“I take it you’ve got some history with that guy.”
She shook her head. “Not directly, no. He’s a friend of a friend I wish I’d never had.”
“Ah.” He didn’t get it, not yet, but a vague picture was forming in his mind, one that left a sour taste in his mouth. “You were on the run from the feds and the club took you in.”
“No.” She looked scandalized.
“You’re an undercover fed, working the club.”
“Um…” Even more scandalized.
“Ex-boyfriend?”
She finished the cig and dropped it to the dirt, grinding it out with her white-and-rose boot heel. “Okay, look. Obviously, none of the boys are gonna tell you, and you’re too dumb – no offense – to figure it out yourself.” She turned to look at him head-on. “The club is my family. Literally. Candy’s my brother.”
For some reason, he’d never anticipated that. Like Fox said: he was stupid.
Jenny gave him a small grin. “You had no idea?”
He finally got his tongue unstuck from the roof of his mouth. “No…”
Her grin widened, flashed straight white teeth. She was pretty all the time, but she was beautiful when she smiled, he realized. The sudden brightness in her went to his gut…places farther south…and snapped his brain back online.
“So…you’re Candyman’s sister.”
“That’s what I just said.” Her tone was, miracle of miracles, teasing.
“And he’s your brother.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s how it works, yeah.”
For some reason he wanted to smile back at her. It was a relief, this new knowledge, and he didn’t understand it, but he was going to enjoy it. “Shit. Really? And you live in the clubhouse?”
“Last time I checked.”
The picture he’d been building snapped into sudden, excruciating focus. Candy looking after his little sister, keeping her safe beneath his roof, wanting her to have a two-man security detail…that included him. Not to be immodest, but he was a big guy, which suggested a big problem.
He was furious suddenly.
“Our dad was in the club,” she was saying, and he tried to clear his mind, listen to her. Her face was wistful. “He raised Candy up knowing he’d patch in one day. It’s sort of a family legacy, I guess.”
It wasn’t working; he couldn’t keep from scowling.
She glanced at him and started a little. “What?”
“Okay, for real this time, who was that guy and what does he want with you?”
“Riley?” She waved as if it was nothing, though the fear still glittered in her eyes. “You know how the ATF is, always wanting to bring down a whole chapter of Dogs.”
“No, Jen, I’m serious. What kind of danger are you in?”
For once, she contemplated telling him, gnawing at her lower lip, eyes searching across his face. “I don’t think I’m ready to share that story with you yet.”
He sighed, but nodded. “Fair enough. Is Riley involved?”
“Essentially.”
He nodded again. “Well…” He was frustrated, wanting to do something but having no idea what. “I don’t like him knowing where you work. That ain’t cool.”
She smiled.
It was his turn to ask, “What?”
“Earlier, inside,” she said. “Do you know who you reminded me of?”
“Your brother?” he guessed.
“No. Yours.”
Ten
Colin
A routine developed: spending the day at Gabe’s, watching over Jenny alongside one of his new Texas brothers. Most often it was Fox, because being in from out of town, he had no local responsibilities. But sometimes it was one of the others. Today it was Talis, the sergeant at arms, and a potted plant would have been better company.
“So what’s ‘Talis’ mean?” Colin asked, shaking a fat puddle of ketchup from the bottle onto his plate.
The man across from him folded his beefy arms and gave Colin a disapproving look. “It’s short for Talisman.” He had a deep voice.
Colin grinned. “You somebody’s lucky charm?”
No answer. Murderous stare.
“Okaaay….”
“Don’t mind him,” Candy said jovially, joining them from out of nowhere. He managed to pull out the chair beside Colin and steal a fried drumstick off his plate at the same time, already chewing by the time his ass hit the seat. “Talking ain’t his strong suit.”
Talis didn’t seem offended by the comment. He didn’t even look like he blinked, actually.
“He’ll tear your throat right out, though,” Candy went on. He bit into the drumstick again and bits of fried skin rained down onto the table. He turned to Colin. “Tomorrow’s Sunday,” he said as he swallowed.
Colin edged his plate closer, lest he suffer more food casualties. “Yeah.”
“Jen doesn’t work on Sundays.”
“Right.” On instinct, his eyes sought her out. She was standing a few tables away, setting down a customer’s food, jeans molded to her ass in a way that made him want to move around in his chair.
“I thought we’d see about getting you a bike,” Candy said, pulling his attention back.
“What?” He felt a fast grab of excitement. He hadn’t grown up thinking much about bikes, but when you were in this club, and spent enough time around them, you started to crave a machine of your own. Right now, a bike would mean his own slice of freedom: alone on the road, wind in his face, nothing but his own thoughts for company. “Really?”
“Yeah. I know a guy who can cut you a good deal on one.”
And just like that, his sudden joy sank. He stared down at his plate. “I don’t know that I can…afford…anything.”
Candy made a considering sound as he chewed. “I ain’t been paying you for this, have I?” He gestured to Gabe’s, the watchdog gig.
“No.”
He nodded. “Then don’t worry about affording anything.”
~*~
Candy
“Nobody’s seen him anywhere,” Jinx said. He took a long drag on his smoke and leaned back against the couch cushions. “I checked at his old haunts, talked to his old girls, and he ain’t been seen or heard from.”
“Tiny miracles,” Candy said with a sigh. In his mind, the best way to keep Riley away from Jen was to keep track of the bastard, and since his release, that had been impossible.
“You still wanna head over to the Armadillo?”
Ah, the Armadillo. Good place to have an overpriced drink; good place to find a girl to sit in your lap. Good place to slide into a back booth and get information.
“Yeah. Lemme check in with Jen first.”
Jinx nodded and propped his boots on the coffee table, content to wait.
Jen had headed to the sanctuary almost an hour ago, and he found her in her room, with the door open, in her bathrobe, combing out her hair as she sat on the bed and watched a video on her laptop.
“Any boys allowed in here?” he asked from the doorway.
“Certain boys.” She set her brush aside and began separating her wet hair with her fingers, preparatory to braiding it. He’d never been close enough to any woman in his life to predict her little evening routines. He knew his sister’s; maybe that meant he wasn’t a total drifter. “What’s up?”
“I told Colin I’d take him to find a bike tomorrow morning.”
Her brows lifted. “Big step. Guess you’re not sending him back to the swamp?” It was hard to tell if there was hope or regret in her voice; either way, there was a spark of interest in her eyes that proved she wasn’t indifferent.
“Guess not,” Candy agreed. “He’s been doing a good job at Gabe’s? Watching out for you?”
She looked back at her computer. “Yeah.”
“No complaints?”
“None that would matter to you.”
He chuckled. “Do you like him?”
She didn’t answer.
“Jen,” he pressed
.
“I don’t like anyone. You know that.”
“Right.” He pushed away from the jamb. “I’m heading out. Be back in a bit.”
“Okay.”
Just before he walked off, he said, “It’s a shame, though, you not liking anybody, ‘cause he sure as shit likes you.” With that happy bomb to keep her awake long into the night, he walked away with a laugh.
~*~
Colin
Colin woke before dawn, feeling stupid that he was too amped up to sleep, but unable to affect a change. His eyes had snapped open, the word bike echoing through his brain. He hadn’t felt this way since the Christmas he’d asked for a BB gun. He’d been eight; he’d gotten a .22 instead.
When the sky beyond the window began to gray, he rolled out of bed, dressed, and headed outside. By the time the sun was up, he’d washed all the club trucks and was thinking of starting in on the bikes, the sleeves of his hoodie wet to the elbow, boots powder coated in dirt.
“Damn, son,” Candy said when he walked out and found him. The VP was grinning broadly. “Don’t you make a pretty car wash girl?”
It was the sort of remark that, had they been on equal footing, would have drawn a “fuck you” in response. But Colin could only grind his teeth and say, “Morning.”
“Morning,” Candy returned. “Grab your purse, princess, we’re going shopping.”
~*~
Ned, who didn’t offer a last name, was a “collector,” according to Candy. He lived in a trailer in a dirt lot with two thirty-year-old Buicks parked under the adjacent carport. He came out to shake their hands, a white-haired, stoop-shouldered man who was approximately a thousand-years-old.
“C’mon back,” he told them, and led them around the side of the trailer…
To a wonderland of shiny steel. A huge metal hangar in back of the trailer housed rows of bikes, a true historical collection. Old Nortons, Indians, and Triumphs. A few army green numbers from the second World War. Several Beamers. And of course, the Harleys: everything from an old Knucklehead without a seat to a late model Night Rod airbrushed with green flames.
Colin traced a finger down the handlebars of a gorgeous old Bobber.
Candy came to stand beside him. “You wanna get something you’ll be comfortable on long distance,” he said quietly. “Go see what he’s got down there on that end.”
When Colin glanced over at him, the man winked.
Down on the end, a Night Train awaited him. Black, sleek, with minimal chrome. A modern day warhorse, begging to be touched.
Colin skimmed his hand down the fuel tank and shook his head. “There’s no way you wanna get this for me.” When there was no answer, he looked over again.
Candy studied him with narrowed blue eyes, his gaze hard to read. A measuring look. “Right now, yeah, I think I do. Just don’t make me regret it.”
Colin swallowed. “I won’t.”
~*~
Jenny
“…he sure as shit likes you.” The words had chased through her dreams last night. Or maybe they were nightmares.
He sure as shit likes you. She’d known that, yes, but hearing her brother say it made it official in a way she wasn’t ready for.
Not that she cared.
She didn’t care about the fact that her brother was buying Colin a bike. Not at all. She cared about the fact that her brother was going to use a shiny new bike as some sort of incentive to keep Colin hard-nosed on the job.
The unhappy tension under her skin had nothing to do with the mental image of six-feet-four-inches of Cajun gator hunter on the back of a black Harley. Nope. Not at all. She didn’t get all female and jittery over boys anymore. Especially not younger boys. Especially not…
“Just shut up,” she told herself, and reached for the next sheet of paper on top of the stack.
“What was that?” Darla asked.
Belatedly, she remembered she wasn’t alone, and her face grew hot with embarrassment. “Oh, nothing. Talking to myself again.”
“Hmm,” Darla said, peering at her own pile of papers over the rims of her reading glasses. “Sometimes that’s the only intelligent conversation a woman can have around here.”
Jenny smiled. “You know, nobody twists your arm to stay around this testosterone pit.”
“Nobody twists yours either, sweetheart.”
“Fair enough.” Jenny sat up from her slouch and took her legs off the arm of the chair, set her boots on the floor. “All the housekeeping stuff looks in order,” she said.
“Kitchen stuff too.” Darla sat back and pushed her glasses up. “You know, if we got us a crew of Lean Bitches like they’ve got in Tennessee, we wouldn’t have to do so much.”
Jenny snorted. “Oh, they might cook and clean. We’d still be going over the books.”
“Too true.”
They had been camped out in the small clubhouse office for the past hour, running through the months’ invoices and bank statements. Candy had returned home to Texas suspicious and untrusting, and he always wanted someone with skin in the game to be in charge of the accounts. He would review what they’d just done, and file it away in the big spiral notebooks lined up on the shelves behind the desk.
“I don’t know about you,” Darla said, “but I need a slice of that chocolate pound cake I made earlier.”
“That sounds like a fabulous idea.”
She heard bikes coming onto the property as they walked to the kitchen, and a little prickling of awareness crawled up the back of her neck. Not that she cared about who might be arriving on a new bike. Nope. Not her.
“They’re back from Ned’s I hear,” Darla said as she pulled the lid off the cake plate.
“Someone went to Ned’s?”
Darla gave her an oh please look. “Honey, don’t even pretend.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Uh-huh.”
She had a forkful of cake poised in front of her mouth when Colin burst into the kitchen, grinning like a kid.
“Well hey there, Colin,” Darla greeted. “Did Ned get you all set up?”
He spared her a fast look. “Yes, ma’am.” Then his gaze pinged back to Jenny.
There was no denying it; he was staring right at her, and the exuberance in his face, shining in his eyes, caused her throat to tighten. No, she thought quietly. Please don’t direct anything like that my way. I won’t be able to defend against it.
“You gotta come see it,” he told her. “It’s fucking sweet.”
No, the voice said again. You take too many steps, and then you’re running, and you’ll never stop until it’s too late, and you’re bleeding on the floor…
But she set her fork down and got to her feet as if in a dream sequence. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go see it.”
Eleven
Colin
She was impressed, he could tell. The Night Train was a slick piece of machinery, mean in all the right places, simple where it counted. Jenny paced around it, studying with a critical eye. She didn’t have that glassy, disinterested look of a woman playing to his ego. No, she liked the bike for exactly what it was, and not because a man rode it.
“Pretty,” she finally said, and glanced up to meet his eyes. Hers were an almost translucent blue in the sunlight. “How’s she ride?”
He almost said something wildly inappropriate in response. Almost. Instead, he said, “You wanna find out?”
Total shutdown. Her eyes closed up and she took a step back.
Colin clenched his teeth together. He’d thought things were better, that she was less frightened, more trusting. She didn’t hate him – he’d thought. So why did she keep throwing up these roadblocks? What the hell?
She glanced toward the clubhouse where her brother had disappeared a few moments before. Candy had bragged on the bike a minute, kissed his sister on top of the head, then headed inside, leaving them alone. If that didn’t feel like brotherly approval, Colin didn’t know what would.
But here
they were again, Jenny withdrawing.
He liked her, damn it. She was hot, and he wanted to peel those tight jeans off of her, yes, but he was building a genuine affection for her too, and he wanted her to come around. Wanted her to like him too, if he was honest.
“Jenny,” he said, kindly but firmly. “Do you wanna go for a ride?”
Her head swiveled back, eyes still uncertain, but sparking with something promising.
He gave her his best grin. “I’m gonna bet, you having a Lean Dog for a brother, that you like riding. Am I right?”
“I love it,” she admitted.
“Come on then. One quick ride, so you can tell me if I got a lemon bike or not. I promise I’ll keep my hands to myself.” He showed her his empty palms then tucked his hands in his pockets to demonstrate.
She debated a long moment, staring at the toes of her boots – rich brown today, with pale stitching. Finally, she nodded. “Let me grab my helmet.”
~*~
She felt good behind him, her legs jacked up so her feet could rest on the pegs, breasts cushioned against his back, arms tight around his waist. Her feelings about him notwithstanding, she knew she had to hold on, and she did tightly, letting her weight shift naturally with his as he turned out of the clubhouse parking lot and headed up the street.
A gorgeous, cloudless day, the sun hot and the air dry, smelling of desert things. The wind scraped at his face. He felt little wisps of her long blonde hair that were swept forward and tickled at the backs of his ears.
How different it was, riding with a passenger. Alone, there was a sense of weightless freedom. With a woman behind him, he felt this heavy responsibility…but a certain security too. A warm presence against his spine, keeping him company in the lonely bubble that existed on the road, where a man and his bike became something entirely apart from the world around them.
They’d gone about five miles when Jenny tapped his shoulder and then pointed off to a side street that was rearing up on the right.
Snow in Texas (Lean Dogs Legacy #1) Page 5
