by Jessie Cooke
She nodded. “Yeah Bill, that sucks.”
“For one of them bikers. Bastards. Cocksuckers. First they take over this town and then just about the time us respectable citizens thought we were going to be able to claim it back, that Marshall kid marries a cop. What the fuck is that?”
Katrina chuckled. She had the same thought herself when she came back and found out who Dax had married. Unfortunately, Kat and Angel had history before Angel ever met Dax, and that made it even harder for Kat to take. “Yeah, who would’ve thought?” she said. “Hey Dillon, I need the van tomorrow.”
“For what?”
“What do you care? You using it?” Her dad had gotten his license taken away the last time he’d been picked up on a DUI. It was his fifth and his final chance with the motor vehicle department. When he called Kat sobbing over that, she’d told him he was lucky the cops stopped him each time before he killed anyone. He’d told her that she was “cold and uncaring.” That conversation had ended up much the same as most between them did, with a lot of yelling and him hanging up on her.
He narrowed his own almond-shaped eyes at her. Kat looked just like her father. Sometimes when she looked at him she found it strange to see her own eyes staring back at her. “Why you always have to be such a smart-ass?”
She sighed. “I don’t know, Dillon. I don’t have time for analysis tonight though, I have some cooking to do.”
“What are you cooking?” Bill asked her.
“I have to bake a cake, or two.” She smiled proudly and said, “I have my first catering job tomorrow.”
“Catering job? Why would you do that? Who’s going to take care of the bar while you’re out catering?” Dillon asked.
“Seriously?” she said. “You can’t handle it for a few hours at a time without me? I mean, I know Bill here can knock ‘em back pretty quickly, but since he’ll probably be our only customer, I think you’ll be okay.”
Dillon’s eyes took on that sad, nostalgic quality they get when he was sliding toward inebriation and he said, “You know, it used to be standing room only back in the day when we first came back here. People dropped in just to look at my memorabilia.” Kat sighed. He was about to go off on a tangent about his lost opportunity. He could have been the greatest running back the NFL had ever seen. One fateful night of poor decisions changed all that when he injured his knee and lost his place in the draft. Kat didn’t believe he ever really got over that. He may have, if that had been the worst that ever happened.
Early on, Dillon masked his pain with an artificial smile because it was all about keeping up appearances. He married his high school sweetheart, the captain of the cheerleading squad and the cliché that would eventually be her parents, moved to New Orleans.
Dillon got a job there, working for Katrina’s mother’s uncle in a bar in the French Quarter. Her mother worked at a popular Bed and Breakfast on Bourbon Street. Katrina was born in a hospital overlooking the Mississippi River and from the outside looking in, for the first seven years of Katrina’s life, the little family looked perfect.
From the inside however, Katrina was an innocent, unwilling witness to the destruction that would ultimately tear them apart. Dillon couldn’t adjust from being the local golden boy on the Southside of Massachusetts to being a nobody in the French Quarter…or at least that was what Kat heard her mother say repeatedly. Her mother Cora was beautiful. She had long, dark hair, lavender eyes and the body that went along with being the captain of the cheer team. Her job as a concierge at the B & B afforded her the opportunity to meet a lot of people…a lot of men, and she liked to flaunt those assets of hers, or so Kat heard Dillon say repeatedly.
There were passionate fights and although Kat was too young to know what was happening then, she eventually figured out that there were also passionate make-up sessions. Kat spent the time that she wasn’t at the gymnastics classes her mother pushed her to take, hiding in her room so that she didn’t have to listen to them. When they fought, and when they made up, she’d turn the sound up on the TV in her room to try to drown them out. Kat was seven years old when they had their last fight. She was in her room as usual watching TV and trying to ignore the ugly things they were saying to each other. That fight seemed to last forever, finally ending with the slamming of the front door.
Kat would be woken up the next morning by the sound of the doorbell…and the detective who walked through the door when Dillon opened it, would bring news that would forever change both of their lives.
Acknowledgments
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and events are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to people, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
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Other Books by Jessie Cooke
Coming Soon…
KAT: Southside Skulls (Book 6) Nov 2017
HUNTER: Southside Skulls (Book 7) Dec 2017
Just like Grey (Series TWO) Dec 2017
Available Now…
DAX: Southside Skulls MC Romance (Book 1)
CODY: Southside Skulls MC Romance (Book 2)
GUNNER: Southside Skulls MC Romance (Book 3)
ZACK: Southside Skulls MC Romance (Book 4)
JAKE - Best of the Bad Boys (Book 1)
BROCK - Best of the Bad Boys (Book 2)
JAGGER - Best of the Bad Boys (Book 3)
KYLE - Best of the Bad Boys (Book 4)
BLAKE - Best of the Bad Boys (Book 5)
Just like Grey (Series ONE Complete Set)
