Saving Glory (Hells Saints Motorcycle Club Book 4)

by Paula Marinaro

  “Damn it Jules. Don’t you ever knock?” Glory swallowed a string of profanities. Because besides the bundle of nerves she was already packing, the last thing she needed right now was to throw him into the mix.

  But even as her irritation at the sudden turn of events grew, so did Glory’s appreciation for the man who stood before her. The soft cotton of his black T-shirt strained over his muscled chest and hugged his broad shoulders. When an errant strand of hair escaped from the man-bun he sported, Glory had to ball her fist in order to stop herself from reaching out and brushing it off his forehead.

  Damn.

  Although Glory had taken a few extra minutes with her appearance, she suddenly wished she had done more. Now she smoothed the cotton skirt of her pale pink sundress and twisted her foot in the pretty soft leather sandals a bit self-consciously. Why hadn’t she made the time for that long overdue hair trim and a fresh mani-pedi?

  She stopped her thoughts mid-stream and reprimanded herself.

  The days of dressing to impress Jules Bonny were over.

  O.V.E.R

  “Why would you want to go to the bakery opening?” She forced her eyes away from the worn denim that hugged his powerful thighs only to find Jules ogling her breasts.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Jules continued his long, slow, appreciative appraisal of Glory before his eyes settled on her face. “Dolly is family. Most of the brothers are all gonna show up at some point or another today to show their support.”

  “Yeah. Dolly is family, but Gianni is her partner in this, and we all know how you feel about the Saints women working for—what was that word you used—the wops? Wasn’t that it?” Glory risked his anger. Partly because she thought she had a valid point and the other part was that if she argued with him, maybe Glory could stop the reappearance of the lust locomotive she hitched a ride on whenever Jules neared.

  “I ain’t got a problem with Dolly working with Gianni.” Jules wrapped his powerful arms across a six-pack of muscle and narrowed his eyes at her.

  “Really? You don’t have a problem with Dolly working with Gianni?” Glory challenged.

  “Nope,” Jules said with a slight flex of bicep. “Just spit it out, Glory. I know you’re dying to say it.”

  He was absolutely right she was dying to say it.

  Dying. To. Say it.

  And so she did.

  “You have absolutely no problem with this, Jules? No problem at all with Dolly working for Gianni? But you had such a huge problem with me doing almost the exact same thing. Why?” Her voice broke slightly over the why, because she could no longer dance around the fact that Jules’s very real problem with Glory catering for the Italians had been the crux of their break-up.

  “First of all, Dolly ain’t working for the wop, she’s in business with the wop.” Jules rose to his full height as he punctuated each word.

  “What difference does that make?” Glory scowled in confusion.

  “Second of all—”Jules overrode her in a voice heavy with meaning, “Dolly’s not my woman, Glory. And you were.”

  Glory felt the blood drain from her face as a million memories of what it had meant to be Jules’s woman raged through her at heart wrenching speed. As she looked helplessly into Jules’s eyes she saw the shadow of that same memory flash across his face.

  Another long moment passed in a silent standoff. Neither one wanted to give in to the deep emotion that fell hard and settled between them.

  It was Jules who finally put his hands up in surrender.

  “Look, Glory. I’m not here to rehash this shit. Your brother called and said you needed a ride to the opening. I was going anyway and I didn’t see it as a big deal to bring you with. Besides I thought he had cleared that with you. If you’re not cool with this, if you don’t think you can handle us being alone together? Then I can just call the club house and see if anyone’s still there and they can haul your ass over to the bakery. Makes no difference to me either way,” Jules challenged. Then he moved towards her as he jingled the keys in his hand. “But make up your damn mind because with or without you, I’m headed out now.”

  “Don’t be flatter yourself, Jules. Of course I’m not afraid to be alone with you.” Glory raised her chin a fraction.

  “I never used the word afraid, Glory,” Jules corrected her with a smile in his voice.

  She mentally kicked herself. He made her so nervous she couldn’t think straight.

  “I just want to make it clear that nothing about you—about us—scares me. Of course I’m okay to be alone with you. As a matter of fact, I’ll go wherever you want to take me,” Glory said in a voice that was supposed to sound strong and fearless.

  Jules gave her another long, slow, predatory look. Then grinned at her with dancing eyes. “I can think of a ride I’d love to take you on and it don’t have a damn thing to do with the bakery.”

  He smiled at her then. Jules looked strong and confident—to a heartbreaking degree.

  Glory tried to look annoyed at his swagger, she really did. But Jules’s gentle teasing had always put a smile on her face. She shook her head with a grin and asked, “What am I supposed to do with you?”

  Jules smiled wickedly over bright white teeth. Before he could say another word, Glory placed her index finger firmly against his lips and, with laughter in her voice said simply, “Don’t answer that!”

  Jules reached up, captured her hand in his and pulled her to the doorway.

  “Let’s get you and that pretty dress of yours on the road, darling,” he coaxed her. “We got a party to go to.”

  *****

  Dolly and Gianni’s joint business venture sat a few miles out of town, halfway between the club’s territory and the affluent town where Gianni Abruzzi, the front boss for the Bonzini family, reigned supreme. Jules felt more relaxed than he had in a very long time with one hand on the steering wheel, and one arm draped casually over the back of the seat that Glory occupied.

  Having Glory by his side again felt damn good.

  As they drove down the long winding roads, Jules snuck glances at her. Her white-blonde hair was longer than he had ever seen it and there were little frown lines between her brows that hadn't been there before. And she had started biting her nails again. It was a nervous habit that she hated about herself but couldn’t seem to quit for long. She still had a habit of making little jittery jumps with her legs when she crossed them. She was doing it now and he longed to reach out and put a warm palm on her knee to still her nervous energy. Just like he used to.

  But Jules knew that touching Glory again, even momentarily, would only make him want to touch her more. He had made that mistake once already. And that was when he had wrapped his arm around her in a caveman like form of possession. A statement of primal ownership that Jules had felt suddenly compelled to make in front of Glory’s brother.

  The club never went in for the property of patches that most other one percenter clubs had for their women. Prosper told Jules once that the way he looked at it, it was completely the other way around, once a woman got under your skin, she owned you. Claiming it to be any other way was just damn hypocrisy, Prosper had said. Jules agreed with him, but still—the thought of owning Glory sounded damn good to him. Never more than now, when she was back from all the things that had taken her away from him.

  As a matter of fact, fuck the patch.

  If he had his way he would tie her up to the bedposts and keep her locked in his room.

  Glory turned in her seat and raised an eyebrow as Jules chuckled softly to himself thinking of how spitting mad she would be if she could read his thoughts.

  He answered her unspoken question with a devilish wink and got a kick out of the way her cheeks flushed before she turned her eyes to the road ahead.

  Jules looked at Glory in appreciation and relief. She looked great— but not just in a smokin’ hot way—she looked good in a healthy way that reassured him.

  The last few weeks at the lake had been good for her. When
Jules had first started working out at the house Glory had been pale and thin. Gradually over the past few weeks, he had been happy to see that burden of worry lift a little. He knew that most of that was the result of watching her brother settle in and begin to work on his recovery. But he hoped that him being around lightening things up and making her laugh a little had also helped with that.

  When Jules stole another glance at Glory, his eyes landed on her legs.

  Her long, toned, gorgeous legs.

  Legs that went on forever and ever.

  Smooth and strong as they wrapped themselves around his back pulling him deeper and deeper—signaling her want as he pushed himself inside of her—

  “So when did you get this truck?” Glory’s sexy as hell voice called out from beside him and brought him crashing back to reality.

  When her words interrupted his thoughts, Jules shifted uncomfortably. He took his arm off the back of the seat and placed it casually over his budding erection.

  Stubborn. Too damn independent. Fiery tempered, obstinate damn woman.

  Yeah. That calmed things down. Much better.

  “A while ago.” He focused on the road ahead. “I got it a while ago.”

  “Wow. It’s beautiful.” Glory ran her hand along the leather interior. “I never pictured you wanting something like this, it’s really roomy. But why did you get such a big truck?”

  Jules looked over at Glory to see if she was fucking with him. When he saw her blue eyes knit in question and stare back at him with an innocent and frank curiosity, he made a decision.

  Jules jerked the steering wheel hard to the right, pulled the truck over and killed the engine.

  Then he moved his seat back and shifted his big body so he was facing Glory straight on.

  At the abruptness of his actions, Glory looked back at him in stunned, expectant silence.

  “After you left, I took up with Bambi,” Jules blurted out.

  “You took up with Bambi before I left,” Glory corrected him with emphasis.

  Feisty woman—

  “You gonna let me finish?” He scowled.

  “Just trying to keep it real, Jules.” Glory lifted her nose slightly in the air. “Go on. Continue.”

  “Bambi and me—” Jules looked suddenly unsure of himself as he scrubbed a hand over his face and looked hard at Glory.

  Her face revealed nothing.

  It hurts less if you just rip off the Band-Aid.

  “So I was fucking Bambi,” Jules continued in no uncertain terms. “And after I had stopped fucking her, she told me that I had knocked her up. At first I was so damn shocked I didn’t know what the hell to do. But then when I thought about it, if the kid was mine I wanted to do right by it. Beside the bike, the only vehicle I had was that old van. No air bags—seatbelts only worked some of the time. So I bought the Ram you’re sitting in now. A month passed, then two more. Baby wasn’t showing on the bitch like I figured it should be. I asked her about it, and she kept giving me bullshit answers. So I scheduled her in with Doc Gideon and showed up at the appointment. And doc confirmed it for me. The due date was too far off for the kid to be mine. I wanted to kill that lying snatch for trying to pull that one over on me. But then I figured I got what I deserved for taking up with her in the first place. So now she’s gone and I’m stuck with this big-ass, ridiculous, gas guzzling, monstrosity as a reminder of what a fucking fool I was.” Jules reached past Glory to the glove box. He pulled out a flask, took a long pull on it, eyed her over the silver container and waited.

  Her glacier blue eyes clashed with his stormy darker ones, as she looked at him long and hard.

  “If the baby was yours, were you gonna marry Bambi?” She asked simply.

  Jules regarded Glory with care.

  “Nope. You know I’m not that guy. And besides—I never felt that for her.”

  Another long quiet moment fell between them while Jules drummed anxious fingers against his thigh waiting for her reaction. It seemed like forever to him before she spoke.

  “Anything else you want to tell me?” Glory asked.

  “No. Think that about covers it.” He hoped his tone signaled the end of the conversation. But then as he looked at Glory sitting so poised and still beside him, he added with reluctance, “Anything else you wanna know?”

  Glory gave him another searching look before she focused back on the road ahead and answered, “No, I’m good.”

  Jules put the car into drive and pulled out into the traffic. Although he tried for casual calm, the tension in his jaw only began to relax after the woman seated beside him let out a long slow breath.

  Jules would have given his left nut to know what she was thinking in that moment. But when he glanced over at Glory, her face remained closed off and expressionless.

  He hadn’t intended to make that roadside admission. Damn embarrassing was what it was—the way he let himself get played by Bambi Henderson. But when Glory had made that comment about the truck, Jules thought that for sure that she might be fucking with him. The word had been all over the club about Bambi’s deception and he didn’t think it was possible that the Winston sisters hadn’t filled her in on what a damn fool he had been. But to be fair, Claire and Raine weren’t really the kind of women who got off on recounting someone else’s mistakes. Especially if they knew it would hurt Glory.

  So yeah, it shouldn’t have surprised him to find Glory clueless about the whole Bambi thing. But it did.

  Because, when it came right down to it, Jules really had no clue about women.

  What they thought.

  How they felt.

  What they wanted.

  No fucking clue.

  Chapter 13

  Glory snuck little looks at Jules as they continued down the road to the party. She had almost choked on her own spit when he looked her in the eye and fessed up about the whole Bambi situation.

  Of course she knew.

  Her girls had her back on all things Jules Bonny.

  And truth be known, Glory had breathed a deep sigh of relief when Claire had called and notified her that Jules’s status had gone from baby-daddy to baby- daddy no more. Because really, the thought of Jules sharing a child with that woman—or any other woman for that matter—had filled her with a sadness so deep that she had thought that her heart might break.

  Glory could have kicked herself for making that comment about the truck. She had no desire to hurt or embarrass him. God knows she had made enough of her own dumb mistakes. She had really just been trying to make conversation. When she had made that remark, she honestly had no idea the two things were in any way connected. And the shock that showed on Glory’s face at his confession was one hundred percent for real.

  Just not for the reason that Jules thought it was.

  And now as she sat next to him, with his strong arm once again casually draped over the back of her seat, a small part of Glory hoped that this surprising show of honest vulnerability might mean a new start for the two of them somewhere down the line.

  Stranger things had certainly happened.

  And with that hopeful thought, Glory leaned her head back against the seat just under the place where Jules’s strong arm met her shoulder. Then Glory smiled inwardly, took a deep breath and willed herself to relax and enjoy the rest of the ride.

  *****

  As Jules pulled into the cobbled driveway, Glory’s eyes grew wide in appreciative wonder. When the girls had told her that Dolly had gone into partnership with Gianni to open a bakery she had expected something much less grand than the regal building that stood before her. She had thought that the bakery would be something more along the lines of a pretty, quaint, corner store. In her mind’s eye, Glory had imagined a small shop with a few well-placed tables and chairs, a couple of glass cases filled with various baked goods, and perhaps an espresso machine with a few coffee canisters sitting on a side bar.

  What she got was a majestic brick building with a stone fountain beautifully displayed in t
he circular driveway. If it weren’t for the dozen or so Harleys, and a custom delivery van with a sign that read D&G Bakery parked in the lot, Glory would have thought that they were at the wrong place.

  “This is the bakery?” Glory felt a small pang of envy when she compared this beautiful building to the lake house kitchen where she had started up her own little catering business. But in the next breath she thought about how Dolly had been so helpful and encouraging to her and was immediately ashamed of her momentary envy.

  “Pretty fucking nice, huh?” Jules stood beside her and waved a hand at the imposing structure. “This is Casa Di Pranzo. Gianni’s place. The whole top floor is used as a banquet area and there’s a bunch of fancy shops on the main floor. A cigar bar, a chocolatier, an imported wine shop and now Dolly’s bakery is in there. Gianni spared no expense on the place and I got it on good authority that he let Dolly call all the shots” Jules paused and rocked back on his heels. “You know I never have been and never will be a fan of the Italians, but Reno says his mom is really fucking happy. And any man who makes Dolly McCabe happy earns a few points with me and with the rest of the boys. Come on let’s go in and check it out.”

  Glory took in the beautiful building with a mixture of apprehension and interest, then she smoothed the skirt of her dress and let Jules lead the way.

  The twin glass and copper trimmed doors swung open wide automatically in greeting and led to a marble entryway. The first floor boasted a thickly carpeted, walnut-paneled emporium. The bake shop was the last store on the left and was situated across from the sweeping staircase that led to the elegant banquet hall on the second floor.

  In contrast to the heavy and richly wooded lobby, Glory was pleased to find that the bakery itself was light and airy. The walls were painted a creamy butter yellow and highlighted by soft recessed lighting. Dozens and dozens of decadent pastries sat on ornate doilies in cases of gleaming antique glass. A complicated looking, and quite massive, Italian import presided over the high espresso bar. Frothy cakes, piled high with frosting, sat proudly in a revolving, tall, mirrored case. The seating area was filled with tables made of white wrought-iron topped with thick glass and the chairs were covered with plump, colorful, paisley cushions