by Sandra Owens
It did to Nate, also. It would mean he could join Taylor and the girls for dinner whenever she spent an evening at Rosie’s. And although the idea of finding a house big enough for all of them had been brewing in his mind, he hadn’t mentioned that to Taylor. With the bar, his hours were too disruptive for a family, especially since Taylor often welcomed him home by jumping into his arms the minute he walked in the door, usually without a stitch on.
“Look at the way he’s smiling. He’s thinking dirty thoughts about his girlfriend,” Alex said.
Court smirked. “Pretty sure he is. Actually, I’ve been seeing that smile on his face a lot since she moved in.”
“Stuff it,” Nate cheerfully said, then couldn’t help grinning. When had he ever thought he’d be cheerful about anything?
“Who are you and what have you done with our sourpuss-faced brother?” Alex put his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “In all seriousness, I’ve thought for a long time . . . no, more like I’ve been afraid that you’d never figure out how to be happy, and I hurt for you.” He lowered his eyes to the surface of the table. “I didn’t like it.”
“What he said,” Court said. “You raised us. You were our mother and our father. If not for you, I hate to think where we’d be now. If anyone deserves to be happy, it’s you, Nate.”
“We’re going to be crying in a minute if you two don’t shut up.” Although it was a lame attempt to lighten the mood, he was deeply touched by his brothers’ concern. As for raising them? What choice had he had as the oldest brother? Sure, there’d been times when he’d both hated and resented the responsibility, but the two clowns he called brothers had brought him great joy. Still did, and he was damn proud of them.
He pushed away from the table, scowling at the gleam in Alex’s eyes. “No, I’m not doing a group hug.”
Alex snorted. “I can make you.”
“True, but remember what you said yourself. I play dirty.” He smirked. “You really want your wife to know you like wearing pink panties?” He left his brothers laughing as he went to find Rothmire. Just what plans did the man have in mind for them once they turned over Aces & Eights?
CHAPTER THIRTY
“So you get to sleep with the boss,” Madison said, her amused eyes on Taylor.
Taylor grinned. “Oh, yeah.” As the newly promoted special agent in charge of the Miami field office, Nate was now her boss. “And let me tell you, my boss is a very talented man.” She winked. God, was he ever! The man’s mouth—not to mention other parts of his body—was so, so very talented.
Lauren laughed. “And so is his new intelligence analyst.”
“Saying the same about his special agent in charge of investigations,” Madison said, a dreamy smile on her face.
His brothers had been happy with their new assignments, Court as an intelligence analyst and Alex supervising their operations. Taylor thought it was a brilliant move on Nate’s part, but then she might be a bit prejudiced where her man was concerned.
With Rothmire’s transfer to a troubled field office in the Midwest happening in three weeks, Nate had been offered his job. They’d talked late into the night about it. At first, he hadn’t been thrilled and had seriously considered refusing, but she couldn’t imagine a better replacement for Rothmire. The thought of the bureau bringing in an unknown for the job if Nate didn’t take it was what had finally won him over.
“What if they send someone like your first boss?” she’d asked. From all she’d heard, that man had practically run the Miami office into the ground, had even been the reason one of his agents was killed.
That one question had decided it for him, and now Taylor sat in the office of Aces & Eights, waiting to watch the Gentry brothers’ “falling out” on the monitor. For the past several days, they had left her, Madison, and Lauren in stitches as they acted out different scenarios of how that could go down. Whatever they had finally decided to do they’d kept a secret, so Taylor sat with her new girlfriends, each of them practically bouncing with anticipation.
She’d never had close female friends before, and she treasured their friendship. If a tiny part of her heart envied that they could call their guys husband, she did her best to ignore it. She and Nate had agreed that they needed time together before considering marriage, and even if she was ready for that next step, he wasn’t. That was understandable, really.
Although he claimed he was over his worry of being an abuser, she believed that was still a fear in his mind. Not in hers, though. The man would walk into the ocean and keep going until he drowned before he would touch her or the girls in anger. So time was what he needed and what she would give him.
As for the girls, they adored him and he them. And Rosie? She’d loved him at first sight, and all she’d said when they’d told her they were living together was “About time.” Neither one of them suspected that Taylor knew about the money Nate slipped Rosie on a regular basis. How could she not love a man who did things like that? Since they had too much fun thinking they were pulling something over on her, she let them have their little game.
“It’s starting,” Lauren said.
Taylor snapped her eyes to the screen, her gaze following Nate as he stomped toward his brothers.
Nate strode up to Alex and Court. “Which one of you assholes put that dent in my Harley?” he snarled, his voice raised. They’d spent the last week arguing about anything and everything with each other in front of their customers, building up to this moment.
At their silence, he poked Alex in the chest. “Was it you?”
Alex knocked his arm away. “Get your hand off me. I’m damn tired of you blaming me for every little thing that goes wrong.”
“He’s just pissed because he’s not getting any,” Court said.
Nate wondered what Taylor’s reaction to that was, considering they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. She was probably laughing hysterically. None of their customers knew that his brothers were married or that he had a live-in girlfriend, since they fiercely protected their private lives.
He turned on Court. “You think not? That sweet little thing you’ve had your eye on? Guess whose bed she woke up in this morning.”
“You son of a bitch.” Court came at him with a fist.
Nate spun, using his legs to knock Court’s feet out from under him. They’d been tumbling on the floor for a few minutes when beer splashed on their faces. He looked up to see Alex standing over them, holding an empty pitcher. He and Court both went for Alex, ending up in a three-way brawl.
At tasting blood from the cut on his lip, Nate decided to end this charade. They’d done enough to make the final scene believable. Not to mention the bikers in the bar tonight were about to join in the fun.
He pushed up from the floor, dragging Alex—rather, Alex letting him pull him up—with him. “Go. I don’t care where. Just get out of my face.”
“I’ll go all right, but don’t ever expect to see me back here covering your ass again,” Alex spat. “I got much better things to do.”
Nate watched him walk out. Baby brother should have been an actor. “Did you put that dent in my Harley?” Nate yelled just before he walked out the door. His only response to that from Alex was a middle finger lifted in the air.
“Anyone tell you that you’re a total dick before?” Court said, looking up at Nate with his back flat on the floor. He rolled over, brought his knees under him, then stood. He glared at Nate. “If not, let me be the first. I put the damn dent in your bike. If you’d given me half a chance to tell you that before you hurt our baby brother, I wouldn’t be saying this . . . Go screw yourself. I quit. Q-U-I-T.” He took a few steps away, then came back, putting his face too close to Nate’s. “I used to think blood was thicker than water, but you proved me wrong. See you in hell, brother.”
Nate stood in the middle of the floor of Aces & Eights—his hands fisted at his sides, his breaths fast and heavy—feeling strangely sad. They’d planned everything that had just happe
ned, yet it felt real. Final.
As soon as he could realistically announce new owners, he would never come back to Aces & Eights. His brothers would never return. Alex and Court would have already left with their wives, but Taylor would still be watching. Although he’d wanted her to go when the other ladies did, she’d refused.
“Even though tonight will be for show, it’s going to hit you that this part of your life is really over. I’ll be there for you,” she’d said before they left for the bar.
How had she known? He turned in a circle, eyeing the bikers, all standing silent as they looked back at him. “As of this moment, Aces and Eights is for sale.” When no one moved, he waved a hand in the air. “Go do whatever it was you were doing and stop looking at me.”
As soon as they wandered off, he looked up at the camera. “Love you,” he mouthed.
Although he rarely drank during business hours, he was making an exception tonight. As he headed for the bar, a body barreled into him.
“Say it ain’t so, Ace. You boys gotta make up. You can’t be selling out.”
Nate peered down at the little man who had his nose dug into the v of Nate’s ribcage. “Dammit, Spider, you’re blubbering all over my shirt.” He pried Spider’s arms from around his back, frowning at the tears rolling down Spider’s face.
He sighed. “Stop crying, and I’ll buy you a beer.” That seemed to do the trick, and he followed Spider to the bar. Strangely, he was going to miss the little man. He’d have to make sure that Rand and Josh kept an eye out for him.
Truthfully, as much as he was looking forward to more normal hours, he was going to miss this place, even the biker clubs that gave them so much trouble. But Rothmire was right, it was time to move on.
“Spider cried like a baby,” Nate said. Even though it was three in the morning, they were all sitting on Nate’s balcony. His brothers and their wives had been waiting for him and Taylor to come home after closing Aces & Eights for the night.
Alex laughed. “I knew he would. He loves us, especially me.”
That was true, Alex was Spider’s favorite Gentry brother. “I’ll spread the word next week that I found buyers.”
Taylor, sitting next to him, squeezed his hand. “It’s going to be hard for you guys, letting it go.”
Yeah, it was. He was afraid he wasn’t going to enjoy his new job nearly as much as working undercover. “We’ll survive. Any progress on finding our mother and sister?” he asked Court.
“I’m running a program now, looking for any records of a woman named Wanda who gave birth to a daughter the year our sister would have been born. Even if our mother changed her last name, I’m hoping she kept Wanda. If not, then it’s going to be harder to find them.”
“But we will,” Alex said. “In the meantime, I need my beautiful wife to tuck me into bed. I’m wiped out from beating you two up tonight.”
Nate scoffed. “Like hell you did. I whipped your ass.”
“Did not.”
“Did too. And shut it, Alex, if you don’t want your new boss to put you on desk duty.”
Alex looked at Court. “Can we still beat him up when we’re off duty? ’Cause if we can’t, that’s not gonna work for me.”
“Come on, Ninja Man,” Madison said, pulling Alex up with her. “Let’s get you to bed before you get fired.”
“Nah, he wouldn’t fire me. He loves me too much.” He bent and kissed Nate on the cheek.
“Dude, stop kissing me. Stop hugging me.” Swallowing a grin, Nate scrubbed at his face where Alex had kissed him.
“Make me,” Alex said, laughing as he walked out, his arm around Madison’s shoulder.
Court rolled his eyes. “Baby brother ain’t right in the head. We’re out of here, too. At least tomorrow’s Sunday, and we don’t have to do anything but sleep all day.” He waggled his eyebrows at Lauren. “Well, maybe not sleep the entire day away, but we are spending it in bed.”
“TMI,” Nate muttered.
Alone with Taylor finally, he stretched out his legs, patting his thigh. “Come here, tiger.” After she was curled up on his lap with her head resting on his shoulder, he wrapped his arms around her.
“Tired?”
“Strangely, no. Why? You got something in mind?” She licked his neck.
“I have a few ideas. The question is, do you want me to show you here or in our bed?”
“Why don’t we start here and see where we end up?”
“I like how you think.” He tilted his head and looked into those beautiful blue eyes, already turning dark with desire.
“I love you, Taylor.”
She straddled him. “Why don’t you show me how much?”
“I can do that.” He tugged on her T-shirt. “But I can do it even better if you’re naked.”
“Ah, you need inspiration for this love business?”
“Yes, but you’re all the inspiration I need. That I’ll ever need.”
And no truer words had ever been said by him.
EPILOGUE
She’d found them! Kinsey Landon held her mother’s letter in her hand. She’d read it a hundred times or more in the past year, ever since learning she had brothers. Three of them, to be exact. “Alex, Court, and Nate,” she murmured, testing their names on her tongue for what was probably the hundredth time. It was strange that she knew about them, but they didn’t have a clue of her existence.
The surprise was that they were the owners of a biker bar. That didn’t sound like men she’d want to know. But they were her brothers. Since finding them, she’d researched bikers, learning there were two kinds. The men and women—doctors, lawyers, businesspeople—who rode mostly on the weekends were one kind.
Then there were the clubs, what the bikers referred to as the one-percenters. They were the outlaws of the motorcycle world, men who called their wives and girlfriends their “old ladies.” She snorted. Seriously? The Hell’s Angels came to mind, along with what little she’d heard of them—nothing good. It appeared her brothers belonged to the latter group, the one-percenters. Not the kind of men she could see herself liking.
Did she want to let them know of her existence? The part of her that had never known she had brothers said no. She’d done just fine without them for her twenty-two years on this earth. Yet, she had brothers. She wasn’t alone, or wouldn’t be if they wanted her in their lives. That was the biggie. Well, the second biggie. The first, did she want them in hers? What if they were members of the Hell’s Angels or the Outlaws? If so, she didn’t want any part of that.
She read her mother’s letter again, even though she had it memorized.
My darling Kinsey,
If you are reading this, then I am no longer with you. Please don’t cry too much, sweetheart. I’ve been blessed to have you in my life, and having you has kept me sane.
You see, I had three sons who were taken from me, and my heart has cried each day from missing them. Without you in my life, I don’t know how I would have gone on.
Before she finished reading the pages she held, her gaze strayed from her mother’s words, landing on the birdbath outside her window when she caught the flutter of wings. The parrot was back. Like so many parrots one could glimpse around Miami, this one had once been someone’s pet that had either been let loose or had escaped. She knew that because he talked to her.
She grabbed the baggie of birdseed she kept just for him and slipped outside, careful not to make too much noise. He was skittish.
“Hello, Oscar,” she quietly said as she lowered herself to the ground, far enough away as to not send him flying away.
“Hello, Oscar,” he parroted in a high-pitched woman’s voice, tilting his head, one beady eye on the bag of birdseed.
He’d said that shortly after he’d appeared at the birdbath, which Kinsey took to mean that was his name and he was a male. She tossed birdseed onto the stone slates, a little closer than the last time. She was slowly getting him used to her.
“Hello, Oscar,” he chirp
ed as he fluttered his wings, landing on the opposite side of the birdseed. “Oscar’s a naughty boy.” He eyed her again, before hopping forward until he could dip his beak to scoop up the food.
As he pecked at the seeds, she said, “I don’t know what to do, Oscar. See, I found out I have brothers. Brothers, Oscar. Imagine that. I want to meet them, but what if I don’t like them?”
Oscar paused, looked at her as if considering her problem, then said, “Hello, brothers.”
Kinsey laughed. “So it’s that easy, huh?”
There was one part of her mother’s letter that she’d read the most and had memorized: I had to believe that I had instilled in my sons honor and a love of learning so they would grow to be fine young men. I know in my heart they grew into men I would be proud of.
She needed to find out if that was true before she burned her mother’s letter and forgot she had brothers. Kinsey pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket and called Aiden, asking him to meet her for breakfast.
“I need you to go with me to a biker bar,” she said the next morning.
“Huh?”
Kinsey lowered her menu, peering over the top at her best friend. “I said, I need you to go with—”
“I heard what you said.” His eyebrows scrunched together. “I’m just trying to figure out why you said it.”
“It’s a long story.”
Aiden leaned back against the booth, spreading his arms along the top. “I’m listening.”
“Read this.” She handed him her mother’s letter.
“I found them,” she said when he finished. “They own a biker bar, Aces and Eights. So what are you doing Saturday night?”
“Going to a biker bar?”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Where to start? I’ve written enough acknowledgements that you’d think it would get easier. It doesn’t. With each book, there are more readers, friends, authors, and so on to thank. And with each book, I find myself more grateful for the support and encouragement given me. I keep expecting to wake up and discover that this wonderful journey I’m on is all a dream. I sure hope it’s not.