by Zoey Parker
“Fuck.” Cutter ran down the steps of the clubhouse and met Lucas, seeing the taillights just before she disappeared around a corner.
“What the hell happened?” Lucas asked.
“That girl has more crazy ideas than I can handle sometimes.” Cutter pointed to the gates that were closing, keeping unwanted traffic out of the lot. “I was talking with Joanie in the back room, and Cherry walks in. She starts accusing me of all sorts of shit.”
“Was Joanie dressed and standing upright at the time?” Lucas didn’t even hide the accusation. It wasn’t uncommon to have an old lady and still get action on the side. Girls like Cherry knew that, but not all of them accepted it.
“Yeah. She was.” Cutter answered with a hard tone. “She was asking me about Cherry. I guess Cherry had gone to her a month or so ago about working in the house, but since she heard about my claiming her, she wanted my okay before she approached her. I was telling her fuck no, but Cherry didn’t stick around to hear me. She didn’t fucking let me say a goddamn word. Joanie hightailed it out of the room, and I was about to take Cherry in hand when she bolted. Told me to fuck off and ran.”
Lucas shook his head. “I think I remember why we decided not to take any girl as an old lady or otherwise.” His own woman was back home, probably pouting when she woke up to see him gone and her stuck at home.
“No way was I letting her work the house, and I wasn’t doing anything with Joanie in that room. She just went all crazy on me.” Cutter looked back at the locked gates.
“You could just forget about her.” Lucas tested the waters. Cutter had only just claimed Cherry, and he could cut her loose. No one would give a shit. Lucas thought about how easy it would be to tell Josephine she was on her own after her little fits or her, more than vocal, doubts about them, but no way could he. He’d told her he loved her, and those weren’t just words to him. For the first time ever, he knew what love felt like, and he had it with Josephine. Did Cutter feel the same about Cherry?
“No way.”
The deep conviction in Cutter’s tone told Lucas everything he needed to know. Cutter said he wasn’t just fucking around with Cherry, but the look his eyes at that moment told Lucas he was in deeper than that. He fucking loved her, too. Cutter pulled out his phone and tapped hard on the screen.
“Cherry. You better be getting your ass home right away. I’m headed there now. It’s not what you think, not by a fucking long shot. I want you home when I get there.” The last sentence dropped off in volume, more worry than order.
“Go. I was just coming to talk to Joe. It’s fine.” Lucas waved him off. “When you find her, maybe take it easy. She’s new to this whole thing, too, you know.”
“Whatever, her ass is mine.” Cutter shoved his phone into his back pocket and stalked to his bike.
Wanting to get back home to his own bundle of trouble, Lucas pushed through the front doors of the clubhouse and headed straight for Joe’s office.
“Hey!” Joe waved him in from his desk. “Shut that door.” Lucas noticed how red Joe’s eyes were, not puffy like he’d been crying but red like he’d been digging into some of the supplies out at the warehouses.
“You okay?” Lucas shut the door and took the seat across the desk from Joe. He’d known Joe since he was too young to ride a bike. He’d been friends with his father, and he’d never once seen him high—drunk, sure, but never high.
“Yeah. It’s this COPD shit. Doc actually suggested I toke up, and who am I to argue?”
Lucas laughed. “I guess not.” He looked around the office. “Have you talked with Clay?”
“Yeah. About an hour ago. Man’s pissed as hell.”
“I bet.” Lucas nodded. “What’s the next step?”
“Next step, we wait. He could man up and get over it, or he could blow his shit.”
“I think he’s going to blow his top, and he’s going to come after us.” Lucas scratched behind his ear. “That asshole talked to Josephine. He actually went up to her and talked to her, and worse yet, he fucking put his hands on her.” As hard as Lucas tried, he couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice. “He grabbed her arm and took her to the car, saying shit about our decisions. That we better make the right call at the vote.”
“What?” Joe’s eyes narrowed. Getting the women involved was bullshit, especially before shit even went down with the vote. You don’t talk to the women to get messages to the men. It just wasn’t done. “She okay?”
“Yeah, she’s shaken up and scared now that I’m too dangerous for the kid and her, but she’s fine. I have her at the house. Croc and Zack are there watching the house. I want him, Joe. I want that fucker all to myself.”
“I get it.” Joe nodded and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his stomach, which was growing at a rapid speed thanks to his inability to move around much anymore. “We continue on as usual. Business is getting better with the expansion of services. The medical docs are happy with the shipments coming in, and Clay doesn’t know who our growers and buyers are at the moment. For now, we just keep on as we have been but with wide eyes and open ears. We hear so much as one fucking peep that those Iron Rebels fuckers are in our area, and we’ll go after them.”
“We need more than that, Joe. We need to send those fuckers a message that they aren’t coming into our town. Let them run their shit around us, outside of this place. They don’t need this small a town for their products.”
“What do you think we should do? Have a sit down with them?”
“Why not? Let them know they can’t touch this town—next door, who cares, but not here. What’s this place have that they want so much anyway? They can peddle their shit anywhere else.”
“They want the medical line; they want that revenue stream. You’ve seen how well we do with it. They want a taste. You think we should partner with them?” Nothing about the way Joe was looking at him suggested he liked that idea.
“Fuck no. We don’t partner with them for anything. The medial line stays ours. It’s the only hand we have out there in that shit. They can have everything else. Now that the garage is picking up and the house out back is starting to bring in more cash, we don’t need to reach any further than that medical shit.”
“I agree with you, but it’s those assholes that don’t see it that way. They want what we have.”
“No shit.” Lucas rubbed the back of his neck. “This has to get settled. I’ll reach out to Clay, get a sit down. Maybe we can try the civilized way, not that those fuckers are civilized in the least.
“Fine. Set it up for tonight. Let Cutter know, and I’ll get Forrest on board. Maybe we can roll his ass out of his house for once.” Joe laughed but quickly started coughing.
“Yeah, about that. Some of the guys are starting to call for him to step down, get someone in that chair that will actually be in that chair.”
Joe caught his breath and nodded. “I know it. And right after him, it’ll be me they want stepping down.” He’d been president since Lucas joined up as a prospect. Having Joe step down would start an entire new generation of board members. “You wanting my seat?” Joe asked with a wry smile.
“Fuck no.” Lucas stood from his chair. “The view from my chair is just fucking fine.” And he meant it, too. Josephine already had trouble with the club. If he took on the responsibility of the whole fucking thing, she’d really have an issue. And he couldn’t blame her. He’d be busier with club business than he would be with her and the baby, and that’s not where his needs were anymore. Settling down, being a husband and a father, now that started to sound fucking appealing. He was finally starting to understand what his father was talking about when Lucas joined the club.
His father always told him to get his priorities in order, make sure he never let the club become more important than his family. His dad never took a board seat because his priorities were at home, and Lucas never thought he’d make the same call. Fucking and riding, those were his priorities when he signed up.
; Now he had a pregnant girl at home waiting for him, and he couldn’t wait to get back to her.
Lucas left the clubhouse with every intention of going straight home, waking up his girl, and sinking his cock straight into her. He hadn’t touched her in too long, and he needed her, needed that connection and that reclaiming of her body.
Just as he swung his leg over his bike, his cell rang.
“What?” Lucas answered it.
“Man, your old lady just took off.” Croc yelled into the phone. The roar of his bike was in the background. “Zack tried to stop her, but she gave him the finger and got in the truck. She took off.”
“Where are you?”
“We followed her. We’re outside some house on the other side of town. There’s a medical truck here.”
“Her mom.” Lucas sighed. He was still pissed but relieved that she didn’t hightail it back to her own house. “She’s at her mom’s. Stay there until I get there. Don’t let her leave. If she tries, take out the tires.”
“Cut the tires?”
“If she tries to leave, yeah.”
“Whatever you say, man.”
Chapter 15
Josephine walked up the steps to her mother’s house, making sure to give one last glare at the two young assholes Lucas left at the house. It wasn’t enough that she didn’t have her own car and had to drive the big ass truck of his instead or she didn’t have most of her things with her at his house because he’d made her pack so fast, but now she had babysitters that were at least five years younger than her.
Putting them out of her mind, she entered her mother’s house, immediately taking in the smell of baking cookies.
“Mom?” She dropped her purse on the entry table and went to the kitchen.
A middle-aged woman stood over the stove, transferring cookies from a baking sheet to a cooling rack.
“Oh!” The woman jumped a bit and clutched her chest. “I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t hear you.” She put the spatula down and turned to her, wiping her hands on the apron she wore over her nurse’s uniform.
“You’re the nurse?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, you must be Josephine. Your mother mentioned you might stop by today.” She untied the apron as she spoke and draped it over the kitchen chair. “She’s napping right now, but she had quite the appetite this morning. Said she wanted a chocolate chip cookie, so while she slept, I thought I’d throw a batch together.”
“Mom was hungry?” Josephine smiled. She couldn’t help herself. Her mom had lost so much weight over the past months, she worried the weight loss would be more harmful to her than the cancer she was fighting.
“Yes.” The nurse nodded and pointed to her mother’s closed bedroom door. “She should be getting up soon if you want to sit with her.”
“I think I will.” Josephine nodded. “The hospital called me this morning. They are all set for the procedure. They’re going to have a medical van come the morning of to take her to the hospital.”
“That will be easier for her, then. While you sit with her, I’m going to do some of the laundry. The night nurse had to change the sheets a few times, so I’ll get those going.”
“Mom had a bad night?”
“No worse than usual.” The nurse patted Josephine’s arm. “Don’t worry too much. It’s part of the medicine. She’s a strong woman.”
“Yeah. She is.” Josephine agreed. Her mom hadn’t had a choice in the matter. Being a single mom didn’t exactly give her a lot of free time to sloth around. She didn’t have many friends, and she worked harder than she should have, all so Josephine wouldn’t feel the effects of not having a father in the house.
Josephine sat beside her sleeping mother and placed a hand on her growing belly. The baby was starting to show a little bit, and she was beginning to feel little kicks or movements now and then. The worry over Lucas being too dangerous hadn’t gone away just because he put his foot down and took control of the situation. As much as her mom tried, Josephine still felt the longing for her father. She wanted him to be there like so many of her friends’ fathers were. Did she want that for her own child?
Lucas told her he loved her, and she knew him well enough to know the man didn’t say things he didn’t mean. And she could tell by the surprise in his own features when he made the proclamation that he’d never said those words before, either. Hell, he was probably as surprised by the feeling as he was by expressing it out loud.
She hadn’t returned the sentiment, at least not verbally. Waking up beside him, sleeping in his arms, having him sit across from her at the dinner table—all these things felt right, like he’d always been there. But he hadn’t been, and if whatever this deal he was working on with Clay got violent, he might not be in the future.
The same excuses played through her mind, all things to consider before getting involved with him, but they were already involved, and so was her heart. She did love him, otherwise she wouldn’t be so afraid for him. He was arrogant and bossy, but he held her when she was moody. His touch alone could soothe almost all her worries.
“Josephine?” Her mother’s soft voice filled the room. Josephine sat up straighter in her chair, leaning over to take her mom’s hand, so frail and chilled. “I thought you’d be at work.”
“I wasn’t feeling great, so I took the day off.” Rather, Lucas decided she needed to rest and had called her boss, an act she still wasn’t sure she liked or not. “How are you feeling?”
“Oh, you know.” A slight squeeze of her hand let her know her mom was still fighting. The tiny smile she gave Josephine reminded her of how much her mother used to laugh. Even after her father walked out, after the bills became too much to pay on just her salary, even after they’d almost lost the house, her mother smiled and laughed, never giving into the pile of crap being dished out to them.
“There’s cookies. The nurse said you wanted cookies?”
“Oh, yeah. I did have a taste for chocolate chip. One of these medicines keeps giving me a sweet tooth. But if I eat it, I’ll probably toss it up. You take them home with you, to that big guy of yours. He looks like he could eat a dozen or two.”
“Lucas. Yeah, he probably could.” Josephine laughed and tucked Mom’s her hair back behind her ears.
“I know you’re worried, but I’m not sure about what—me or him or you?” Her mom struggled to sit up, and Josephine was quick to move the pillows and push the button on the hospital bed they’d rented to help her.
“We haven’t exactly had the best luck with men, you know.” Josephine tried to joke. After her dad bailed, she didn’t remember her mom dating anyone else.
“Better to have loved and lost,” her mom whispered with a whimsical look in her eyes.
“Really? Even Dad?” They didn’t talk much about her father. Josephine didn’t need to know much about him to know he was a deadbeat. He walked out, never looking back and leaving them dangling in the wind. He never even bothered to divorce her mother; he just left.
“Your father was decent enough before he changed. He took good care of me and you.” A frail finger pointed at Josephine.
“Yeah, by deserting us.” Josephine started straightening the sheets and blankets.
“Listen, Josephine, I didn’t tell you everything about your father. I didn’t want—” Her voice broke off, and Josephine looked over at her. A tear ran down her cheek.
“Mom, I’m sorry. Don’t. It’s okay. We don’t need to talk about him.”
“No, you need to know.” She grabbed Josephine’s hand and held on tight. “Because you look like you might make the same mistake.”
Josephine sank back into her chair and listened.
“Your father did walk out on us. That was true.” Watery eyes looked away from Josephine as she continued. “A few years later he tried to come home. But in the time he’d been gone, he’d changed. Maybe for the better, I don’t know. I never gave him the chance.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’d joined some
biker club, not the one your guy’s in. The patch, it was different, red with horns or something.” Josephine swallowed. She’d seen that patch before. “But I was scared. Too scared he’d run away again or that he’d get in trouble because of that club. So I told him to go and never come back.”
Josephine blinked a few times, letting what her mother told her settle in her mind. “He’s in the Iron Rebels?”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t do the same thing I did. Don’t try pushing Lucas away because you’re too scared.”
“He’s still there? Is he still in that club?”
“What?” Meredith closed her eyes for a brief moment, then let out a slow breath. “What did you ask?”
“Mom. Is he still in that club? Do you know?”
