Authors: Lauren Gilley
Curtis had smiled – a threatening sort of smile Michael would remember forever – and said, “I like the way you handle a knife. I like it so much, I’m thinking about offering you a job.”
He hadn’t accepted. Not then.
But two months later, when he and Uncle Wynn were eating ramen for dinner and rationing the Dog Chow, Michael answered the phone on the first ring, and immediately agreed to bring Curtis another dog.
After that trip, and that beer by the courtyard fountain, he’d accepted a job working at Curtis’s very lucrative car and bike shop. He’d shipped half of each paycheck to Wynn. And he’d quickly learned that this business was run by and peopled with Lean Dogs, that this was a motorcycle club endeavor.
When they asked him to prospect, he accepted.
When they patched him in, they told him why they’d wanted him in the first place: his knife, and what he could do with it. Only now…it wouldn’t he hogs he was slicing into in the dark.
Michael shrugged. “Eventually, there was an opening for someone like me here in Knoxville, and I put in my paperwork. I wanted to come home to Tennessee.” He shrugged again. “That’s it. That’s how it happened.”
Holly started to smile, and then smoothed her lips. “After all the buildup, I was expecting major drama.”
He glanced back at his cards.
“You don’t do drama, though. You’re too solid for that.”
It felt like a compliment. He took it as one.
In a quiet, feather-light voice, she said, “Your uncle raised you?”
He didn’t look at her. “Yeah.”
“All those dogs. That must have been fun growing up.”
“He has a farm, ‘bout an hour from here.”
“How nice.”
“It is.”
“Why don’t you have a dog now?”
“I travel too much. It wouldn’t be fair to a dog.” When he glanced up at her, wondering how many more questions he’d have to field, he found her gazing at him with warm reverence.
He had no delusions about her feelings for him anymore. They were stuck, the two of them. For better, probably for worse.
“You don’t want to talk about it,” she said.
He shrugged.
“So I’ve been thinking,” she went on brightly, “that I ought to be practicing with the gun, like you said.”
“Yeah, you do.”
He wanted her proficient with it.
A chill slid down his spine like the touch of a finger. For a little while, amid the snow, and the lulling drowsy beat of the holidays, he’d allowed himself to stop thinking so much about the fact that she was a hunted woman. He couldn’t afford to be so lax. Not when she was the third person in his life that he’d loved.
Nineteen
Michael took New Year ’s Day for the two of them. They went riding, the cold nipping at their faces, funneling up their sleeves and chilling their arms. He liked the soft shape of her pressed against his back. The way even her slight extra weight sent the Dyna dipping deeper into the sharp turns. Her hands were relaxed against his stomach, her chin tucked over his shoulder. She loved it. He heard her laughing in his ear.
They went back to the cattle property for target practice, and stayed until the shadows were long across the grass, and she could knock each soda can off a hitching rail with precise aim.
She fried him chicken for dinner, at her loft.
It was well after midnight, when, both exhausted and gleaming with sweat, he clicked off the lamp and they sought sleep beneath her piles of quilts.
All that day, he wasn’t a Dog, and she wasn’t someone who’d tried to hire him. They were just them, and it was glorious in its own quiet, simple way.
But there was a rock in his stomach the next morning as he approached the clubhouse. Before he clocked in at the garage, he knew he had to see Ghost, and take whatever punishment was given to him.
The president was talking to Ratchet in the common room when Michael entered. Ghost looked up at the sound of the door, pinned Michael with a glance, and turned back to Ratchet.
“Yeah, print it out for me,” he said, squeezing the secretary’s shoulder where he sat in front of his computer. Then he came to Michael. “Outside.” He gestured to the door and Michael followed him that way.
It was an unseasonably warm morning, the sky packed with clouds, the humidity piling up in stagnant pockets on the lot. The news was predicting more snow soon.
Ghost put his back to the same steel support pole Holly had been clinging to on New Year’s and folded his arms, brows lifted in expectation. “The guys ended up taking RJ to the ER for an X-ray. Docs said he had a concussion.”
Michael met his president’s stare unflinching and said, “We’ve all had one. He’ll live.”
Ghost’s nostrils flared at the edges, as he pulled in a breath. “That’s what I said. It happens: guys have arguments; guys throw punches.” He twitched a humorless smirk. “Mags says it’s suicide, surrounding ourselves with more testosterone.” He sobered. “If that had been Aidan or Merc or even Briscoe, I woudn’t have thought much about it. But you? You don’t get drunk and brawl at parties.”
“I wasn’t drunk.”
Ghost frowned. “That’s what I was afraid of. Who’s the girl?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does if she’s making my most dependable guy act like a fucking moron. That’s not you, Michael. You don’t go off half-cocked like that.”
Inwardly, Michael was tight with anxiety. No, it wasn’t like him…in Ghost’s eyes. Because Ghost hadn’t ever been around him when he gave a damn about something. He was the best sergeant at arms this chapter had ever seen, because he didn’t care to be anything else.
Outwardly, he held his icy composure and said, “So I hit someone. You just said it happens. Guys throw punches.”
Ghost’s eyes narrowed. “It’s one thing to hit a brother in anger. You make up later, have a beer, things are all good again. But you don’t even like your brothers. You start getting pissed off at them – then where does that leave us?”
“It doesn’t change anything with us.” Michael frowned and gestured between the two of them. “RJ crossed a line, and he got knocked back across it. End of story.” But Ghost had struck home – he wasn’t close with any of his brothers. If he started showing outright animosity, his loyalty to the club as an entity would come into question.
He couldn’t afford to let that happen, not when he had no other options.
Ghost gave him a measuring look. “I don’t expect it to happen again.”
“It won’t.”
A beat passed. Then Ghost finally said, “Good. Saddle up, then. We’ve got the children’s hospital run today.”
In his state of total preoccupation with Holly, Michael had completely forgotten the annual trip to children’s cancer ward, where their year’s worth of collected donations and club member contributions were handed over to the head oncologist, and gifts were taken to the children. Photos were always snapped for the paper: Ghost shaking hands with doctors while he flew his Dogs patches. It was great PR for the club, a tradition continued after Ghost’s uncle Duane had stepped down years before.
“That’s today?” he asked.
Ghost gave him another of those narrow glances. “Yeah. Is that a problem?”
He would be away from the clubhouse and beyond Holly’s reach most of the day, if she should need him.
But he said, “No, sir.”
Holly stood in Ava and Mercy’s tiny outdated kitchen, weak sunlight pouring through the naked window, sleeves pushed to her elbows as she contemplated the lump of floured dough Ava had amassed on the cutting board.
“It’s hideous,” Ava said.
“No.” Holly stepped to the counter and patted the dough with one flour-dusted hand. “It’s just a little overworked.”
“Said no man ever,” Ava deadpanned, and they both burst out laughing.
Holly had been shocked to get a call from Ava that morning. After Michael had left for work, and she’d been tidying the loft, her cell had rang. The boys were going on a charity run, Ava had said, and her classes at UT didn’t start until next week, and she had writer’s block, and would Holly like to come over and help her with this bread recipe?
Holly had jumped at the chance. She didn’t have to be at work until two. And she couldn’t believe, after New Year’s, that anyone involved with the club would want to see her again. Ava had sounded relaxed and genuine on the phone.
So now here she was, in the tiny apartment above the bakery, putting her baking knowledge to the test. The apartment was very old, all-original, classic dark hardwoods with white walls. And it was full of books and mismatched furniture and an underlying warmth that reflected the lovebirds who lived here.
“I think it’ll be okay if we let it rise,” Holly said.
“How do we do that?”
“Do you have a deep bowl?”
Ava produced one from an upper cabinet and Holly transferred the dough into it, draped it with a damp towel and set it off to the side. “We won’t know for sure until it comes out of the oven,” Holly said.
“That’s a lot of work for potentially shitty bread.”
“If it turns out bad, you can always go downstairs and buy some.”
Ava nodded and turned, put her back to the counter. She made a face. “Yeah.”
“Their bread’s not good?”
“It’s delicious,” Ava said. “It’s just that…” She exhaled through her nose. “Well, Mercy didn’t have much in the way of a mother growing up. And since I’ve had some time off, and nothing else to do – well, I guess I’m trying to be the mother he never had,” she said, and it had the air of an admission. She gave Holly a wry smile. “How dumb is that? I’m twenty-two and trying to be his mom.”
“It’s not dumb. I don’t think it is, anyway.”
“He–”
The crash of shattering glass was like a slap, it was so loud, and so sudden. Like a fist punching into the room, it assaulted them.
Holly shrieked and couldn’t hear it, her voice lost amid Ava’s shout. They grabbed at one another, falling against the counter.
There was a brick on the floor. Winter air streamed in through the jagged hole in the kitchen window; bright slivers of glass littered the tile.
“Someone threw a brick through the window!” Ava said with total disbelief. “Holy shit!”
Holly’s ears were filled with the pounding of her heart. A cold sweat chased across her skin as her eyes moved from the ruined window to the brick.
“There’s a rubber band around it,” Ava said, voice a shaking semblance of collected. She released Holly’s hands and took a cautious step forward, avoiding the glass.
Holly followed her. “Be careful.”
Ava knelt and took the brick in her hands. On the underside, beneath the rubber band, was a folded slip of paper. She withdrew it, opened it, and read it, her pale face going chalk white.
She turned it toward Holly, so she could read it too.
We found you
.
You’re coming back home with us.
“Holly, how could it be worse to tell me?” Ava sat perched on the arm of the chair in her living room, arms folded across her middle in an instinctual, protective gesture, covering the baby inside her.
Outside, the two uniformed officers who’d responded to the call were still milling around at the foot of the iron staircase, filing the report and checking in with HQ.
Holly hadn’t expected Ava to call the police, and she’d almost begged her not to. But that would have made her look suspicious. That would have let Ava know there were secrets worth protecting; if Ava knew, Mercy would know, the whole club would know…She couldn’t let that happen.
So two officers had shown up, snapped photos, and collected the brick for evidence. They would dust for fingerprints they said, and survey the shop owners down on the street to see if anyone had witnessed the brick being thrown.
“This has nothing to do with the club,” Ava had explained, while they waited for the cops to arrive. “I want the little rat caught.” There had been a strange gleam to her eyes then, one that made Holly think she knew more than she let on…
But her expression was different now. Concerned and a little harried.
Holly studied her hands. “It would be worse,” she said, still too rattled to come up with a convincing lie. She shoved to her feet, stumbling over her own boots in her haste. “I’ll go. I’m so sorry this happened.” She looked at Ava’s face. Here she was in the home of a kind stranger, a woman who was pregnant, who was married to a devoted husband, and Holly had earned her a brick through the window. What if it had hit Ava? A projectile like that could kill a person. “I’m so sorry…” And she spun to go.
Footsteps were pounding up the iron staircase outside, and before Holly could reach it, Mercy burst through the door. His slick dark hair was pulled back, and it added to the tightness around his eyes. He was dressed in a thick leather jacket under his cut, leather gloves he hadn’t bothered to remove. He was tracking mud into the apartment and didn’t seem to care.
His eyes went straight to Ava. “Jesus Christ, are you okay? The cops outside–”
Ava held up a hand, like she was steadying him as he went to her. “We’re fine.”
At the sound of “we,” he turned sharply toward Holly, his gaze dark and aggressive.
She shrank beneath its touch.
He turned back to Ava and said, “Who the fuck threw a brick through the window? What did they want?” His face paled, muscles leaping in his lean cheeks as his jaw clenched. “Was it…” He trailed off, staring at his wife.
Ava shook her head. “It wasn’t anything to do with us.” There was an apology in her eyes as she glanced over at Holly. “The note on the back – I think it was for Holly.” She leaned forward. “Please tell us who did this. We can help you.”
Ava may have been earnest, but Mercy wasn’t. He had to be wondering if he could chuck her out the window the way the brick had come in.
He stared at her with a grim blend of understanding and fear – fear for his wife. “I always thought you were bad afraid of something,” he said.
She bowed her head.
“Holly…” Ava sounded frustrated.
“Call Michael,” Mercy said. “I wanna talk to him.”
By the time Michael parked his bike at the foot of the iron staircase leading up to the Lécuyers’ apartment, his stomach was one hard knot. His pulse thumped at his temples. Inside his gloves, his palms felt damp, sticking to the leather.
Mercy waited for him, sitting on one of the lower steps and having a smoke.
Michael propped his foot on the lowest step, rested a hand on the railing, so he had to look up at the man. He would give him that deference: this was his house, and his world he’d endangered with his own.
“What happened?” Michael asked. They’d already talked about the brick over the phone. He wanted the underlying story.
Mercy took a long drag and released the smoke slowly through his teeth. “They were in the kitchen when it came through. Standing at the counter. Neither of them heard anything beforehand, down in the street. But they wouldn’t have – they were talking.”