by Debra Kayn
"Nice show earlier, Ramchett," Crain said, lifting his bottle of beer. "Though the view of your white ass wasn't what I wanted to see."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Lee asked.
"You. Shari. The Goddamn stairs in the Sterling Building. That's a first." Crain grinned. "See what wearing the patch will get you."
"Put a good word in for me, will you, bro?" Ink stood and stretched his arms out to the side. "That's one ass I'd like to tap."
In one motion, Lee stood and picked up an empty bottle, smacked it against the edge of the table, breaking off the bottom of the glass, and held the sharp, jagged edges to Ink's throat. "Careful what you say, brother, or you won't be tapping anyone's ass anytime soon."
Ink's laughter cut off. "Jesus, man..."
Blind anger coursed through Lee's veins. He didn't belong here. The code, the rules, the brotherhood were for the others, not him. His colors were black and white, not labeled on the back of his vest, representing what he lived by. All he knew was survival.
Bantorus members viewed the patch he wore, the hand he'd held up when sworn in as a lifer, and trusted him. He was born into the club, his dad was fucking VP of the head chapter, and his brother was the fucking president of the Federal Charter. He tightened his grip on Ink's T-shirt, pushing him away.
Inside, he wasn't afraid to walk outside the line.
Inside, he protected himself.
Inside, he'd kill anyone that touched Shari.
Shari deserved his protection. She came to Federal because she had no choice, and that was Los Li's fault, and he planned to make them pay. Every damn one of them would bear the scars of their past.
"All right, it's over," Kurt said. "Lee, downstairs. Ink, get out of sight."
The music stopped and everyone stood around Lee in silence. He looked past them all and met Shari's gaze.
She opened her mouth as if to speak. He shook his head stopping her. She looked away, but not before the raw hurt etched in her eyes hit him. She'd pushed away her anger toward him when she thought he needed protected, opening herself up to him again.
There was nothing she could do about the way he lived his life. He needed to keep people away, least they learn things they really don't want to know.
Kurt walked ahead of him. Lee followed his brother into the hallway and down the stairs. In the weight room, Kurt flipped on the lights, grabbed a pair of gloves, and tossed them to him.
He held the boxing gloves in front of him. "What?"
"You want to bust someone's face." Kurt stepped into the ring. "I'm giving you the opportunity."
"I don't need to fight you." Lee said, tossing the gloves to a nearby chair.
"Fine." Kurt punched his padded fists together and bounced on his toes. "Let me beat the shit out of you for staying away all these years."
Kurt observed him, not backing down. Lee picked up the gloves and stepped into the ring. All their life, they'd stayed away from competing against each other.
His brother made a life for himself inside the ring, working his way to the top in the underground fighting league. Lee slipped on the gloves and punched his hands together. Unlike Kurt, he'd never had the need to test himself, to powerhouse over another man with strength and skills. Growing up, he stood on the sidelines with bigger plans.
That didn't mean he didn't get in the ring occasionally and do his best to kick Kurt's ass.
"Bring it." Lee jabbed Kurt's shoulder.
One quick punch to Lee's midsection put him in the mood to hit back. He danced on his toes, no stranger to boxing. The knowledge that Kurt could kill him with one punch was never a concern.
Kurt might beat the shit out of him, but his brother wouldn't kill him. That's what separated him from his brother. Outside the ring, against Los Li, Lee would kill to win.
He struck back, missing, and Kurt lifted his brow in amusement. Lee grinned. Many fights started this way between them. Fun, teasing, cockiness.
"You worry Dad and Taylor," Kurt said, punching Lee in the stomach.
He grunted, squeezing out his breath. "Right."
Sweat coated his upper body. He danced from side to side. Kurt wasn't telling him anything he didn't know. That's why he kept his visits to Pitnam to a minimum and his phone calls home short. If they knew what he was really doing, it'd kill them.
He ducked, feigning left. "It'll be over soon."
"How soon," Kurt asked, not even out of breath.
Lee swung out and connected with Kurt's jaw. Adrenaline fueled him. "Soon."
"Fuck that." Kurt popped him in the eye.
Pressure exploded along his cheekbone. His vision blurred, and he squinted seeing past the pain to punch Kurt with a left, and a right.
"You want it to end?" Lee struck out, hitting blindly. "Let me finish the job without questioning me."
Kurt planted both his gloves on Lee's chest and pushed him back. Lee rocked back on his heels and let his arms drop. The fun of going a few rounds had ended, because the sport was no longer about boxing.
"You can't go on cleaning up Los Li's troubles," Kurt said, his voice raw and low.
Lee ripped off his glove and fingered the tender skin around his eye. Both of them knew it wasn't cleaning. What he did was kill the enemy. "It's almost over."
"At the cost of what?" Kurt stuck his gloved hand under his arm and pulled his arm free. "You come back and you're messed up. You reach out one fucking night for me to help you, and the next thing I know, you're fucking around with one of our girls. Tonight, you had one of my members by the throat, and you're not saying a damn thing. I'm worried about you."
Lee grunted. He didn't want to talk about what he'd done all these years. Kurt wanted to go back to how Lee was as a teenager, and that part of him was dead. He wasn't the same person.
"You're breaking, bro. You're scrambling to understand and needing to talk, you're playing with fire getting involved with Shari when you know she's under your watch, and you're keeping your distance from your family. Your MC brothers are wondering if you're committed."
"Bull shit," he said. "I've got it all under control."
"What happens after the Feds take down Los Li, huh? What happens to you?"
"Everything goes back to how it should've been before Los Li touched our lives," he said.
Kurt looked him in the eyes. "It'll never be the same. Life was shit even before Taylor was kidnapped. Mom rejected us...you can't go back and fix everything. We've all moved on. Dad's moved on. Taylor's moved on. Risa will fucking move on with my help. You're the only one with your boots planted in shit you can't change."
Lee looked away and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Kurt would never understand.
"Let it go," Kurt said.
Lee walked over, picked up his vest, and slipped it on. He had to get out of here.
"Hey, you know I'm here for you. I've always been here." Kurt said and continued after a pause. "I love you, bro."
He stopped in front of the door, met Kurt's gaze, and said, "Love you back, brother."
Then he walked out of the room, reminded of their childhood of sleeping in the basement away from their mom and her latest live-in boyfriend, fending for themselves, and scrounging for the last spoonful of peanut butter in the jar. Kurt always fed Lee first, kept him safe, and made sure not a night passed where he questioned if he was loved. In the end, Lee wasn't sure there was anything left inside of him that warranted that kind of devotion.
Chapter Eleven
Shari tacked the poster announcing the opening of Silver Girls to the corkboard in the front of Country Mart, near the automatic doors. She straightened the paper and stepped back. All the posters around town were in place, and she'd received many congratulations over the news from the residents of Federal as they stopped to read the signs.
Tomorrow night, the Sterling Building would open the doors for every miner in town, and the few males who somehow escaped working deep under the ground while living in Federal. She smiled, excit
ed that all their preparations were finished.
"All done?" Lee asked.
Her good mood vanished. She slung her purse over her shoulder. "Yes. That was the last poster."
Lee walked beside her to the truck. She felt him bump against her purse, and she moved farther away. Everywhere she'd gone today, he stuck with her. She'd reached a new claustrophobic level thirty long minutes ago.
No stranger to having an escort, she usually enjoyed one of the Bantorus members keeping her company on errands. While Lee was physically with her, he kept himself emotionally shut off from her. Since he wanted to act as if they hadn't had sex in the Sterling Building, and he hadn't chased after her for days prior to that, then fine, she would too.
She glanced at him and kept walking. Whatever was going on behind those dead eyes of his, he wasn't willing to share. No man had ever made her regret having sex before, but she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much he'd insulted her or how disappointed in herself she was for allowing herself to being used.
Lee reached the truck first. She squeezed between him and the door, but Lee wasn't giving her much room. She took her purse off her shoulder and turned sideways to keep from touching him. Before she could make it by him, he lifted her up onto the bench seat.
His hand tangled with her purse strap, ripping the bag out of her grasp. The contents spilled out onto the pavement.
A tampon rolled out of her purse and came to a stop in front of his black, leather boot. He squatted down. She jumped out of the truck and snatched the rest of the feminine products that she kept hidden in the little pouch on the inside of her purse into her hand. "I can do it."
He ignored her, and held her purse open. She quickly picked up her wallet, her sunglasses, her pistol, and her makeup pouch and dumped them inside while Lee picked up the handful of coins that'd scattered.
A small knife lay beside Lee's boot. Her heart raced and she peered closer. The worn silver overlay shined in the sun. She picked up the knife and ran her thumb over the initials B.H.T. Bruce Howard Tango.
"Where did this come from?" she asked, holding up the knife.
Lee closed her purse and handed it to her. "What?"
She thrust her hand out in front of him, shaking from her head to her toes. "This wasn't in my purse. Where did it come from?"
Lee held on to her elbow and stood with her. "It must've been in there, unless someone lost it in the parking lot."
"No, it's...nevermind." She peered around the parking lot, searching for answers.
Her uncle had to be around here somewhere. He was the one who held the knife in safekeeping for her, and he'd never give it to someone else.
There were two cars parked at the front of the store, but both had Idaho license plates. The other vehicles in the back of the lot, she recognized as belonging to the employees at Country Mart. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth and she stepped around the truck to look in front of the sheriff's office.
There was only one patrol car parked in the front of the building. She walked a few more feet and studied the sidewalk up and down Main Street. Besides locals and a few tourists milling around, nothing stood out as different. She pressed her fist to her chest, holding tight to her father's knife. Uncle Ted had kept the knife for her until she was older, but always brought it out of his dresser drawer to let her hold while she was growing up.
When she became responsible enough to keep it in her possessions, she'd asked him to hold on to it. She swallowed hard. For some reason, she liked the idea of Uncle Ted being accountable for the only keepsake she had left of her parents. As if making her uncle hold on to the knife would create a bubble around him, and he'd never leave her the way her parents had left.
In the end, her childhood wish failed, and Uncle Ted slipped out of her life. She had no idea if his long absence was job related or if something had happened to him. Because he worked for the federal government, he never divulged what he exactly did for a living. She rubbed the engraving on the knife. No, he had to be okay. Somehow, someway, he made sure she found the knife and knew that he was alive.
She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes. Holding her dad's knife opened up questions that she had no answer to or could get without confiding in someone else. She'd promised never to reveal her relationship with her uncle or mention her real last name.
"Hey." Lee stood behind her and rubbed her bare arms. "You're shaking."
She let herself lean back against his solid form before she caught herself. When she pulled away, rational thoughts returned. She turned around. The knife wasn't in her bag this morning when she left the club, or this afternoon when she'd paid the club's water bill while she was in town. That left only one way for the knife to get in her purse.
"You did it," she said, grabbing his arm. "How?"
Lee frowned. "I don't know what—"
"Don't lie to me." She held onto him tighter, not letting him walk away. "Who gave you the knife?"
"Doll..." Lee looked over her head. "Let's go back to the club. You haven't eaten all day. You've been running around cleaning and organizing for several days. You need to rest if you're dancing tomorrow night."
Her body vibrated with excess energy. She wanted to punch him.
"You asshole," she whispered, stepping around him.
He grabbed her arm. "Shari, listen to me."
"Why should I?" She slapped at his hand until he let her go. "You want to order me around, have sex with me, and then go all cold and not acknowledge what we did, that's fine by me."
"Stop talking," he said.
She shook her head. "But when you are the only one around and I find this—she held up her fist—you're messing with the only thing that matters to me."
"Shari—"
"Fuck you, Lee." She turned around and walked toward the store, because she was not going to get in the truck with him or be anywhere around him right now.
Wayne, the nightshift supervisor at Meghoni Mine, walked out of the store swinging a plastic bag at his side. She hurried over to him.
"Hey, Wayne," she said, threading her hand underneath his bulky arm.
Wayne looked down from his six foot six inch height to her breasts. "Hi back, sweetheart."
"Do you have a few minutes to run me out to the club?" she asked, ignoring Lee who stood where she left him in the middle of the parking lot. "I'll give you a free dance tomorrow night."
Wayne stopped and frowned. "No tips?"
"Nope. It'll be on the house." She tugged his arm, but he refused to move. "But we need to hurry. I'm in a rush to get home."
"Where's the riders?" Wayne peered behind her and scanned the parking lot.
The moment he spotted Lee, his already rigid body seemed to expand. She groaned. Lee headed their way, and going by the confident pace and the laser eye contact he held with Wayne, Lee had no plans on letting her escape.
Lee lifted his chin. "Lee Ramchett. Bantorus Motorcycle Club."
"Wayne Soke," Wayne held out his hand. "Foreman at Meghoni Silver Mine."
Lee shook the miner's hand, and gazed at Shari. "Go hop in the truck, doll."
Her jaw opened and she clamped her teeth together. She wasn't going anywhere with him, and she was past listening to him...Bantorus or not, she was done.
"Is there a problem?" Wayne asked.
"No."
"Yes."
"No," Lee repeated.
The knife, warmed from her hand, reminded her of everything important. No matter how attracted and fascinating she found Lee, he had no place in her life. A wandering nomad who as of today used her, lied to her, and wasn't worth the aggravation she was currently going through.
Lee's eyes might be alive and determined now, but she'd seen the emotional light go out. The truth spoke volumes.
Because she refused to use others or lower herself into being miserable, she reached out and squeezed Wayne's arm. "No problem. I forgot Lee was here. I'll catch a ride with him."
"No dance
tomorrow?" Wayne winked.
She smiled, because she was a performer. "For you? Half price, honey."
Wayne laughed and said, "See you then."
She strolled to the truck, hopped in, and shut the door. Buckled in and hands clasped together on her lap, she ignored Lee when he sat behind the steering wheel. The last thing she wanted to do was be in the same car as him. He had her on an emotional ride already without forcing her to put up with more of his company.
She dreaded going back to the clubhouse. The girls would question her mood, and the cabin gave her no privacy. She rubbed her thumb against the knife and stared out the window as Lee drove her out of town. She needed space to understand what had happened.
Her dad's knife wouldn't magically appear on the ground beside her purse.
The purse Lee knocked off her lap.
Somehow, Lee put the knife on the ground for a reason, and she was determined to find out why. How did Lee get the knife? She couldn't allow herself to believe Uncle Ted was gone.
Chapter Twelve
Shari walked up the stairs to the clubhouse. Lee remained behind, leaning against the truck. When he'd planted the knife in her purse coming out of the store, he thought she'd discover it while she was alone. That way she'd come to her own conclusions on how the knife got in her purse.
Tango had said the knife was a gift. Gifts were supposed to make a person feel happy. The fear that'd come over Shari pissed him off. If Tango were here, he'd kick his ass.
He still couldn't believe his fucking hand got caught on the strap of her purse and spilled everything out for her to see while they were in town. He stared at the club door swinging closed.
His plan was to keep his relationship with Shari's uncle secret. He'd watch over her and keep her safe for a month or two, and then they'd both be free to live their lives the way they wanted.
Instead, he'd stepped over the line and had sex with her. Hell, he'd been with her twice, not to mention all the back and forth that had him panting hard for her. He'd gone in to guarding Shari by demanding all of her attention, and he liked what she gave him back. He couldn't help but noticed the soft sigh that came before her body warmed. The way she touched the tip of her tongue to her front teeth before she smiled. The way she always laid her hand on him when she talked or the way she pretended to keep her distance when everything about her screamed for him to keep doing what he was doing. And Jesus, her scent. He could survive on her sweetness alone, and the hell with needing oxygen.
