“That’s nuts,” I hissed out through my teeth.
“It is, but I’m going to warn you now, that girl is still getting her shit together. She’s not here often, because her old man, Phoenix, is a nomad in the club. When she is here, you’d do best to steer clear of her. She’s working through her demons from what Phoenix has passed on to Hopper, but she’s still prone to causing drama, and she used to be friendly with my ex, so rest assured if she’s wanting to cause drama you make a pretty target.”
“Fantastic,” I muttered. Smoke rubbed his fingers along my back as we moved deeper into the clubhouse where people were dancing, playing pool, drinking, and generally carrying on as only adult aged children can. Despite the fact that I’d been to the clubhouse a few times before when I was with Walker, I didn’t really know anyone here. He had kept me mostly sheltered from club life, I was learning. I was also finding it strange that he had done so since most of these guys seemed to enjoy having their women close.
Once again, I had to take a moment to shut down the thoughts about my past. It wasn’t that I wanted to dwell there, or go back, I couldn’t help making the comparisons, because once your eyes are opened and you begin to see what is truly in front of you a person can’t help chastising themselves for having been so blind to it all. I hoped this was all part of the healing process I was going through, and at least I wasn’t in denial about the things I was experiencing now. I was learning from the past in order to make my future better.
Smoke and I were standing near the bar talking with Ghost, Leanne, and the prospect currently working behind the bar taking orders. His name was confusing, because I’d heard Ghost call him Gray and Smoke called him Surfer-Dude a lot. The Surfer moniker seemed fitting since he had that slow, southern California surfer speech going on and he had an affinity for the word ‘dude’ as well. Smoke had mentioned working with him before with CFFRD. It was just as we were all joking about the fact that Surfer-Guy Gray didn’t know how to make silly frou-frou drinks when Hopper and a man named Tuck walked toward us with a purpose. A man named Mick joined them quickly.
“Ghost, we have a pretty big fuckin’ issue we need to discuss in the office, possibly church,” Hopper explained. Ghost immediately hopped off his stool and started heading in that direction. Hopper and Mick followed behind, but Tuck hesitated and he did so while staring at Smoke.
“I’m thinking you should come too, Smoke.”
Smoke didn’t say anything other than to nod his head. Then he turned to me with regret in his eyes. “Don’t worry, you have to go, go. Handle your club business, and I’ll see you when it’s done,” I assuaged his guilt with my words and I could see the relief as weight seemed to visibly lift off his shoulders. He glanced around before speaking though then he sighed.
“Not sure how long this is going to end up taking, and Chief doesn’t look fit to drive you home, honey.”
“I’ve got her, Smoke. Go ahead to the office, and I’ll see her home.” Leanne lifted her glass to prove her point. “I’m just drinking Ginger ale tonight.”
Smoke nodded his head and took off with Tuck in the same direction the other men had gone moments before. I turned and glanced in Gray’s direction, smiling at him. “You better prepare your woman for the realities of that happening,” I explained with a grin. He smiled back, but his smile didn’t reach his eyes as they scanned the room looking for the woman he pointed out earlier. I looked too, and didn’t like what I saw when I did. If I didn’t know she had a man of her own I would think she was on the prowl in the clubhouse. Kayla, the girl Gray said he lived with, appeared to be flirting with a couple of guys over by the pool tables. That couldn’t be good.
“Did you want to hang around a bit and see if the guys get done with their club business quickly, or…” Leanne started to ask when Smoke, Hopper, and Tuck tore off out of the building with Smoke yelling, “Gray, get your ass out here with us, gonna need you on this one.”
“Shit!” Gray hissed, snatched up a set of keys from behind the bar, and tore off after the other men.
“Well, I’m going to take a wild guess and say they won’t be back any time soon,” Leanne amended.
I grinned at her. “I’m thinking you would be correct.” At that point Ghost had reemerged from his office and was stalking over to Leanne. “Babe, we’re going to be tied up with club biz for a bit.”
Leanne smiled sweetly at her man. “I figured. I’m going to get Poppy home since her ride just took off like a bat outta hell with the rest of the men. I’ll be back soon as I drop her off.”
Ghost didn’t say a word, just leaned in and kissed Leanne long and deep. Then he swatted her ass as she moved off her bar stool and he took off at a quick pace back down the hall that led to his office. It was on the ride home that Leanne informed me that she would keep me in the loop if she could.
“Soon as I know anything, I’ll message you. Lord knows, the lifestyle these boys lead, we women are left to worry too often. If I can help take some of that worry for you, I will.”
I smiled at Leanne. “You make a good old lady for the Prez doing that.”
She cocked her head to me then. “I imagine where you come from you know all about good old ladies for the Prez of the club.” I saw the pride in her eyes as she spoke of Angel Girl, yet she still noted my hesitant response.
“She may be my step-daughter, but I will always take truth over lies.”
“It’s not that she’s a bad person,” I started out. “I like Angel Girl, but she has her own club to deal with. She leads those women, and half the time club business for her club is the same as it is for the guys in Aces down there. She’s too buys being a good president for her club to be a good old lady supporting the women of her man’s club.”
Leanne nodded her head. “I suppose I never thought about that. Some days, I wish she’d give it up, because I think her calling was supposed to be in that support role. Then again, I remember all those girls when they first came to me, and then started Sierra High Evermore MC. They were all so lost and not a one of them were found until they made their own purpose. So, while she’s not supporting the women from her man’s club the way I think she was always destined to, she’s supporting all the women of hers in a way that they get a new lease on life when it’s kicked them to the ground one too many times.”
“I get that too,” I agreed.
“She didn’t step in and do anything in your situation?”
“Nope. I never heard from her or Keys throughout. JoJo came to visit me a couple times before I finally decided I needed to get out of that town, but there wasn’t much she could do outside of giving me a shoulder to cry on.”
“I suppose that’s true too. I’m a bit disappointed in those girls though, that being the case. I can’t believe after everything Angel Girl went through with Sweet that she would stand back and watch all that go down without doing anything on your behalf.”
“I think they’ve had their hands full with some things going on down there. I know JoJo hinted at something big with one of their security clients landing in a mess that was blowing back on the club.”
“Still,” Leanne muttered.
“Honestly, Leanne, she has her own family to worry about without having to deal with my soon-to-be ex husband’s problems with fidelity and not putting his pride above all else.”
Leanne sighed. “You know, sometimes men can be really damn stupid.”
“Amen to that,” I agreed on a laugh.
“I have to tell you though, I like what I see going on between you and Smoke.”
“I like it too. His sister didn’t seem to happy at first since I’m still married, and everything started happening so fast.”
Leanne pulled into my driveway, put the car in park, and then moved so that she was facing me. “Let me give you a little advice on that note. When I lost my first husband I thought I lost my world. One minute he was there, and we had been having some of the same fertility issues you had in your marriage, only
we had to try getting pregnant around his deployment schedule. Around the time I finally decided it was never going to happen for me, and had given in to thinking about just adopting kids, I got word that he was gone. I swore I would be alone forever then. I just knew there was no getting over him. He was my first and only love up to that point.”
I offered Leanne a small smile as we took each other’s hands. “Then I met Angel Girl, of course I knew her as Jamie at the time. The thing was, I heard her story, and I saw her trying to put the pieces together. Watching someone else putting their broken heart back together one little tiny piece at a time does something to you. By the time her dad found her a few years later, I suppose I had been healing my own heart too, and just hadn’t realized it. So, when he first approached me I was interested, but seriously conflicted. Had I listened to my family, I never would have given into him. Instead, I tuned them all out and went for where my heart was pulling me. Now, Ghost and I are happy, we have two beautiful children together, and then there’s Jamie and our grandbabies too. When you’re on the outside looking in, maybe it seems shitty or like I forgot my first husband, but he’s still in my heart, and I have to think he’d be happy that I got the family I’d always wanted even if it couldn’t be with him.”
“I’ve always been a bit envious of what you have with Ghost. I guess being that way, looking back on it, I knew in my heart things were missing from my marriage.”
Leanne nodded sagely. “My girl, I’m thinking you’ve had years to come to terms slowly with the death of your marriage. Doesn’t matter that you think you were wearing blinders and suddenly woke up. It wasn’t as sudden as you think, and you realizing what you just told me about feeling envious of Ghost and me, that says I’m telling the truth. You knew. It just took a bit longer for you to act on what you already knew. So, when people see that you are freshly divorced, and those same people haven’t been living your life with you to know what was going on in it, they are going to have their own assessments about how you’re moving on too soon. But they don’t know that you’ve been working at moving on for a long while now in your heart. You’ve just gotten around to finally making it official.” She leaned over then and hugged me, her warm cinnamon scent enveloped me and I melted into her arms for a moment before pulling away.
“Thanks, Leanne. I can’t tell you how much it means to know someone understands where I am with everything.”
She waved my words away in typical southern woman fashion. “We Georgia girls have to stick together, sweetheart. I have your back, and I will continue to do so whether things work out with you and Smoke or not. You are family, but more importantly, you’re someone I consider a friend. I don’t abandon my friends over petty lovers squabbles. So keep that in mind.”
“I will,” I said, and then to lighten the mood before I got out of her car I added one parting shot. “Besides, you have to keep being my friend if you want me to make my awesome triple layer chocolate cake for you again.”
“Girl! I expect cake next time now that you said it!” I got out of the car and Leanne promised once more to message me as soon as she heard anything about the men who went out on an emergency run.
Since it was so late when I got back, and there was barely a sliver of a moon in the sky to lighten up my relatively dark neighborhood, I decided the walk I was taking Bubba on was going to be around the fenced back yard, off leash, while I watched him do his business from the door and then promptly took him back inside. He didn’t seem to mind as he bumped my thigh with his head on the way into the house. I like to think it was his way of telling me he missed me.
“I missed you too, Bubba.”
Bubba and I did our usual night time routine of me washing my face, brushing my teeth, and putting on the tightest, most comfortable sleep clothes I owned. Everything had to be tight when I slept, or I would go without clothes altogether, because I was not a calm sleeper normally. I tossed and turned a lot and in baggy clothing that became problematic, because then parts of my shirt or pants would get discombobulated and stuck under me and it felt like I was being suffocated by my murder-plotting clothing. Yes, I am aware that thinking those things makes me weird, but it’s okay if I keep it to myself. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one in the world who thinks their clothes might be trying to choke them to death at night. Why else would people opt to sleep naked in the wintertime?
Bubba was lounging just outside the open bathroom door as I did my thing, and he dutifully got up and followed me into my room where he proceeded to flop down on a doggy sigh at the foot of my bed once I climbed up and hopped under the covers. I wore a second skin tank top and panties when I crawled in. I was not getting trapped by my clothing tonight. No, sir.
It felt as though I had just laid my head down on my pillow when a banging on the front door set off Bubba who jumped to his feet and started emitting a low level growl as his eyes focused on my open bedroom door. “Shit!” I huffed out while clutching a hand to my chest. Then I glanced over at my alarm clock to see it was 3:52 in the damn morning. “Who in the hell is disturbing our peace this early in the morning, Bubs?”
I got up out of bed and started into the short hall that led from the bedroom into the living room with Bubba at my side. When I was close enough I thought I could be heard I called out. “Who is there?”
“Sorry, honey, it’s me.”
“Smoke?” I asked to verify since I was still trying to shake off the cobwebs of sleep.
“Yeah, honey, you know someone else showing up at your door in the middle of the night?”
I moved over to said door, settled Bubba, and then opened it to let Smoke in, and the first thing that hit me was the clinging scent of, well, smoke. As in smoke from a fire that was clinging to my man’s skin, clothing, and it wasn’t the good kind of campfire or cookout smell. It was an acrid, battling raging fires scent that caused my nostrils to burn slightly when he got close enough to push through the narrow opening I’d made with the door.
“What happened?” I asked as I shut the door behind him and locked it once more.
“Fire at one of our warehouses tonight. Looked to be deliberate since what Ghost and I were called away for was that our security cameras had picked up a couple people roaming around said warehouses. It wasn’t until we were looking at the footage that I noticed what they were doing.”
“Oh my God!” I moved to get a towel for him to sit on so that the blackened soot all over his clothing wouldn’t mess up my furniture. “Here, sit on this.”
Smoke smiled at me and then glanced down at himself. “Mind if I hop in your shower, honey? I didn’t realize how bad I was.”
“Only if you want to come out smelling like roses, and I mean that literally.”
Smoke cocked his head in question, which made me laugh. “I don’t exactly have manly fragrances in there. My shampoo and body wash are both rose scented. Apologies, because I used to keep gender neutral stuff in my old house for whoever stopped by, the club brothers, my brother, whatever, and I just didn’t think about the necessity here.”
Smoke came over and brushed a tender kiss across my temple. “No worries honey. I just need something to clean me up. I can take a man-scented shower at home later to wash away the roses.” He was chuckling as he turned and sauntered off to my bathroom. It was only after he was in the shower that I wondered what exactly he would be wearing out of it since he hadn’t brought anything extra in with him.
I didn’t have to wonder long. He came out with nothing but a towel and a smile on. Needless to say, sleep didn’t find me for quite some time, and once it did Smoke and I were both beyond exhausted and not worried in the slightest that he didn’t have any clean clothing at my house.
Chapter 11
It took right around three hours to drive from Cedar Falls to Pittsburg, PA. We were back in Pittsburg to watch the Penguins once again, and to finally meet Kent for more than a couple minutes. Smoke had planned on taking me, because he felt as if he had to make it up to m
e after leaving me stranded at the barbecue after party. His brother also had something to make up to him since he ditched us to work out problems with his woman the last time we had gone to see him play. None of that explained why my brother and Smoke’s friend, Shep were tagging along. That involved the fact that they both had been sitting there when the negotiation of how Kent was going to make it up to Smoke went down; therefore they managed to yell loudly enough that they should also be included in the next game day visit.
That was how I found myself on the back of Smoke’s Harley Dyna Wide Glide heading to Pittsburg with my brother riding next to us and Shep trailing behind on his crotch rocket. The guys had given Shep plenty of flack over his choice in rides, but the man just shrugged it off and told them ‘I like what I like, get over it.’ So, they got over it. Eventually. The ride to Pittsburg was a peaceful one. The traffic had been relatively light, the sun had been shining, and even though it meant three hours on a rumbling motorcycle that was going to make me walk funny when I finally got to get off and use my legs again, being wrapped around Smoke for those three hours made the trip worth it. I still had moments where I doubted myself, doubted what I had with Smoke, and if I were even able to have anything with anyone again after Walker. My judgment hadn’t been the best with Walk, and I had so obviously been wearing blinders for the majority of our relationship. Now, it made me question if I was seeing everything clearly with Smoke.
The thing was, when I was touching him and in his orbit, I felt like my eyes were wide open and I was seeing everything for the first time. If only I could kick that niggling doubt out for good, because being wrapped around him on that ride had only reiterated to me how right everything felt when we were together. He had brought me to Pittsburg, once again, to meet his brother. That had to mean something. Granted, the guys had conned their way in on the trip too, but even that meant a little more. This was my first time hanging out with Shep, who worked on the same engine as Smoke at the fire department.
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