by Debra Kayn
Prior to Amy throwing her attitude around, he'd let himself relax. Hell, they'd had great sex, and she gave him a damn good reason to get up and face the day. She'd accepted him after giving her a few statements last night, and then she'd changed.
He paced three yards, turned, and returned to his bike. Disappointed that she'd easily fall into looking the other way if he spoke out of line, laid down on the ground, or ignored the club, he wanted her to stand up and demand answers, to order him to fucking stand still, to face her, to pay attention.
He wanted her to be the one person with the balls enough to care about him, who wouldn't let him pretend he was handling everything. He wasn't. He hadn't. He'd failed.
He skipped the pack of cigarettes and instead pulled a joint out of his satchel. Halfway in, he got control of his anger. As the paper burnt down to his fingertips, he flicked the end to the ground and pulled out his phone. Maybe if he hurried, he could slip away without anyone noticing where he was going.
He only need a few minutes where he could talk and figure out what the fuck he was supposed to do. Once he got his head straightened out, he could focus fully on the job in front of him.
He shoved the cell back in his pocket and sat on his bike. He'd ride over there, one more time.
The steady roar of motorcycles stopped him from turning on his bike. Merk and Gunner rode into the parking lot and pulled in beside him.
Merk cut the engine. "Where are you heading?"
Fuck.
Lost in wanting to ride out, he'd forgotten about his need to stay here or tell his MC brothers he required backup for Amy. He dropped his hands to the gas tank, pissed even more at himself. Sloppy mistakes would get Amy and him killed.
"I'm just sitting and enjoying the morning. The others haven't got up yet." Jacko caught movement in the window of the motel room.
Amy obviously never forgot the danger she was under and stayed in the room aware of her surroundings and heard the incoming motorcycle. He had to keep his head.
"Jeremy spotted a marked black sedan going east on Interstate 90. They went past both exits for Federal. He dropped off and parked under the viaduct in case they loop around up at Lookout Pass." Gunner got off his bike. "I'll fill the others in."
"You guys staying?" Jacko asked.
Merk nodded. "Cam doesn't want any more trouble happening inside Federal. There's talk about the owners filing a report with the sheriff over the broken cameras and the window getting busted at the Laundromat and apparently the missing security tape out of the back room from that day of the shooting. If anything happens, Cam wants it contained to the outskirts of town. Bantorus MC already paid him a visit yesterday and wasn't happy."
"Fuck Bantorus," Jacko muttered. "They want to start something with the club, Cam can send them to me. None of this shit has anything to do with Moroad."
"It does, brother." Merk lowered his voice. "Nobody messes with one of us without having to deal with the club. The same rules apply outside as they did in prison."
Jacko pulled out a cigarette and wandered a few yards away. He'd put the club first over everything, except the one thing that mattered. He'd trusted wearing the patch would protect him and whoever belonged to him. The Moroad colors failed to keep him safe, and he'd lost Sarah. He wasn't going to lose Amy, too.
He inhaled and blew out a steady stream of smoke. Behind him a door shut, and his skin crawled in awareness. Without looking, he knew Amy came out to see what was going on.
He swayed left to right.
"Is everything okay?" Amy's sweet voice floated to him though she spoke to Merk.
With the sound of her filling his head, the taste of her still on his tongue, and his dick limp in his jeans— satisfied to the highest degree, he wanted nothing more than to keep hold of those feelings. They were real.
The attitude she gave him was misplaced.
His anger toward her unearned.
He needed to focus on what was right in front of him.
She weighed him down and kept him from roaming around lost. She gave him a place to lay his head, right between her breasts. And, when he allowed himself to believe, she gave her heart to him.
"Yeah, honey. Everything is okay," Merk said.
And, he decided right then, he hated that it was Merk she approached to ask her question and not him.
He turned and walked straight toward her. "Everyone get behind the motel before we become walking targets."
Amy fell into step beside him. Not that he gave her a choice. He loosened the grip on her wrist and slowed down to a pace she could maintain. Merk followed a few yards behind. In the distance, two doors shut. Any moment everyone would cluster around them, and he'd have to let Amy go on being pissed at him.
His MC brothers would question him if he went serious. He couldn't allow any doubts or he'd lose their trust.
At the empty pit, Jacko left Amy on an upturned log and went to the woods bordering the edge of the grassy area to gather some branches. He had to think of the immediate situation and how to get Amy back where she belonged. To get her there, he needed to keep her mind occupied, so she would stop dwelling on their situation.
He returned to the pit, dumped the wood he'd gathered, and picked up the propane torch. On a log, he sat and torched the smaller branches, burning off the bark, until he had the wood glowing red.
Amy sat with her arms hugging her waist, chilled from the early morning. He turned off the propane and tossed the canister to the side away from the heat of the fire. Merk, Bear, Johnson, and Gunner stood back by the building looking at the get-back whip Bear worked on and talked amongst themselves.
"Hey." He held out his hand to Amy. "Come here."
She looked at the others first, stood, and walked over to him. He leaned back, bent his knees, and said, "Sit."
She turned around to sit with her back toward him, and he tapped her leg. "Facing me."
Her hesitation wasn't lost on him. He held her hand and guided her to straddle his lap. When she was sitting, he scooted her close and wrapped his arms around her back. They sat eye to eye. Almost as close as when they were in bed, naked, enjoying each other's body.
"Once it warms up, I'm going to take you for a ride." He smoothed her hair off her forehead and inspected the thin red line where the bullet grazed her head. The superglue held her skin together. Even the swelling was down. "Tomorrow, you should be able to wash your hair. Your skin has had time to close. Does it hurt?"
"No." Her answer came out breathless.
He hated upsetting her. Sarah had lived to argue, but Amy's patience and maturity always came first for her. For him to get her riled up, he knew the depth of her feelings and now he needed to make it up to her.
"Good." He whistled on an exhale. "We'll go for a short ride. You need to get away from the motel and the fresh air will help improve your mood."
Her eyes narrowed. He smoothed her eyebrow with his thumb. Sarah's temper had always come out of nowhere and disappeared just as fast. He could never keep up or predict how to handle her. Amy simmered, and suddenly he wanted to work at getting her in a better mood.
"Are you going to stay pissed at me all day?" he asked.
Her lips firmed and finally she said, "Are you going to act crazy all day?"
"Momma...," he whispered. "I am crazy."
Her brows shot up as a small gasp came out of her mouth. She stiffened in his arms and held on to him in fright. He pulled her tighter against him, unwilling to let her pull away.
She stared over his shoulder and grabbed his biceps and whispered, "Don't move."
That got his attention. Whoever was behind him frightened her.
"Amy, reach into my vest pocket and get my pistol," he whispered.
Her eyes snapped to his. "I don't think that'll work."
"It fucking will." He strained to look toward the building without moving his head. "Where the hell is everyone else?"
Amy's whole face changed. Her mouth curved up. Her eyes danced
with amusement. Her cheeks indented. His body remained tight.
"You want to explain what's behind me, before I stand up and kill whoever thinks they can sneak up on me," he said.
"It's not someone." She reached up, held his head, and peered at him closer. "You have a tick crawling up your neck. It probably came off the wood you carried to the fire."
He lifted his hand. She grabbed his wrist. "Don't. I'll get it."
She leaned closer and wrinkled her nose. "Hold still, I want to make sure it hasn't bit you yet."
Her hand rested on his shoulder, and she walked her fingers up his neck. He shivered. She giggled softly.
Her warm breath fanned his ear. "Do ticks freak you out?"
"No." He grunted.
"Oh, okay." She pulled back, slipped off his lap, and walked to the fire with her arm straight out in front of her, her thumb and finger pressed together, holding the tick.
Once she finished putting the tick in the flames, she watched it burn and kept her back toward him. He stood, walked over and put his arms around her from behind and pulled her back against his chest. She'd opened the door to talking. He better take advantage of her willingness to listen before she changed her mind.
He kissed her temple, below her injury, and swayed with her in his embrace. "The only thing you need to think about is staying safe. Cam only knows one side of the story. Bear, Johnson, and the rest of the guys know their side of what happens within the club. I'm only giving you enough information to make you feel secure about staying with me, being with me, because everything else shouldn't touch you. I need to protect you, and in doing so I'm going to keep a lot of things that happen away from you. You'll drive yourself nuts if you try to understand what goes through my head or figure out what makes me tick."
She snorted.
He chuckled. "What? Bad choice of word, Momma?"
"I hate ticks," she mumbled.
"Yeah, well, I'm not a huge fan of them myself. You helped get it off me, and I appreciate it. You can pick all the ticks off me as you want." He tapped the end of his finger against his head. "But, leave the way my brain ticks alone."
She turned, planted her hands flat on his chest, and lifted her chin. "Never."
"That's not the answer I wanted to hear."
Her slender shoulder came up. "I think it is exactly want you want."
"Damn it, Amy. I told—"
She silenced him with a finger to his lips and stopped him from moving. "Someone needs to take care of you because you suck at taking care of yourself. I gave you my word that I'm in. You can't change who I am. It bothers me more when I know I can help, and you refuse. If you want me to accept you and your need to keep the club business secret, I'm not going to ask you to break any rules. But, respect me enough to be there for you and if you need me to listen, trust me to understand or at least comprehend what is happening. That's what I need from you, to be with you, to feel secure in whatever kind of relationship we're having together."
Jacko glanced over at the other Moroad members returning to the backyard of the motel, then lowered his voice. "I hear you, but you need to stop questioning me when the others are around."
"I know you're not crazy," she whispered back. "You gave me eight hours last night and not once did you leave the bed, talk my ear off, or revert to separating yourself from me."
He inhaled deeply. "I can't get into this now."
"When?"
Bear looked over at him. He bounced on his toes, grabbed her ass, and twirled her in the air. While he distracted the others, he whispered in her ear. "I'll explain after we get to where I want to go on our ride."
Her arms came around his neck. Her legs hooked around his hips. She laid her head on his shoulders. "Then let's ride."
Carrying her, he strode past the guys, lifted his chin, and took Amy to his motorcycle. Five minutes later, they were on the back road heading north. He wasn't even sure he could give her the man she remembered. He wasn't sure he even wanted the old Jacko back.
Chapter Nineteen
The two-story, farm-style house sat smack dab in the middle of the canyon between two peaks of the Bitterroot Mountains. Amy held on to Jacko's hand as he walked her up to the wraparound porch. Besides the weathered paint and lack of inhabitants, the house stood proud and regal as if the past owner enjoyed the backdrop of nature at their doorstep and the solitude the rural area in the Silver Valley brought them.
Jacko stepped up on the porch, opened the door, and walked right into the house. Inside, she gazed around at a fully furnished home. The floral printed couch faced the river-rock fireplace. The television—one of those bulky box ones—sat in the corner, the screen covered in dust. Each end table held a lamp, the shades covered in cobwebs.
Amy tugged at Jacko's hand, holding him close. With no warning or explanation on why they'd stopped at an abandoned house, she wanted to know why the area rug on the floor, the dead potted plant on the stand beside the stairs, and the empty coat rack stood beside the door. She feared he'd walk up the stairs and introduce her to a bed-ridden old woman who would die before the house rotted.
"Why are we here?" She curled into his side, anxious to leave.
Jacko let go of her and walked over to the fireplace. He plucked a light pink candle from the candleholder. Her gaze went to the dark red end and realized the candle had sat on the mantle and faded over the years. A shiver went up her spine.
"Jacko?" She crossed her arms and cupped her elbows.
"When I was seventeen, I got arrested for robbing a gas station." He broke the candle in half, dropped it at his feet, and faced her. "I ended up doing two weeks of community service and no jail time because my dad was a Defense Attorney and played his son's bad behavior on boredom and too much free time. While I picked litter up along the interstate, working off my punishment, he disowned me. In his eyes, I'd fucked up. That's all it took for me not to give a damn what he thought of how I acted or the activities I decided to do."
She rubbed her arms. Even when Jacko was with Sarah, Amy never thought of where he came from or how he'd grown up. He was a man in his thirties then and at forty-two years old now, she still knew nothing about him.
"That was my first taste of breaking the law. My second time came a month later when I bought a gun from an old biker from Moroad MC and helped bring a load of powder through Idaho to Montana." Jacko blew out his breath. "My Moroad sponsor died in prison about two years later and by then I'd already patched in and spent nine months in prison myself for armed robbery. When I got out, I came back here to the house and found it exactly like it is today."
"This was your parents' house?" she asked, looking around for any sign that Jacko had once lived here. A pair of boots, a jacket, a filled ashtray, nothing.
"It's still my parents' house. They continued to pay the mortgage until it was paid off. They left because they were embarrassed by how I turned out. Apparently, abandoning your child isn't as bad as abandoning a house. Dad made sure the bank never slapped a foreclosure sign on the door. He had a reputation to protect," he said.
She shook her head. "Did they tell you that?"
He laughed. "My mom visited me once while I was in prison to cut her ties with me and told me never to contact them. I had no reason to doubt her, and when I got released the first time, I came back to what you see here now."
"Where are they or have they passed on?"
"They're alive. Cam had someone find out where they went. I have an older sister in Florida and they moved near her." He stepped closer. "That way their son, Jack Baker, a felon, can't disturb their lifestyle. Far as I care, they're dead."
She inhaled deeply, absorbing the information. "I'm sorry. I can't imagine what you went through all alone, and you were barely an adult."
He shrugged. "You have to love someone to miss them, and love was never a part of what I had when I was a kid. There were rules and ways to act, but never love. My parents' treatment of me had conditions and consequences."
&
nbsp; "Yet, you brought me here. The house must mean something to you," she said, wanting to give him something to prove his childhood couldn't have been as bad as the memories.
He closed the distance between them and his mouth softened. She leaned toward him willingly as his hand came around her neck.
"I brought you here, because it's one place where nobody can overhear what I'm going to tell you. We're away from the club, safe from any of my enemies watching, and yeah, maybe this place reminds me I'm not crazy. There were times I remember where I learned how to ride a motorcycle for the first time and I had my first blowjob inside a Chevy Nova out in the driveway. I can't remember the chick's name, but I thought that was the best feeling in the world." He moistened his lips and studied her. "You believe I'm damaged goods, Momma."
She let her head fall forward and rested her forehead against his chest. Her words coming from him pained her. She'd spoken out of anger and vulnerability at not knowing which way she could help him the most.
"I've changed for a reason." He kissed the top of her head. "Look at me."
She raised her head. There was no doubt Jacko was open, sane, and speaking to her. His clear gaze held hers, waiting for her to give him encouragement to go on. She nodded, eager to know how he went from a quiet, if not rowdy man, to one who everyone thought needed medicated.
"In the last five years, I've loved and lost. There were times I wanted to say fuck it to life and take everyone to hell with me if they stepped in my way. I spent most of my years before Sarah in prison, and I spent the years after losing your sister in prison. By the grace of the club, I got out early. While I was inside, all I thought about was how to pay back those who killed her and how I could keep you safe. I thought I put you somewhere you could live happily for the rest of your days, and that never happened."
"You had no idea Los Li would come after me," she said.
"But it happened, and I'm going to fix it." He smoothed her hair away from her face. "I'm going to do it my way. I know you have doubts that I'm capable—"
