Chasing Claire (Hells Saints Motorcycle Club)

by Marinaro, Paula

  Much, much later, as I was falling asleep in his arms, Reno pulled me close to him and whispered against my ear.

  “I wished for you too, Claire.”

  CHAPTER 51

  Two days after Reno proposed to Claire, he went to see his uncle.

  When they heard the chiming signal of the security monitor, Dolly and Pinky had just gotten up from the table and had begun to clear the dishes. Prosper sat deep in his favorite chair and lit up his weekly Cuban cigar. It was late Sunday afternoon, and the tradition that had begun when Petey was alive had continued on long after his death. Reno had been just a kid when his dad had passed on, but Dolly knew that he remembered those Sunday dinners well. She noticed and appreciated that her son tried to make an appearance whenever he had the time.

  “Sorry I missed dinner, Ma.” Reno bent down and kissed his mother’s cheek.

  “Happy to see you up and around. How you feeling, honey?” Dolly hugged her boy close in answer.

  “I’m good thanks to my kick-ass gun-toting ninja mother,” he teased her. Then his eyes warmed. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, honey. I’m doing just fine.”

  Reno kissed his aunt in greeting. “Hey, Pinky. Mind if I steal the boss man for a couple of minutes?”

  “You got about a half an hour before the game starts,” Prosper growled, but Dolly didn’t miss the light in his eyes at seeing his nephew.

  Dolly watched Reno walk toward the office with his uncle. The wild child that she and Petey had conjured up together. God, she missed her big, rough husband. Reno was so much like him. Loyal, smart, handsome, and too damn stubborn for his own good. Reno was the best thing that Dolly had ever done, the best gift that she had ever been given. Dolly loved her boy with all of her heart.

  But she was not blind to his faults.

  She knew that Claire and Reno had been spending a lot of time together since the shooting. She had seen the panic and heartache in Claire’s eyes during those long hours that they had sat together at the clinic. A person had to be just about blind not to see the love they had for each other. But Dolly had watched this thing with Claire and Reno unfold, then snap back and close tight before her eyes too many times to be overly optimistic. Dolly had bit her tongue at every twist and turn. Her boy was a damn fool if he let that sweet thing slip away. But that was exactly what he had been before, a damn fool. Drinking, whoring, and fighting. Damn, damn fool.

  Dolly knew that whatever it was that had made Reno act like a goddamn ass would work itself out. She also knew that the times it did, her son would always find his way here. Not to her, but to Prosper. Eventually, Reno talked just about everything out with his uncle. Dolly knew that Prosper had been waiting for that too.

  But Dolly also knew that time wasn’t going to be on Reno’s side forever. Dolly realized that for Prosper, this situation was different, because it involved one of his girls. She understood that it was a true testament to Prosper’s love for Reno that he had kept silent this long. Today, she hoped that Reno had come here to honor that and explain himself if he could, or to seek Prosper’s counsel if he couldn’t.

  Dolly held her son close in greeting and hoped for the best. She stood by her sister-in-law and the two of them watched Reno and Prosper head toward the back of the house to the office.

  “He looks good. Don’t you think? Apart from being a little pale and a little skinny, I think he looks good.” Dolly tried to keep the anxiety from her voice and failed.

  “He looks great, honey. Your boy is going to be just fine,” Pinky reassured her.

  “I’m glad he’s here. Wish the hell I knew what brought him here, though.” Dolly was looking at the closed door.

  “I hate it when they go into that room. I can’t hear a thing,” Pinky commented to her.

  Dolly watched as Pinky put on a fresh pot of coffee, “I had hoped that you’d found a way to get around that by now. Are you sure there is absolutely no way that we can hear what’s going on in there?”

  “You know, as well as I do, that I have tried about a million times over the years to listen in on what’s being said behind those closed doors. Sweet Jesus, Dolly, you’ve been right alongside of me with your ear to that door for most of those times. That goddamn room is locked up tighter than a farmer’s daughter on a Saturday night.” Pinky sighed.

  The two of them stood together and looked toward the tightly closed doors.

  “I’m worried.” Dolly turned to her friend.

  “About Reno?” Pinky made herself busy setting up the coffee tray. Then she searched under the cabinet and came up with the good stuff. Pinky brought out the bottle that was reserved for special holidays, the very good news, and the very bad news.

  “Yeah, it’s Reno. I don’t know, Pinky. God knows I love that boy, and I’m the first to admit he hasn’t always been an easy child to raise. But he always kept that sweet side to him. Always kept his head,” Dolly sighed, looking for the words. “Things seem to have calmed down now, but you know as well as I do that there have been times in the past year or so when my boy’s been lost. That trip out West—all that drinking and fighting and . . .”

  “Whoring,” Pinky finished for her.

  Dolly nodded. “Whoring.”

  “Honey, Reno was a good boy, and he’s grown to be a good man.” Pinky looked at her friend.

  “I don’t know.” Dolly shook her head. Doubt created worry lines between her brows. “It’s this thing with Claire.”

  Dolly poured a generous shot from the best bottle in the house into her black coffee.

  “You don’t like Claire?” Pinky asked. She was confused.

  “Honey, of course I like her. I love her. Absolutely love her. Raine and Claire both. Remember that summer? That little tiny thing with those big, blue eyes following her big sister everywhere? It took her a week before she would let us put a comb to her hair.”

  Pinky smiled at the memory. “Jesus, it took me two weeks before she would let me get her into the bathtub, then she liked those bubbles so much, I couldn’t get her out. The child bathed four times a day after that first time. Her little fingers used to get so wrinkled, I was worried that one day, all the skin was going to fall right off.”

  “And that dirty little pink bunny that we could not pry out of her hands.” Dolly smiled too. “I thought for sure something was going to crawl right out of that thing.”

  “Oh God, remember that? She finally let me wash it, but only if she could watch. That baby girl got out that little green plastic stool and sat right in front of the washer, and then the dryer, until that old, fat, stuffed bunny came out.”

  They both laughed at the memory.

  “She’s grown to be a beautiful woman, honey, and I thank the Lord that he brought them both back to us safe and sound.” Pinky was Dolly’s best friend in the world, but Dolly couldn’t forget that, for a while, in her mind at least, Pinky had been Raine and Claire’s mother. And for a woman who had known early on that she would never be able to have children of her own, that had meant a lot.

  With all that history between them, it was safe to say that even though Pinky loved Dolly like a sister, Pinky also loved Claire like a daughter.

  Dolly knew they were about to walk a very thin line.

  “So what is it about Claire that’s not sitting right with you now, Dolly?” Pinky asked. Then she took a sip of her very hot coffee.

  “Oh, honey. It’s not that. I’m just worried that if Reno ever gets it into his head to go back to those wild ways, he’s gonna permanently ruin his chances with that sweet girl.” Dolly sighed.

  Pinky visibly relaxed. They were in perfect agreement on this one.

  “That would be a damn shame,” Pinky said. Then she added with force, “Prosper will straighten him out.”

  “I hope the hell so,” Dolly answered.

  Then they both looked toward the closed door of Prosper’s office.

  The two women sat and talked together as the sun started to fade in the sky. The lou
d ticking of the clock did nothing to help with the building anxiety they shared. At one point, Dolly got up and paced in front of the heavily carved wooden doors that led to the office. Pinky watched her for about five minutes before she couldn’t stand it any longer and then she put her ear to the door. After a minute or so, she reported that she thought she might have heard something being kicked or thrown against the wall, but she couldn’t be sure.

  CHAPTER 52

  Reno watched as his uncle splashed Johnnie Walker Blue into the two shot glasses that he had set out on the table. Prosper’s windowless office sat in the back of the house. Behind the rich oak panels, its partitions were lined in lead. Two large safes were hidden in the walls as well. One safe had a small arsenal of weapons, and the other contained a bundle of cash and some documents that Prosper found useful to have around.

  To the bare eye, the office looked like any other room in the house. The room was Prosper’s nod to Pinky’s determination to give them “normal” in the times when they found themselves at home together. The house had the means of security it needed to provide a safe environment for the founder and president of the Hells Saints MC. But as Pinky had put it, “that doesn’t mean we have to be reminded of it every damn day.”

  Prosper had insisted that he had agreed to the changes in the house in order to make his wife happy. But Reno suspected that despite all his bluster, Prosper actually liked the sense of normalcy that the home provided. Although his uncle was still a tough bastard, Reno could see that time had mellowed him. Raine and Claire and the birth of his first grandbaby had mellowed him. He was past sixty now, and while Reno doubted that Prosper would ever completely be done with his outlaw ways, his whoring, fighting, and heavy drinking days were a thing of the past.

  Reno and Prosper both downed the first shot, and Prosper leaned over to fill the glasses again.

  Reno reached into his pocket and pushed a small blue box toward his uncle.

  “Too damn early for my birthday, son.” Prosper looked at Reno.

  “Open it, man.” Reno nodded to the box.

  Leaning back and taking his time, Prosper snapped the velvet ring box open, took a look, and snapped it back closed again.

  “You proposing to me, Reno? ’Cause let me tell you, if I see you going down on one knee, I’m going to put a bullet in your goddamn skull.”

  “Yeah, really funny, Boss.” Reno was not amused.

  Prosper did not smile either.

  “So what the fuck is this about, Reno?”

  “I love her, Prosper.” Reno said it straight.

  “Is that what love looks like to you, asshole?” Prosper’s eyes glittered.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Reno fired back. But his uncle’s reaction was just what he had expected.

  “You were there, man, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Oh, no. That’s right. No, you weren’t. You getting shot up does not fucking excuse what was happening before that. Does not excuse any goddamn part of it. You were out there doing the dirty on the West Coast while your girl was not eating, not sleeping, and generally just making herself sick with the thought of offing that cocksucker. Not to mention that she was still dealing with the rest of the shit storm that she’s been through. You left her alone in that,” Prosper snarled.

  “Yeah, well, we worked it through,” Reno snarled back.

  “Really? You worked that through? Was that before or after your cock slammed every whore from coast to coast, and you took to the ring with your bare fucking fists?”

  Reno looked Prosper in the eye.

  “After.”

  Prosper sighed heavily.

  “Goddammit, Reno, I don’t know who is stupider. You for thinking you can make this thing work, or her for giving you a chance to try.”

  “You got no right to call her stupid, Prosper.” Reno’s body was tense and primed. The muscle in his jaw jumped.

  “No? Well, she’s been mine a hell of a lot longer than she’s been yours. That right there gives me the right, Reno. Gives me a lot of other fucking rights too. I’ve lived a hard life, made some hard choices, and there have only been two things that I have ever regretted. One was leaving those two little girls with their good-for-nothing father, and the other was leaving their mother, knowing that she was making the biggest mistake of her life by pushing me aside. Claire’s a lot like her mother. She’s a runner, Reno. Just like Maggie.”

  “I know that.” Reno agreed. “Been talking all that out with her—Manny, and that fuckhead, Jamie—the whole deal. I am hoping now that’s it out, she won’t feel that need to run.”

  “What’s that dead junkie got to do with our girl? Fucker’s been gone for a while now.” Prosper’s eyes narrowed.

  Reno didn’t hesitate to lay it out for his uncle.

  “Cocksucker beat her when she was carrying his own. He hurt Claire so bad that she lost the baby. Just about tears her apart to even talk about it. She can’t have any kids, Prosper. And no one knows that shit. Not even her sister. It messed her all up.”

  Prosper’s mouth closed into a hard line and his eyes slit to daggers. He bunched up his already taut muscles and clenched his fists. With barely controlled rage, he stood and paced the floor like a captured beast. All of a sudden, the room seemed too small to cage the big man in. He growled and heaved and sputtered. Furiously, Prosper picked up the shot glass and threw it against the wall with such force that bits of it came back and landed on the table. The bottle quickly followed.

  “Motherfucking, cocksucking, sonofabitch.” Prosper stood clenching and unclenching his fists. He felt the shots of anger-driven adrenaline course through his body in long rapid streaks. It took a while before all that rage landed. When it did, Prosper punched his fists bloody into the oak wall.

  “That shit’s on me. On my goddamn watch. You’re telling me that Claire’s got to live with the reminder of that good-for-nothing junkie every time she sees a kid, or a pregnant woman? Bastard will never be gone for her.” Prosper didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. Pacing like a tiger, kicking and throwing anything that got in his way.

  Reno waited him out.

  “Goddammit, Reno. No wonder she runs. How the hell is she ever supposed to want to stick around long enough to feel something that always brings her pain? How’s she supposed to want something that she’s never had? Except for the little I gave her, and I was gone too soon. Fuck Jack, for being a weak sonofabitch. And fuck Maggie too, for never seeing him for what he was. This is on me.”

  Prosper laid his arms down hard on the table. The tiny razor sharp shards of glass embedded themselves into his skin. Points of crimson glistened and pooled.

  Reno saw the sorrow in his uncle’s eyes. And the guilt.

  “I got this, Prosper. I’ve got her. I’m there. I just have to keep it that way. I’ve got to admit it, me acting like a dick for all those months didn’t help matters. But like I said, we are getting past that. And that other shit, Prosper, that ain’t on you. Raine and Claire are two of the kindest, strongest, smartest women that I’ve ever known. Part of that is because of the shit they’ve been through. That shit taught them to be tough. They are beautiful inside and out. They are survivors.”

  Prosper shot back, “Bullshit, Reno. They were babies, babies when Maggie died. No kid should ever have to be strong to survive. Not separating those kids from their weak, pathetic father was flawed, fucking thinking on their mother’s part. I never should have gone along with it. And that is something that I will regret until my dying day.”

  Prosper looked hard at his nephew then.

  “Knowing the kid part, and all the rest, you willing to take that on, Reno?”

  “Yeah, I’m willing. More than willing. So much more than that. I love her. I can’t breathe without her. Shit, Boss, I wouldn’t want to. I don’t want to be in a world without her in it. Honest to Christ, when I was lying in that car bleeding my guts out, my only fucking regret was that I would never be able to make right a
ll that had gone wrong between us.” Reno leaned forward. He had his hands on his knees, and he looked his uncle straight in the eye. “But now I have that chance and I am not gonna fuck that up. She loves me too, Prosper. Feeling that, knowing it to be true, I can take anything on.”

  Then Reno ripped his heart from his chest, held it in his hand, and placed it out on the table in front of the man that he loved.

  “Like you said, she’s your own. Question is if you want me there. I have to tell you, I’m going to marry her. With or without your blessing, Prosper. But for her sake, and for mine, sure would be nice to know you’re good with this. So when it comes down to it, do you think I’m good enough for your daughter, man?” Reno’s hand shook as he put it on the table. His whole body tensed.

  Prosper leaned in too. He dropped his hand hard on his nephew’s shoulder.

  “You’re my own too, son. You have been a part of me ever since the day you came out red and screaming. I was there that day, and I’ve been there ever since. I stepped up when your pop died, not because I had to, but because I wanted to. Hell, yeah, I think you’re good enough. But, I’m telling you right now, that whoring shit is done. I got a good idea what brought you to that, but now that’s over. And not just for now, you marry my girl, you keep that for her, forever. I know what goes on in the club, and I don’t give two flying fucks what the other brothers do. I had this same talk with D. Yeah, I did. I told Diego the same thing about marrying Raine that I am going to tell you about marrying Claire. I don’t give two shits where you get hungry, son, but you eat at home.”

  Reno nodded. “Would never do that to her.”

  Prosper took a good long look at his nephew, then nodded.

  “Claire’s good with this? You sure she wants to marry your sorry ass?” Prosper reached for the box again, opened it and took another look.

  “Yep.” Reno’s clenched fists started to open and relax. “She does. Can hardly believe it myself.”

  Then he joked, “Tying her to the chair ’til she said yes probably had something to do with it. A little trick in persuasion that I learned from my uncle.”