by Jessie Cooke
He’d been at Booger’s wake at the club, drinking everything that was handed to him, smoking some weed, and slow dancing with his sexy little nurse. He knew it was early in their “relationship” to call Patrice “his,” but he’d never met another woman he felt so connected to so early on. She’d been there to take care of him every day in the hospital, changing his dressings and making sure he wasn’t in pain. Her smile was what he looked forward to every day as he lay in that bed, waiting to be told he could go home, and her gentle touch was almost as effective in drawing him to her as were her good looks. Her hair was jet black and at work she’d worn it up in a bun on top of her head. The first time he saw her outside of work, though, she’d let it down and it touched her butt and framed her pretty face and all he could think about was burying his own face inside of it. Her eyes were the lightest blue he’d ever seen...except, of course on Blackheart. Some of the guys teased him about how much she looked like their president. Gabe had hero worshiped Blackheart since he was a little boy, and being with a woman who favored him so much gave his brothers way too much ammunition, but Gabriel had a thick skin and he just laughed along with them, and none of them could deny she was hot...hotter than most of the women they were messing with.
He made it back over to the sink and rinsed his mouth with mouthwash this time. Again, his stomach rumbled, but he managed to keep whatever was left in there where it was supposed to be. He looked at his face again and another memory came back...it was an old one, though, not from the night before. It was a memory of when he was just a prospect and he and Booger had been in a fight in a bar on Bourbon Street. They’d both been day drinking and some asshole tourist from the East Coast started razzing them about the way they talked. Booger wasn’t usually one to start a fight, so at first it had just been a battle of words and wit. But when the guy and his friends started making mama jokes, Booger lost it. Once they’d made it safely back to the club he’d told Gabe that “mamas and old ladies were off limits, always.” Gabe missed his mother, a lot...and that memory brought on another one. The reason he was currently sporting a black eye, a split lip, and some kind of injury that had caused a knot of blood to coagulate in his blonde hair was because someone had said something about his girl Patrice. Someone had gone too far.
Gabe had been looking for her. He hadn’t seen her for what he suddenly realized was a long time and he was asking some of the guys if they’d seen her. It was a guy they called Ripper who had crossed that invisible line. “Last time I saw her she was in the hallway with the boss. My guess is he’s about balls deep about now.” Gabe had thrown the first punch, but in minutes, especially with Blackheart conspicuously absent, the wake of their beloved brother had turned into a full-on brawl. Many of the guys didn’t know what they were even fighting about, but most of the Jokers loved a good fight almost as much as they loved a good lay. Gabe wondered now if Ripper was waking up as torn up as he was...and then, even though he was trying hard not to, he wondered about what the man had said.
Gabe had no idea how he’d gotten back to his own trailer the night before, but he was sure he never saw Patrice or Blackheart after that. He loved his president. Blackheart had been like a surrogate father to him since his own father died. He trusted him with his life, even if he didn’t know Patrice well enough to know if he could really trust her or not. He was sure Blackheart wouldn’t go there...mostly sure, almost completely sure.
He shook his head at himself in the mirror and that simple motion made him throw up again. He supposed he should head over to the club and see what kind of damage they’d done, and what kind of hell they were going to catch when Blackheart or Le Singe saw it. Le Singe had disappeared early the night before too, but since he was the closest to Booger out of them all, no one thought anything of his needing some time to himself. Gabe shuddered to think how angry he was going to be when he saw the damage they’d done to the bar, and how many bottles of booze had ended up broken and leaking sticky liquid out all over the floor. He groaned and headed back to where his bed was, with the intentions of picking up the jeans lying at the bottom and getting dressed. But once he was that close, the bed seemed to be calling to him and he flopped back down on top of it and once the room stopped spinning, he reached over to the bedside table and picked up his phone.
He stared at it for a while, as if wishing for a text from Patrice would make one appear. When it didn’t, he used his shaking hands and fingers to type in, “Hey, just making sure you got home okay last night. I lost you.” He wondered again why she would just leave and not send him so much as a text message. His head kept going back to her being with someone else. Gabe wasn’t sure which of his brothers might fuck his woman, but he knew a few of them who had priors. Most of those guys were older, part of the “wild bunch” around since Blackheart put the club together. They were the kind of guys who had no boundaries and figured if something wasn’t nailed down, it was fair game. But Gabe couldn’t imagine Patrice giving in to any of the old timers, and he knew without a doubt that if she said “no,” that would have been the end of it. The Jokers were a lot of things, but Blackheart insisted from day one that no woman would be abused on his watch, and he’d made an example of the men who ignored that directive, with a legendary fury that no one wanted to be at the center of.
He finally pressed “send” on the text and let the phone drop to his bare chest. He closed his eyes...just to rest them while his head continued to pound...and woke up sometime later to an insistent knock on his front door. The phone fell to the floor as he was startled out of a deep sleep, and stepping over it, he went to see who was at his door. By the time he got there, he found himself hoping it was Patrice, with a believable explanation about why she’d disappeared, and maybe even an apology for not saying goodbye. Instead, once he’d pulled open the door he found himself looking into his president’s blue eyes.
Blackheart gave him a once-over and when he cocked an eyebrow it dawned on Gabe that he hadn’t pulled on any clothes. He was face to face with his president, and he was butt-ass naked. “You alone?” Blackheart asked.
“Yeah, boss, sorry...”
“Please tell me you were expecting anyone but me,” Blackheart said with a smirk on his face. Gabriel felt his face go hot.
“Sorry, boss. I’m just a little...”
“Hung the fuck over?”
“Yeah. Come on in. I’ll put some pants on.”
“Well, thank Christ for that,” Blackheart said, following him inside. As Gabe made his way back to the little 5th wheel “bedroom” he couldn’t help but notice the way Blackheart was looking around the small space, like he was still expecting someone else to pop out. As Gabe was pulling on his jeans Blackheart said, “You might also want to pull on a shirt and some boots because you’ve got a hell of a lot to do in order to rebuild the bar you and Ripper tore the fuck up.”
Shit. He’s already seen the club. Gabriel didn’t say anything but went ahead and pulled out a clean t-shirt and socks. While he finished dressing, he wondered if anyone had told Blackheart what they’d been fighting about. Once again that devil on his shoulder tried to get him to wonder if he was wrong about his boss...maybe he had found Patrice too hot to resist. Blackheart was the king of getting what he wanted, no matter how unattainable it seemed to others. What was really stopping him if he wanted something Gabe had? After all, no one was kicking him out of the club, even if he did do something the rest of them would deem “disloyal.”
Gabe ate another four pain pills before scrubbing his face, brushing his teeth, and going back out where Blackheart was, boots on and vest in hand. Blackheart had made coffee and he handed a mug to the younger man as soon as he walked out into the tiny kitchen. It smelled so good that Gabe almost forgot everything and was tempted to kiss him. He inhaled the magic brew before taking a sip of it and savoring the way it warmed his insides up as it slid down his throat. “Ahh...thanks, boss. I needed this.”
“Sit down with it for a sec. Before we go, you
and I need to talk.”
That sounded ominous, but Gabe did as he was told and Blackheart took a seat on the little couch, almost dwarfing it. Blackheart ran a hand through his beard and said, “Your girl...Patrice...what do you know about her?”
Gabriel’s mouth went dry again and it was hard to form the words as he said, “Not a lot. She was brought up in Baton Rouge and moved here for the job after she got out of nursing school.” When Blackheart didn’t say anything after a few minutes Gabe summoned his nerve and said, “Can I ask why you’re asking, boss?”
Ignoring the question Blackheart said, “She mentioned me to you at all?”
Gabriel was now wondering how he would feel about his hero if Blackheart was about to admit to fucking Patrice? He didn’t know...but surely his relationship with Blackheart was more important than one with a woman he still barely knew? “No, boss...she hasn’t said anything to me about you.”
“What about her parents? Her maw? She still in Baton Rouge?”
“Um...I think so. She said she never lived on her own until she moved here...so, I just assumed she still lived with her parents.”
“Parents? As in maw and paw both?”
Gabriel wished he knew why Blackheart had so many questions about “his” girl, but he didn’t have the balls to ask again. Instead, he nodded, sending another jolt of pain shooting through his poor head. “Yeah, I mean, she’s mentioned them both, and a brother and sister...younger, I think.”
Blackheart stood up then, startling Gabriel, and said, “I think we’ll let Ripper get a start on that mess you two made. You and I are gonna take a little day trip.”
“Okay...” Gabe said, nervously. “Can I ask where we’re headed?”
“Baton Rouge.”
2
Before leaving for Baton Rouge, Blackheart told Gabriel what Patrice had said to him at Booger’s wake. Now as he rode along the I-10, he had to think about that. He couldn’t help but wonder why she hadn’t mentioned it to him. They hadn’t had sex yet because Patrice told him she didn’t do that until she was at the point of knowing a man well enough to know she wanted a relationship with him. He’d been okay with that because all along he’d felt like they had been growing closer, and he was sure she felt as strongly about him as he did her. Now he had to wonder if she’d only been using him to get closer to his president. When Gabe was younger he’d had problems with his self-esteem. He knew he wasn’t the best-looking guy around, and he’d never felt like he was very smart. But once he put on that Jokers kutte, he’d gotten a lot more female attention and it had done wonders for his ego. Of course, now he was wondering why a beautiful woman who was six years older than him, a hell of a lot smarter, and had a good career, would want him. It had been like instant attraction for them...or at least for him...but maybe that was her plan all along.
Blackheart hadn’t told Gabe if he thought there was a chance he’d fathered her or not. He had apparently simply walked away when she’d confronted him the night before. He told Gabe after talking it over with Sally; he’d gone to look for Patrice the next morning to finally talk to her about it, and she was nowhere to be found. He’d gone to her apartment first and when she didn’t answer the door, he went to the hospital. There, he was told by one of her co-workers that she was supposed to be on shift, but she’d called off sick that morning. From there he’d assumed she was with Gabe, but in the meantime he’d been working his magic like he always did and he already had a name and address for her parents in Baton Rouge.
Gabe’s head continued to pound as thoughts raced wildly through his head. He glanced over at Blackheart, riding next to him with his long, black hair blowing in the wind underneath his half-shell helmet. For as long as Gabe could remember, Blackheart had been the epitome of everything he’d wanted to be someday. His parents had given him a good life. They didn’t have much money but they worked hard for everything they did have, and gave Gabriel everything he needed. He never doubted that he was loved and wanted the way some of the kids he’d grown up on the bayou with doubted...but something inside of him always drove him to want more. Blackheart stopped by once a week to see his dad. Gabe never knew what kind of business the two men did together, but he found himself at a very young age looking forward to those visits. The man who to a ten-year-old boy looked like a giant always brought him some kind of trinket from New Orleans and was never too busy to spend a few minutes catching up with the boy about what was going on in his life. When his own dad died, Gabe had even felt guilty for all the times he’d wished Blackheart were his father instead.
When Gabriel’s parents were killed in that car accident, it had been Blackheart who woke the sixteen-year-old up to tell him. He’d been filled with compassion and he’d assured Gabe that the club, and he himself, would be there for him, and he’d never want for anything, and Blackheart had never wavered on that promise. At first, Gabe’s Paw Paw and Maw Maw had taken him in. His mother’s parents were good people, but losing their daughter had broken them, and they just didn’t have much left to give a needy, adolescent boy. But true to his word, Blackheart had been there, checking on him every week or sending one of the guys out to see if he needed anything. Gabe’s Paw Paw was much too proud to take any money from anyone that he didn’t feel like he “earned,” but the young man’s grandparents had been shocked, and grateful, when Blackheart “discovered” an insurance policy their daughter and husband had taken out, naming Gabe as the beneficiary. When he turned eighteen Blackheart gave him the paperwork for a bank account where the $100,000 had been deposited in his name and it had spent two years drawing interest. Gabe’s grandparents had hoped the boy would use it to go to college, but he’d never thought he was smart enough for that. He was more comfortable working on a fishing boat than he’d ever be sitting in a classroom, or someday wearing a suit. He’d used a few thousand dollars to buy himself a used Harley and kept the rest of the money where it was, in hopes that someday he might use it to start a family of his own. In the meantime, riding with Blackheart and the Jokers was all he wanted to do, and after his hanging out around the club for two years and Blackheart’s realizing he wasn’t going to get rid of him, the president had allowed him to prospect. Gabe’s grandparents weren’t happy about his choices, but they also weren’t about to turn their backs on the last living link to their daughter. Eventually they seemed to come around, and Gabe had a standing date for dinner with them every Sunday evening. Sometimes Blackheart even went with him, and his grandfather especially seemed to be warming up to the big Cajun as well.
The past week, before Booger’s untimely death, Gabe had been thinking about asking Patrice to go with him to the next Sunday dinner. He’d never taken a girl home before, but he realized as soon as he started thinking about introducing her to his grandparents, he was thinking of her as much more than any other woman he’d ever been with. Now, he was happy that he hadn’t asked her yet. If it turned out she was using him, the fewer people in his life that knew about it, the less humiliated he would have to be.
It was just after 2 p.m. when the men made it to Baton Rouge. Gabriel was slightly nervous, wondering what Blackheart was going to say to Patrice’s parents, and how they’d feel about them just showing up on their doorstep. When they drove their bikes up in front of the neat little blue Tudor style house in the quiet little neighborhood, Gabriel was feeling sick to his stomach, but Blackheart stepped off his Harley and pulled off his helmet, looking as cool as ever; and not for the first time, Gabriel wished that someday he could learn to be more like him.
They made their way up the cobblestone path that led to the front porch of the house and were almost to the steps when the front door came open, and Patrice came into sight. Her long hair spilled down her back and around her shoulders and she was wearing a pair of cutoff jeans and a red tank top. Gabriel tried not to think about how beautiful she was, but it was hard when just looking at her took his breath away. Her blue eyes focused on Gabe’s face for several seconds before she finally
looked over at Blackheart and said:
“What are you doing here?” She reached behind her and pulled the door closed softly. Letting the screen door go, she stepped further out onto the porch. She was barefoot and her long, tan legs shone underneath the hot, afternoon sun.
“It’s not every day someone drops a bombshell on me like you did last night and then just disappears,” Blackheart said, stopping at the bottom of the three steps that led up to the porch. He reached up and pulled off his sunglasses and Gabriel looked from one to the other of them and wondered why he didn’t just see it in the first place. She didn’t just favor Blackheart...she had his face, and his coloring...and as they stared at each other Gabe could even see similarities in their expressions. He expected any minute to hear Jerry Springer’s voice saying, “Evan Babineaux, it’s 99.9% sure that you are the father.”
Patrice was frowning at Blackheart as she said, “Me? You walked away last night, just like that,” she said, snapping her fingers. “Without so much as a word. I took that as my answer...even if I am your kid, you couldn’t care less.”
“I don’t discuss things I haven’t had time to think about,” he said. Patrice rolled her eyes and then she looked at Gabriel at last. Her pretty blue eyes softened and she said:
“Gabe, I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier, I was going to...”
“Is this what you and I have been about?” he blurted out, unable to stop himself. “Did you use me to get to him?”
“Will you lower your voice, please?” She looked over her shoulder at the door behind her, and then stepped down off the porch. “I told my parents you were friends, but I’d really rather they didn’t hear what we we’re talking about, if you don’t mind.”