“Trust me, I need some girl time. Desperately. Say ‘yes.’”
“Yes, then.”
~*~
Jenny
Jack went to sleep like his father: hard and all at once. Mouth slack, body limp, snoring in earnest. Jenny lowered him slowly into his crib, smiling.
“You little lump,” she murmured. “You’re gonna be too heavy to pick up before you’re a year old.”
Colin stepped into the bedroom and she held a finger to her lips.
He nodded, shut the door, and then whispered, “What the hell are you trying to do, woman?”
“Um, excuse you?” she whispered back, straightening away from the crib.
“We just had church, and your brother stared at the wall for a full minute. Like a damn zombie. Your ‘matchmaking’? It’s fucking with his head.”
She went to sit on the bed, frowning at him. “Do you know how much actual matchmaking I’ve done? Just the room thing,” she said when he started to answer. “That’s it. Whatever’s bothering him now, that’s his own doing.”
“Why do you even care anyway? You don’t have a romantic bone in your body.”
Mental note: Don’t have sex with Colin for two whole weeks. “You dumbass. It’s not about romance. Romance is for Hallmark and Russell Stover. My brother isn’t a kid anymore, and he’s never had a consistent woman in his life outside of Mom and me. Guess what: Mom’s dead and I’m busy, and in case no one’s bothered to notice, the stress is starting to get to him. He’s going to implode, and God help us all – God help our teeth – when that happens. I’m not trying to put rose petals and champagne in his life. I’m trying to find him someone stable to lean on, for his own mental health.”
Colin took a step back, black brows scaling his forehead. Whoa, his open palms said. Don’t bite my head off. But his mouth said, “Why Michelle? She’s young enough to be his kid.”
Oh, Colin. Stupid, stupid Colin. “Sweetie,” she said, with forced kindness, “you don’t actually think age has anything to do with intelligence or maturity, do you?”
He started to answer, recalled his own age with a little start, and said, “Well…”
She sighed, and softened. “Candy carries the whole world on his shoulders. He always has. He won’t let anyone help him; he doesn’t trust anyone, not after what Riley did to him. The club is his whole life; he’ll never let control of it slip through his fingers. He’s exhausted, and God knows he has to have indigestion all the time, worrying the way he does.
“He’s too old and too stressed to break someone in. He needs an old lady, and one who understands the club, who’ll help him and not fight him on it. I don’t want anyone trying to guilt him about his family, about what he does, about what he’s committed to. Michelle’s a club legacy. She’s young, and she’ll be sweet to him, and realistic. He’s attracted to her, you can tell. All we have to do is sit back and let nature take its course.”
“Nature?”
“When a girl is raised by the leader of an outlaw organization, do you think she’s going to want tender little civilian boys?”
With a self-deprecating smile, he said, “I dunno, isn’t that what you ended up with?”
She smiled. “No. I got myself a legacy, too.”
~*~
Candy
After church, after his brothers lifted their brows and scratched their heads in wonderment over the carefully thought-out business plans, Candy went in search of the girl who’d made them.
She was in the dorm they’d given her, curled up on the bed with her shoulders against the headboard, staring at her phone, expression raw and, for once, unguarded. Candy stood in the open door and studied her a moment: the notch between her brows, the sad downward curve of her mouth, the glassy look of tears in her eyes.
What an asshole he was. He’d grown up with a sister – a younger sister, at that. He knew it was a hard thing being a woman around this crowd. He should have been looking after Michelle as a daughter, acknowledging the fact that she’d been traumatized and then uprooted, separated from a family that meant everything to her. She was an immigrant, and beneath her cool façade, had to be frightened and grief-stricken.
And what had he done instead? Snarled at her and barely restrained the urge to hump her.
Asshole.
He rapped once on the door and she glanced up with a start. “Can I come in a sec?”
“Uh…yeah.” She scrambled upright, pulling her legs beneath her, expression locking down fast. “Okay.”
His first impulse was to sit on the bed, then thought better of it. Then thought maybe that would make him look awkward and uncertain if he sat in the chair. So bed it was. Not like they were in danger of touching, the way Michelle was trying to disappear inside herself.
It was awkward between them. He could feel it, as he clasped his hands together between his knees and looked at her. He’d thrown his attraction out there, and there was no walking it back; every meeting would be colored by his previous invitation.
“I showed the boys your work,” he said, going for officious. “They like the garage idea.”
“They do?” She perked up a little.
“It’ll take some creative financing, but we figure it’s a start.”
“I can help with that. The financing, I mean.” She lowered her knees so she sat cross-legged, interest sparking in her eyes. She hadn’t been kidding about the idle thing: she was excited by the idea of being helpful, and the genuine grin on her face made him smile.
“Yeah?”
“If you’ll have me.”
Have her. Yeah, he did want to have her. She was wearing a threadbare t-shirt and leggings, simple and ordinary, the way the cotton hugged her erotic in a subtle way. No, not erotic – just another unintentional thing that fed his fascination. Because when you really wanted someone, it had nothing to do with fancy lingerie, or trying, or sultry looks. It was just elemental, a blood-deep hunger that didn’t give a shit about whatever chick mags claimed would “drive him wild.” Desire had no rules; it wanted what it wanted…right now, damn it.
Candy knotted his fingers together and squeezed tight. “Yeah. ‘Course. Not like you’ve got anywhere else to be, huh?” he tried to joke.
Wrong thing to say. She blinked and glanced away from him. “No. Nowhere.”
Oh hell, she wasn’t going to cry, was she? He had no defense against that sort of thing.
“Ah, I didn’t mean…”
Her eyes cut over again, bright and sharp as blades. “Albie said I ought to trust you,” she said, softly. “He said you were one of the good ones.”
He was surprised. “Do you believe that?”
Her gaze flicked down the length of him, then back up, cautious. “I don’t know.”
This had to stop. There was a pressure building in his head, one that continued to intensify each time he was around her. It couldn’t be allowed to grow; time to fix this now.
“Stay here,” he said, like she would possibly go anywhere. Stood, left the dorm. He fetched a fresh bottle of Macallan and two glasses from the bar, and returned, heeling the door shut behind him. “We need to have a conversation,” he said, resuming his seat on the bed. “You drink Scotch?”
“I drink everything.” She sat up and reached for the glass he handed her.
“Excellent.”
Eight
Michelle
She buried her nose in the full glass of Macallan Candy handed her. There was no mincing of fingers – singles, or doubles, or any of that rubbish. A whole tumbler full of good Scotch. She sniffed appreciatively as Candy moved to sit beside her, leaning back against the headboard, long legs stretched out down the length of the bed.
“When I was little,” she said on impulse, “and I was in Dad’s office with him, he’d pass me his glass and have me take a sip. Tell him what I thought.”
Candy’s brows shot up. “Really?”
“Really. I made all sorts of faces.” She smiled, remembering. �
�But by now I’ve got a taste for whiskey.”
The look he turned on her was affectionate, and kind. “You’re a weird kid,” he said, in a way she took for a compliment.
“I’m a biker kid.”
“Ah. Same difference.”
“Yeah.”
They each took healthy swallows of their drinks.
“You said ‘conversation,’” Michelle said, after, and was grateful for the Scotch, because her stomach fluttered. Not an unpleasant sensation, but one that required fortification.
“Hmm,” he said into his glass, and swallowed. “Yeah.” But that was all he said.
After a pause, she said, “It’s going brilliantly.”
He chuckled. “I have lots of conversations, but not like this. Gimme a sec.”
“Okay.”
The air between them was charged, but not with the fractious, angry electricity of before. A low level hum; an awareness of one another. Newness, still? she wondered. Or something that would endure?
“You’re right,” he finally said, “about me being a ‘brute.’ I have been. But damn if I understand it.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
He sent her a sideways glance. “You have a theory?”
“Part of one.” She shrugged. “Nothing mysterious to it, really. We’re attracted to one another.” She fired back a look of her own, the fluttering in her stomach worse as she made her admission. “I’m sure it’s not the first time a poor unsuspecting woman found herself vulnerable around you.”
“I don’t think you’re poor and unsuspecting, though.”
“Thank God.”
He grinned. “You know, normally, I just buy a girl a drink.”
Michelle rapped her nails against her tumbler.
His smile turned wry. “Buy her a drink, drag her back to a dorm, and try very hard not to remember her name when we’re…”
“Fucking?” she supplied.
She thought he would spit Scotch.
“There’s no sense making it sound pretty, is there? I hardly think you’re romancing them.”
“I’m not.” He made a face.
“That woman back at the Armadillo last night.” She hadn’t intended to use such inflection, to sound, well, jealous. That’s what she sounded, even if she didn’t feel it.
“A little hostile about it, huh?” His voice was teasing.
“No.” She smoothed a hand back through her hair, self-conscious now, rattled. She fought for calm. “I’m just being realistic.”
“Mature.”
“The point I’m getting at,” she said with a warning glance, “is that you didn’t look so angry with–”
“You called her Truckstop Barbie,” he put in, helpfully.
“–so why so angry with me?” The alcohol was bracing her. Even as her tight control seemed to slip, she felt braver. “If it’s all just about sex, why would you be upset?”
He slugged down the rest of his drink and made an expansive gesture, grasping. “I dunno. Maybe because it’s not just about sex with you.”
Her heart bumped hard.
“It’s also about what your dad and uncles would think if they found out about the sex.”
The quick surge of giddiness faded. Of course; it was about angering her family, and nothing else.
“It’s wrong,” he said, logically, refilling his glass. He offered the bottle to her and she topped hers off, handed the bottle back. “Me messing around with Phillip Calloway’s kid? That’s wrong on every level, according to everyone. So then, well, yeah, that brings the whole forbidden fruit thing into play. I never was real good at backing off from a challenge.”
“You see me as a challenge?” she asked, fearing it was true, afraid her emotions would get the best of her.
“No, that’s not what I meant. I…ah, shit. This is stupid.” His expression darkened, and he threw down his drink in one long swallow.
What an absurd conversation this was turning out to be. How unsexy and strange to sit and talk to him of their mutual desire. It was a moment that should have been fraught with heat and suggestion, sitting on her bed like this, thinking about their bodies and what they wanted to do with them…do to each other. But instead, they talked openly, and it felt childish.
An idea dawned, more painful than expected.
“You’re not going to let me stay, are you? That’s what you wanted to talk about, isn’t it?”
“Do you hear me saying that?”
“You don’t have to. But I can see no other solution to your dilemma.” She was angry, she realized. “If you can’t shag your challenge out of some sort of honor,” she said, mockingly, “then there’s nothing to do but get rid of me.” Another deep swallow of Macallan. “Dilemma. No. You know what? It’s not a dilemma. This” – she gestured between them – “isn’t a dilemma. It’s a little sexual tension, and not very inspiring tension at that.”
He might have looked offended; she couldn’t be sure. “But it’s there.”
“Like you said: It’s stupid.”
“I didn’t say the tension was stupid.”
An impasse.
They stared at one another. Michelle noted the shadows in his face, the lines deepened by stress. This conversation was in fact stressing him. He was the vice president – might as well have been the president, for all the help the old man was – and he wasn’t some carefree young member with nothing to worry about but a paycheck and a Friday night good time. He was being honest with her, and by doing so, showing her respect. He wanted her. He wanted to peel off her clothes, settle between her legs, and fuck her – the idea sent hot chills racing down her skin. Lord, but he would be magnificent, wouldn’t he? But he was denying that impulse out of respect for her father. For her family. For what she meant to members of this club.
Damn.
She felt a swell of sympathy for him. She understood his burdens – they were her father’s burdens. Burdens she’d helped to shoulder throughout her young life.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what?”
“Making things harder for you.”
He stared at her a moment, eyes soft, accepting her words, she knew. Then he grinned, waggled his brows, and gestured eloquently to his lap. “I don’t think you’re that sorry.”
She laughed.
He refilled their glasses.
~*~
“How did you get involved in all this shit?”
Michelle sipped her drink. “I never wasn’t involved, really. Mum died when I was five.”
“Jesus.”
She pressed on, not able to deal with her mother right now. Mum was a special sequence of faded photos, to be taken out and leafed through when she was properly armored against the heartache. “And Dad had Tommy and me, and the club. He didn’t ever try to coddle us, keep the truth from us.”
She smiled, remembering. “When I was seven, he came home one night covered in blood. He told me how to patch him up. Told me to burn his clothes in the fireplace. It started there, I guess.”
“That’s scary shit for a little girl.”
She nodded. “It was. I cried…” She shook her head. “But that was just life. I didn’t know anything different.”
“What else?” he asked. His blue eyes were warm, denim-colored, encouraging.
Michelle sipped more Scotch, and slowly, as she tunneled back through the years, her tongue loosened, and the words flowed.
She told him about the flat where she grew up, the second bedroom she and Tommy shared until both of them slammed head-first into puberty and bunk beds went from charming to awkward. Tommy was given the foldaway in the lounge. She got a single bed and the better of the two dressing tables.
She went back there: the telly chattering, shifting of ice cubes in Phillip’s glass, smell of warming boots by the grate, toast in the kitchen, damp behind the walls. She didn’t want to give it all to Candyman – the scorched suppers and forehead kisses. But she sketched him a picture. And she
told him about her role within the club.
She had started as a sort of personal assistant, in her mother’s absence, taking care of her grief-stricken father as if she was the parent and he the child. She mended his clothes, cooked his breakfast, brought him coffee without being asked. When he went away on runs, which was the worst, she was left in the care of another member’s wife, Sue Graves, who fussed over her and offered to paint her nails and treated her like a silly little girl who wanted to play tea party. Tommy was sent to play with Sue’s sons, a rowdy, pug-nosed pack of boys with dumb mean eyes and perpetually damp mouths. She knew this because one of the monsters had tried to kiss her once. Tommy had busted his puggy nose and that was the last trip to the Graves.
She had a head for numbers and nimble fingers on the keyboard, so as she grew older, Phillip used her as a proofreader, and typist. She started keeping their personal family checkbook.
“My father isn’t the most trusting soul,” she said. “He’s not very good at delegating, and he carries the weight of the club always, fretting about small things. I was his family and he trusted me, and he had no old lady to lean on. It makes sense, if you look at it,” she said with a shrug. “I became his agent.”
She sighed. “But I probably shouldn’t be telling you any of this. You’ll think poorly of him now.”
He snorted. “It sounds real familiar, actually.”
He was talking about himself, she knew, and that similarity between the man beside her and the man who’d raised her made Candyman much more endearing. Big, and blonde, and pretty, yes, but a leader. That was something she could understand. How peaceful, suddenly, to have that settled in her mind.
“I’ll tell you the same thing I tell Dad,” she said, smiling at him.
He smiled back, the brightness in his eyes exciting her stomach butterflies again. “What’s that?”
“You’re mocking me.”
“A little mocking’s healthy. What do you tell him?”
Tastes Like Candy (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 2) Page 9
