The Princess and the Prospect

by Christine Michelle

  “He’s still grieving. Things will work out, and he’ll come home.”

  “What if he hates the club now?”

  “I know for a fact that isn’t true. We keep tabs on him. He’s been running with Phoenix.”

  “Phoenix?”

  “He’s a nomad in the club. The man was on the road for a while with a band before they broke up, so he took nomad status in order to accommodate the club and the band. I think he enjoys the road too much to come back off of it though.”

  “I wonder why I never met him,” she murmured just loud enough for me to hear. She didn’t miss the smirk I made at that comment either.

  “He’s a good looking mother fucker in a rock band, and he’s a part of the MC. I wonder why your dad never wanted to introduce him to either of his girls?”

  She giggled then. “I guess I see your point. Is he a good guy though? Will Jay be all right with him?”

  “I bet money that the guys in the club have seen to it that Phoenix didn’t happen upon him by accident, if that makes you feel better.”

  “Good, I don’t think I could stand to lose another brother.”

  “So, no objections to me going to Jacksonville?” I asked since she had gotten off track when I mentioned J-Bird.

  “Um, no. It’s club business, so it’s not like it matters what I think anyway.”

  “It matters,” I told her.

  “Well, I’m okay with you having to do your part for the club. At least I know where you’re off to and how long. Some women don’t get told that much.”

  “When it comes to the club, you know I can’t tell you everything, but I will always try to tell you everything you need to know. I promise you that, beautiful.”

  “Thanks,” she said softly as a blush stole across her cheeks. It happened every time I called her beautiful, and it never got old seeing how I affected her.

  “You’re okay with lunch Monday too, right?”

  “Yes, I said I was.”

  “You didn’t. That’s why I was clarifying.” She rolled her eyes at me, which I let go this time. It was good to see her playful, sassy side coming back out. I had missed that about our time together before everything went to shit.

  “I guess I can have lunch with you.”

  “Well, thanks for sounding so eager.” As if her stomach read my mind, I heard an almighty growl come from her body. She nervously giggled as she clutched her belly.

  “I guess the potato salad sampling earlier wasn’t enough,” she admitted.

  “Did you by chance make that before or after the special guest who ruined the day arrived?”

  “Before, why?”

  “Just wondering if it’s safe to eat or not. If it is, I’ll throw some hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill for us. I’m starving, and it sounds like you are too.”

  “That sounds fine, but I’ll pass on the potato salad this time.”

  I looked longingly at the aforementioned dish knowing I wouldn’t eat any if she didn’t. She noticed and laughed.

  “For heaven’s sake, Joker,” she called out in an exasperated tone. “It’s not like I poisoned the food. I just taste tested a lot of it before company arrived and it soured on my stomach as a result. Just smelling it right now would probably send me to the bathroom.” She wrinkled her nose, as if she was already smelling it.

  I knew she didn’t mean anything by it, but my heart hurt knowing I managed to ruin her birthday celebration with her family – even if it had been inadvertently. Plus, she wasn’t even able to eat the food she had prepared.

  “Evan,” I corrected her use of my road name instead of my given name. I needed to at least fix one thing today, and I might as well start there.

  “What?”

  “You’re still calling me Joker. I thought we worked better using our given names?”

  “Oh, I guess so. Your name changed since then and mine was never really…”

  It was my turn to wave her words and thoughts away like she normally did to me. “Evan and Anna works for me.”

  “Evan and Anna,” she replied in her delicate voice. I had to turn and get busy making us food then, otherwise I wasn’t so sure I could keep my hands to myself for the rest of the evening.

  I rolled off the couch when the alarm on my cell phone buzzed me awake. Leaving at 4:30 am had been a shit plan. It was one that might just have Crow eating gravel today. Damn the bastard. I groggily made my way to the hall bathroom, cleaned up, relieved myself, and got dressed in record time. Before I was about to head out, I turned back to the bedroom and opened the door. Anna was there on the bed, fast asleep with her dark hair spilled haphazardly across the pillows. Even in her sleep, she held her belly cradled in her arms as if she needed to protect the child growing there from the world.

  I may have been mad about our situation in the beginning, but I was pretty sure Anna was going to end up making a wonderful mother for our children. Shit! What I was thinking? Children? We weren’t even at the kissing stage again yet, let alone at a point where I needed to concern myself with getting her pregnant again. Still, that glow in her skin, the twinkle in her eyes when she talked about the baby, and the way pregnancy had filled out her subtle curves had made her one of the most gorgeous women I’d ever laid my eyes on. Actually, there was no competition from anyone I could think of. She was it. I just hoped I would be able to convince her that my fuck up was truly a one-time deal. There was no way in hell I would ever jeopardize losing her again. I Couldn’t. There was no way I could survive her going missing from my life again.

  Against my better judgement, I moved into the room and kneeled down beside the bed. Without thought, my fingers traced over the silky strands of hair on the pillow before I leaned in a placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. “See you later, beautiful,” I whispered. Then I got up and left the room before I managed to call my loyalty to the club in question by staying behind to hold her in my bed. That was another goal I needed to set. The two of us sleeping apart sucked. Even if she wasn’t ready for sex just yet, I didn’t think I could manage to go too much longer with curling up to her at night.

  By the time I got outside, Kane and Crow were both sitting at the end of the driveway waiting on me. “It’s about fucking time, Army boy. Didn’t they teach you shit about being on time in the military?”

  “They taught me a whole fuck of a lot about how to hurry up and wait. You just did that part on your own this morning,” I called out to him as Kane chuckled. It didn’t take long to get myself situated and the three of us were on the road headed to Jacksonville. Not too long ago, I would have been excited for the trip, and the prospect of branching our club out. When it had first been talked about freely in front of me, I just knew I might jump at the chance to head to Florida if they needed bodies for the new chapter. Now, they couldn’t drag me away from this town. My heart was here, and right now it was beating for two. There was no way I’d even think about dragging Anna away from the rest of her family, and even if things didn’t work out, I wasn’t going to put her through a long-distance custody issue either. That meant staying put. Luckily for me, this was supposed to be a quick run to see if the new location was feasible and to help out some members in the Tallahassee Chapter. Their Prez had gotten in some deep shit while protecting his old lady, and now they were on the ropes for running guns up and down the east coast and a few centralized states on a pipeline directed to and from Canada with pitstops in between.

  I wasn’t too keen on being a part of that shit, but club was club. We had to support one another, and our mother chapter was behind them for the ten years they managed to get locked into running that shit. They had an escape plan at the end. There was even an emergency plan in case shit went south, but that was a nuclear option that would involve all the chapters. It was also one we weren’t able to talk freely about with Kane present. I had no doubts he’d become a member, but the fact of the matter was he was only a prospect at this point.

  Hell, truth be told, I wasn’t sur
e why he was even prospecting for the club. From what Deck had told me about all the shit that had gone down with his woman, I wouldn’t think Kane would want to be a part of the club. Then again, and I hoped I was wrong, he might have the kind of motivation to join that would eventually get him put to ground. Messing around with another brother’s wife and old lady wasn’t looked upon too kindly unless that brother and his woman had an open understanding.

  We made good enough time on the road to get there in about three and a half hours since traffic was light early on in our journey. We arrived at one of the favored scouted locations and killed the engines. “Looks like we’re early and the Florida boys are running a bit behind. They were supposed to get in before we did,” Crow commented as he pulled out his cell, presumably to check on the men from our Tallahassee Chapter.

  “Damn, since we operate so close to the beach, back home I didn’t expect this area to look like the sticks. Why this place?” Kane asked as we both glanced around.

  I shrugged my shoulder. “Don’t know. From what I understand this is the favored spot.”

  “Nah, we’re at the Old Kings Road property,” Crow told whoever he was speaking to, and then he hung up. “Idiots went to the second one on the list. I guess they had some reason to think this place sold already.” Crow glanced around. “You want to know why we want this place? Over 20,000 square feet plus a separate office offering another 1,000. Then there’s the two coolers that are each 3,000 square feet.” He waggled his brows about that. If ever there was a built in space adequate to be used as a torture and kill room, an industrial freezer space would do it. It was already nearly soundproofed, the cool temperatures inside would keep any smell down and preserve whatever might need to be saved, plus it would make for an uncomfortable as hell place to be held prisoner. There were other practical uses for the freezer space too, but since Florida seemed to be a hot bed of bullshit we’d be walking into as a club, it only stood to reason that at least one of them would be used for nefarious purposes.

  “There’s loading docks and doors, and look at all this glorious concrete,” he mentioned after a bit of pause as he threw his hands out to indicate the giant parking area that used to house more than 50 big rig trucks and trailers. This was a shipping company previously and I could definitely see the allure. With very little work, it could become an amazing compound, especially since it already had a barbed-wire fence around the perimeter.

  We all glanced up when we heard the pipes in the distance. The Florida boys had arrived.

  “Sorry we’re late,” Crusher stated as he dismounted his bike and came over to greet us. He was the current President of the Tallahassee Chapter, and a hell of a man. The scar that ran through his right eyebrow was a testament to the fight he put up to keep his woman alive when shit went down with her not too long ago. “I seriously thought Ghost had said this place was off the list.”

  “Nah, still for sale, and the price just dropped. Something about a vermin infestation on last inspection,” Crow offered up with a laugh.

  “Sneaky little shit,” Crusher applauded.

  “Well, God willing, and the creek don’t rise, this will be home soon, and I prefer this to the other options. So does the old lady. She has a bit of country in her even though I have her living in the big city of Charleston. If we have to move to sunny Florida, she said she ain’t living in the middle of no giant city.”

  “You’re planning to come down?” I asked. I hadn’t been privy to every detail of the expansion plan, it seemed.

  “Yeah. After the shitstorm I helped cause with Ever, and the fact that I just can’t move past the bullshit, we all thought it best I head down here as a senior member for a while.”

  The fucker still had a hard time being nice to Ever no matter how much everyone pointed out that he had been wrong about the way he had treated her. I was starting to see that maybe Merc and Double-D had been weeding out their problem children in the club slowly, but surely. A brother named PeeWee had been ousted from the club shortly after everything blew up with Ever when it came out that he’d said some pretty heinous things to her, including threats that involved the shit he’d do to her sexually. She had still been underage when he made those threats. He had also been stealing from the coffers over at one of the strip clubs, and no second chances were given. He was stripped of his kutte and all Aces High insignia. Crow apparently wanted a smoother transition away from trouble and had offered to leave when asked. At least he was somewhat intelligent.

  “We’ll be glad to have you down here, brother,” Crusher told him. “We could use some seasoned vets who were around when we were all knee deep in shit and learning to swim with the flies or drown in it.”

  “Yeah, bunch of these kids now don’t know what it means to fly the 1% patch. Aside from dirty club snatch, they’ve never had a chance to get their hands in it. Especially these green mother fuckers here,” Crow taunted.

  “No need to,” I explained quickly. “Army life taught me all I ever needed to know about how to kill and survive at all costs. What did it teach you?” Crow had been in the military for a short time, but he had been Coast Guard, never served overseas, and was stationed almost solely at a base in northeastern North Carolina until he got out after his first enlistment and moved to Charleston.

  “Let’s go check this place out,” Crow called out, ignoring my question completely. I hated men who bragged about shit when they hadn’t been in the heat of anything more than a club whore’s pussy – to borrow his own analogy.

  The setup wasn’t something any club brother could complain about. “Fuck, it’s better than what we’re currently using back home,” Crusher echoed my own thoughts. “There’s a lot of building potential here too considering the trucks won’t be everywhere.”

  “It’d probably be a smart idea to get a garage in out by the street side. There’s enough room to have the custom ride shop some of the men have been talking about,” Crow put in. I just bet he would want that available wherever he ran off to. He was a decent mechanic, but he wasn’t custom ride worthy. I wasn’t even certain he was trainable beyond what he already knew. Not that he wasn’t intelligent enough, just that his own stubborn bullshit would get in his way. That wasn’t going to stop him from wanting a larger piece of the club pie that the custom shop would bring in. Profits from club businesses were put into a pool and split amongst the brothers of the club. Officers took a higher percentage, then the rest would be divided equally amongst the rest of the regular members. The men in the chapters where the businesses were earning higher than others were given bonuses based on those higher percentages because they usually worked hands on with those businesses to make them a success.

  That was another reason why we were here. Even though the Tallahassee Chapter had gotten themselves on the hook for the decade of gun-running, that shit was bringing in profit too which meant we all had to do our part to support them since we all saw a piece of the pie.

  The men looked over the property more in depth while Kane and I sat out by the roadway keeping watch for anyone who may seem a little too interested in what we were doing. The property wasn’t the only reason we were here. On the way back, we would end up pushing Kane’s bike into a box truck with some precious cargo and scooting to Charleston where it was going to be picked up. Even though I knew a part of my club pay came from it, I wasn’t a fan of running the guns. The last thing I needed was to get pinched for gun running before I could straighten things out with Anna and see our baby born.

  “Mind if I ask something?”

  Kane’s attention moved from the horizon to me and back again before he tipped his chin up. “Ask away.”

  “Why are you prospecting? I thought you guys over at Permanent Marks hated the club on Ever’s behalf.”

  “She’s part of the club despite what happened to her, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah, she is, but her biological family is club. Her husband is too. It’s kind of hard to walk away from that.”

&nb
sp; He nodded his head once. “Well, Deck made me hopeful the whole club wasn’t full of morons who treated little girls poorly,” he teased. “Seems I was right about that, and besides you have to admire hardened men who can bow down and admit they’re wrong. I enjoy the open road too, and don’t exactly fit in with the rest of polite society here in the south. Seems these are my people. At least they are if I get through this bullshit prospecting period. Gotta say, not enjoying that part so much.”

  “What? Say it ain’t so? You don’t actually like cleaning up used condoms off the floor after a party or the nasty bathrooms after some of those fuckers explode their guts out?”

  “Jesus, what is wrong with that one guy?” I furrowed my brow just as he said, “Tuesdays are the worst.”

  I laughed then. “You’re talking about Grit, and his wife thinks Taco Tuesday is something of a holiday, never to be missed. The rest of us think Grit could do without the bean burritos though. She always sends him to the clubhouse afterward too. Damn near the only night he doesn’t stay home with her these days. Three guesses as to why she encourages that.”

  Kane laughed. “Smart woman.”

  “You do know the policy about messing around with another brother’s woman, right?”

  Kane turned a critical eye on me then. “I have no interest in any of the brother’s women.” We both sat silently contemplating that. “Does that extend past death?” He finally asked.

  “I think that depends on the circumstances. No one would begrudge the woman moving on, and it’d be damn hard for a club woman to move on in a different lifestyle if she’s been in it a long time.” I shrugged. “I don’t think there’s any hard or fast rule against it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “It is.”

  “You know, knocking a brother off to get his woman wouldn’t be looked upon favorably though,” I added with a hint of laughter in my voice. Kane threw his back and laughed heartily at that.