Nolan: Return to Signal Bend (17 page)

Eggs counted, Iris handed the little basket back to Caroline, who ran to her sister, and they went hand in hand to hunt up more hidden treasure. Adrienne, pretty far along in her fifth pregnancy, waddled along behind her daughters.

“Need any help?” He pulled Iris close as he asked, and she tucked her head to his chest for a quick hug. She’d dyed her hair, and now it was a rich, reddish-brown. He liked it dark. It made her eyes look even prettier.

“Sure. We could use all the help we can get.”

Deck held his basket up over his head. “I HAVE SEVEN EGGS! IT’S THE MOST!”

Nolan’s mom laughed. “It’s a lot, little man. Maybe we should help little John find some eggs for a while. He only has two.”

“Okay!” Deck went over to John, who was not quite two yet, and took one of his eggs out of his own basket and put it in John’s. “Come on, John!” Then he took the toddler’s hand and nearly dragged him off his feet toward the vegetable garden.

Nolan watched his mom follow behind, out of the way, but paying attention, as Deck helped little John look in a space under the railroad ties that bounded the garden. He knew that she was making some kind of weird family with Bart. He’d brought it up with Iris, but she didn’t agree. She’d pointed out that everybody pitched in with everybody, and Bart just needed more help with the kids.

But Nolan could see it. It bothered him, because his mom deserved better than being a stand-in mother and housekeeper for a still-grieving widower and his kids, but he had to admit that she seemed happier than she’d been in a long time. She liked having more people to take care of.

“I want this someday.”

Iris leaned her head back and looked up at him. The sun shone in her hair, making red shine in it like streaks of light. “Want what?”

He shrugged and smiled down at her. “A place like this, the kids, all of it.”

She said nothing, but stared into his eyes as if she were waiting for him to say more.

“I want that with you, babe.”

“What are you saying, Nolan?” She stood straight and turned to face him.

“I don’t know yet. I guess…for starters, how would you feel about saving up for a place together? A place with some land.”

“
Buy
a place together? Honey, I’m broke.”

“That’s why I said saving up. I’m not rolling in it, either, but I’ve got some saved from when I was in SoCal, and we don’t spend a lot to live. If we were careful, I bet we’d have enough for a little place in maybe a year. Free and clear. No bank bullshit.”

“You want to save up for a year so we can buy a place together. And that’s ‘for starters.’ What’s for finishers?”

He knew what she was asking, but seeing the future in this way required a new lens that Nolan’s wasn’t comfortable with yet. He was throwing out an idea they hadn’t at all talked about before—not only living together, but buying the home they’d do it in. That itself implied serious commitment, and Nolan thought it was silly to hesitate about the rest of it.

It was silly, but he knew why. All his life, people he needed had left him. His biological father. Havoc. Analisa. Over and over again, he had been left. It was hard to trust that the ground he stood on was solid when it had shifted beneath him so often. Buying a place wasn’t the same commitment that asking Iris to take his ink and marry him would be. Not to him.

At the sound of Deck and John’s laughter, he looked up. All around them was family—talking, playing, enjoying each other’s company. In the house, Shannon and Candy were preparing a spread to celebrate Easter as well as Nolan and Lexi’s birthdays, all within days of each other.

This was the life that Havoc had given them. This was what he’d wanted for them—family and security and love. Nolan didn’t want anything else. The best way he could honor his true father’s memory was to be happy in the life he’d made for them.

He turned his attention back to Iris and slid his hands into her newly dark hair, cupping her jaw in his palms. “Finishers is my ink on your skin, my ring on your finger, my kid in your belly.” He kissed her gently. Against her lips, he added, “No. Finishers is us sitting on our porch while our great-grandkids play in the yard.”

“Jesus,” she breathed. “Nolan—are you proposing to me?”

He wasn’t ready to do that, not yet. Not officially, not on a whim. “I’m promising. I love you. I want that life with you. Can you see a future like that? Is it what you want?”

“I don’t think my dad is ready for me to be engaged. I like the idea of making a plan, though.” She finally smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s what I want. You and me.”

A surge of happiness went through him, so strong and alien he nearly flinched. He folded Iris into his arms and lifted her off her feet, and she threw her arms around his neck. They kissed—no, they made out—like that, under a blooming cherry tree, surrounded by their family.

When he finally set her down, Nolan’s mother stood watching, a melancholy smile on her face.

~oOo~

A week later, Nolan leaned against the funnel cakes booth and grinned as, across the way, Iris chatted up a customer in the little Jubilee tent. She hadn’t seen him, so he could take his leisure and enjoy the view.

Iris talked to anybody. Nolan tended to be reserved around people he didn’t know, but his girl insisted that the only way you got to know someone was to talk to them when you didn’t. She didn’t make small talk for long; she asked questions that probed beyond those pat responses that defined chitchat and started actual conversations.

To Nolan, most people were potential adversaries. To Iris, they were potential friends.

Right now, she was talking to a heavyset, grey-haired couple in matching Harley-Davidson kuttes and orange bandanas, like two big old peas in a pod. The woman was twisting her hand back and forth, admiring some kind of bracelet, and Iris was talking about it, lifting the woman’s arm gently every now and then. While Nolan watched, the man pulled his chained wallet from his pocket. Her curious mind and her open, friendly personality made Iris a great salesperson.

This was Spring Fest weekend. What had, when he was a kid, been a smallish little local fair had grown into a major event, and in the past few years, it had developed into an informal bike rally as well. The Horde had always donated the proceeds from their barbecue and wine booths to a regional charity, and over the years, other Signal Bend businesses had chipped in as well. A couple of years ago, the schedule for the Fest had coincided with a multi-state charity run, and since then, the Signal Bend Spring Fest was a big draw for bikers—those sporting colors and those who just liked to ride. This year, the club was sponsoring its first bike show.

As usual, Nolan didn’t get to enjoy most of the fair. He was in charge of security, so the best he got was a meal or two and an engrained knowledge of the fairway. Iris had been working as well, though, so he’d enjoyed taking these little moments and watching her, or, when he could, pulling her behind her tent and having a private minute or two.

She was dressed today in a way that had him distracted—and a little bit worried, too. The sun was going down, and when it did, the Fest would shift to a less family-oriented party. People who’d been drinking all day started to feel it. The music got louder. The little kids and their parents headed home, and the bikers let their hair down.

Iris was over there, being friendly and sweet and bubbly, wearing a tiny little pair of denim shorts, her bright red cowboy boots, and a snug black beater with a little red checked shirt closed over it with a knot a couple of inches above her waist. Her hair was in pigtails, for fuck’s sake.

She looked unbelievably cute and hot. That beater was tight and low over her truly stellar chest. The red lace of her bra peeped above the neckline.

Sometimes, Iris would make an offhand comment that suggested she thought she was plump. She was not plump. Her body was sex on a platter—beautiful tits, slim waist, round hips, sleek thighs. And all of it on display in what she was wearing today.

Nolan had seen men notice her all day, and the attention had ranged from casually appreciative to downright predatory. What Nolan hadn’t seen, Show had complained to him about. Between the two of them, they were trying to keep eyes on her all day. The whole Horde was, in fact.

Except Kellen. After Nolan had beaten the shit out of him, breaking his eye socket and a couple of ribs, Kellen had apologized profusely to him and Iris, and to Show. Since then, he kept a respectful distance.

Nolan had known that Showdown had truly accepted that Iris was his when the old man had stood down and accepted his handling of the situation. He hadn’t come up behind him, demanding his own justice.

The old biker couple walked off down the fairway, and Iris’s eyes wandered up and down the way. She saw him and gave him a sweet little wave and a smile. He headed over.

Before he could get to her, he heard his name and turned as Darwin trotted to him. “We got some trouble by the petting zoo, brother.”

The B&B ran the petting zoo, with Len and Lilli and Gia in charge. Bo, Ian, Joey, and Henry had been helping out. That was a lot of kids around trouble.

“What kind of trouble?” He was already heading toward it.

“Bo had one of his things and lashed out at some guy, and now Lilli and Gia are at a standoff with the guy and his buddies.”

Adolescence sucked for everybody. Nolan guessed it must suck triply bad for somebody with Asperger’s. Bo was coming up on thirteen, and he’d started, on rare occasions thus far, to act out with some violence. This was a really shitty place for that to happen.

“You
left
them? Why the fuck didn’t you use your damn phone and
call
me?”

Darwin gaped at him. He was their youngest, and not their brightest, patch. “I didn’t…Lilli…she said…”

“Fuck! Go to the booth. Get everybody you can. NOW.” Nolan ran toward the petting zoo, wishing like fuck he still carried as a matter of course. But none of the Horde wore their pieces anymore. Things were safe and quiet now.

There was firepower at the booth, though.

The petting zoo was just a couple of temporary corrals, one with about a dozen lambs and baby goats, and the other with four ponies lent to the Horde by one of the Signal Bend families, for the Spring Fest. With the dusk, they’d been closing up, and this side of the fair was nearly deserted, so there were no bystanders to witness the trouble—or to get caught up in it. For that, Nolan was glad.

What he found in the near-dark was Lilli and Bo wedged up against one of the rails of the pony corral, and Gia off to another side. The ponies were all trained to ground-tie, and they stood in a wary group where their leads lay.

Four men surrounded Lilli and Bo. One had Gia. Bikers of the unaffiliated variety, a gang of wannabe tough guys. The worst.

The metal fencing of the corral rattled rhythmically, and it took Nolan a second to understand that Bo, behind his mother, was slamming his back against the fence.

No one had seen Nolan yet. He pulled his blade from its sheath on his thigh. That weapon, at least, he had. But at least one of these assholes had been carrying—he’d seen the glint of it in the shine of the portable spotlight that was the only illumination back here. The gun was on Lilli and Bo.

Jesus. They could be facing Armageddon back here. Isaac would lose his fucking mind.

Unobserved as yet, and alone, Nolan pulled up his patience and examined the scene. From the way the guy who had Gia was standing, and her corresponding defensive posture, Nolan decided that that guy had a knife—and also that he thought he was pulling easy duty, terrorizing a young girl. But Gia was Lilli Lunden’s daughter. She’d been getting self-defense training for years.

There was at least one gun on Lilli and Bo, and Nolan would assume that wasn’t the only one. He’d also assume they’d all have knives.