Red Eyes MC: Books 1 - 3

by Grey, Blair

  But after reading through the sample bio, I almost felt like I knew the sperm donor. He had been raised Christian but now identified as agnostic. He was a music teacher at a local university and volunteered at the soup kitchen on weekends.

  These weren’t the scary people that Rachel was warning me away from.

  In fact, I started to have the opposite fear. Reading about someone who was perfect for me, someone I wanted to be the father of my baby, just might make me feel like I had some attachment to him. It was enough to make me feel some obligation to tell him he had a child, even if he had made it clear that he didn’t want to know, even if he had signed away his rights to know. It was probably a good thing I didn’t know who the man really was or where he lived.

  “You don’t have to decide anything right now,” Sandra said soothingly at the end of the appointment. “Think it over. Decide if you’re sure. Then we’ll start those medical tests, and then you can think it over again and decide if you’re really sure about this.”

  I laughed and shook her hand. “Thanks so much for meeting with me, Sandra,” I told her. “This has really been helpful.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” she said warmly. “And seriously, if you have any questions at all, or if you’d like to set up another appointment, definitely feel free to call me. I’d love to talk through any more concerns you might have.”

  “Thanks,” I said, really meaning it. “Hey, would you mind if I take a copy of that sample bio? I’ve been talking about this with one of my friends, and she’s really against the idea of it. I think if I could show her that, she might come around.”

  “Of course!” Sandra said, handing over the folder. “And if you need any other information for her, or if she’d like to come to a meeting with me and you, you know where to find me.”

  I walked out to my car with a big smile on my face. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that this was what I wanted to do. It cut out the messy relationship factor and any potential dad issues further up the road. It would be just me and my little baby, just the way I wanted it to be.

  I couldn’t wait to talk to Rachel about this.

  17

  Marcus

  Tuesday

  I was at the clubhouse on Tuesday when Braxton came in. He dropped onto the couch next to me and winced. “Head hurting you?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him. The officer hadn’t been too gentle with him the previous day, and I wondered if Braxton had even bothered to get it checked out.

  “It’s just a headache, nothing big,” Braxton muttered.

  “Head injuries are nothing to mess with,” I said seriously. I got up and grabbed my wallet off the side table. “Come on, let’s go. We’re taking you to the hospital.”

  “Dude, I’m fine,” Braxton said.

  “Did you even bother to check for a concussion?” I asked him. “Let’s go. We should get it check out, just to be on the safe side. If you fall into a coma, Landon’s going to be a useless mess.”

  Braxton looked guilty when I mentioned his twin, and that got him moving. He climbed slowly to his feet. “All right, all right,” he muttered.

  I felt sort of guilty for dragging him along with me. It wasn’t that I wasn’t concerned about his head injury, but I was partly also using this as an excuse to go to the hospital and hopefully see Leila. I still hadn’t heard from her, and I was starting to feel worried. I was sure that she had gotten home fine, but I just wanted to make sure she was okay. That I hadn’t done something wrong the other night.

  I helped Braxton fill in all his paperwork when we got to the hospital. “Here, I’ll take it up to the counter,” I told him. “I can tell your head’s killing you every time you move.”

  Braxton scowled at me, but he made no move to protest or to stop me. I handed over the checklist and then said casually to the receptionist, “Does Leila Warren happen to be working right now?”

  The receptionist rolled her eyes at me. “You were the guy who was in here before, aren’t you? The one who refused to see anyone other than her, even though she was on her break at the time?”

  “That’s me,” I said, grinning. I was kind of glad that she remembered me. However embarrassing it was, maybe it meant I wouldn’t have to jump through as many hoops this time to convince them I wasn’t going to settle for anyone other than her.

  The receptionist rolled her eyes again. “What, do you have the hots for her?” she grumbled, but she got on the phone for a second and then directed us to a room, letting us know that Leila would be there shortly.

  We waited in the room for Leila. She froze in the doorway when she saw me, double-checking the information on her clipboard. “Braxton?” she asked the twin, totally ignoring me.

  Braxton eyed her up and down and then looked over at me, a smirk on his face. “Dude, did I die when that officer hit me?” he asked. “Because shit, I thought you only got nurses this sexy when you died and went to heaven.”

  “Shut the fuck up, man,” I snapped, feeling on edge. I watched Leila carefully, expecting her to storm out of there and demand that someone else come to help us. If she did that, there wasn’t much I could do in response. But instead, she just went about examining Braxton’s head. Braxton was fortunately silent, seeming to realize that I was serious when I had shushed him before.

  She looked just as good as ever. She was in pale blue scrubs today, and they accentuated her tanned skin and pink lips. Her hair, rather than being up in a messy bun, was braided down her back, and it was the first time I realized just how long her hair was.

  I had a sudden image in my head about taking her to bed, letting those silken waves tumble across her shoulders and down her back. I tried to push it out of my mind before I started to chub in my pants. That would be embarrassing, and, given that she still wasn’t talking to me after Saturday night, she might never talk to me again if she saw that.

  “No concussion,” she finally said, “but you do have a pretty decent cut back here that I’m going to need to clean.” She worked in silence for a few minutes as Braxton squirmed in pain. “Done,” she finally said, stepping away and taking her gloves off. “The headache you mentioned on your form is probably mostly to do with a sort of whiplash from having your head pushed around so fast. Standard muscle relaxants will probably help.”

  “Thanks,” Braxton said, and for a moment, I thought he was going to flirt with her, but then he looked consideringly over at me, jumped off the table, and headed out the door.

  I caught Leila’s arm before she could follow him. “Hey, you,” I said quietly. “Why haven’t you returned my calls? Did I do something wrong the other night?”

  Leila looked up at me for a long moment, and I could see that she was uncertain. But then, she shook her head. “Look, Marcus, whatever life you’re living isn’t one that I’m interested in,” she said finally.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, wondering if she knew about the Red Eyes thing. If so, how did she know?

  But it wasn’t that. She shook her head. “I know you were trying to get me to believe it was a cat that attacked you when you first came in here, but we both know you got cut with a knife,” she said quietly. “And not only would that be one hell of a kitchen accident for you to do that to yourself, but you’re right-handed, and the cut was on your right forearm.”

  I grinned. “Very astute of you,” I told her. “First you figured out that it was a knife cut, rather than a cat, and now you’ve figured out that I didn’t do it to myself in some sort of fucked-up attempt at suicide that I later went back on.”

  She rolled her eyes. But then, she sighed. “Look, I had fun the other night. And the sex was really good.”

  “Yeah, it was,” I couldn’t stop myself from saying. I reached for her, but she took a step back.

  “But,” Leila continued, “I don’t want to get caught up in the middle of whatever bullshit you’re caught up in.”

  “Things are settled down for now,” I told her. And it was the truth
. Ray had just told all of us to go on vacation until he sorted things out, and even though I’d still been planning on figuring out some way to make the Unknowns pay, I was starting to wonder if maybe it would be best to just do as Ray had asked. Take a vacation. Spend some time with Leila.

  But Leila’s mouth twisted bitterly. “For now,” she said.

  I grinned. “I can’t predict the future,” I told her. “But come on, I have a couple weeks with nothing to do. A vacation of sorts from work. Give me the chance to show you that I’m not the guy you think I am.”

  Leila continued to stare at me. “Who do I think you are?” she finally asked.

  I blinked and then smiled crookedly at her. “I don’t really know, to be honest,” I admitted. “But I can tell that whoever it is you think I am, you don’t like me all that much.”

  Leila rolled her eyes. “You’re pretty arrogant,” she said finally. “You walk in here like you own the place, interrupting my work like you think you have some right to do that.” Then she paused. “But I know you’re not really like that, deep down.” She said the last part quietly, almost as if she was saying it just to herself. She bit her lower lip.

  Again, I took a step toward her, and again, she took a step back. “If you really want to show me what kind of person you are, if you’re really the caring person I think you are, then I’m attending a fundraiser for children on Friday,” she told me. “It’s at the fairgrounds. Set up is around ten a.m., and I’m going to need help with some of my equipment.”

  “Some of your equipment?” I couldn’t resist asking, waggling my eyebrows at her.

  Leila rolled her eyes, but she barely managed to suppress her grin. “I’m not making any promises,” she said. “I’m not agreeing to another date or another repeat of what happened after our date on Saturday. I’m just saying that if you want to come and talk to me, that’s where you can find me. But you’d better not get in the way. I’ll be working there.”

  She paused. “And stop coming here to visit me at work. The other nurses are starting to talk.”

  I laughed and gave her a mocking salute. “As you wish, darling,” I told her. “I’ll see you on Friday at the fairgrounds, no later than ten.”

  “Fine,” Leila said. She made a shooing motion with her hands. “Now get out of here so I can get back to work. Your friend is probably waiting for you.”

  I grinned and headed out the door.

  18

  Leila

  Thursday

  My thoughts and emotions were in a chaotic whirl with the week I was having, and I was glad to have a day off on Thursday to finally process everything that had happened since Saturday. Between sleeping with Marcus to the artificial insemination consultation to seeing Marcus again at the hospital, I didn’t know how I was feeling. I needed to talk to Rachel.

  She got a sitter for Gavin so that we could have a girl’s day. I had begged off going out for drinks with her, even though that was what I had promised, and she let it be. Probably, she thought I didn’t need to go looking for a man because I had just been on a date last Saturday night. Knowing her, she was probably already planning the wedding.

  “Hey!” Rachel said excitedly as she met me outside our favorite lunch spot. She gave me a huge hug. “Come on; I want to hear everything,” she said, linking my arms as she led me inside.

  I rolled my eyes, but I was grinning. No matter how old we got, no matter how much our lives diverged, she was always my best friend, and I appreciated that more than I could tell her.

  “So come on, tell me about the date,” Rachel said as soon as we sat down at our usual table. “I thought you were going to call me as soon as it was over. And you’ve been cryptic all week. It’s been killing me.”

  I laughed and shook my head. “I just needed time to process it, that’s all,” I told her. “I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you.”

  “Oh my god, you slept with him,” Rachel said, gaping at me with her mouth wide open.

  “Is it that obvious?” I asked, grimacing.

  “Well, I can’t think why else you would need to take your time processing it.” She shook her head. “Oh wow, Leila. That’s huge for you. You must really like him.”

  “He’s a nice guy,” I said, shrugging nonchalantly. “But I don’t think I’m going to keep dating him.”

  Rachel groaned. “Why not?”

  “He’s just not the right guy for me.”

  “Why not? What’s wrong with this one? And if it’s something stupid, I’m going to steal your phone and call him up myself to set you up on another date.”

  “He just… reminds me of my father, that’s all,” I said, staring down at my plate.

  When I looked up, Rachel was making a face, but I could tell she wasn’t going to push things. I thought about telling her that Marcus had come into the hospital again, that I was giving him another chance. That I was going to let him prove that he wasn’t just like my father.

  But in the end, I decided to keep that to myself. The last thing I wanted was to get her hopes up about this relationship working out. I didn’t want to put any pressure on things, not when I was already having my doubts.

  “Anyway, I had my insemination consultation, too, remember?” I said, pulling out the folder that Sandra had given me. “It was actually pretty exciting. I think I might really go through with it.”

  Rachel sighed, and I could tell she still wasn’t on board with the idea of it. But she flipped open the envelope and started looking at the sample donor profile. “This is, like, super detailed,” she said in surprise.

  “Yeah, the consultant joked about it, said wouldn’t it be nice to have a folder like that before you ever started dating someone?”

  Rachel snorted and shook her head. “Don’t you feel like it’s kind of creepy, though?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not like I’ve stalked the guy to get all of this information. He willingly gave it.” I paused. “I’ve been on their website, browsing through the database. I’m not officially signed up for it yet or anything, and even if I decide that I really want to do that, there are some medical tests they need to do to me first to make sure I’m healthy and everything. But it was cool to look through the profiles. There are some pretty amazing catches in there. Now, I just have to decide what kind of kid I want. Other than one who’s just like Gavin.”

  Rachel grinned. “He really wanted to see his Auntie Leila today, by the way. But he’s hanging out with his friend Brian from school, so he’s pretty happy about that, too.”

  I laughed. “I’ll try to swing by for dinner again sometime soon,” I promised. “It’s staying light pretty late now; he and I can play some Frisbee before bed or something. You know, really wear him out.”

  “He’d love that, I’m sure,” Rachel said.

  “I definitely want a kid who’s sporty, but I think that’s more nurture than nature,” I mused.

  “You could have a musician’s baby,” Rachel said. She snickered. “You’d be almost like a groupie then.”

  I giggled. “Yeah, but with my utter lack of musical talent, the kid would still probably turn out average at best.”

  “True,” Rachel said. She shook her head. “I still don’t think this is the best way to go,” she admitted. “I mean, you know that I’ll support you, no matter what you decide to do. But I really think it would be better if you found yourself a good man. Someone that you could count on.”

  She paused and then sighed. “Take it from me; trying to raise a child on your own for even part of the time is difficult.”

  “Uh-oh,” I said, reaching out and putting a hand over hers. “Are you and Victor having problems?”

  “We’re not having problems, per se,” Rachel sighed. “But I haven’t seen him in weeks now, and he called last night to tell me that they’ve added another couple cities onto this round of expos. So it’s going to be even longer until he gets back.”

  “Um, did you tell him that’s totally unfair?” I asked, r
aising an eyebrow at her. “I’m all for being supportive of your spouse, but he’s been gone forever now, and at some point, he has to come home and take up his share of the burden.”

  “But he is taking up his share of the burden,” Rachel protested. “I’m not working; his salary is what’s supporting Gavin and me at the moment.”

  “Honey, if you wanted that, you could have him paying child support while you found yourself someone who really appreciated you,” I said, rolling my eyes. I loved Victor, and I thought the two of them were great together. I always had. But sometimes, Victor was such a dude, and Rachel just let him get away with it, even when it was breaking her heart.

  I got that she wanted to be supportive of him. I understood that he was working and that she didn’t feel like she could argue with that. But she had to put her foot down at some point. Victor, like most guys, could sometimes get so caught up in what was right in front of his eyes. She had to remind him that there was more to the world, and to his life, than that.

  She sighed. “I just don’t know how to talk to him about it,” she said. “I want to make it clear that I support him, and obviously I know that he’s not doing this because he doesn’t want to be back here with us. I understand what’s going on. I just miss him.” She wrinkled her nose. “But I don’t want to sound like one of those girls, you know. I don’t want to be too clingy.”

  I laughed. “He’s your husband,” I reminded her. “I think he’s given you the lifelong right to be clingy.”

  She grinned. “There is that,” she agreed.

  “If you really don’t want to do it over Skype, wait until he gets back home after this trip and then talk to him about it,” I suggested. I waggled my eyebrows at her. “Then you can really show him just how much you appreciate having him spend a little time at home.”