Brand_A Steel Paragons MC Novel

by Eve R. Hart

  “Yep,” he said with a bouncy nod. “Think I can stay at the clubhouse until I find a place?”

  “Fuck yeah!” It wasn’t like I had to run it by Iron, Chris was always welcomed there. Matter of fact, he always stayed there whenever he was in town. He hopped up and we shared an excited hug.

  We chatted for a little while. He ate half of my sandwich after eyeing me with a look like he was wondering why I’d ordered such a sad thing. All I needed to do was to point at Sketch for him to understand.

  “I’m thinking we should go get tacos tonight,” Chris said and he didn’t even have to say where. There was only one place in town to get tacos. No, I didn’t mean it like there was literally only one place. I meant that after these pulled pork tacos there was no other place you’d want to go. Fresh, local ingredients and smoked just right. My mouth watered at the thought.

  “Hell, yeah,” I said feeling the need to wipe the invisible drool I imagined slipping past my lips. “Lake, Ky, and B-ry will be down, too. Sketch?” Chris and I looked over at him.

  “I’m down,” he said with a quick shrug.

  “I’ll let Ky and Lake know,” Chris said. “I’m headed over there now. My car started making this weird rattling noise about half a mile before I got to the city limits.”

  “Sounds good. I’m gonna close up early. It’s not like there’s a damn thing going on here anyway. Meet you there in a few hours?”

  “Yep. I’ll get Ky to look at my car and get settled at the club. Later, Sketchy-boy,” Chris called out over his shoulder just as he hit the threshold to the shop. Then he darted out the door and down the street, laughter following behind him.

  “Fucker!” Sketch called out, fist raised in the air. “He better watch his nuts around me.”

  “You sound really desperate to see his junk, man,” I said jokingly. “You even openly admitted out loud that you want to fondle his sack.”

  “So I can tattoo his balls…not so I can…come the fuck on. You’re such an asshole.” He didn’t sound mad in the least. He knew I was only messing with him and that I didn’t mean it even a little.

  A few hours later, we were all taking up the huge table in the front window that had a view of the river. Pitchers of beer and tacos were where it was at. And looking around at my loud and happy brothers, was home. My eyes landed on Chris, who unsurprisingly fit right in with everyone there.

  I thought more about what he’d said earlier. I was fucking ecstatic that he was moving here. Things finally seemed to be sliding into place.

  Sure, it had been hard for me to leave Moon Hill. Something like that shouldn’t have been easy. I left behind a huge part of myself when I made the decision to come down here. But at the same time, it needed to be done. If I was being honest, I had started to feel a bit trapped there. My soul cried for an escape and a chance to fly. Leaving Moon Hill was like leaving your parents house. It would always hold a huge part of my heart, but there just came a time when a boy turned into a man and went off to find his own way. I had no idea if that even made sense.

  While there were people I missed back there, there was one that I absolutely hated to leave behind. This fucker that was sitting across from me right now. The same stupid guy that was here to stay.

  So yes, things felt amazing right then.

  And I loved how he fit right in with the people in my life. Of course, he knew Lake from Moon Hill, so no big surprise that they got along. But he and Ky had grown close over the last year and a half. Lake and Ky were the brothers that I felt the closest to, but then again, I really knew them before we set up this chapter. I’d met Ky while I’d spent time down in the South Carolina chapter. I needed a little distance from Moon Hill and they were able to use an extra pair of hands at their custom bike shop.

  “Chris says he’s hitting the beach first thing in the morning,” Lake said, effectively snapping me out of my thoughts. “Who’s going?”

  “Hell, I’ll go just to watch him wipe out on his ass,” Ky said, his head fell back as he laughed.

  “What?” Chris said tossing him a confused look. “You hate the beach.”

  “I don’t hate it. I just don’t trust the ocean. I’m not a big enough idiot to even try and fight her for control. Unlike some people.” Ky shook his head like Chris was stupid for even trying. “I don’t mind sitting on the sand, surrounded by hot women in bikinis. I can do that all day.”

  More laughter and I’m sure there wasn’t one of us that would disagree.

  “I can’t wait to wake up every morning, toss on some board shorts, and walk out my back door to the sounds of the waves I’m about to ride.” Chris had a smile on his face that rivaled all the ones of the kids on Christmas morning.

  “Hey, I’m not saying I don’t like the ocean,” Ky said, snatching up a chip from the basket in the middle of the table. “I even think it might not be so bad having a house on the beach where I could open my windows and let the lullaby of her crashing waves carry me to sleep every night. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to go in any further than ankle deep in her.”

  “You don’t know what you’re missing, man,” Chris said rolling his eyes.

  “I’m good with that,” Ky mumbled, shaking his head. “Brand, you in? You and Lake could use some sun.”

  “Not all of us can have a natural tan to our skin,” Lake said tossing a balled up napkin at him. “My mom’s Irish and my dad’s Scottish. I’m lucky I didn’t come out a fiery redhead and covered in freckles.”

  More laughter. And to be honest, it wasn’t far from the truth. I spent too much time in the shop and my skin was close to ghostly white at this point.

  “I’m in, but only till about eleven. I do have a shop to open,” I said finishing the last bite of my fourth taco.

  With a relaxed sigh, I sat back and rubbed my belly. It was satisfyingly full. Beer, chips, salsa, and tacos were all having a crowded party in there.

  We sat there for another hour or so. Ky talked about his new pet project. Lake went on about how the garage needed someone to run the front so he wouldn’t have to keep finding receipts everywhere. Lake made sure the paperwork was put away neatly but I could tell he’d rather not be that person.

  Sketch told his versions about things I really didn’t need to hear considering it was my shop he was talking about those things happening in half the time. I actually cringed internally every time he shared one of his ‘in my room with the door closed’ stories. If I hadn’t caught him a few times wiping his whole station and chair down afterward, I might have had to say something.

  B-ry talked about the locals that came into the bar out of curiosity. Most of the time they were respectful but occasionally there were the ones that were clearly there to shake their head at us. Or sometimes, there were the dumb macho ‘I’m more badass than you’ guys that would come in, get fall down drunk, and toss out fighting words in hopes that one of us would take the bait.

  I called it an early night, knowing that Chris would be banging on my door before the sun even hit my windowsill. The shop would be open late tomorrow and I didn’t want to be tired while trying to ink people. I respected my work and my clients too much to do that.

  The pieces of my life seemed to be fitting together perfectly, the picture much closer to being whole than before. I almost couldn’t believe how great everything was. But I wasn’t about to question any of it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Cami

  Another afternoon of doing nothing. Or at least that was the way my parents thought of it. While I had been locked away in my room working hard on getting the last little details right on my latest painting, my parents thought I was just indulging in a hobby. And wasting time with it, as they had told me more than once before.

  Art was my life. It was my soul. It was the reason I got up in the morning and the same one that had me dragging my feet to go to bed each night. This, however, was not something my parents understood—or ever would, I was convinced.

  “Cami.” M
y sister’s voice floated through the room with a mix of frustration and concern, breaking my concentration. “Dinner is in thirty minutes. You might want to get cleaned up.” She sat down on the side of my bed, her butt just barely perched on the edge, and stared at me.

  I looked down at my paint covered arms and sighed. Yes, she was right, I couldn’t go to dinner looking like this. Not only would I get displeased looks from my mother throughout the whole meal, once everyone was gone, I wouldn’t hear the end of it either. Good thing I had been working with acrylic paint, a few good scrubs in the shower and it would come off.

  It wasn’t a personal goal to make my parents’ lives hard, I just seemed to do it naturally.

  “Not to sound like Mom, but what are your plans?” she asked as I began to pack everything up.

  “I have a plan…” I said even though I didn’t really. I had dreams…maybe? Little ones. I had an idea of what I wanted to do with my life, but I also knew that it would never match up to what my parents would even be half-thrilled with.

  “Just take the job at the museum. It’s perfect for you. You get to be around all that art all day and with as much of their donations that come from us, I’m sure they would even let you have an input on what they bring in. And it will get Mom off your back.”

  I was born a Benson. And unfortunately, you couldn’t throw a stone in this city and not hit something either owned, named after, or was somehow connected to the Benson name. My family had been here for generations. There were so many of us that names were starting to be recycled. Yep, I had two cousins with the name Kelly. It was only slightly less confusing because one of them was a boy. We donated to a lot of different projects and organizations. All you had to do was take a look around. There was a wing of the hospital named after my great-aunt Nancy. The museum that my sister mentioned was The Benson Art Museum, named after us because of the sizable contribution my family gave to help break ground. We owned a good deal of land and properties as well, and that was all managed by the Benson Property Group.

  I think you get the idea.

  And since we were the top donors to the museum, my mother took it upon herself to suggest they hire me. Suggest, as in pressure them with her checkbook. I didn’t have proof of this exactly, but I knew my family and that was how they tended to take care of things.

  The job wouldn’t have been half bad but I knew it would eventually suffocate me and stifle my inner artist. It wasn’t that I couldn’t appreciate all types of art and mediums, it was more that standing there all day, looking at the same classic, stuffy paintings and sculptures the museum offered would only fill my brain with classic technique and style. Maybe I was being a bit of a brat, but I honestly just didn’t want to take the job.

  Or perhaps, I wanted to make my own way.

  To say that I was the black sheep of the family would have been a strong understatement. I was the youngest of five. But being the baby didn’t give me any leeway when it came to this family. My sister, Laurel, the one currently trying to talk some reason into me, was in a serious relationship with a guy whose family was second known to ours. My oldest brother, Timothy, owned and managed a bunch of upscale apartment complexes as well as a few marinas on the beach. Dalton was three years younger than him and had a custom yacht dealership. No, he didn’t actually build boats, he just held all the best connections and knew how to use the right one for each job.

  And so on.

  So you can see where I was going with all of this.

  I maybe sort of had a plan for the future. Okay, it was really more of a wistful dream. Only I wasn’t sure how to go about it. And even less sure how to tell my family it was what I wanted to do. It would not go over well at all and I wasn’t saying might not, I was saying definitely won’t. Which was why I’d kept the idea to myself, even from Laurel.

  We were the closest. She was only two years older than me and also the one I talked to the most. She had become the sort of buffer between my parents and me, though if she had to pick a side, I had a feeling it wouldn’t be mine. But I couldn’t really blame her. It was just the way it went with this family.

  I would have said that possibly, somewhere in the hidden devious parts of my mind, that it was a way to lash out at what I’d been forced into. And not to forget the fact that my art simply wasn’t something my family, my mother especially, saw as something you could make a life with. It would have been better if I’d been able to force my artistic bone into something they could brag about. Like, say, becoming a ballerina. Pushing myself with hours and hours of structured practices and rehearsals. A grace that could be shown on stage and eventually possibly taken me places around the world. Unfortunately, I wasn’t that graceful girl. And the thought of ruining my body, mainly my feet, wasn’t all that appealing to me. Even from a young age.

  “Well, I’m going downstairs,” she said as she stood up with the grace of a queen, then headed out of the room with quiet steps. “Hurry it up,” she called out right before she rounded the corner into the hall.

  As I rushed through a shower, making sure that I didn’t have a speck of paint left on me, I thought how I needed to find my own place. At twenty-four, it was simply time. It wasn’t that I was hesitant on moving out of my parents’ huge house, it was more that with no job I didn’t have money to pay for a place of my own or even all the bills that came along with life. I know what you might be thinking. I’m a rich girl and my parents would probably pay my rent and anything else I needed. Yes, that was very much true, as long as I got a respectable job doing something they thought would in some way look good to the community.

  The thing was, I didn’t want them to pay for everything. I wanted to live my life on my own terms and know that I could do it all myself. Because I wasn’t about living my life on their terms. Maybe my brothers and sisters were fine doing that and I could understand the appeal. But something in my heart sank whenever I would start to question if what I wanted was really all worth it. It was. I truly believed that.

  Dinner was a typical Benson affair. Four courses, none of them cooked by any of us. None of them simple. And not a single one eaten without some sort of conversation about how well each one of my siblings were doing business-wise. I was happy for them in their handed down success, really I was. If they were happy then I was happy for them. But that didn’t mean I wanted to hear basically the same thing week after week. All the while, no one asked me a single thing about my life or my so called ‘hobby.’ And the only time I got my mother’s attention was when she turned to me and pointedly made a statement about how the staff went out of their way to make sure my meal was prepared to my ‘dietary needs.’ Like it was something that was beyond ridiculous to her.

  Marta, the house chef, never had a problem making me special meals. And you would think that she had to say that because it was her job and all, but I knew it wasn’t. I didn’t treat her like the rest of my family. We had a few conversations of things that she wanted to try to make for me and I was happy about them all. It wasn’t like I was all that picky or had special restrictions due to health reasons. My mother just simply liked to make it seem that, yet again, I was a burden on someone in some way, all the while coming off like she was a caring parent.

  “May I have everyone’s attention, please?” Brice, my sister’s boyfriend, said as he scooted his chair back a bit. We’d just finished dessert and I was really hoping they would wrap this thing up so I could go back upstairs. “Laurel, we’ve been together a while now, and I wanted to do this with your family present, I know that’s important to you.”

  Oh, wow.

  He was really doing this right now.

  He slid out of his chair and got down on one knee as he pulled a ring box out of his pocket.

  “I see no one more perfect to spend my life with. Laurel, will you marry me?”

  “Yes. Oh, gosh, yes,” she replied as she all but dove for the monstrous rock he’d bought her.

  Even I was a little impressed by it. It wasn�
�t my style, but I could see how it was perfect for her. And he knew better than to try and pull this off with something less than spectacular.

  “This calls for a toast,” my mother said and it was clear she was pleased about this union. I could just see it now, my mother would take over the whole wedding planning and it would be one to remember. The wedding of the season that everyone would be talking about. That would be exactly how she would want it. The wedding would turn into some sort of grand publicity stunt.

  I smiled and gave them both congratulatory hugs, going as far as to welcome Brice to the family. As my family surrounded them, I stood back and wondered if I was somehow missing something. I didn’t want to infect everyone with my weird mood so I tried my best to shove my uncertainty down and smile for my sister. This was her big moment and I wasn’t going to bring her down. I was overjoyed for her. Really, I was. This is what she had wanted for a while now. It looked like she was going to get her happily ever after. I mean, I could only hope so. There truly was no way to tell what the future held.

  I mean, I had to be real for a minute. She could start popping out kids and get that misshapen, pudgy mom body and he could totally be repulsed by her and start cheating. Or he could go prematurely bald and decide the gym is a waste of time. Or he could develop an addiction to porn. Who knew, maybe he already had one and was really good at hiding it.

  Okay, so maybe I went a little off there on that thought process. I had never really been in love so, it could have been that I just didn’t understand anything when it came to matters of the heart. Or perhaps, I was just doomed to be an old lady with a million cats that I talked to as if they were my friends or children or something like that. I could see it now, I’d order fancy tea biscuits from England and eat them dry—without tea—like it was a normal thing to do. And I’d make rugs and coats out of all the loose cat hair I would sweep up every day.