by Jayne Blue
“I take care of Mama,” he said, squeezing my heart. I wanted to say, me too, buddy, me too.
Tonya took Cooper’s hand and started across the street with him. The bus was just pulling up at the courthouse stop. If she hurried, she could catch it. I raised my hand in a wave. As the bus came to a stop, I saw him.
The chrome on his Harley glinted in the sun as Angel Bishop made his way across the street and straight for me. My throat ran dry and my knees knocked. I lowered my arm and put my hands on my hips.
“I’ll see you in a few days,” I said to Tonya. She saw Angel too. She quickened her step and got to the bus just before he pulled away from the curb.
“May I help you?” I asked, crossing my arms in front of me, then quickly dropping them to my sides. I didn’t want to take a defensive stance. I didn’t want him to know his presence here affected me in any way at all.
“Ms. Denning?” he said, flashing a smile that probably made most women melt. I felt a little heat flare through my veins but stiffened my back. I wasn’t my mother, dammit. And I wasn’t Bailey.
Bailey. I may just murder her yet.
“Just passing through the neighborhood,” he said, grinning. “What’re the odds I’d run into you again?”
He was lying. Teasing me. I don’t know why it made my blood boil. I don’t know what I was thinking charging into this guy’s club last night. At the moment, I didn’t know what made me think I could do a damn thing to straighten my sister out. I just knew I couldn’t give up trying.
“I’d say they were pretty good. This is Green Bluff, after all.” The light caught Angel’s eyes. They were pure blue and deep set. They flashed when he smiled. I noticed his size last night, but he’d kept his distance across the bar. As he stood just a few feet in front of me he seemed like a giant. His chiseled arms filled out the sleeves of his white cotton t-shirt, hugging him like a second skin. He had intricate ink on those massive biceps. Tribal designs on his left arm, and the silhouette of a howling wolf’s head on his right. It was the symbol of the Great Wolves Motorcycle Club, the same one he wore on the back of his leather vest.
“Do you have a minute to talk?” I blurted. I wasn’t naive enough to think his being here was a coincidence. There was still the matter of Bailey to contend with.
“I suppose,” he said. I turned on my heel and pushed through the clinic doors. He didn’t follow right away and I realized I hadn’t actually invited him to.
“Do you mind?” I asked, holding the door open. He looked up and down the street, then dropped his shoulder as he started toward the door. Holy God. The guy had a sinful swagger to the way he walked.
No. No. No. I would not be distracted by the first leather-clad hunk who ever walked through my door. That was my mother. That was Bailey. That was most definitely not me.
Beverly sat bolt upright and cracked a smile as we walked past her. I led Angel back to my office. When I turned, he stood in the doorway. Mercy. He really was huge, formidable. But he also had a devilish smirk about him that I figured drove most women mad. I was not most women. The sooner he realized that, the better.
“What’s on your mind, counselor?”
“I didn’t ... I haven’t …” I let out a hard breath. “I’m worried about my sister.”
“Is that what you were calling about earlier today?”
“Yes ... I …” I stopped cold. I’d hung up on him this morning. Well, shit. Of course he saw the clinic number pop up. His being here was no casual coincidence.
“Yes,” I said, making my voice firm, definite. “I was going to ask …”
“But what, you lost your nerve? You were pretty nervy this morning. Threatening to pull our liquor license and whatever else.”
He leaned against the doorframe, one booted foot in front of the other. “Are you threatening me? Is that why you came down here? Let me tell you something, Mr. Bishop: I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of your club. So I don’t know what you thought to accomplish by …”
He crossed the distance between us. I backed up, sitting down hard on the edge of my desk. Angel cocked his head to the side. In amusement, maybe, but he reminded me of a confused dog for a second. It was almost comical.
“Look,” he said. “You’re getting the wrong idea about me. About my club. If anything, that is what I hoped to accomplish by coming down here. I don’t know what the hell you’ve got going on with your sister. She seems like a nice kid. Whether you want to believe it or not, Judd is a nice kid. That’s the guy she was with. He’s not the kind of guy who would take advantage of a ch… of a woman. If your sister is saying that he has, I need to know about it.”
“No,” I said. “Not exactly. But Bailey was obviously drunk last night. Like I said this morning, she’s only nineteen. If the Wolf Den is in the habit of serving …”
He put up a hand. “We are not in the habit of serving to minors. You can think whatever you want about the men who wear this patch. But the Wolf Den is our livelihood. We don’t shit where we eat, if you know what I mean.”
“Lovely.”
“If your sister was drunk, she came in that way. Judd didn’t offer her anything. None of us offered her anything.”
“What about now?” I asked.
Angel narrowed his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“That’s what I was calling about. My landlady called me a little while ago. Bailey took off. Some guy in a motorcycle came and picked her up. What do you know about that?”
He took a step back. His whole face changed. His eyes flickered and he ran a hand across his jaw. He had about a day and a half of rough blond stubble that added to his rakish good looks.
“Shit,” he said, surprising me. I expected him to tell me it was all none of my damn business or that it was Bailey’s lucky day that an associate of his club took an interest in her.
“I’ll kill him,” he said, adding further shock to my heart. “I told that kid to …”
Angel started to pace. From the corner of my eye, I caught Beverly trying to look busy. She was terrible at it. I suppressed a laugh by coughing into my hand as I watched Bev check out Angel Bishop’s hard-as-granite ass in his weathered jeans. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and punched in a number. He held up his index finger as he waited for whoever he’d called to answer. After a few seconds, he swore under his breath and shoved his phone back in his pocket.
“He’s not answering.”
“Judd? That was Judd you called?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Listen, I came down here to set something straight with you. As much as you want to warn your sister about my club, I need to warn her too. And not because of what you think. I can’t have some nineteen-year-old coming into my club drunk. People get the wrong idea. You got the wrong idea.”
“Oh, I think my ideas are pretty sound, Mr. Bishop.”
“Angel,” he said. “Nobody’s ever called me Mr. Bishop in my life.”
I don’t know why, but that made me a little sad. There was a hardness to Angel’s eyes and the way he carried himself. Just as he couldn’t begin to know what I’d fought through to make a life for myself and for Bailey, I didn’t know his story either. For the first time since I’d crossed his path, I felt like an absolute shit.
“Angel,” I said. “I’m not interested in arguing with you. I’m just ... I’m worried about my sister. She’s impulsive. She’s like our mother. And she’s got it in her head that anything I call a bad idea ought to be her new life plan.”
He smiled and it shot straight through my heart. “I think I like you, Maura. You mind if I call you that? And I like what I think you’re doing here.”
I reared back. He made my head spin. “What I’m doing here?”
“I saw you,” he said. “With that woman outside. Somebody thumped her and her kid. Probably her old man. Are you going to help her?”
I opened my mouth to say something, but he had me momentarily dumbstruck. “I’m afraid I can’t ... that’s con
fidential.”
“Sure. Right.” He started walking around the office, peering out my window. He raised his hand and shot a wave to Beverly. She blushed and waved back. Heaven help me.
“It’s dangerous though,” he said. “I know plenty of guys like the one your client’s hitched her wagon to. Half the guys in my club were raised by guys like that. The club is what saved us. You probably wouldn’t understand that. You probably had some rich daddy who went to all your school plays and told you how smart you are.”
I think he might have been teasing, but my back went up again. “You don’t know a thing about me, Mr. Bishop.”
He turned, studying me. The muscles in his jaw jumped as he worked something out for himself. “Naw,” he said. “I suppose I don’t. But you don’t know anything about me either. Your sister, I know girls like her too. I’m guessing she’s nothing like you. Sweet kid. Pretty. But she doesn’t maybe think a whole lot of herself. That makes things dangerous for her. I told you, Judd’s a good kid. Impulsive too. Which makes them probably not great for each other. I need Judd to keep his shit straight.”
“And I need my sister to keep her shit straight,” I said.
He gave me a slight jerk of his chin. “Then maybe we can help each other out.”
“How?”
“When I find Judd, if your sister’s with him, I’ll make sure to get her home safe. Just give me half a day.”
My shoulders dropped with relief. “Thank you. I mean that. It’s all I’m asking.”
He looked around the office. “I don’t know, Maura. Something tells me you should ask for a whole lot more. For now though, I’ll see what I can do.”
He gave me a devastating smile, then showed himself out of my office, leaving me breathless in his wake.
Chapter Five
Angel
I pounded on the door of Judd’s room at the Wolf Den. Though still a prospect, he’d banked enough respect within the club to earn the privilege of staying here. He was a big kid, brawny with a permanent scowl on his face which had more to do with the way his eyebrows were shaped than his mood. Still, even without his probie cut, Judd Malloy had a tendency to scare the shit out of people.
“Save your fist,” Switch called from downstairs. “Kid hasn’t been back since early yesterday.”
After leaving Maura’s clinic, I’d spent the day shadowing Sly on a couple of runs. He’d just about settled on some property outside Sacramento. Gunn had made a small fortune taking over Benny Hurley’s bike shop. Sly wanted him to expand and open a full-service body shop. He was a hair away from locking in a deal with one of the big car rental companies to handle their entire northern Cali fleet. If it went through, it could mean millions in the Great Wolves coffers over the next couple of years.
I went back down and joined him at the bar. Helene, one of our new hostesses, had just unlocked the doors and the dinner crowd was starting to file in. We weren’t usually that busy on Monday nights so we only had Helene and three waitresses working. Ford was handling the bar. I raised my chin and Ford started pouring me a draft beer.
“Thanks, man,” I said, then turned to Switch.
“Word is he took off with that lawyer’s sister from the other night,” I said. “Sly won’t be happy.”
Switch didn’t look surprised. “Yeah. Well, at least Judd had the good sense not to bring her back here. Prez doesn’t care where where he dips his wick. He just doesn’t want new people spending the night here after hours for a while.”
I took a sip of my beer. “Well, I’m pretty sure the girl doesn’t have a place of her own. Got any ideas where he might have shacked up with her?”
“Why do you care all of a sudden?” Switch asked. He turned on his stool so he faced me straight on.
“Don’t,” I said. “Just trying to keep everyone accounted for. You heard Sly at the table.”
Switch was smiling. No, it was more of a shit-eating grin. “She was pretty fucking hot,” he said.
“Jesus, Switch. That girl was nineteen, tops. Just a few months away from being jailbait. Judd’s only twenty-two. That’s fine for him. Not for me. And not for you.”
“Who you tryin’ to kid, Angel? I saw the way you looked at that lawyer chick who stormed in here. And I can’t say as I blame you. Tight little skirt. Nice ass. The kind you can get a fistful of. And those tits …”
“Shut your fucking mouth,” I said as I downed the rest of my beer. My blood boiled. Fuck. What was wrong with me? Just the idea of Switch or anyone looking at Maura that way had me ready to throw down. Hell, I knew I’d said the same kind of shit to Switch a million times over the years. It’s what we did. But I don’t know. Something about Maura just seemed ... different.
Switch wasn’t bent out of shape by my comment. Instead, he started laughing. “That’s about what I thought, brother. You’ve got a thing for that chick.”
“I don’t have a thing for that chick. I hardly fucking know her.”
“Right. So you’re gonna sit there and tell me you haven’t already figured out where to find her? Where the hell were you yesterday afternoon? You flew out of here hellbent on being alone. Now you’re sitting there wondering where the hell Judd is because now you’re worried about what Sly said. It’s no good, man. I know you too well.”
Dammit if Switch didn’t. Denying it would only make it worse and we both knew it. “Yeah,” I said. “She was worth checking out. And you can think what you want, but it is better to know how serious she was about making trouble for the bar.”
“So what did you find out?”
I reached over the bar and grabbed the beer gun. I filled up my mug and topped off Switch’s. “Well, she sure doesn’t want her baby sister getting with Judd. Bu from the looks of it, her plate is pretty full with other shit. I don’t think she’s in a position to make any trouble for the Den. She works at this clinic near the courthouse. She helps battered women, from what I can see.”
“Well, God bless her then,” Switch said. “Things might have been a hell of a lot different for my ma if she’d had someplace like that to go.”
I slapped Switch on the back. His story was a lot like the rest of the guys who wore this patch. Most of us were raised by strong women but quite a few had deadbeats for fathers. A lot of us might have ended up on the streets or in prison if the club hadn’t taken us in.
“Yeah,” I said, watching the suds swirl on the head of my beer. “Yeah.”
Switch let the subject go. He knew me well enough to figure out what was on my mind and he also knew better not to push it. As the bar crowd started to thicken, I decided I wasn’t in the mood for the noise. I finished that second beer and slid off the stool.
“Just give me a heads up if Judd comes in. If he brings that girl back in here ... well ... even more so.”
“You got it,” Switch said.
The other things Switch said burned through me later that night when I tried to get some damn sleep. Tight ass. Big tits. Maura’s defiant pout swam in my mind. She was nothing like the women I usually ended up with. Hell, a few months ago, someone like her would have had me heading in the other direction. I’d never been looking for anything serious or complicated. I had only wanted what was fun at the moment. Now though …
I had a dream that night. It started out the same way it had almost every night since Sly and Scarlett’s wedding. Emily had been everything I usually went for. Blonde, stacked, a ready smile and sultry laugh. She was looking for the same kind of fun I was that night. She felt so damn good when I took her under the stars. We laughed. We danced. We fucked. I twirled her around the dance floor, loving the way her hair caught the light. Her smile widened, then her face split into a scream. She was covered in blood and she went limp in my arms.
I couldn’t save her. There was too much blood. The bullets ripped right through her. They should have hit me. If I’d been faster, turned my body. Seen where the gunfire came from. Emily died in my arms every fucking night. Tonight though, as I held her
in my arms, her face changed. She wasn’t Emily anymore. She was Maura.
“Angel?” She called my name. It wasn’t a yellow bridesmaid’s dress she wore. It was her black business suit with blood staining the white silk blouse.
“Maura!” I sat bolt upright, drenched in sweat. A soft knock on the door pulled me out of my damn head.
“Angel?” It was Mo again. For a second, I didn’t know where I was or what the hell time of day it was. I grabbed my phone off the charger. It was just past eight in the morning. Fuck. I’d slept almost eight hours. That hadn’t happened since the wedding either.
“I’m good,” I said. “Just need to get a shower.”
“There’s breakfast downstairs if you want it,” she said. “I’ll save you a plate.”
“Thanks, Mo,” I answered. My stomach rolled with dread. I couldn’t shake the image in my head of Maura as she appeared in the dream. I stood under the shower jets, my hands flat against the tile.
“No,” I whispered. “Not again. I will never let that happen again.”
I dressed in a t-shirt, my cut, and a pair of jeans. I ran my fingers through my wet hair and grabbed my helmet from the top of the dresser. Mo gave me a stern look as I grabbed a pancake on the way out. I just wasn’t in the mood for talking. My heart still raced. It was crazy, I knew. But I just had to see for myself.
It was just after nine when I pulled into the lot across from Maura’s clinic. The lights were on inside but I couldn’t see her from where I sat. I should have gotten here earlier. Would she see me if I went in? And if I did, what the hell would I say?
I pulled up Judd’s number on my phone and punched it. It went straight to voicemail. “Not cool, probie,” I muttered. I sure as shit hoped he was in contact with one of the other club members. If he ignored me one more time, we were going to have to have a different kind of conversation.