“Thank you.”
His golden brows lifted. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You didn’t call me a stupid bitch and tell me to go cook somebody something. So you did a lot.”
This time, his smile was just a smile, blue eyes scrunching, lines pressing deep in their corners. She’d always found something so appealing and honest about the way the wind and sun weathered bikers’ faces. Real men, unfiltered and imperfect, stunning to behold.
“Can you have something drawn up for me by lunch tomorrow?”
“Before then, I’m sure.”
“Good.” He clapped his hands together with a certain finality and stood. “I’ll see you then.”
“Candy,” she said, when he was at the door. It felt strange and thrilling to have his name in her mouth like that. An unexpected drop of sweet on her tongue. She had to swallow, as he twisted to look back at her. “Thank you, too, for letting me come. I don’t know where else I would have gone. I don’t even know where Tommy is now.”
His expression softened. “He’s safe though, yeah?”
She nodded.
“So are you. It’ll be alright.”
~*~
She worked until the numbers blurred in front of her eyes, and then she realized it was dinnertime. Just as well. The less time she had left in the day, the less time she could waste dwelling on home and things she couldn’t change. Bolstered by her talk with Candy earlier, she followed the scent of roasting meat to the common room.
Darla was just stepping out of the kitchen and intercepted her, a plate in her hands. “Ah, here, you have this one. I’ll get another for Pup.”
“Darla, really, you don’t have to, and I’d be happy to help.”
“I wouldn’t hear of it. Go eat. Good Lord, you’ve been shut up in that office all day. Did you even get lunch?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then you sure aren’t helping with dinner! Shoo.”
Plate of steaming pot roast in-hand, she went in to find a seat. The men sat in twos and threes at the tables, half-watching TV, chatting. If she was at home, she would have found one of her uncles and plunked down beside him, unselfconscious and eager for conversation. But she felt uneasy with strangers, and so sat down at the bar, alone.
But she wasn’t alone long.
One of the members whose name she couldn’t remember climbed onto the stool beside her. Turned to her, his appraisal bold – not the way Candy’s had been, not authoritative and intense, but speculative and flirtatious. Handsome in an obvious way. Dark hair, sharp hazel eyes, and a dangerous smile. Early thirties, cocksure and invincible.
She wanted to dislike him on impulse, but made a conscious effort to reserve judgement.
“Hi,” he greeted. A nice voice; one made for telephone conversations and radio stations.
“Hello.”
His grin widened. “Do you remember my name?”
She speared a hunk of potato with her fork. “Will you be flattered if I do?”
He laughed. “Maybe.”
“Sorry, I don’t.” Which was the truth, but she softened it with a grin.
He laughed again. “Fox wasn’t right about you, was he?”
“What did he say?” she asked, just as the uncle in question joined them.
“Oh, nothing.” Fox shrugged. “The usual – ‘she’s a bit of a shrew, she doesn’t like the lads.’ That sort of thing.”
She had to laugh, disbelieving. “Are you serious?”
“Only looking out for your reputation, love.” He snagged the hunk of buttered bread off her plate and devoured it in three too-big bites. “Wouldn’t want the likes of this one sniffing after you.”
“How sweet.”
“It’s Gringo, by the way,” the stranger said, grinning and glancing between them.
“That sounds like a story,” Michelle said.
“I can tell you over dinner,” he suggested.
Fox snorted rudely.
Michelle gestured to her plate with her fork.
“A drink, then,” he amended. “Some of us are heading over to the Armadillo.”
A mental image of an armadillo popped into her head: the armored, snuffling, aardvark-looking creatures she’d only ever seen online and in animal books as a child. No place named after one of those could possibly be dignified or pretentious.
“A drink,” she said, and wanted to salivate at the idea of one. In the whole mad rush to get to Tennessee and then Texas, she hadn’t had a drop of alcohol. A craving kicked hard in her stomach. “We’re sitting at a bar now, though.”
“Yeah.” He gave her another lethal grin. “But the scenery’s better there.”
She couldn’t remember the last time someone had flirted with her. It just didn’t happen at home, where everyone lived in fear of her father or was related to her. When had it been? Maybe Paul, his hand sliding up the inside of her thigh beneath one of the pub tables, whiskey breath against her neck, when no one was looking.
She missed it terribly, suddenly, feeling female. That romantic human connection; being touched, kissed, wanted. With Paul, she’d realized that she craved the physical side of their relationship. She could be worn out and sated, and all he had to do was pass a fingertip up her back and she was rolling toward him in the dark, inviting his mouth down to hers. Something had been missing with the two of them. Oh how she’d cried when he ended things, but while they were together, she’d had the sense of reaching, trying to grab hold of something that wasn’t there.
She didn’t for a second think Gringo had what she was after. But he was good-looking, and cheeky, and maybe most of all, he was interested.
A little ashamed of herself, she said, “What’s the scenery like?”
His grin widened, and she saw a flash of ruthlessness in his eyes. “Oh, you’ll love it.”
Fox’s elbow dug into her back. “You can tell him to fuck off, pet. Everyone does.”
She ignored her uncle. “Who’s going?”
“Me, and Cowboy, and maybe Pup. Fox, too, if he wants to come.”
She debated a long moment. She really had no desire to do anything with this man. But she liked the idea of comradery. Being included. Being treated like a desirable woman for a change.
So she said, “Let me get my bag.”
~*~
Candy
Candy would have paid good money to watch his sister kill her asshole ex-husband. He would have paid even more to kill Jud Riley himself, and spare Jenny the trauma of living with what she’d done.
Either way, he was glad the bastard was dead. But there was a reason he’d been left alive all this time, and that reason was his ATF agent brother, Elijah Riley. Local charges – traffic violations, drug busts, assault charges – were no great danger to a club. Individual members fucked up sometimes, and did time. Or they took a fall for their brothers and were revered for the time spent behind bars. But federal charges…that was a whole other world. Clubs all over the continent had been giving the feds the slip since the sixties. But Candy wondered if it wasn’t inevitable, eventually, that the FBI or ATF managed to make something stick.
He desperately hoped that sticking had nothing to do with his chapter, his family, and the brother of the man they’d finally killed. So he had to ditch their guns. All of them. Discreetly.
And if anyone could be described as discreet, it was the man sitting across from him, Armando Sanchez.
“It’s hot tonight,” he said, conversationally. “Do you think it will storm later?”
He wrote something on a cocktail napkin with a pen and slid it across the table to Candy. How many?
“Always a chance,” Candy said. He accepted the pen and wrote back. 25. Russian.
“You never know,” Armando agreed. The napkin again. 25K.
Candy grinned. 45.
35.
40. He underlined it three times. “I’m a business man, ‘Mando. Don’t fuck with me.”
The man sighed, shoulders slum
ping, but finally nodded. He extended a hand across the table and Candy shook it. “I’ll call you to arrange everything.”
“Good.”
Armando slid from the booth, his beer untouched.
At first, Candy had dreaded the idea of working with this particular cartel. It felt political, and he didn’t do politics as a rule. But no one else had been looking to buy twenty-five Russian AKs on short notice, and the Lean Dogs now had a working arrangement with the Chupacabras. And then Armando had shown up, and been nothing like what Candy had expected. Medium height, pleasing features, black hair shiny and neatly combed. He’d been dressed in a t-shirt, flannel, and jeans, his boots worn from regular wear. Unremarkable in all aspects, and not likely to draw attention. Candy had expected a Tommy Bahama shirt, gold chains, and bodyguards. Instead, Armando was efficient, undramatic, and composed.
Business concluded, feeling lighter in the chest, Candy leaned back in the booth and savored his Scotch, sighing deeply.
The Armadillo crawled with its usual crowd of cowboys and tipsy women with inflated hair. The sound system blared, pop-country with crap lyrics that made the under-thirty crowd scream and holler in delight as they rushed for the dance floor. There were doubtless a few life-scarred older patrons, ranged at the bar and in back booths like this one, but he couldn’t see them, and in that moment, Candy felt old and tired. Not elderly, not like Crockett, and not decrepit. But he was forty-five, and he was starting to have stiffness in his knees and wrists and elbows, from all the years spent riding. His low back throbbed, a dull, constant ache that the Scotch soothed. He had nothing in common with these people around him, these carefree, laughing, glowing young people with their whole lives ahead of them, bursting with promise, free of dark clouds.
He wished, suddenly, that his father was sitting across from him. Almost wished that when he got home, Jenny would come have a drink with him in front of the TV, and they’d talk about stupid shit like old times.
But Dad was long-dead and Jenny had a baby and a new man, now.
What did he have? Aside from the promise of forty-grand. He had his brothers, his friends.
But friendship had never filled the gaping wound his father’s death had left behind. When your best friend and brother-in-law murdered your old man…you stopped looking at friends as lifelines. They were friends. They weren’t anything more than that.
Just as he started to really crank up the mental melodrama, his waitress appeared, one hand on her hip, posture cocked and ready for action. “Where’d your friend go?”
He’d had this one before, the night Albie had called, in fact. She was tall, long-legged, big-haired and stacked. Tan, tossed, glossed, and waxed to within an inch of her life. She’d watched a lot of porn, he figured, because the moaning, squealing and exclaiming started the second he laid hands on her, and didn’t let up until she was passed out afterward. His poor dead mother would have said she didn’t have two brain cells to rub together, and she would have been right. His night with this woman had been meaningless sex with a nice visual to go along with it.
Easy cold comfort, the safest kind.
“He had to leave,” he said, sliding into his charmer routine. “Left me all alone, can you believe that?”
“Poor you.” She made a pouty face and sat down beside him in the booth. Then presented a blinding smile. “But that’s okay. That means I get you all to myself.” She twisted toward him, breasts squeezed together and threatening to spill out of her tank top, looking up at him through her false lashes.
Candy swallowed down the last of his drink and decided he needed to get laid tonight. “You still on the clock?”
“I get off in a half hour.”
“Then bring me another drink, darlin’, and I’ll follow you home.”
~*~
Michelle
The Armadillo was a delight to her. Like a fatty snack you wanted just once, then never wanted to see again. By tomorrow, she wouldn’t care if she ever graced the doors again, but for the sheer aesthetic, she was glad to be here now.
Familiar with every kind of English pub, she’d never been in a honky-tonk before. It was pale, scrubbed wood, with a wide dance floor, a massive bar, and neon everywhere. Stuffed animal heads, ropes, western saddles, bridles, and spurs took up the wall space. The music was atrocious, but the people dancing seemed to love it, beer bottles held high as they embarrassed themselves with clumsy hip-shaking.
“That’s a jackalope,” Cowboy explained as she examined the rabbit with antlers mounted beside their table. “Indigenous to Texas,” he said with a wink.
She grinned and reached for her bottle.
She had a booth with Fox, Gringo, and his best friend, Cowboy, who’d proved sweet and charming. Fox was just Fox – she’d forgotten what it was like to ride double behind him on the bike, the way he seemed to cut the turns too tight and challenge the speed limit. And beside her, Gringo kept shooting her looks and inching his thigh closer and closer to hers.
He was kind of a wanker, if she was honest.
“Is this where you all come to pick up women?” she asked, just as a waitress passed with a tray of drinks. They were all in hot pants and tank tops, flashing lots of tan skin and showy smiles.
“Sometimes.” Gringo sipped his beer, tried and failed not to check out the woman’s ass.
Michelle snorted. “Or all the time?”
He turned to look at her, eyes dancing. “Jealous.”
Okay. Definitely a wanker. “Hardly.”
“Hey, it’s okay if you are,” he said. “I get it.”
Cowboy groaned.
“Christ,” Fox said.
Michelle said, “Well, you’ve got self-esteem, I’ll give you that.” And the others burst out laughing.
~*~
Candy
He was walking for the exit, the waitress – who’d reminded him that her name was Trina – under his arm, already planning the ways he’d peel the clothes off her body, when he spotted cuts and patches. Some of his brothers, in for a drink and a look-see at the girls. Fine.
Then he saw the girl sitting beside Gringo.
Michelle.
Then he ground to a halt. And watched them.
Body language was unmistakable: Gringo, his arm flung across the back of the booth, head tipped toward whatever Michelle was saying, his grin predatory, planned to eat that girl alive. And how young she looked under the table lamp, her face unlined, her hair shining. And how vulnerable, with tired shadows beneath her eyes and a quirk of sadness at the corner of her mouth.
“Hey,” Trina said, “where are you going? I thought we were leaving.”
He was moving away from her before he registered it, and in a few long strides was at his brothers’ table. All heads turned toward him collectively. Michelle registered surprise. Gringo had that glazed, about-to-get-laid expression, and it made Candy want to punch him.
“Hey,” Cowboy greeted.
“Isn’t that the girl from last time?” Fox asked, leaning around Cowboy to get a look at Trina. “Jesus, the legs on that one.” He whistled.
Michelle, he noticed, glanced toward the waitress too, and her lips compressed in obvious distaste.
Not that he cared about that. Nope. Not at all.
“Gringo.” He was careful with his voice, keeping it calm. “What did I say before?”
“How you weren’t gonna bail me out if I got another DUI?”
“No. What did I say about keeping your hands to yourself?”
He struggled a moment, but then remembered, eyes widening. “Oh. Well…”
Candy grabbed the guy’s arm and all but dragged him out of the booth, to the sound of his friends’ laughter.
“Hey!” Gringo managed to shake him off when they were about ten feet away from the table, straightening his shirt and cut with an appalled expression. “What the hell?” When Candy started to say something, he held up a hand. “Respectfully. Respectfully what the hell?”
“I told you
to stay away from Michelle Calloway.”
“Wrong. You told me not to fuck her. You didn’t say anything about getting a beer.”
“Beer is foreplay for you,” Candy said through his teeth. “It’s going to lead to fucking. Back the hell off of her now.”
“Um…in case you haven’t noticed, she isn’t exactly some innocent little princess. I ain’t gonna have to force that girl to do anything.”
The words conjured a dozen mental images, each more startling than the last. Michelle in one compromising position after the next. And for reasons he didn’t understand, his mind rendered the kind of incredible detail that made her a warm, physical presence against his hands. He saw her sharp blues eyes gone drowsy and heavy-lidded with pleasure; the leaping pulse in her throat as her head fell back. Imagined the shape of her breasts, the tight inward flare of her waist. Imagined, also, the warm slickness between her legs.
Damn, she was pale and fragile as flower petals, ripe as a little peach and probably just as juicy. Young, and homeless, and delivered to his doorstep. Sitting in his office chair. Standing naked under the hot jets of his shower. The bathroom had smelled like her shampoo afterward.
Oh hell. Oh hell, oh hell, oh hell…
Forget Gringo. He wanted to fuck her. With the same kind of blind hunger that always had him reaching for a new waitress at closing time.
And then, to his horror, he saw that she had joined them, and was standing beside Gringo, staring up at Candy with a cool, impossible to read gaze.
“It’s very kind of you to worry,” she said, “but he isn’t bothering me. I wanted to come and have a drink.”
He tried to smile at her, and knew it turned into a sneer. “Does your dad just let you run around all over with his boys?”
A flash in her eyes; she’d taken it as an insult. “I’m an adult. He lets me come and go as I please.”
“Turn down the big bro reaction,” Gringo encouraged. “We’re just having drinks. She can make up her own mind about that kinda shit.”
Tastes Like Candy (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 2) Page 6
