realized, an old lady. There were some burdens you could only share with the person who shared your bed, and Candy had gone forty-four years without that in his life. “But there’s no sense talking about what you could have done differently. It happened. We’re okay. That’s what matters.”
He grunted his disagreement. Then grew contemplative. “I still don’t know how I never saw it, back when we were kids.”
“Saw what?”
“Riley’s evil. It had to be there.” It had been; behind every smile, every seemingly sweet touch, something dark and foul, overtaking him like a vine, choking whatever good there was. “Why didn’t we see it?” He tipped a look up to her, nothing but shadows and shiny eyes in the dim light, and Jenny’s heart grabbed for him. Riley had been his best friend once. She wasn’t the only one who’d been betrayed.
“Nothing traumatic ever happened to the guy,” Candy said. “I mean, look at Mercy. If anyone ought to have been a murdering, wife-raping son of a bitch, it was him.”
“But he’s not.”
“No.”
“He had too much good in him. And something to live for.”
His gaze narrowed. “Riley had something to live for too. And he put it in the hospital.”
She sighed and rested her chin on top of his head, his hair prickly on her skin, his breath warm against her throat. “Are you sorry I did it? You kept him alive for a reason.”
“I’m not even a little sorry. Don’t worry about that. Things might be a little tricky now, with his brother, but we’ll get through it.” It smacked of an overconfident lie, but she let him tell it. “But I’m glad he’s dead, honey. I wish I’d done it a long time ago.”
Silence tightened around them, easy and comforting.
“Are you excited about being an uncle?” she asked.
“Absolutely.”
Thirty-Six
Colin
“I’ve talked to some of our contacts in Odessa,” Candy said, “and they said all of Riley’s drug charges were dropped from orders up on high. They didn’t have a name; said the order trickled down the pipeline. Whoever it was, though.” He lifted his brows to drive home the point. “He got Elijah off the hook for the kiddie porn stuff too. So he’s got sway.”
“And we’re all fucked,” Gringo put in, cheerfully. “Swell.”
“Did you just say ‘swell’?” Cowboy asked him.
“It’s been a week since Riley,” Talis said, and everyone quieted down again. “Why hasn’t his brother moved on us yet? Why wait?”
“Because he’s planning something.” Candy sighed. “And God help the poor man if he’s scheming. Dangerous business for somebody that stupid.”
As a prospect, Colin wasn’t permitted to offer up suggestions during church, but in the past week, he’d been invited to attend it, keeping quiet watch down at the end of the table, learning the speech patterns, gestures, and nervous tics of his brothers. He’d discovered that he liked the formalities of church, the rituals, the air of quiet dignity about the room. A room that told a story, cluttered with old photos and Lean Dogs memorabilia.
“Keep the channel open with Odessa PD,” Candy instructed Fox. “I want a name, damn it.” He closed the meeting out with a loud smack of his palm against the table.
As the others filed out of the chapel, Colin took the chance to inspect one of the photos he’d been eyeing for the past half hour. The film quality made him think it had been taken in the eighties. A knot of men standing together in front of the clubhouse many years and several paint colors ago. There was Candy, young and big as an ox, playboy-pretty when he grinned. Crockett, vital and sharp-eyed, far less gray in his hair. And a man who he couldn’t mistake for anyone else. A blonde giant of a man: Candy and Jenny’s father, Jack Snow.
Colin felt Candy draw up alongside him at the wall. “Dad loved that picture,” he said, quietly. “He always used to say he couldn’t wait until he had grandkids, then there’d be three generations of Snows in one shot.”
Jenny was almost forty, which meant Candy had to be almost forty-five.
“Why didn’t you ever have kids?” Colin asked, expecting a sharp retort.
Instead, the VP shrugged. “Fucking’s one thing. But having a kid with somebody? I don’t take that shit lightly.” His gaze slid over, bright with speculation. “Having babies is a big deal.”
“Yeah. It is.”
A moment passed, one final, silent warning. Then Candy’s face relaxed and he popped Colin affectionately in the shoulder. “Come on, prospect. With any luck, I might patch you in before your kid turns sixteen.”
“Ha.”
~*~
He was stripping parts out of a wrecked Ford he’d just taken down off the flatbed when evening came on, swift and silent, rife with long shadows. It was cool, but he was sweating from his efforts, and dragged his sleeve across his forehead, pausing to step back from the car and stretch his shoulders.
The sun hovered just below the horizon, the sky a Navajo tapestry of oranges, reds, and pinks. A smear of embers along the humped backs of low, distant hills.
Colin waited for the homesickness to hit him, his blood’s cry for the dusky, erotic nighttime pulses of New Orleans.
But it didn’t come.
He watched night steal across the vast open dome of the sky above him, this pure Texas sky, and felt unaccountably settled inside. He’d been in so many cities, some of them glittering jewels, and others humble stop signs, and in every one of them, he’d watched the sun fade and felt the urge to leave. Go, a voice had always chimed in the back of his mind. This isn’t your place. Go find it.
But tonight, that voice was silent. Tonight, he stood in the humblest shape of his life – a prospect, a newbie, a displaced Cajun, a terrified father-to-be. But he found no shame in that. Because he felt content, too. Like maybe…just maybe…he’d finally reached a place to put down his metaphorical roots, so that he might finally grow into a man.
Might become the brother everyone expected him to be.
He was behind the clubhouse, and heard her boot heels on the porch boards seconds before sand kicked at the backs of his legs and her arms went around his waist. Jenny’s face pressed warm and soft against the flat of his shoulder blade.
“You working hard?”
“Hmm.” He covered her hand with his against his stomach. “Something like that.”
He felt her shift around a little, heard the deep sigh that meant she’d spotted the sky. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Of all the places you’ve ever been, where was the best sunset?”
He didn’t have to think about it. “Right here.”
~*~
Seven Months Later
Jenny
She loved her Amarillo sky, but there was something to be said for a Southeastern back yard carpeted with thick grass, bedecked with tiki torches, and comfortable patio furniture. The flames from the torches licked at a black night sky and kept the mosquitoes away.
Jenny flexed her bare feet against the warm concrete and settled deeper into her chair, enjoying the night sounds, and the solid weight of baby Jack in her arms. Born eight pounds, two ounces, destined to be as massive as his father and uncle, he had her coloring…and Colin’s dark hair. “Absolutely perfect,” Ava had declared him upon arrival. And currently sleeping like the dead.
Jack’s cousin, Remy, had a new swingset that Mercy and Colin were putting together now by torch-and flashlight, astounded by the lack of promised “Hardware Included,” and cussing about it, much to Remy’s delight.
The picture of suburban normalcy.
Content that Jack was peaceful, Jenny let her head flop back against the chair. “Oh my God. I needed this. We needed this.” Just a weekend trip, to visit – and maybe carry some guns back from Knoxville – but a good one, nonetheless.
Ava plucked a cookie from the plate on the table and nibbled its edges. She was three months along with her third baby, and so far, the cookies were all she’d been able to stomach tonight. “Things rough back home?”
Jenny made a face. “I won’t say rough, no. But strained, maybe. Money’s tight,” she admitted, feeling guilty. Candy liked to keep that sort of thing private. “And things have been quiet. Too quiet. At this point, we’re all convinced the ATF’s gonna pop out of the bushes at any second.”
Ava frowned thoughtfully. “Does Candy have an accountant?”
“A Walsh, do you mean? His little brother has many talents, but money management isn’t one of them.”
Ava grinned. “Guess not. Ask Walsh to come down for a spell,” she suggested. “Or, you know, there’s other number crunchers in that family.”
“Albie?” Jenny guessed.
“Him, yeah. Albie can do damn near anything. But Michelle’s good with that sort of thing, too.”
“Her dad lets her get involved?”
Ava gave her a careful look. “Just when I think I’m too involved in club stuff…I remember Michelle. She’s in deep.”
Jenny nodded, pulling up her most recent mental snapshot of the girl. Blonde, petite, pretty. She had the eyes, those eerie blue ones her father and uncles shared. She’d just been a kid the last time Jenny had seen her.
Then again, so had Ava.
“What’s it like, I wonder, to grow up just a normal girl?”
Ava snorted. “Don’t know. To tell you the truth, I’d rather not find out.”
Jenny grinned. “To tell you the truth, I’d rather not either.”
“Ha!” Mercy crowed triumphantly, and they both looked out to the yard.
“Did you get it, baby?” Ava called.
Mercy flexed one of his very impressive arms. “Fillette, I can always get it.”
Ava laughed.
With what looked like minimal effort from the brothers, the swingset was hoisted upright as Remy cheered them on excitedly.
With their son’s head cupped in her palm, Jenny watched her man step back and survey his work with pride. Let her eyes wander over the strong, tall, solid shape of him, appreciating the way his shirt clung to his damp skin, wanting to tidy his hair with her fingers.
She had it now, didn’t she? That dream she’d stuffed in a back drawer, afraid to even hope for anymore. It had come in on the evening bus almost a year ago, big-shouldered and beautiful.
It was a strange time for the club, but she wasn’t frightened. No, she felt stronger and more capable than ever. Funny how it had taken blood to wash the helplessness away. Funny how she hadn’t been helpless at all…just led to believe it.
As if he sensed her staring, Colin turned to look at her. He smiled.
She smiled back.
THE END
*Colin, Jenny, Candy, and the Texas crew will return in Tastes Like Candy, coming soon.*
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Lauren Gilley writes Literary Fiction which is sometimes mistaken for Romance. She’s the author of sixteen novels and several short stories. When she’s not writing, she’s at the barn, plotting stories and cleaning horse stalls. She lives in Georgia.
Other Titles From Lauren Gilley
The Walker Series
Keep You
Dream of You
Better Than You
Fix You
Rosewood
Whatever Remains
Shelter
The Ru
ssell Series
Made for Breaking
God Love Her
“Things That Go Bang In The Night”
Keeping Bad Company
“Green Like the Water”
The Dartmoor Series
Fearless
Price of Angels
Half My Blood
The Skeleton King
Secondhand Smoke
Loverboy (coming soon)
Lean Dogs Legacy Series
Snow in Texas
Tastes Like Candy (coming soon)
Snow in Texas (Lean Dogs Legacy #1) Page 22