by A. J. Downey
If I needed it, I would go to Caleb, and Caleb would then call Philip. Philip, who wanted to see this farm fail, would tell Caleb, ‘Nah, she doesn’t need it,’ and Caleb would tell me no… So I either had to come up with it out of my own pocket or not at all.
It was tougher than I’d like to admit. Mostly because even though I owned two-thirds of the farm, Caleb declared that my salary earned from it remained the same and that what would have been mom’s portion of it go into trust for the farm. I couldn’t even be sure the money wasn’t going into Caleb or even Philip’s pocket because every time I asked to see the financials Caleb told me I didn’t need to worry my pretty little head over these things.
I dropped into an empty seat at the four person table and sighed looking from one face to another, and another, until I finally settled on my mother’s.
“So what is this?” I asked.
“I have hired this young man to help you around here,” she said and I choked on the sip of sweet tea I’d started to take.
“Mom! You sold your portion of this place to me, you don’t get to make that kind of decision!”
“I know, you do… but Bailey I implore you to please think about this. He has experience.”
I looked over my anonymous barroom hook up, eyes drifting to the nametag thing on his vest which read ‘Rush’ and tried not to think about how I’d read that faded patch over and over as he’d fucked me against that wall. I pressed my thighs a little tighter together under the table and continued to pretend I didn’t know him from Adam.
“What’s your name?” I asked him and his eyebrows shot up.
“Rush, what’s yours?” he asked and I knew he just wanted to hear me say it because I wouldn’t tell him before.
I smiled and it wasn’t terribly friendly, “I’m sure you’re used to hearing this from the cops but I’m the one asking the questions here.”
“Bailey Lynn Berling!” my mother cried and I looked in her direction. The scowl she gave me was top notch and I just knew I was going to hear all about it from her later. My mother didn’t allow me to be raised with a single rude bone in my body but here I was, killin’ it just the same. Still, so confused! My mother swore she would never talk to José, ever again. Had cut him out of our lives completely and Dray right along with him, when Aunt Tillie had died; so this was pretty much mind blowing.
I turned my attention to my biggest mistake in recent history and he grinned at me. It was adorable, too. I kind of hated how hot he was while he nodded and said, “Okay, fair enough…” before he rattled off a rather impressive resume of things he had done at a couple of dude ranches in Arizona. Horse world was a small world and I’d heard of them in passing, however when it came to thoroughbreds and the kinds of horses they dealt with, it was worlds apart… still, a horse is a horse, is a horse.
“Mm-hm,” I said and leaned back in my seat, “and why did you leave?”
“Felony conviction, owners were pretty hardcore Christians and didn’t take kindly to one of their hands picking up an assault charge. They pretty much made it so I would never find work in the area again.”
“I see, and what happened there, with the assault charge?”
“I’d rather leave it in my past if that’s okay with you. It was a long time ago.”
“More than ten years?”
“Yes.”
“How much time did you serve?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“You want the job, or not?”
He looked out across the driveway to the main barn where Renaldo was leading Starry Eyed Dreamer back into the barn. She was one of the fastest mares and had been, unfortunately, injured into retirement. Her next career was just beginning here though, as a broodmare. We were lucky to have her, and had managed to breed her successfully with Three Legged Singin’ Night Train around ten months ago and she had around a month or so to go before she dropped her foal.
“I served a little over three years, was supposed to be eight, got out with time off for good behavior.”
“How long ago was that?”
“You already asked me that boss lady.”
“You don’t have the job, yet.”
“Bailey…” my gaze flicked to my mother who gave me a withering look to go along with the warning tone in her voice. I ignored it for now, angry at the ambush, and that she would just make decisions after I’d bought her out of her share. I was trying to prove something here. That I could do this, that I could do anything and everything she and daddy said I never could, but it was going to be kind of hard to pull that off if she was going to meddle like this. Adding to my aggravation was him… Why, out of all of the people in the damnable motorcycle club my mother proclaimed was so rotten to the core, did it have to be him that had the required experience?
“Why should I hire you?” I asked bluntly, having a hard time reigning in my anger. I had a hard time with a lot of the things going on and the feelings that came with them. Maybe you’re just tired of being the perfect angel when no one notices or cares. I thought to myself, which is pretty much what had led me to letting biker boy over here bang me in the back of that shithole bar in the first place.
“Because, the way I hear it, you ain’t got any other options. That, and I could probably do the work of three of your last hands.”
“Right, I can let you know by tomorrow,” I said, fully intending to fight this one out with my mother but knowing I was likely going to lose. I really did need the help around here, and my mother never did anything without a reason. She probably had a fully stacked deck of cards to play against me. She could be as manipulative as they came.
“Why not now?” he asked.
“She has to get it approved, don’t you, Bales?” Dray said, and it was my turn to give him a withering look. Not that it was his fault that apparently my mother had gotten awfully chatty about my business.
“Caleb will approve this,” my mother said and I looked her direction.
“He owe you some kind of favor or something?” I blurted, and it was the closest I’d ever come to really lashing out at either one of my parents. Well if it worked for Philip… the bitter thought came unbidden.
“Yes.”
I knew that tone of voice… that was the tone of voice that said you didn’t ask any more questions, you just did what you were told, or else. I looked across the table at Dray who was grinning at me and I frowned. I didn’t much appreciate being told what to do as a grown adult. Not by the good ‘ol boys club, not by my mother, and certainly not by some outlaw motorcycle club.
I didn’t want this guy working here, not after having fucked him. That was just asking for a disaster of epic proportions. I would have called him the next day and said no dice, but I could tell; it looked like my mother was going to be adamant. Damnit. I did need experienced help around here, and he had experience… plus he was definitely not hard to look at.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I told him after a tense silence and he gave a nod. I really needed to think about this, clearly, without his darkly smiling eyes looking at me, without my cousin’s gaze burning a hole through me and definitely after I’d had a chance to find out just what my mother was thinking.
“I do believe we’ve been dismissed, VP,” Rush said and Dray gave a nasty smile. I sighed and tried not to let it show that this was so not how I imagined seeing my cousin for the first time since his mother’s funeral was going to go.
“I believe you’re right, Rush.” Dray’s expression softened marginally as he looked over my face. I’d never been good at controlling my expression… my mouth, yes, but my face had always been in need of deliverance. I guess that hadn’t changed. I was still working on the mouth part, and from the expression on my mother’s face, I’d done a bang up job just now. I was just so epically sick of being controlled and handled… Leave it to me to wait until the latter half of my twenties to rebel.
The two bikers exchanged a look and got up, going for their bikes. My mother and I
watched them gear up and go in tense silence, but anything we needed to say could wait until they were gone. It wasn’t polite to throw down with your family in front of company of any sort and I was, at least, willing to keep from being anymore uncivil than I’d been.
I shook my head as their contrails of driveway dust settled back to the ground in their wake and turned on my mother.
“Just what the hell was that?” I demanded.
“That was a mother’s worry, Bailey.”
I blinked. My mom had never been terribly maternal, we’d pretty much had a nanny for that. I felt my brow crush down in a frown.
“Why the sudden interest?” I demanded bitterly.
I’d never seen the look that crossed my mother’s face just then. It immediately made me feel awful, and I would pretty much agree to just about anything to make it go away. She reached a hand across the table and I took it.
“There is a lot I protected my children from. Things you don’t know about your father, and for that I am grateful. Still, there are things I apparently couldn’t protect you from… Philip especially. I loved your father, flaws and all, but some of his worst traits have manifested in your brother and I fear for you. Bailey… I see things here that you can’t. Just let Dray’s friend work here… please?”
I felt my own eyes tear up, like every rich family ours held more than a couple of skeletons in its closet. Maybe my mom had paid attention more than I realized. Philip had always been a shit to me growing up, but then he’d gotten into it deep enough with a girl at his school that father had had to step in. I was sent to boarding school shortly after – an all-girls boarding school.
Yeah, I know, crazy right? My brother gets in trouble and I’m the one that goes to boarding school, but that was my dad’s logic for you. Didn’t I say, good ol’ boys club? I’m pretty sure I did.
It was probably one of the best things to have ever happened to me while at the same time, the worst. The best because the school really was fantastic, the worst because I finally felt cast aside for good in favor of an older brother who was just plain awfully behaved.
I slammed the door on painful past truths and looked critically at the present ones. I really didn’t want this Rush guy around, I was pretty sure he knew that I knew exactly who he was and that was just a headache I didn’t need. One I especially didn’t need on top of the daily headache that was preserving my father’s legacy, and to some extent, my dream of finally proving myself worthier than the make heir apparent, when it came to Blue Hills.
Still, looking at my mother’s face, the worry, and the deep knowledge that things were only going to get worse the more I dug my heels… I ended up nodding reluctantly. It didn’t feel good. I’d already used him once and that hadn’t felt good either. Okay, well, it’d felt amazing; like really amazing, but it couldn’t happen again. It never should have happened in the first place.
“Fine,” I said, “I’ll hire him on a trial basis. Happy?”
“Relieved, my darling girl. I’m relieved.” She sat back in her chair and I picked up my glass, drinking more because I had absolutely no idea what else to talk about now.
Chapter 3
Rush
I didn’t expect her to call the next day. I was pretty much balls deep in putting a new cat on an old Pontiac 6000 when Dray ducked back out of the office and held out the phone yelling, “Hey, Rush! It’s for you, man.”
I looked down from the undercarriage of the car above me and set my socket wrench aside from where I was putting the heat shield back up over the exhaust. I walked over and took the phone from him and turned my back on my older brother Archer’s curious stare.
“This is Rush,” I said into the receiver.
“You’re hired, you can start tomorrow,” a hard female voice that could only be Ms. Bailey Lynn Berling said through the shop’s old land line. I gripped the grease stained beige receiver a little tighter and thought to myself how I’d like to do bad things to her, bad things she begged me to do more of.
“What time?” I asked.
“I thought you’d been in this line of work before,” she said and I wanted to lay a hand on that ass. Pink it right up and knock the condescension right out of her.
“I have,” I said.
“Then don’t be late,” she said tartly and whatever phone she was on clattered and the call ended. She hadn’t answered the question, but she had at the same time.
I swore softly and Dray asked from behind me, “Problem?”
“Nah, I just gotta adjust my schedule… I have to be there early to start work.”
“How early?”
“Stupid early.” My VP raised an eyebrow and I sighed, “There’s the ass crack of dawn early, but this is earlier than that,” I said.
“Go back to the club then, rack out. I can finish up.”
“Naw, I just have to finish bolting on the heatshield and it’ll be good to go. You can call the customer if you want.”
“Right.”
He ducked back into the office and I finished the last few bolts needed to complete the job and brought the car down off the lift. I didn’t hear Archer come up behind me over the hiss of the hydraulics letting the car down and it startled the fuck out of me when he clapped me on the back of my coveralls.
I jumped and cussed him out while he laughed until tears collected at the corners of his eyes.
“What the fuck you want, man?”
“It’s a good thing you’re doin’ for Dragon and Dray’s family,” he said. “Still, I wouldn’t be any kind of brother if I didn’t tell you to be careful,” we said those two particular words in unison and he knocked his fist playfully into my chin as we said the rest in unison too; “and call me if you need a hand.”
“You miserable prick,” he added.
“Not my first rodeo,” I grunted and went around to the driver’s side of the POS I was working on.
“Maybe not, but it is your first horse race, and you know how these rich bastards can get crazy when it comes to money. They ain’t got a lick of sense with it.”
“Yeah, no shit. Should be mandatory each rich fucker comes up like they got nothing so they have some fuckin’ sense when they get it.”
Archer shook his head, “Wouldn’t make a difference, going that road just breeds a whole different set of troubles.”
I frowned and nodded, “Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth?”
“See you around little brother,” he said as I ducked into the crappy cage and pulled it out of my bay. I parked it, left it, and went for the degreaser for my hands. Clean up was a snap once I got my hands clean, just schuck the coveralls and switch out my boots from work to motorcycle and I was good to go. I pulled my cut down off its peg and shrugged into it as I crossed out from under the shaded bay into the full sunlight.
I took a deep breath, and the air outside the shop seemed cleaner and lighter than it had a moment ago, despite the fact that it hadn’t really changed. It was the same old mix of metal, grease, and gasoline that was pretty much a part of any automotive place you went. No, the shop hadn’t changed, I think I had. It felt like I’d just had one of those phone calls that changed my life.
I was always cut out for working with my hands, I just wasn’t cut out for working on cars. I belonged in a natural setting, with wood and growing things. Working with horses was something I’d taken to like a fish to water, and losing that had hurt. It was a stupid ass decision, losing my shit on that asshole, but he’d fuckin’ hit me first and had disrespected me something fierce before it’d even come to blows. He’d started shit, then hadn’t been able to handle it when I’d fuckin’ finished it, but still, it’d been my life that’d ended up in the shitter as a result.
Not that that was anything unusual to any of my brothers. That’s why this lifestyle fit us the best. I swung a leg over my bike and dropped onto the seat, digging through my keys absently before I found the one to start it. I half-assed put my bandana on my head without tying it off and fired he
r up. I finished tying off the red bandana behind my head, pinning down the errant corner and crammed my helmet on over it, doing up the chinstrap while I listened to my baby chug reassuringly beneath me.
She could be a cranky bitch when she was cold, but she always fired true. I could probably stand to give her a tune up in the next few weeks, but I don’t know, sometimes that wasn’t so much a necessity as much as it was I liked working on her.
I patted the glossy black skin, veined with blue lightning on her tank and didn’t care what anyone thought about me treating my iron horse like she was a real one. She’d gotten me through more than one high speed chase and had never left me on the side of the road, always giving me ample warning that something was going and needed attention. She was a special kind of ride, and even though she was getting way up there in miles, I wasn’t even close to ready to trade her in.
I rode back to the club and ran into my twin comin’ out the front door, headed for his cage. No Maren in sight, which probably meant she was at Soul Fuel learning her new trade. I still worried about my twin brother. I’d been there, with women lookin’ at me for financial stability, but fuck if they weren’t in it for an actual relationship. No, they’d been getting their dick of choice on the side the fuckin’ ticks. I didn’t want Nox to go through the same kind of hurt that I had on that front. He was better than me, and deserved far better than that as a result.
I got off my bike and wandered in my brother’s direction, the sudden quiet from the cease of my baby’s engine filled only by the ticking of her cooling engine and the rustle of the leaves in the slight breeze. I loved those sounds, meant I hadn’t gone deaf.
Nox stopped and waited for me to come up to him, his scowl tellin’ me plainly he knew I had somethin’ on my mind. I did, too, and I needed to get it off my chest. I didn’t trust anyone else to spill my guts to than my biological brother, even if all we shared was the same mother and the same womb. We were a scientific anomaly to the nth degree that way. Something like a one in a billion chance. We’d faced every odd since the same way; together.
