He, nor any of his brothers, ever went to church again.
It wasn’t God.
It wasn’t faith.
Now that he was older and understood it better, it was the dogma.
In the end, on Sundays, he, his dad and his brothers would go out and do something, like take a hike or go play catch in the park. And with his mother not in earshot, his dad was big on saying, “This is where God is, boys, this is what He gave to us, not some damned building.”
Porter Sadler meant the park or the hike, and them being together.
And even when Boone was fourteen, he knew his father was right.
Boone didn’t share his ideology about religion with Smithie and Dorian.
He said, “I think Ryn needs to be given a hiatus until this shit is sorted so I can be certain she’s kept safe.”
Dorian waded in then.
He did this by saying, “No.”
Boone looked to the guy.
“Sorry?” he asked.
“No,” Dorian repeated.
Boone stayed silent mostly because he needed the energy to control his temper.
“Son, trust me. I’ve been through this,” Smithie said to Dorian, then jerked his head Boone’s way. “These boys got skills we do not have. They can get the job done. And still speaking through experience, it gets worse before it gets better.”
Boone wasn’t a big fan of that last part. But he knew the Rock Chicks’ stories, and what the Nightingale crew had to go through to get their women through them. So as much as it sucked, he also knew Smithie was not wrong.
“So Ryn is the one to pay for some motherfuckers targeting her?” Dorian asked.
“I’ll cover her salary,” Smithie returned, openly insulted that Dorian was inferring he wouldn’t.
“You gonna cover her tips?” Dorian pushed.
“Well…yeah,” Smithie said.
“And what? She adjusts her life to fit their bullshit?”
Smithie had no reply to that.
Dorian turned to Boone. “Think I’d like Ryn to weigh in on where she wants to go with all this. She feels like hunkering down behind your wall of protection, that’s hers. She doesn’t, we’ll cover her while she’s here.”
“Ian,” Smithie bit out. “We got bouncers, not bodyguards.”
“I will personally see to her protection,” Dorian declared.
“Love you, boy, but you don’t have the skills to do that,” Smithie retorted. “And I’ll add on to that, I absolutely do not want you the focus of dirty cops.”
This was wise, especially when they were talking about dirty racist cops.
“You don’t have those skills, but you’re right,” Boone cut in, saying this to Dorian and doing it before their discussion turned into an argument like the expression on Dorian’s face was sharing it was about to do.
He said his next even when he really didn’t want to say it.
“I gotta let Ryn know the fullness of what’s going down, what that means to her, and she needs to make the decision. When she does, we’ll reconvene to figure out how to keep her safe while she’s working if it comes to that.”
“My other girls, my patrons?” Smithie asked. “This shit spreads. You got bad cops in the mix, anything goes. Who’s gonna protect them?”
“For now, we gotta start with Ryn,” Boone said.
“We actually don’t,” Smithie clipped. “See, I’m still the boss around here and what I say goes. I’ve had girls roofied in my place. Attacked in hallways. Kidnapped in the parking lot. And worse. Far worse. Far worse than roofied and kidnapped and fending assholes off with trays, so I hope you get where I’m coming from. I do not want Ryn to suffer due to circumstances beyond her control. And I love that girl, do not doubt it. But I got more to think about than just her.”
Smithie turned his attention to Dorian and kept talking.
“I get it, son. You gotta stand for something. And the reason I’m groomin’ you to take over for me is that, without fail, you stand behind my girls. But you need to learn this. We cannot only take Ryn into account and what’s happening to her. If this club, and the people who work here, become a target of dirty cops…” He trailed off and shook his head.
This was becoming a familiar refrain.
Mamá Nana was out.
And Smithie, in his way, was too.
Smithie looked to Boone.
“I’ll call her,” he stated.
“Let me talk to her first,” Boone replied.
Smithie nodded.
Dorian was tapping his fingers on the armrest of his chair, and although the man got up to shake Boone’s hand before he left, neither man made to move as if they were going to follow him so he figured they were about to have an uncomfortable discussion.
Boone was about to have the same thing with Ryn.
He drove to Ryn’s place, parked, and as he was walking up to the front door, Lottie came out, followed directly by Mo.
Lottie was a slip of a woman. Lots of tits. Lots of hair. But just above average height and very slender.
Mo was a huge man. A mound of muscle. Muscle with bulk. No hair at all.
They were the perfect match.
Lottie was also one of the most feminine women Boone knew. She had it and she flaunted it.
She was last, one of the guys. When Mo’s boys were all together, she was in the thick of it. It was impossible to offend her. She gave as good as she got when it came down to teasing and banter.
And she loved Mo to distraction.
The last part was all Boone would need to love Lottie like a sister.
But the rest of it didn’t hurt.
However, in that moment, she was giving Boone a look he couldn’t decipher, except for the fact it was pissed.
He stopped on Ryn’s stoop and she didn’t delay in giving it to him.
“Fix this,” she snapped, whirled, looked up to her man, and semi-repeated, “Fix it.”
She then rounded Mo and stormed into the house.
Right.
Lottie had lived through the Rock Chick stuff too, and one of the Rock Chicks was her sister. The one, if Boone wasn’t wrong, who fought off an attack at Smithie’s with a tray.
Once the door slammed inside, Boone looked to Mo.
“Hawk called. Briefed me. I briefed Lottie,” Mo told him.
Boone felt his skin chill.
“Does Ryn know?”
Mo shook his head.
It wasn’t that he was the one who wanted to give her the news.
It was that he wanted to be close when she got it.
He was a little surprised, considering Lottie’s greeting, at the mood he walked into when he hit Ryn’s living room.
Evie was there now as well. They were all drinking iced tea, or a tea with the words “Long Island” in front of it, and Pepper was on her feet, bent toward Hattie, brushing something on Hattie’s lips saying, “I swear to God, it plumps them. Like you got injections. It’s insane.”
They were fucking around with makeup.
A man shot dead not fifty feet from there, and they were fucking around with makeup.
He had to admit, that said more about all of them than any recommendation from Lottie that they were the shit and her boys had to get in there.
Ryn turned to him when he showed through the door and immediately shot him a huge-ass smile.
Christ, she was pretty.
Never prettier than when she was smiling…or laughing. And he’d now seen her come, so that was something.
So the last thing he wanted to do was wipe that smile off her face.
She jumped up and made her way to him, calling, “Hey.”
“Hey,” he said when she got to him.
She put her hand to his abs and tipped her head back.
He didn’t miss her invitation, or the opportunity to accept it.
He bent and touched his mouth to hers.
When he lifted away, he muttered, “Can we talk in your room for a sec?”
That was a thing he got from his father.
Porter Sadler was not a man to give over to negative emotion about anything.
But one thing Porter openly hated was procrastination.
It had been drilled into Boone from a young age that you got shit done. And if some of that shit was more uncomfortable, onerous or annoying than other shit, you did that first.
Regardless, it was getting late and Ryn would be thinking about dinner and getting to work soon, and since she had no work to get to, she needed to know.
Her gaze was moving all over his face, and when she finished doing that, she nodded.
He took her hand and led the way to her bedroom, hearing Pepper whisper, “What’s going on?”
“Later,” Lottie said.
It was impossible for Ryn not to hear them, but that wasn’t the only reason, after he got her in her room, she instantly asked, “What’s going on?”
He moved to her, put his hands on her hips, and pulled her closer.
She took his hint and lifted her hands to put them on his shoulders, but other than that, she kept distant.
She’d moved on.
It was a little crazy, and a lot strong, that she’d had the day she’d had, from start to murdered man on her back deck, and she was with her girls, drinking tea and experimenting with makeup.
He had a feeling Kathryn Jansen had been forced to just move on from a lot in her life.
But shit was about to get extreme.
And he felt a jolt of pure fury race through him that she was going to have to suffer yet another blow.
With no small effort, he shook that off and decided to do this quickly so they could get to the part where she moved on.
But this time, he’d be there to help.
“Right. Cisco shared there’s been a campaign to try to force him to come forward and take a rap for a killing he didn’t commit. They’re focusing on women in his life that mean something to him. First, they targeted his sister. A stalker. So bad, she quit her job and moved to Alaska. You know about Corinne. And now it’s you. They’re using ex-cons to do this work, we don’t know how, we can guess why. And the guy they sent after you was a sex offender.”
She sucked in breath.
Boone quickly kept talking.
“So there’s a reason behind the extremity of Cisco’s reaction to someone trying to break into your house. I still don’t condone it and wish you didn’t have to live through it. But it’s arguably a valid reason. He might not have known what that guy was intent to do, but he knew the ante was being upped.”
“Oh my God,” she breathed.
“As I said, these guys are only targeting women in Cisco’s life. No clue why, but I figure we don’t need more evidence they’re assholes,” Boone went on.
“No,” she whispered.
She was freaked, not hiding it.
Goddamn it.
He squeezed in at her hips.
“We’re on it, baby,” he assured her. “Hawk, the guys. Eddie and Hank. Slim and Mitch. Malik. Chaos is in. Sebring will keep his ear to the ground if he doesn’t wade in full throttle. This won’t last long, and I’ll do a damn sight better looking after you from here on out.”
She shook her head and squeezed in at his shoulders, saying, “It’s not on you, Boone.”
“It isn’t but it is.” He shifted closer and explained, “We’re new, but you’re still mine. Mine to eat onion rings with, mine to fuck on the bathroom sink and mine to protect.”
Either she knew Doms enough to know she didn’t speak against that, or she knew guys like him enough, because she didn’t reply.
“Talked to Smithie. There was a discussion with him, me and Dorian. Smithie decided you’re on a hiatus until all this blows over,” he finished.
Though, he was going to say more, but her change in expression made him stop speaking.
“You talked to Smithie?”
“He needed to know,” Boone pointed out the obvious.
She pulled away from his hands and asked again, but added more words this time, and on the last words, jerking a thumb at herself, “You talked to Smithie? My boss?”
“Ryn, I can see you not thinking clear after what went down, but that guy who tried to break in today was intent to do you harm that is not as final as death, but you don’t have to live with death because you’d be dead. Not a good scenario by any stretch, but only a little less bad than that, you’d have to live with whatever that guy did to you for the rest of your hopefully very long life.”
Her eyes narrowed in a way no man wanted to see on the face of his woman.
“Not thinking clear?”
“Kathryn, a man was murdered while you hid in your bathroom. You heard it happen. You’re gonna react to that and I’m seeing you’re reacting to that by not gettin’ the situation you’re in.”
“Okay, Boone, but Smithie is my boss. And I have to work.”
“Smithie is going to cover you.”
“Do you know how much Smithie has covered over the years?”
He didn’t, but he reckoned with Smithie’s heart, and the crap that seemed to swirl incessantly around his girls, he’d had his bookkeeper create a line item for that shit.
She continued, “I’m not one of those girls. I show up. I get on with it.”
“You don’t just get on with this,” he stated.
“Okay about that too, but maybe I’d get a say in how my life was handled. I don’t know, one word, maybe two. You think?”
Truth, it occurred to him that he should have gone to her first, and not Smithie.
Also truth, he didn’t know her well (yet), but he knew her enough to know that would have been futile because she was a woman who life slammed up against hard, but she shook it off, and moved on.
He also knew she wasn’t unaware she was this type of woman, but at this juncture, she obviously wasn’t putting it together that this was not one of those times she could simply do that.
And more, she now had people who were not only willing, but in his case wanted to look after her, including Smithie, but mostly Boone. She’d said that her damned self just that morning and made it clear it meant a lot to her. And now she’d apparently forgotten it.
Which brought him to the place where it was obvious she was pissed at him for doing nothing but looking out for her and that was in no way cool.
Which was why he returned, “There’s no reason to be pissed at me.”
“No reason…?” She shook her head in disbelief. “You went and talked to my boss who made a decision about my life and my time and my job not only without my input, but also before I even knew the fullness of what was going on.”
“Smithie’s had some experience with this, Kathryn, and he’s acting for your own good.”
“Does anyone think that maybe I know what my own good is?” she snapped, then drawled, “I mean, I don’t know, but my guess is, I’m the best judge of that.”
He was not a big fan of her tone.
“Cut the sarcasm, sweetheart,” he growled.
“Fuck that, Boone,” she bit at him. “What am I gonna do with all my free time? Cower behind my locked bathroom door and wait it out?”
“I’m gonna have you covered.”
“Actually, no, you’re not,” she retorted. “You’re relieved of duties considering you aren’t super-hot at executing them.”
Boone grew completely still.
Fucking hell.
She did not just say that.
She kept going.
“Now I need to talk to Lottie, and the girls, and freaking Smithie, so if you’ll excuse me.”
She made to move around him.
Boone stopped her by speaking, his voice vibrating again like it did earlier that day when he was talking to Cisco.
“I should have been more cautious. I shouldn’t have left you today, but I had no idea half this shit was going on,” he clipped. “So that was a low fucking blow, Ryn.”
Her eyebrows s
hot up even as her hair swayed with the violence of her head jerk.
“That wasn’t what—”
Boone interrupted her.
“And straight up, some jackholes set a monster on you, that isn’t in any way on me.”
“Of course it’s—”
“But if you think I’m fallin’ down on the job, sweetheart, I hear you. You got to trust who’s got your back. So, I’m out.”
With that, her entire body jerked.
“Boone, if you’d let me speak,” she said slowly, semi-irately, but still, there was carefulness in her words.
Too fucking late.
“Think you said enough,” he returned. “I’ll talk to Mo and the boys. You’ll be good.”
And with that, he turned, walked out of her room, down her hall, and right out her front door.
He didn’t slam it.
He didn’t even slam his car door.
He drove carefully, but not calmly, to the office.
And in the parking lot, he made his calls to make sure Ryn was covered.
After that, he went to work.
And he worked on shit that was her shit.
Even when it wasn’t.
Chapter Thirteen
Dry as a Bone
Ryn
Arundown of my last three not-so-great days:
After Boone prowled out in a snit, I walked to my living room in maybe an even bigger snit and informed the girl gang what had just gone down with Boone.
All of it.
Now, we were women hanging together.
So obviously I’d already shared what had gone down with Boone until that point (particularly the bathroom sink sex, and the profoundness of the same, a conversation that made Mo look like he wanted someone to shoot him).
But as sisters were wont to do, earlier profound lovemaking was completely forgotten and there was, as there would be, general outrage at the high-handedness of the new man in my life who, just that morning, I could not get enough of, had plans to be with him as much as possible for the whole freaking week, but who had just told me he was “out” and then walked out when I was having possibly the worst day of my entire life.
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