“You know.” Pup leaned forward, face comically serious, voice dropping to a hiss. “Killing people kinda stuff.”
“Ah. Gotcha.”
Pup sat back, looking pleased that he had an audience. “The guys tell all sorts of stories about him. Shit knows which are true and which are just tales.”
The most dangerous man you’re ever gonna meet, Candy had said of the Englishman. Note to self.
Colin swallowed a mouthful of barbecue and said, “Where’s y’all’s president? Why didn’t I meet him tonight?”
Worry flashed across the kid’s face, maybe even a touch of fear. He swallowed, Adam’s apple jumping in his skinny throat. “Crockett…he don’t get out a whole lot anymore. He’s…well, he’s gettin’ up there in years, you know, goes to bed early.” His laugh was nervous.
Colin read between the lines. “So Candy’s pretty much running the show around here, isn’t he?”
Pup dampened his lips, hesitating.
Behind him, Colin heard the distinctive clip of female footfalls, followed by the unmistakable honey smoothness of a female voice.
“Candy’s thought he runs the show his whole life, wherever he was,” she said, moving around him. He didn’t want to swivel his head and be too obvious in looking at her, so he waited, letting her move through his peripheral vision as she stepped behind the bar and came into full view. “He’s a bossy dick,” she continued, “but lovable enough to get away with it.”
She was tall, all legs, and crowned with a thick mane of blonde hair. She had one of those narrow, heart-shaped faces that emphasized the lips and eyes. Her makeup was light, tasteful. A small silver pendant of some sort hung from a simple chain around her neck, and his eyes traveled down from there, taking in the way she filled out her simple scoop-neck t-shirt. Fantastic tits, little waist, hips made for hands.
“Puppy, are you telling stories again?” she asked, pulling a mug down from the overhead rack. They had hard cider on tap, and she drew one, took a healthy sip.
His eyes lingered on her lips as they touched the glass, her throat as she swallowed.
It had been a while, he realized suddenly. He was six-four and built like a brick shit-house, so the ladies looked his way, even though he was a prospect. But he’d been kept too busy to indulge much with the club girls in NOLA, always stepping, fetching, mopping and enduring everyone’s hazing.
Desire teased at his stomach now, watching this woman drink. He liked ‘em tall…and blonde…and stacked.
Shit, between the food and now the groupie selection, he might never want to go back to Louisiana.
“No,” Pup answered her, drawing himself up tall on his stool. “I’m just trying to make our new prospect feel welcome.”
“Hmm.” She set her glass down on the bar, blue eyes narrow and unconvinced. “And how’s that going?”
“Good,” Colin said, drawing her gaze. He gave her his best smile, the one that landed him invitations into countless bedrooms. “Even better, now that you’re here.”
She stared at him, and not in a good way.
“I’m Colin,” he offered.
She gave him a quick, tight smile. “And I’m not interested.” Her heels were loud as gunshots on the hardwood when she plucked up her glass and stalked off.
Pup laughed. “You know that song? ‘Shot Down in Flames’?”
“No.” Colin stuffed more cornbread in his mouth and muttered around it. “Never heard it.”
Four
Jenny
She heard the low rumble of voices on the other side of the sanctuary door, but she didn’t knock. All such formalities had long since been disbanded. And no women were ever allowed in the sanctuary anyway; none save her.
Inside, the suite of rooms was dim, lit only by the glow of the massive HD TV affixed to the far wall. The living area was cozy, comfortable, and smelled of cigars, Scotch, and other secret masculine things. Candy was parked in his usual chair, socked feet up on the ottoman. It had to be Fox in the recliner opposite; no one else vibrated that kind of calm intensity through the dark the way Charlie Fox did.
Talk ceased, and their heads turned toward her, just shadows against the TV.
“Boys,” she greeted.
Candy was smoking, a thick tendril of cigar smoke curling above his head. “Where you been?”
She grinned to herself. “Does it matter?”
“Yeah.” He was dead serious.
A soft crinkling of leather meant Fox had shifted in his chair; his attention was fixed on her, she could tell.
She sighed. “Would you two old hens quit worrying? I went to see Aunt Edith. She needed groceries and a little TLC. Is that alright with you?” she challenged.
Candy exhaled with a low hiss through his teeth. “Did you tell her I said hello?”
“Yeah. I told her that her favorite no-good nephew said ‘hey.’”
He snorted. “She always liked me better than you.”
“Says you.” Jenny sighed as she kicked off her shoes and set them neatly in the rack by the door. She’d spent hours with Aunt Edith, organizing her fridge, cleaning her small apartment, playing Scrabble with the elderly woman until Edith had begun to doze in her chair. Her face hurt from smiling and her back was tight from bending low to hear what her aunt had whispered in her small, frail voice. Being Southern meant taking care of your family, and that was no easy task.
“I met your new prospect,” she said as she straightened, an image of the tall, dark-headed man filling her mind. Attractive was too mild a word. He’d given off that dark vibe that suggested heat, power, and licentious intent. He probably thought of himself as a playboy; she’d detected something more feral and disturbing than that. Something dangerous.
“Yeah?” Candy said. “What do ya think?”
“I think he’s gonna make a terrible prospect.”
He laughed. “Too bad you weren’t a boy, Jen. You coulda been my right-hand guy.”
“You’ve got plenty of those, brother,” she tossed back. “Night, you two.”
“Night,” two voices – one Texan, one English – said together.
She was all the way down the hall and just slipping into her room before their conversation started back up again.
“…Riley?” she heard Fox say, and she froze, one hand curling tight on the edge of the doorframe.
It was funny how a single word, just a regular ordinary name, could render a person down to her most elemental, reactionary pieces. But that’s what that name always did. Remembered pain fisted her lungs; all the old bruises were long healed, but they flared hot beneath her skin now, memories seared down to the bone.
“I saw him today,” Candy answered, voice barely audible. He breathed a long, sad sound. “He’s getting out. Couple weeks, probably. Overcrowding or some shit.”
“Christ,” Fox said.
Yeah. Christ.
Jenny couldn’t listen anymore. She ducked into her room and eased the door shut silently, going to the bed and letting it catch her weight before her knees gave out.
Riley. Getting out.
She heard a distressed sound building in her throat and pressed her knuckles to her lips. She couldn’t do this, not now. Panicking would solve nothing. And she wasn’t that woman anymore; she didn’t have reactions to things.
She put both hands down on the mattress beside her and took a sequence of deep, steadying breaths. She tipped her head back, brought her shoulders together, felt her chest open up. The exercise the therapist had walked her through; the therapist Candy had forced her to see, back when he’d first come home.
The tension bled out of her, draining from her head, down through her throat, leaving through her fingers. She imagined the soft fleece blanket beneath her absorbing the emotion, dispersing it somewhere safe, where it couldn’t take hold of her. When she felt calm, she opened her eyes, straightened, surveyed the room.
They called this wing of the clubhouse the sanctuary, and that’s exactly what it was. Sev
en years ago, when Candy came home, when he cleaned out the club Magnificent Seven style, he’d promised a new era for the Texas chapter. The renovations, physical and mental, had been slow, but steady. They had started here, with this added-on space that was their home, and then worked their way through the rest of the building. All that remained was the exterior at this point.
Back here, they each had a bedroom and bathroom. There was the living room where the boys were currently watching TV, plus a small kitchen and a porch that overlooked a long flat stretch of dirt where she watched the sun set most nights.
Jenny Snow was thirty-nine and she lived in an MC clubhouse with her older brother. A truly charmed existence compared to the life she’d finally shaken off seven years ago.
The fine tremors had subsided, and the knot in her stomach was gone.
“Get it together, Snow,” she muttered, and got up to change.
When she was in yoga pants and one of Candy’s old threadbare Longhorns t-shirts, she headed back out to the kitchen, in search of a snack. She’d skipped dinner, dealing with Aunt Edith, and that new prospect’s loaded-up barbecue plate had set off her hunger.
“Candy go out?” she asked as she passed through the living room and found only Fox.
“Yeah.”
The kitchen was a tiny affair, just a bank of cabinets, stovetop, microwave and fridge. “You hungry?” she asked over her shoulder as she pulled out the makings of a turkey sandwich.
“Nah. I wouldn’t turn down another drink, though.”
She grinned and shook her head as she put her sandwich together. She popped it on a plate and grabbed the half-full bottle of Macallan sitting out on the counter.
He held out his glass when she reached him and she poured a generous two fingers.
“Charlie, you’ve got a drinking problem, you know that?” she asked, dropping into Candy’s abandoned chair across from him.
The Scotch caught the light from the TV as he swirled it around. His eyes glinted, an unnerving blue in the dark. “Obviously.”
She laughed and snuggled back deep into the chair. It smelled like Candy, and that was a comfort.
He downed half the drink in one practiced swallow. “How much did you hear?”
She shrugged. “About what?”
“You know what.”
She took a bite of sandwich and stalled. “Enough.”
He sat forward, and his voice gentled, gained traces of something like emotion. “It’s not going to be like it was last time, Jen. I promise you that.”
“Is that why you’re here?” Her throat tightened, some of the panic lapping back in. “Because of…” She didn’t want to say his name, so she didn’t.
“He can’t hurt you. Not this time.”
“No,” she agreed. “I’m a much better shot this time around.”
He grinned. “Thank God for that.”
Five
Colin
There were worse jobs than scrubbing bathrooms. He knew that. It didn’t make it any more fun, though. After a life lived in various relative’s houses, hotels, the occasional girlfriend’s apartment, he’d never lingered long enough anywhere to be held responsible for its cleanliness. The first time he’d tackled the New Orleans shared half-bath, Bob had come in behind him, discovered missed flecks of soap scum, and withheld dinner.
Withheld dinner.
Now, he was a bathroom expert.
At ten after one, Colin wheeled the mop bucket into the utility closet, shut the door with a determined thump, and reached to knuckle the stiffness from his lower back. Jinx had awakened him at six-thirty that morning, and told him to clean everything. It didn’t matter that the clubhouse was more or less spotless; he’d swept, mopped, polished, buffed, washed, and dusted all that he could. He’d saved the bathrooms for last, and here it was, middle of the day, and he was done. It spoke positively of keeping a clean house. Less maintenance work.
He turned around, thinking about lunch…
And nearly collided with the twins. Both stood beside him in the hall, silent and stone-faced, The Shining style.
“Jesus!” he swore, his voice coming out super-Cajun in his sudden fright.
“Hey,” one of them said. Who knew whether it was Catcher or Cletus; they were damn identical.
“Candy wants you to go pick up lunch,” the other one said.
“Yeah?” He massaged his chest where his heartbeat needed some coaxing to return to normal. When neither of them responded, he said, “Uh, yeah. I don’t have a car. And I have no idea where anything is.”
One of them held out a set of keys. “Green truck out front. Go to Gabe’s.”
“Okay.” He had no idea where that was. Did he go left or right out of the drive? What the fuck? “Okay,” he said again, and got nothing in return.
“Fuck me,” he muttered, palming the keys and moving down the hall.
It was staggering to step outside into the sunshine. Only once he was squinting did he realized he’d spent all day so far indoors, and that wasn’t at all normal for him.
Pre-Lean Dogs, that was.
A handful of guys were standing in the front lawn, groupies, hanging off their arms.
He spotted Jinx and shaded his eyes against the sun. “Hey, where’s Gabe’s?”
The bearded, severely tatted member flicked his cig butt into the dirt and regarded him a moment, that same assessing glance everyone gave him. “Go about a mile and a half north, and it’ll be on your right, can’t miss it. Tell Jen we want the usual.”
Colin ducked his head respectfully. On the inside, it killed him. But he knew he had to go through those motions or risk expulsion. And given that he had no plans for the future, he had no alternative but to patch in and become a Dog.
The green truck turned out to be a fifteen-year-old Dodge that took two tries to start, and smelled of smoke and BO. But it was a set of wheels, which was more than he had.
Even if he hadn’t been given directions, he could have found Gabe’s. Endless stretches of desert gave way to a big roadside sign announcing Gabe’s Just Ahead and then there was the place itself, the parking lot welcoming him with another sign. He turned in, pulling up to a small building framed in rough cut timbers, cars jammed up at the curb. A narrow porch ran along the front of the restaurant, decorated with rocking chairs. A steer skull was mounted above the door.
The interior was everything Amarillo crammed into a four-hundred square foot space. Texas license plates, steer skulls and mounted heads. Lassos, old dusty boots, saddles, spurs, bright woven blankets hung up like tapestries. He even spotted a jackalope or two as he wedged past a few patrons and approached the front counter.
It appeared to be one of those places where you put your order in at the long wooden front counter, the staff passed the ticket back through the window to the kitchen, and you waited. “For here or to go?” the girl at the register asked the guy two people ahead of him.
Colin stuck his hands in his jeans pockets and settled in to wait, eyes roving over the small restaurant. Most of the patrons were day-laborers in coveralls, jeans, dirty boots and ball caps. He spotted a few guys in road crew orange. A handful of retiree couples who no doubt came to this place every day, sat at the same table, and ordered the same thing. He knew that he was the only tourist in the place; everyone else may as well have had LOCAL stamped across their foreheads.
“Sir?” The line had cleared out and it was his turn; the girl at the register was talking to him now. He turned toward her. “Hi, welcome to…
It was the blonde from the clubhouse the night before. And girl wasn’t the right word anymore, because she was all woman.
“…Gabe’s,” she finished, blue eyes widening as she recognized him. Her professional, friendly expression arrested and grew brittle. “It’s you,” she said, voice flat.
“Colin,” he reminded, flashing her a grin. “Didn’t catch your name last night.”
“Hi, Colin.” It always amazed him the way a woman could say
perfectly normal civil words and make them sound like vicious insults. “I’m still not interested.”
She was wearing a western denim shirt embroidered with Gabe’s above one breast pocket, and above the other, her name. Jenny.
“You sure?” he asked. “’Cause your shirt says you’re Jenny.”
She sighed and looked away from his smiling face. “Do you wanna order something? And before you hand me one of those corny pickup lines, I’ve heard them all already.”
“Do they ever work?”
“Do you wanna quit holding up my line?”
“This guy bothering you, Jen?” someone behind Colin asked.
“No, Terry,” she said shooting a smile toward the man in the trucker cap three patrons back. “He was just getting ready to place his order.” Then she pegged Colin with a look of such murderous intent, he had to laugh. “So order,” she said through her teeth. The threat was implied, rather than spoken.
“Shit. You’re a demon in the sack, aren’t you?”
“If you wanna live to apologize for that statement, place your damn order.”
People were starting to stare at this point. Colin didn’t care, because the only stare drawing his attention at the moment was hers, and it was making him all kinds of excited and horny. He liked a little violence in a woman. It was really the only thing he found alluring about his brother’s wife, and it looked damn good on Miss Mystery Jenny.
“Fine,” he said with a dramatic sigh. “Be like that. I was told to get the usual, whatever that is.”
She nodded crisply and punched buttons on the register. She slid a plastic card, number thirty-two, across the counter toward him, and said, “Wait outside. Someone will bring you the food.” Then she tilted to the side and glanced around him, dismissing him. “Okay, who’s next?”
He knew when not to push, so he followed her instructions, smiling to himself as he went out on the porch and settled into a rocking chair.
His only company was an old man in overalls and a cowboy hat down on the opposite end, reading a paper and minding his own business. Perfect.
Snow in Texas (Lean Dogs Legacy #1) Page 2
