Cavanagh - Serenity Series, Vol I (Seeking Serenity)

by Eden Butler

  Declan seems satisfied with that, nodding to Mollie and exchanging a glance with Vaughn that is polite, if not friendly. “In the meantime, I don’t think it would be wise for you to go back to your apartment. Not until the locks are changed again.”

  “No.” Mollie wouldn’t waver on this point. She’d spent weeks waiting for the Super to handle the damage left by the burglary. She’s slept next to Layla, listening to her low snore, to the little whines Honey made as he slept between them. She wanted her own bed, her own space so she could relax, so she could sort out all the drama that had occurred in her own head without any interruptions.

  “Mollie…” Autumn’s voice holds a warning, but Mollie knows she is not angry; she knows that her friend’s concern is only for her safety.

  She cuts the redhead off with one nod. “I know what you’re going to say and I appreciate the concern. I do.” She stands, feeling like she needs to look at all of them to be heard. “My dad didn’t raise a coward and I’m not going to let some punk run me out of my home.” When Declan opens his mouth to protest, she waves him off. “There’s a 40 cal under my pillow and I know how to use it. I’ve got a bat under the cushions in my sofa and cans of mace in every drawer of my apartment. When I say I know how to take care of myself, that isn’t me making claims I can’t back up. I’m a biker’s kid. I didn’t spend my childhood selling Girl Scout cookies and playing with Barbies.”

  “That may be, Mollie, but they got to you once before.” Mollie whips her head to Vaughn at his words, tamping down the instinct to lash out at him.

  “I was caught off guard. There were two of them and I wasn’t prepared.” She lifts her chin, determined. “I am now.”

  “Fine.” Declan’s frown tells Mollie that he isn’t pleased with her stubbornness. “But would you at least let us take you home? Maybe pick you up in the morning?” He walks in front of her and when he speaks, his voice is soft, cautious. “I’d feel a bit better if someone was with you.”

  “I can stay,” Vaughn says and despite their brief interlude in the lobby, Mollie isn’t sure she wants to be alone with him. Not under the present circumstance.

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “Why are you being stubborn?” Vaughn asks.

  Seeming to sense the looming fight, Declan cuts Vaughn off with a wave of his hand. “It’s fine. We’ll take care of her, mate. Don’t worry.” He looks back at Mollie. “The alumni’s security will be on campus in the morning. You try to get hold of your da and McShane and I will come round when you need to go somewhere. That alright with you?” Mollie doesn’t immediately answer, thinking that her friends are already in enough danger just by being with her. One look at Autumn, though, squashes any thoughts she might have about leaving town and putting space between them. “Fine. But I don’t want you disrupting your lives because of me.” Declan’s smile is wide and mirrors the one on Autumn’s face. They are impossibly smug when they get their way.

  Whistling down the hall echoes and Joe enters the room, his mood decidedly improved. “Mollie, my love, how are you?” He moves around Vaughn to kiss her cheek.

  “Can we go now?” Autumn asks her dad and he begins detailing the instructions he received from the doctors.

  Mollie barely notices when Vaughn excuses himself from the room, but she catches the expression on Declan’s face and the way the Irishman stares at Vaughn as he lingers in the hall and pulls out his phone. His gaze meets hers and he stands at her side, his voice low, concerned.

  “Be careful of that one, love.” He looks over his shoulder, eyes narrowed at Vaughn’s back before he returns his attention to Mollie. “Something tells me he’s keeping things to himself. I don’t like it.”

  SIX

  “Mississippi State Penitentiary. You are receiving a call from a convicted felon. Do you accept the call?”

  “Yes.” Mollie thinks the guards love playing that message, as though she wouldn’t know who was calling her from “Parchman Farm.” From what she knows of them, they like to rub salt into gapping, festering wounds and treat the inmates worse than day laborers. “Daddy?”

  “I’m here, Mimi. How’s my girl?”

  Hearing his voice, though it is rough, gravely, is always a pleasure; it’s like she’d been holding something weighted, crushing on her shoulders until she heard “How’s my girl?” coming from the other line. Two seconds after hearing his voice, the weight wasn’t quite so heavy.

  “I’m good. I miss you.”

  “I miss you too, sugar. You okay?”

  She wished she had the time to simply chat with him; tell him how beautiful the mountains were this time of year, how the sound of the lake running the length of the campus could still manage to ease her mind; how loudly Layla screamed when Donovan doused her as she lay sunbathing with ice water and flour; how sometimes she misses the sound of the porch swing moving in the wind at the Compound, the easy, constant drone of the chain holding the swing up singing to her like a lullaby. Most of all, she wants to tell him how she loved falling asleep to the sound of him playing his acoustic Gibson and the low, smooth melody of his tenor voice in the dark silence of her childhood home. But there isn’t time. There was never enough time, not when they spoke, not when she visited him.

  Mollie leans against the back of her sofa, the thick tufts of the cushions holding a perfect outline of her body. “I got an abscess. It’s getting worse.” She immediately falls into the coded language they’d invented when they needed to discuss things that nosey guards shouldn’t hear.

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “You did, huh?”

  He takes a breath and Mollie doesn’t like the wheeze she hears in his inhale.

  “You know I’ve got my eyes on you, Mimi. Don’t ever think that your Daddy ain’t looking out for you.”

  “I know, Daddy. I know it.”

  “Good. Now, tell me about this abscess. Is it just yours?”

  “It is, but you know the girls. You know how they like their sweets. Lately, when they’ve been coming around, they wind up with a few abscesses of their own.”

  He takes another labored breath, this time releasing a cough that sounds thick. “I’m gonna see about fixing this.”

  “Daddy…”

  “It’s okay, baby. I can get this straightened out.”

  “How are you gonna do that?” He doesn’t speak and she knows it means someone in the MC will be showing up. “You got one of your own? One that maybe makes mine worse?”

  “I might have one, but now is not the time to discuss what’s ailing me. I just want you to take care of yourself and your girls. I can help. In fact, I’m sending you something.”

  Mollie closes her eyes, trying hard not to get worked up. She knows that sending her something, really means someone from her father’s club will soon be making an appearance. They were kind men, fiercely protective, but when they drove into town, they brought complications with them. Last time it happened when Mollie was sixteen and her mother’s domineering, meddlesome then-boyfriend decided he could take up the mantle of telling her what to do. When she broke curfew by twenty minutes, he locked her in her closet for two days. Layla managed to sneak in, to slip Mollie a cell that she used to contact her father. Then, hell broke loose in Cavanagh. Bloody, “I don’t know where your boyfriend ran off to” hell. Mollie didn’t like to think of what had really happened to him.

  “The last time I had an abscess, you sent me that puppy. It pissed and shit all over the place, remember that?”

  Her father’s chuckle is deep and she hears the faint sound of a full laugh that he lets die off. “Yeah, well, that’s because your mama is allergic. To every damn thing.”

  Mollie smiles, knowing that her father means that her mother doesn’t like complications. She doesn’t like anyone who doesn’t conform and she especially doesn’t like anything that reminds her of her father. Mollie is a daily, constant reminder of the life her mother pretends she never lived.

  “She doe
sn’t like mess, but this isn’t her problem.”

  “I want you to go see her.” The humor is gone from his voice and Mollie worries that things have escalated. That had to be the case, or her father wouldn’t insist that she warn her mother. He knows how little they see each other and why Mollie made the conscious choice to stay away from the woman. “I want you to stay with her. In fact, it might be a good idea to give the package to your mama.”

  “Daddy, you know that’s not going to work.”

  “It will if you tell her how bad that abscess is, sugar.” His voice has grown deeper, the inflection somber enough to make Mollie’s heart stammer. “She’s your mama.”

  “She’s Katie’s mama.”

  He sighs. “I know, baby, but I want you to try to get her to help you take care of it. I want you to try real hard. If that abscess gets infected…” He doesn’t finish his thought, but she knows what he’s trying to say. He couldn’t bear it if something happened to Mollie. He’s said that many, many times over the years.

  “It won’t. I can take care of it.”

  “You can, I’m sure, but I’d feel better once that package heads your way. And Mimi?”

  “Yes sir?”

  “Don’t try to throw it out.” That’s code for ‘don’t be a brat and get mad and kick the guy out.’ “You’re not a kid anymore and I really don’t have say so over what you do, but for me, please, you hold onto that package until I tell you. You hear me?”

  He wouldn’t let this go, no matter how hard Mollie tried to reason with him. She did, after all, get her stubbornness from him. Whoever he was sending would take direction from her father, no matter how angry or frustrated she got. Mollie knew that was inevitable. They would shadow her like a stalker. They would make her daily routine difficult and she knew they’d try to limit the time she spent with her friends. That wouldn’t be fun to explain. Her father wanted her camping out at her mother’s place, supposedly secure behind the walls of the gated community. But there was no way in hell her mother would ever agree to some crusty biker defiling her pristine home.

  “When are you sending it?” She needed to prepare, to try her best to soften her mother up to the idea of another biker invading their lives.

  “Should be there now, actually.”

  That was unexpected. Her father had never sent anyone in without a warning. That he’d already had the package delivered, told her that things were worse than she thought. Mollie moves her hair around her pinky, nervous about how disruptive her life would soon become and she was just about to tell her father that she needed time, but then three knocks beat on her door and she knows it’s already too late. But when she looks through the peep hole and sees Vaughn standing there, duffle bag held firm in his large fist, a quick lick of dread and suspicion flashes into her mind.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks him, opening the door and holding a hand over the mouthpiece of her cell.

  She doesn’t like how wide his smile is, how that smug smile is the only expression he carries on his face. “Tell your Dad I’m here.”

  Mollie feels the thick wad of alarm bunch down her breath. “What?”

  Vaughn steps across the threshold and shuts the door behind him. “Tell Malone his package has arrived.”

  Mollie Malone’s temper is a fuse slowly burning before the impending explosion. Vaughn can see it in the way her eyes have narrowed so small that minute wrinkles have formed at the corners. Her temper has become a powder keg and each look he gives her only fuels the fire.

  “I know I should have told you sooner,” he manages, but before he can finish his explanation, Mollie throws her cell phone at him.

  “Of all the sneaky, slimy piece of shit moves, Vaughn Winchester. Ugh.”

  He dodges the cell, catches it, but isn’t quick enough to miss the television remote that dings him across his jaw. “Dammit, Mollie, calm down.” When she takes a swing at him, he easily catches her fist. “Stop it.” She’s wiry, squirms against him, but she is strong, Vaughn knew that from the day out on the rugby pitch. He just manages to keep her fist from flying yet again before he turns her around, chest to her back, arms circling her. “You have every reason to be pissed off at me, but please know it was all to protect you.” She jerks against him and Vaughn closes his eyes, breathing in to distract himself from the feel of her small body rubbing against his. “I wanted to tell you. I did. But your father didn’t want me screwing with your life.” Another breath, this one moving Mollie’s thick hair onto her shoulder. “He knew how pissed you’d be.”

  “And did he know you’d kissed me?” She straightens her back, trying to move out of his grip. “Because I promise you, that wouldn’t be part of what he would have wanted.” A look over her shoulder and Vaughn can tell she’s still ready to throttle him. That gaze is full of venom.

  He lets her go, working his fingers through his hair before he slumps onto her sofa. “No. That wasn’t part of the plan.”

  Mollie moves slowly, eyes never leaving his, venom in that expression only growing more poisonous before she sits on the sofa, nearly on top of the armrest away from him. “What was the plan? Get into my delicates to protect me?” Those last two words are animated by air quotes.

  “I didn’t want in your delicates.” When she cocks an eyebrow at him, Vaughn looks away. “Not at first.” This comes under his breath and he hopes she doesn’t hear it.

  “All this time, all these months. It was all an act? You giving me your hoodie? You being worried about the burglary? All of that was because of the mission? She throws a pillow at him when he continues to look away from her. “Was it?”

  Vaughn doesn’t want to answer her. For some reason he can’t fully comprehend, he doesn’t want her knowing what he thought about her when they first met. But she deserves answers. “I thought you were gonna be some spoiled little brat.” Mollie’s low gasp, an instant insult, has her tossing another pillow at him, which he deflects, expecting her anger. “What the hell was I supposed to think? You lived with your mom in an exclusive area; Cavanagh is a private university.”

  “Yep that screams, ‘spoiled rotten.’ That’s her money, not mine and I promise you my sister saw more of it than I did.”

  “I was wrong,” he tells her, rubbing his fingers along the soft fabric of the pillow. “You surprised me.”

  “Because I wasn’t a little shit?”

  Vaughn laughs, remembers her attitude when he called her dad a squid. “No, you were still a little shit.” He easily repels the smack she attempts against his shoulder. “You surprised me because you weren’t anything like I expected. I didn’t think I’d like you so much.”

  She doesn’t respond and Vaughn can tell that her anger at being tricked and her stubbornness was keeping a reaction off her face. But then her eyes slip toward him, reach his gaze and hold it, and Mollie softens, moves her hand toward his, holds it and Vaughn lets himself enjoy the way her hand disappears under his palm.

  He wants to kiss her, just now. The urge is there, a nagging little compulsion that he finds hard to push back every time he’s around Mollie. A quick glance at her, and Vaughn wants to repeat the flux of heat, of desire she worked in him with just one, slight kiss in the ER waiting room. Mollie leans back against the sofa, moves her face to stare at him and he knows what she wants, what she needs. But then he remembers the threat that lingers, remembers that he is a disaster at relationships and he sits up, running the list of details in his mind: Someone had always watched her, Mojo Malone’s MC brothers, but Viv had told him, those brothers couldn’t keep their noses clean, another casualty in the drug trade that Mojo wanted his club out of and Vaughn had to insert himself in Mollie’s life to keep her father happy. He was the dependable replacement who needed a job, or at least, a purpose beyond getting his clients into competition shape. He wasn’t expecting the experience to be pleasant. He wasn’t expecting to like her so damn much.

  Vaughn tries to relax, rests against the sofa, slips his arm out
along the back of it. The job, the mission he tells himself, catching the disappointment in her frown when he takes his hand away from her.

  “Listen, we’re stuck with each other. I’ve got a job to do and your dad wants you protected. I know not telling you why I was hanging around was shitty, but that really wasn’t my call.” He leans his elbow on his knees, holding his head in his hands. “But things got sticky and the more I hung around you, the more I realized you needed to know.” Vaughn glances at her, not liking how Mollie has returned to the other side of the sofa. “The time was never right and my sister has been working—”

  She interrupts him with a flick of her hand, silencing him immediately before she heads for the small stereo near a bookcase to his left. With one push of a button, the walls rattle with some loud dubstep monstrosity that has Vaughn’s ears pounding. Then Mollie settles next to him on the sofa, leaning so close that he can feel the press of her breast on his bicep.

  “If Autumn stopped some asshole trying to get in my place,” she whispers, “and we were gone a while at the hospital, then maybe the same asshole had time to come back here.”

  She smells like vanilla again, and Vaughn has to work to push the thought of pulling her onto his lap and kissing her out of his mind. He turns his head, bringing his lips to her ear. “You think you got some bugs?”

  She nods and Vaughn likes the way her soft hair feels against his face. “It wouldn’t be the first time. Normally I check, but I haven’t had time. Daddy gave me some equipment for my sixteenth birthday.” When Vaughn pulls back, looks at her like she’s a little bit crazy, Mollie shrugs. “We had a weird home life.”

  Vaughn squirms on the sofa, the sweet, delicious scent of her skin, of her hair wafting in his nose. Just a job almost rumbles in his head, but he knows it’s a lie now. Vaughn can’t deny what he wants, how much he wants her, but he has a mission to carry out. They needed to get this situation handled so he gets to the day where he has no hesitation kissing her; where her on his lap, his hands all over her won’t piss anyone off. Well, except her father.