“Nothing.” He looked down at his cup and shook his head. “Just reminded me of something my dad used to say.”
“What was that?”
He looked up, and his eyes locked on mine. “He liked to say that sometimes the best things in life happen when you’re not paying attention. And that if you’re not careful, you may just miss them.”
I smiled softly, surprised he was sharing something so obviously personal. “Your dad sounds like a very smart man.”
Sadness crossed his expression. “He was.”
I tilted my head slightly. “Was?”
He lifted his cup and took another drink, but I recognized he was using the time to get himself together. It was obvious that talking about his dad caused him pain, and for reasons inexplicable to me, considering I didn’t even like this man, I wanted to soothe that pain.
I wasn’t at all surprised when he changed the subject. “When do you start work?”
Already knowing where this was headed, I held up my hand. We’d had a nice moment, but that didn’t change the fact I needed to stay away from this man. “I appreciate your offer, Bear, but I don’t need your help.”
He scowled. “It’s not your choice.”
“You’re wrong. It is my choice, and I’ve made it.” Sighing, I looked into my empty cup before standing. “Are we done?”
He scowled. “No.”
I held up my cup. “Then I’m going to need more coffee.”
I started toward the kitchen and didn’t need to turn to know he was following me. I poured myself another cup of coffee and added milk and sugar before turning to face him again. Leaning back against the counter, I waited for him to speak. He lifted his cup and took another drink before walking toward me. With him in the small space, I pressed myself back into the counter, but the scent of leather and soap surrounded me, and for a moment, I wanted to get closer. I wanted to press my face into his neck and just breathe him in.
Slowly, he placed his hands on either side of me against the counter. “I know you’re scared.”
“I’m not scared,” I answered immediately.
His eyes stayed locked on mine. “You should be.” I swallowed hard when he continued. “The men who are after me are not good people. And they’ll go after anything that’s mine.”
“I’m not yours,” I pointed out.
“The minute you walked through the doors of my clubhouse, you became mine.” Something I didn’t recognize flashed through his eyes before he dropped his head.
“You seem to know these men. Tell them I’m not yours,” I suggested. “Get word to them somehow. I’m sure you can figure out how to convince them that you and I do not have a relationship.”
He lifted his head and proved that he was going to completely ignore any idea I suggested. “You need security, and the only person offering it is me.”
“I don’t want security from you,” I replied quietly.
He pushed back slowly and stood to his full height, which had to be almost a foot taller than me. “Then you leave me no choice.”
I shifted forward slightly. “What does that mean?”
He turned and started toward the door, but I followed him and repeated, “Bear, what does that mean?”
With his hand on the doorknob, he paused and glanced over his shoulder at me. “That means, I’ll do whatever I have to do to protect you. With or without your consent.”
“You can’t do that.”
He pulled open the door, but his eyes stayed locked on me. “You’re in my world now, sweetheart. I can do whatever the hell I want.” The intensity in his eyes burned through me. “And I will.”
He walked out and closed the door quietly behind him, his actions in complete contradiction to the intensity of his words.
I stared at the closed door.
And not for the first time, I wished I’d never walked into that damn clubhouse.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JOSIE
Slamming my car door, I quickly crossed the street to the little diner Becs had suggested when we made plans to meet for dinner. It was already Thursday, and I couldn’t believe how quickly the first four days at my new job and in my new office had gone. My primary office was at the high school, but I also had offices at the middle and elementary schools, so I spent the week getting to know the staff and setting everything up. I still had so much to do, but this was the only evening Becs wasn’t working, and I really wanted to catch up with her.
I pushed open the door and walked through, almost immediately coming face-to-face with the hostess.
She smiled sweetly. “Just one?”
“No, actually…” I returned her smile, but mine faded when I saw her eyes linger on the bruises around my eye. I guess my concealer was beginning to wear off, and I’d forgotten to check it, considering I’d been running a little late. “I’m meeting someone.”
She seemed to catch herself staring and shifted her eyes back to mine. “Becs?”
“Yes.”
“She’s already seated.” She grabbed a menu and gestured for me to follow her.
I could already see the table we were heading to because I recognized Becs’s long black hair. Her back was to me, and she had her head angled to look out the window, but that hair would give her away every time. The hostess set my menu on the table, and Becs snapped her head toward us. She smiled when she saw me, and I slid into the seat across from her.
“Your waitress will be right with you.”
“Thank you.”
When she began to walk away, I threw my purse on the seat beside me and smiled at Becs. “I’m so sorry I’m late.”
“I was a little late too.” She flicked her wrist. “No worries.”
I laid my forearms on the table and leaned forward. “You okay? You look, I don’t know, tired maybe.”
“I am tired,” she admitted.
“We can do this another night,” I offered.
“No.” She shook her head. “I think this is good for me.”
“Why…” I trailed off when the waitress approached and asked to take our orders. I listened to what Becs ordered and liked how it sounded, so I ordered the same thing. When the waitress walked away, I continued. “Why do you say that?”
She inhaled deeply. “I just wanted to see for myself that you’re okay. I feel so bad about what happened to you.”
“What happened to me was not your fault, Becs. Please don’t think that.”
“It kind of is.” She frowned. “I overheard Bear talking on his cell the other night, and he pretty much said it was.”
“What?” My eyebrows drew together. “Why would he say that?”
She leaned forward but glanced around the small diner before she continued. “It’s a long story, but the men who did this to you hate my brother and Gunner more than anyone else. Bear seems to think they targeted you because they watched us walk in together and assumed you were my brother’s girlfriend. That made you the perfect target. They’d been leaving us alone, so I didn’t think of it, but I should’ve. Hell”—she motioned toward my body—“I should’ve thought of it when I saw you.”
I glanced down at my chest before facing her again. “What does that mean?”
She shrugged. “Bear doesn’t date much, but the few girls he’s been with have all been a certain type.”
“What type?”
She pointed at me. “Your type.”
My eyes widened. “What type am I?”
She smiled softly. “You’re blond and gorgeous and curvy. He especially likes curvy. So, if those guys have picked up on that over the years, then you looking like you do and hanging out with his sister would’ve easily led them to believe you belonged to my brother.”
I had so many questions about what she was sharing with me, but for some reason, I couldn’t get past one thing she’d said. “Bear likes curvy women?”
She nodded. “Yep.”
“Hmm.” I sat back and folded my hands together in my lap.
> “Why do you say that?”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t have guessed that about him. I figured he’d like tall and slim who wear mostly leather.”
Becs laughed and sat back. I was happy to see some of the tension around her eyes disappearing. “You’ve thought about what my brother would like?”
“Not really,” I replied. “He came to my place the other morning, and I was in my pajamas. I figured he was used to women in really revealing lingerie.”
She laughed. “Yeah, I don’t really know and talking about those preferences is grossing me out.”
I slapped my hand over my forehead and laughed. “Sorry. Of course, that would be gross for you.” I dropped my hand back down to my lap. “I don’t have any siblings, so I didn’t really think about it.”
“Did it suck being an only child?” she inquired.
I didn’t even have to think about it before I answered. “Yeah, it really did. I always daydreamed about what it would’ve been like to have a sister to talk to or share stuff with.”
“You didn’t have that with your mom?”
I shook my head. “No. I wasn’t close to my mom. She never wanted kids. I was the result of a drunken encounter after a Christmas party.”
Her eyes widened. “Your parents told you that?”
“I don’t know my dad,” I admitted. “But my mom told me when I was older and asked. She said it was a one-night stand when they were both interns at the hospital. She told him she was pregnant, but he decided to go on the trip he had planned to underdeveloped countries. The last she heard, he was married and living somewhere in Africa.”
“That’s awful,” she muttered sadly.
She seemed to want to say more, but the waitress approached our table with a tray holding our chicken salads and iced teas. After she moved away from the table, Becs continued. “Where did you grow up?”
“Boston,” I replied before taking a long sip of my tea.
“Do you ever think about moving back home?”
I took a bite of my salad and swallowed before answering. “No, not really. My mom worked a lot when I was growing up and still does, so if I went home, I’d still be alone.” I took another bite when she did and swallowed before I continued. “What about you? Where did you grow up?”
“Colorado.”
“Wow, Colorado is pretty far from North Carolina.”
“Yeah. We moved here when I was nine. Bear was fifteen, and Jamie was thirteen.”
“Who’s Jamie?”
She swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “He’s our brother.” I waited patiently for her to go on, sensing she needed to. “He died about ten years ago. He and my dad died in the MC.”
I reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “I’m so sorry, Becs. I got the impression from Bear that your dad had died.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Bear told you?”
I pulled my hand back and wrapped it around my glass. “No, but he referenced him in the past tense, so I just assumed.”
“I’m surprised. He doesn’t talk about our dad with anyone.” She smiled softly. “After we moved here, my dad and Bear got really close.”
“Why did you move?”
“My dad didn’t like the local president or the direction the club was heading, so he brought some guys here, and they began their own club. It was good for a while, but then one night, my dad and Jamie were killed, and they voted in a new president. It wasn’t good for a couple of years after that.”
“What about Bear?”
“He wasn’t there the night they were killed, and he beats himself up about it all the time.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I never told him, but I’m glad he wasn’t. I would’ve lost almost everyone at the same time.”
“Your mom?”
She shook her head sadly. “She died three years ago. Lung cancer.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“Were you close to your mom?”
She nodded. “Very close. We did everything together.” She took a drink of her tea. “I can’t imagine how it was for you not being close to yours.”
I inhaled and exhaled slowly. Trying to find a way to explain my mom to people was difficult. She always seemed awful when I tried to explain how she behaved, but she wasn’t. “My mom just wasn’t very nurturing. She was also very blunt, which made her come off hard when I think she just felt honesty was the best policy.”
“What do you mean?”
I bit my lip, searching for the right example, when it finally came to me. “You know how you described me as curvy.” She nodded, so I continued. “Well, my mom always told me she felt I should lose weight. That I needed to look a certain way to make it where I wanted to be in life. She changed my diet, sent me to nutritionists, and even hired a personal chef, but it didn’t change how I looked. My body type is my body type, so I’m always going to carry extra weight in certain places.” Becs looked at me like most people did when I talked about my mom. “She wasn’t being mean. Believe me, I know it sounds like she was, but in her way, she thought she was giving me the best chance at being successful.”
“Not gonna lie, Josie, she sounds hard to live with.”
“She was sometimes,” I acknowledged.
Becs nodded. “After our dad and brother died, our mom started smoking more than she ever had before. She also wasn’t eating, and she became really withdrawn, which was not her personality at all. She’d been a loud, outgoing, hard as nails kind of woman but a big softie with her kids. Bear always said we lost all three of them on the same night, and he’s not wrong. She was lost to us after they died, and she never came back. She even refused chemo after the first round failed. We knew she didn’t want to live without our dad.”
“No wonder Bear seems so protective of you.”
“He is.” She gestured out the window. “This shit with the Widows is wearing on him, though. He wants to keep everyone safe, and he knows he can’t.”
I nodded, and for the first time since I met him, I thought of Bear in a little different light. I saw him as a son and a brother who was afraid of losing the only family he had left, but I also saw him as someone who didn’t want one more death on his hands. Even though his father’s and brother’s deaths shouldn’t be, I imagined he couldn’t be convinced of that.
“I wish all of this would end before the baby’s born.” She dropped her hands to her belly. “This is making him even more crazy than usual.”
When she rolled her eyes, I giggled, and she joined in. I was happy to see the sadness leaving her eyes even though I sensed it was never far. I took another bite of my salad and waited for her to do the same before I spoke again.
“I hate that I can’t protect myself,” I admitted.
“What do you mean?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never felt as helpless as I did that night. The only thing I knew to do was to run and scream. And it has me thinking. What would I do if someone broke into my apartment? I don’t know self-defense. I don’t own a gun.” I shrugged. “I’m basically defenseless.”
She pursed her lips. “Hmm. I don’t know of any self-defense classes, and Bear would probably lose his shit if he found out you’d bought a gun and you don’t know how to shoot.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah.” She stabbed a piece of lettuce with her fork. “After I graduated with my beauty license and got a job, I told him I was getting my own place. He took me to buy one and taught me how to shoot. He still showed up at my house almost every night for about six months and crashed on my couch until he eventually realized I was gonna be okay.”
I smiled softly. “That was nice of him.”
She lifted her fork to her mouth, and I did the same, chewing while she spoke again. “At the time, I told him I hated it, but I secretly liked it. I was a little afraid of being on my own too.” She dropped her fork to her plate and lifted her glass of tea, but I could tell by her expression that she had some
thing else to say, so I waited. “You know, I went out on a few dates with a guy whose boss had a business just on the edge of New Hope, heading toward a town named Cranberry, and it was a shooting range. I remember his name was Manny because that was my dog’s name when I was young.” I smiled along with her at the memory. “He might be someone you could talk to.”
“I wonder how I’d find a number for him.” I thought aloud.
She lifted her fork and ate another bite. “I’d just drive there. I went with Sal one time because he needed to pick up something, but I don’t remember the name of the business. Manny runs it in an old warehouse building, if that helps. If you find the building, you could probably just knock and ask him.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled, lost in my thoughts.
Becs leaned forward. “Maybe you should run it by Bear first, though. Believe me, you do not want to get on the wrong side of my brother.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Does he know you dated this guy?”
“God, no.” She laughed.
Grinning, I lifted my fork to my mouth but spoke before I took a bite. “I’m not brave enough to just go there and knock anyway.”
She giggled. “I know Bear would teach you if you asked.”
I thought about that but immediately disregarded it. Bear and I didn’t get along, and I didn’t want to give him the impression I was scared and in need of protection because I wasn’t. At least not from him. Something about him got to me. Something made me think about things I shouldn’t with a man like Bear. He was trouble, and I was not the type of woman who found trouble exciting. Even if I had been, that night at his clubhouse would’ve easily changed that for me. Becs’s stories had softened the image I had of him, but it hadn’t changed the fact he was dangerous and so was his lifestyle. Besides, no matter what Becs said, there was no way I was his type, so spending more time together would only lead to more arguing and miscommunications.
Deciding to change the subject, I glanced down at her round belly. “Are you excited to be a mom?”
“I’m nervous,” she admitted, “and completely unprepared.”
I laughed. “I think every mom says that before her first baby.”
End Game (Sinners MC Book 2) Page 7