Joke

by Mia Malone

  “No gym. Most people either work pretty damned hard all day, or they’re not interested. Gib moved back home, and he’s really into that thing, so it took him no time at all to get Paddy’s crew in there to sort out the basics. He’s done some of the remodel himself, I’ve done some, and we’ve been adding to it over the years, so it works for us.”

  “Oh,” she said, turned and walked over to look into the extra bedroom, and sighed. “Can I put some equipment in here? I need to get back to my routine, you know, for my…”

  She made a gesture toward her bad leg, and he scowled.

  “Shit, honey, I should have known. Ask Gib, I’m sure you can do whatever you need at his place. He’ll –”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not asking someone I barely know if I can barge into his home almost every day.”

  He went from annoyed with himself to chuckling in a heartbeat.

  “Babe,” he snorted. “No need to barge. You could just walk in like a normal person.”

  “Joke.”

  “I’ll ask him. It’s a separate building, you can park behind it so they wouldn’t even notice you. Unless he’s there, it’s empty.

  “You work out there.”

  “Yeah. Lee does her yoga there in the winter. Paddy does too, and Gib’s boy Callum trains there since he moved here.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “It sounds like a real gym. I’ll pay him,” she said.

  “Yeah, that’ll piss him off.”

  “But –”

  He raised a hand and reached for his phone, and she stopped speaking.

  “Gib,” he said when his friend answered. “Can Siss work out in the barn?”

  “Sure she can,” Gibson agreed, as expected.

  “She offered to pay you,” Joke said and backed away when Sissy slapped at his shoulder.

  “Sure she can,” Gibson repeated. “If she wants to piss me off.”

  “That’s what I told her,” Joke shared. “Later.”

  “Later.”

  Joke tucked the phone away and grinned at Sissy.

  “Done.” She sighed, but the way her eyes had softened told him that her annoyance was mostly fake. “Wanna go back to their place for ice cream or stay here?”

  “I’ll stay here. Will you tell Lee and Jenny that I had a great time?”

  Hell no. He was not going back to Gib’s place for fucking ice cream when he could stay and hang out with Sissy.

  “I’ll go down and check on Oak. Want to watch a movie later?”

  “Oh,” she said, and her cheeks were suddenly rosy.

  “Babe?”

  “Yeah. Sure. A movie sounds… yeah.”

  He raised his brows, but she turned and carried her bag into the bedroom.

  “I’ll unpack, take a shower,” she said.

  She’d take a shower? Why the hell would she –

  “Right,” he said and went down to do the quickest pit stop in his life at Oak.

  It didn’t matter why Sissy suddenly had a desire to shower. Thinking about her on the other side of the wall meant he needed a little while alone in his bedroom, to take the edge off before spending the evening behaving like a sensible goddamn… whatever-the-fuck. He was becoming a fifteen-year-old horny as hell idiot again, and he wondered if it was normal to feel that way when you were his age. It probably was. Or not. Or whatever.

  His moved his hand fast, and it took him no time at all to get to the point where he clenched his teeth together to keep a hoarse groan from slipping out.

  Feeling foolish but a lot more relaxed, he snagged a tee from the floor to wipe himself clean and walked out to spend the evening with a woman he hadn’t expected to have in such close proximity quite that fast.

  Chapter Five

  Joke

  She’d been in Wilhelmine for three weeks. Two of those weeks she’d lived in the apartment next to his. They worked together some shifts, but having her there was to give him some more free time, so he deliberately put her and Tug together on most shifts. And spent the free evenings forcing himself to stay away from Oak.

  It wasn’t just that Sissy was downstairs. He also had no clue what to do on his evenings off and realized that as years had passed, he’d built a huge part of his life around the bar. He’d enjoyed it, and was proud of the place, but also felt relief when it sank in that he wouldn’t have to let his whole world revolve around Oak.

  Slowly he tried to settle into a routine where he did some of the paperwork for the bar during the evenings. This meant he had more spare time during the days instead, so he hung out with his friends and spent time in Jenny’s kitchen while she cooked, laughing with her and Lee or just talking quietly with his sister. He went skiing, but since he’d been the only one off, he’d not enjoyed it much. He liked the slopes well enough, but it wasn’t as much about the turns and the snow as it was about being there with the others.

  He also worked out more than he had before and enjoyed doing it while Sissy was in the barn doing her own routine. She told him her leg was getting better again and he could see for himself that she limped less at the end of her shifts, which was good. He’d offered to put a chair behind the bar if she needed to sit down between customers and she’d been close to hitting him if the look in her eyes had been a good indication. He’d backed off, amused at the thought of her trying to fight with him, although slightly insulted because he’d been trying to help her.

  She talked to her daughters every day, and he heard her voice, and the girls’ as they chatted. There was always a pinched look on her face after the calls, and he’d started thinking about ways how he could help her to bring the girls somewhere where she could meet them.

  “Earth to Joke,” Jenny said, and he turned to find his sister next to him.

  It was his turn to get the deliveries into her kitchen, so she had no reason to be there except for putting a very long nose into shit which didn’t concern her. Which she would, of course.

  “Hey,” he said and hoped the delivery van would arrive early, which would be a fucking miracle, but it could happen.

  “Sit down for a while?”

  “Sure,” he said, accepting the inevitable. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” she murmured, watching him with narrowed eyes. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing,” he echoed and braced.

  She did not hold back, which he hadn’t expected.

  “You’re behaving like a pussy, Joke. Why?”

  “I don’t –”

  “She’s been through shit. We can all see it, and she won’t talk about it so I don’t know what it is but it’s written all over her. We hang out sometimes, and I like her. And I’ve learned one thing about her in the past weeks; She’s in no way weak, Joke. She doesn’t need kid gloves.” She paused and aimed a pointed glare at him. “So why are you wearing them?”

  “Jen…” He trailed off and restarted. “I know some of the shit she’s had to handle. Still handles. Not everything by far, but bits and pieces. Don’t want to walk all over her.”

  “Honey, there’s a difference between walking all over her and not walking at all.”

  “I’m not –”

  She cut him off again.

  “Yes, you are. Listen… I spent most of my life not doing shit to get the man I wanted. That was stupid on so many levels I still cringe sometimes when I think about it. You need to find your balls, Joke, and you should do it fast because you have competition.”

  What the fuck?

  “I have –”

  “Doug Hanes and a few of his boys were in the bar last night, while you were upstairs, having fun with yourself.”

  “Having fun with –”

  “Find your balls.”

  “Stop fucking interrupting me,” he growled. “Annoying as hell, Jenny.”

  She raised her brows but stayed silent.

  “Doug was in the bar?”

  “Yeah. Invited her to the compound.”<
br />
  Hell, no. Sissy was not going to the Wolves MC’s compound. Part of that was because there were a lot of men there, and a lot of them were good men who also were unattached. Mostly it was because of the shit they did. There was a lot of fucking going on at that place.

  “She declined,” Jenny said. “Told him she was flattered but that she was working a lot.”

  “Yeah?”

  That sounded better.

  “Doug said he’d invite her again when she’d settled in some.”

  “Okay. Right.”

  “Get moving, Joke.”

  “I was trying to take it slow.” He winced at how pathetic he sounded. “Might have taken it a bit too far.”

  “No might about it,” she smirked. “You know how to deal with women. I don’t want to think about my brother and the ladies, but people talk so I know you know what to do.”

  “How did Paddy start things with you?” Joke asked, even less interested than his sister in talking about sexy-times.

  “Joke, honey. He took me to a party with the Wolves and put his fingers in my, um… panties.”

  Ouch. That had apparently been a very wrong thing to ask.

  “Jesus. Did I need to know that?” he said with another wince.

  “You asked.”

  “I thought you’d say something about romantic dinners or whatever the fuck,” he snorted.

  She chuckled and put a hand on his leg.

  “He made Gibson’s wanna get laid dinner.”

  “Seriously?”

  Gibson’s wanna get laid dinner was well known. It was a simple pasta dish which Gib had cooked for many ladies over the years, and he’d also passed the recipe on with some other fatherly advice to his sons as they moved into adulthood. Had Paddy really been that desperate?

  “He did it as a joke, but I don’t know… it might have magical powers,” Jenny said, and the smirk was back in her voice.

  Was he that desperate himself?

  “Huh,” he grunted, lacking anything more intelligent to say.

  “Look,” Jenny said and got up. “My view, for what it’s worth? Lay it out there. Ask her to have dinner with you. Tell her clearly that you’re interested and take it from there. If she says no, then you know. If she doesn’t run for the hills, then you can keep moving slowly, or fast, or whatever.”

  He leaned his head down between his knees and blew out air.

  “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” he muttered.

  “Balls, Joke,” she said, squeezed his shoulder briefly and walked away.

  Jesus. He had balls. He had his hand on them more than once every goddamned day, so he knew he had them.

  Okay. Alright. Dinner. He could do that.

  ***

  Sissy

  What the hell did you wear when having dinner with a man who was your boss? Landlord. Neighbor. Star of every goddamned masturbation-fantasy you’d had in the past weeks, and they were many.

  I looked at my pitiful wardrobe and sighed. I’d added some jeans, a few shirts, and a few more tops, but it was a small town in the Rockies. If you wanted to be fancy, you ironed your flannel shirt or wore a tee that was slightly tighter than your other tees.

  I needed help, and I needed it immediately because I was due on the other side of the bathroom in less than fifteen minutes.

  “What would you wear to a dinner with Joke?”

  I hit send and hoped Lee would be close to her phone.

  “Jeans and a tee.”

  I stared at her text and muttered a short, crude expletive. I hadn’t been clear enough apparently.

  “You, though? Those black cargos you sometimes wear to work, no belt, nice undies, and he’s a boob-man so anything that shows some cleavage.”

  Oh. That was better.

  Joke was a boob-man? Really? I would have thought –

  “You want me to come over?”

  I smiled and moved my fingers over the phone quickly.

  “No time, only have fifteen minutes. Thanks and we talk tomorrow, ok?”

  “Enjoy.”

  “Will do.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy myself, but I’d try. I’d started to think that Joke was not interested in me whatsoever, which truly sucked, and then he suddenly stopped me outside my door and asked if I wanted to come over for dinner. I told him I would be happy to, and smiled sweetly as he nodded and walked into his place. Then I walked straight into my own door which I’d forgotten that I hadn’t opened.

  And now I was nervous.

  Was this a date? Like a date-date?

  Jesus, how old was I again?

  I quickly donned a pair of pale blue panties made up of mostly lace, the black cargos, and the only top I had which would show any kind of cleavage. I was kind of average sized in the chest area, though, and also needed some serious assistance from a matching blue bra which moved everything upward to where it had been twenty-five years ago.

  Was that false advertising? Would he –

  “Get a grip,” I ordered myself.

  He was being neighborly and offered to cook, that was all it was.

  ***

  Dinner was lovely, and he surprised me with his choice of food. I would have pegged him for a hamburger man, but he’d made a very nice pasta dish with garlic and fried prawns. We had talked while we worked in the past few weeks but it had mostly been short, casual snippets from our lives and as we ate, we had time to finish more than a couple of sentences at the time.

  He was funny and interesting, and the way he looked at me made my initial nervousness disappear, only to be replaced with a jittery jiggle in my belly. I hadn’t felt that soft hum of anticipation in years and enjoyed it while we finished the meal and leaned back.

  We talked about Dante, but there wasn’t much to say so I shrugged and he went on to share that he’d never been married.

  “Lived with a girl a while in my twenties, didn’t work out, mostly because we didn’t love each other. Great sex tho,” he shared with a grin. “Met Anna when I was thirty-two, loved her like crazy. She had two kids from before, but she was an only child herself, so she wanted more.”

  “What happened?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t mind that I was nosy.

  “Her kids were great, and I didn’t mind one bit having a couple more, so we tried. Didn’t work and it… I guess it wore us down. Fucking on command gets old, and we started fighting. She moved out to California, and when she left, I missed her kids more than her, which was fucking sad because it started out great. So great I thought it’d last forever.”

  “That’s…” I didn’t know what to say, so I lamely echoed his own word, “sad.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “Pissed me off because it didn’t have to go south. At least, not the way I saw it, but she got it into her head to get all kinds of treatments. Herbal shit and pills and natural whatever the fuck. It would cost a lot. Asked her about going to the doctors instead but she didn’t want to, and that would anyway have cost even more. We might have scraped the cash together for either thing, although barely, and I didn’t want to. However much I loved her, I just thought that was whacked and didn’t want to do it. We couldn’t get past that, and then we split up.”

  “Why didn’t you want it?”

  “Maybe I should have, and that’s on me, but I just didn’t understand why. I figured there’d be plenty of kids who needed parents. We could adopt, they’d be ours, and we could spend the money on them instead. On her kids. Get them to college or whatever.”

  “Really?”

  I wouldn’t have thought he’d be the kind of guy who was open to adoption instead of making his own child, so that surprised me

  “Babe,” he said calmly. “I know who I am. Don’t need to procreate to prove to the world I’m a man.”

  The way he looked and how his deep voice slid over me when he said that was really, really hot.

  “I’m not sure I know who I am,” I shared quietly. “It’s like I’m looking at all these
separate pieces, and all of them are me in a way.”

  “You spent most of your life going all in on shit, Sissy. Now that you’ve stopped, it’ll just take a bit of time to figure out how to fit all those pieces together.”

  “All in?”

  “Elite skier? Ace student? Perfect wife? Fantastic mom?”

  “What?”

  “Did you do any of that in parallel?”

  Oh, God. When we’d talked about snippets of our lives, he’d seen me and understood what he saw. I hadn’t figured it out myself until that night when I’d heard him and Day talk, but he’d gotten it after only a few weeks.

  “Why did you ask me to dinner?” I asked quietly.

  I felt stupid and couldn’t understand why he wanted to spend time with me.

  “Sissy, really?” he asked and added when he saw that I really meant it, “I’m gonna come after you. You don’t want it, you need to tell me to back off.”

  “What does that even mean?” I asked weakly.

  I could guess, but I needed him to spell it out for me because if I misunderstood, I’d look even more foolish than I already did.

  “It means that I think you’re gorgeous, and I like your style. I’m gonna hit on you, babe.”

  I looked at him and desperately wanted to say something brilliant which would make him grin that slightly crooked grin and start with the hitting on me just about immediately.

  “Um,” I mumbled.

  “I won’t jump all over you, Siss. We’ll go slow and easy. All I need to know is if you’re with me on this.”

  “Why?” I squeaked.

  I was pretty sure I was wide-eyed and slightly flushed. I was also pretty sure a large part of my brain had either poofed into thin air or possibly slid down to settle low in my belly. Very low in my belly.

  “Don’t want to be that douche who chases his employees around the bar,” he muttered and looked away suddenly.

  I had meant why on earth we would take things slow and was about to clarify when it hit me that he thought I wouldn’t know how to say no to him. The image of my two older brothers suddenly popped up in my mind, and startled laughter bubbled up my throat.

  He watched me for a few seconds with raised brows.