by EA Hunt
Celise? He didn’t call her Celise. He called her ‘Babygirl.’ Her name was ‘Babygirl’ to him. He’d just called her that not two hours ago while he was deep inside her. “I’m not Celise to you. I’m –”
“Nothing,” he wrapped his arm around Claire, bringing her upper body into his chest. He rubbed her back. “You’re nothing and you are upsetting my pregnant woman. Now I want you gone. NOW!”
“You son of –”
“I will kill you,” he growled. He could feel Claire’s lips pressed into his chest at his words. “Disrespect gets a bullet,” he told her. Several brothers and club whores were now walking out of the halls. He was sure they’d heard the shouting and come to see what was going on so early in the morning.
“Come, Celise,” Trigger stepped up behind her. He wrapped an arm around her waist.
“I…” she looked over her shoulder. “I don’t understand,” Celise said, wiping at her fallen tears. Every insecurity she thought she’d overcome when it came to Bash, came rushing back. She felt her knees about to give out.
“Not here,” Trigger whispered in her ear. “Come, Babygirl.” With a tight hold on the woman, he helped her out of the clubhouse, Danish following behind them.
“I didn’t expect –” Claire’s words were muffled by Bash’s kiss. This had turned out better than she could have imagined. The little interloper had been crushed before several members of the club and she had been claimed by Bash as his woman! It was only a matter of time before he claimed her as his Old Lady. She deepened the kiss Bash was giving her. She had the man, the baby and the power of the Black Crows.
Chapter Four
“I can’t wait until this baby comes. Bash has been so attentive. He even bought us a house. It’s so beautiful. We sign the papers day after tomorrow. I can’t wait to get my hands on the house. And decorate the baby’s room!”
She was not going to cry. She was not going to show these women how upset their conversation was making her. Finished serving the people at the table next to Claire and the woman who’d warned her, Celise, about Bash. She turned fighting back her tears as she walked towards the small bar at the café, she stepped behind it, checking on a few customers who were seated there. She glanced at the table the women were sitting at. This was the third time this week they’d come to the café, sat in her line of sight and talked loud enough for her to hear their conversation. For the last two months these women, and some of the brothers, had come into the café. The brothers had stared at her with a few making comments about what they wanted to do to her. Those men she’d told where they could go before Danish had walked through the door whispered something to them and they’d left without a word. But not Claire and her friend. No, they’d come in and rub Claire’s belly or say the baby was in the mood for a chocolate muffin or cookie. She’d serve them with a smile then go in the back and cry her eyes out.
She needed to get over this. Bash wasn’t coming back to her. He wasn’t going to come through the café door, ask her forgiveness then kiss her before she slapped him and kissed him, then forgave him. This wasn’t some black and white movie she’d watched late at night with her grandmother. Where the hero and heroine would get into some huge fight and separate only for the hero to do some grand gesture in order to get his woman back. That wasn’t going to happen here. Turning from the women, Celise waited on another customer. This was real life. People got hurt and learned to live with the hurt until it became a dull ache. With her mind set on trying to turn her pain into a dull ache, Celise relished the fact that the café was starting to get busy. This was what she needed to keep busy and try to forget the man who, in just two weeks’ time, had held her heart in his hands. Yes, it was too early to say you loved someone. In lust yes, but love? But her grandmother had always said she had fallen in love with her grandfather after two days. While her parents had told her that just a week after they’d met, they moved in with each other and had a loving and happy relationship for eleven years. She’d fallen quickly for Bash like her parents and grandparents. She had loved him with her whole, now broken, heart and soul.
“Thank you for the wonderful service as always.”
Celise smiled at Claire. It was the same sarcastic statement she gave every time she came to pay her bill. “Thank you for the compliment,” she replied with a smile. Celise knew if she let this woman see her weak again, she would continue this little game. Claire was being vindictive and there was no reason for it.
“You are quite welcome” Claire replied. “Oh,” she looked down before placing her left hand on her five-month-old belly. “Calm down, little Bash. Mommy’ll get you another cookie.” She smugly looked at Celise while rubbing her belly. “Is it possible we can get another cookie?”
He'd asked her to marry him. Had he also asked her to be his Old Lady? Weren’t they one and the same? They had to be. You couldn’t marry someone without them being your Old Lady, right?
“Can I have a cookie?’ Claire questioned when Celise didn’t respond to her request. “You deny a pregnant woman a cookie?” she scoffed. “I know they aren’t the best, but I didn’t think I’d be denied. Especially since I still come to this place even though you’ve been known to go to the Crow’s Nest and sleep with several of the brothers there.”
“Lair!” Celise hissed.
“Am I?” Claire countered. “My friend Scottie and I have seen you there. We go to have a nice night, dancing, and you’ve been there grinding on whatever man looks your way.”
“You bitch!” Celise spat. She was not going to allow this woman to spread these vicious lies about her. “I’m not that kind of woman. I would never do something like that.”
“It’s always the quiet ones who are the whores. Admit it. ‘Cause there is no reason for so many men to come in here from the Black Crows unless you were fucking them,” Claire laughed. “Men don’t come to a café unless they have an interest in something in said café. And though the food is good and the desserts adequate, the service is less than desirable. I don’t know where your hands have been or your mouth so the fact that a woman like you breathes on the food and touches it while making and serving it…” Claire shrugged. “Every time I go to the doctor after coming here, I have to ask for a blood test. And every time Bash makes love to me, I tell him I’m clean even though I’ve been in contact with his former whore.”
Celise knew before her hand even connected with the woman’s face that she was fired. Turning away from Claire, she walked through the kitchen, grasped her jacket and oversized tote from the hook in the hall and left the café that she’d worked at most of her life.
*********
Attempting to ignore the group of bikers who’d brought up a memory she’d tried to bury for the last five years, Celise turned her car towards her bakery. It was located in the middle of downtown Rydal. She looked in her rearview mirror. The last thing she wanted was for them to follow her or tell Bash she was in town. She’d already had to come into Rydal in the dead of night so she wouldn’t have to face the men of the Black Crows. Though she had changed her appearance in the five years since she was in their presence. She was a little thicker than she’d been the last time she had been in their world. And back then, her hair had reached down to the middle of her back. Bash had loved wrapping a few strands around his finger while she sat next to him or lay in bed with him. Pulling into the back of the bakery she had purchased two months prior, she killed the engine of her car. She hadn’t thought about Bash in years. Celise shook her head, that wasn’t correct. She’d only pretended to stop thinking about Bash and their time together.
After ‘The Claire Incident,’ as she called it, she’d rushed home to her grandmother and quickly told her what had happened. What had been happening. The day Bash had tossed her to the side, she’d moved through the day, the entire week, in a daze. Her grandmother had tried to talk to her. Had tried to find out what happened but she hadn’t told her until that day. The day she’d left her hometown for South Caroli
na. She’d packed up her car and rushed out of the house with just a quick ‘I’ll call you,’ rung out to her grandmother. And she had called her three days later. Willa Jean had been grateful for the call and told her that whatever she was running from wasn’t chasing her. But Celise hadn’t been so sure. Removing herself from her car, she headed towards the back door of the bakery. Opening the door, she stepped inside. Giving a small smile to the part-time baker she’d hired, Celise walked into her office.
‘Disrespect will get you a bullet.’ Those words had rung in her ears every time she called her grandmother and her grandmother telling her she could come back home or she, Willa Jean, could come and see her, Celise. She’d refuse to let her grandmother come to her not wanting the woman harmed because she where Celise was. And Celise knew there was harm coming because not only had she disrespected Claire, she’d also assaulted her. All things which could get her killed. She’s returned only once, three years after her departure, because her grandmother had passed. And still, she hadn’t set foot in Rydal, only staying in her hometown long enough to take care of her grandmother’s affairs. While leaving the funeral home with her grandmother’s ashes, she’d seen Rene across the street, leaving the local store. Before the woman could see her, she’d rushed to her car and sped out of town, hoping not to return.
Sitting behind her desk, she booted up her computer. But return she had. She’d missed the openness of North Georgia. The seaside town she’d settled in, in South Carolina, hadn’t been home. Hadn’t had the openness or the mountainous ranges she found where she’d grown up. So she’d decided to come home. Problem was, there wasn’t really a home to come back to. Her grandmother’s illness had required them to not only sell her house to cover all the final doctor’s bills and move her into hospice assisted living, but it had also drained most of the money Celise had finally saved for her bakery. She’d had just enough left to move to Rydal where a bakery was for sale along with the building it housed and the small two-bedroom apartment over the bakery. She’d snapped both up and opened ‘Willa Jean’s Bakery.’ So far, the place had been doing well and no one from the Black Crows had come looking for her. Hell, they hadn’t come looking for her even after the incident. Every time she’d spoken with her grandmother, Willa Jean had assured her that all was well and no one was looking for her.
Celise hadn’t been so sure, so she’d stayed away until she couldn’t anymore. But her coming back meant she was entering Black Crows territory. That meant she was within Bash’s grasp – something she didn’t want to be. Her bakery was ten miles from the clubhouse and when she came into the bakery every morning to open up, it was still dark out. When she headed home at night it was dark again. She only went out, like today, when she needed to make a bank run. Usually, she did her grocery or essential shopping in the next town. The less anyone saw her and could tip off the Black Crows, the better.
“Celise, we need you out here.”
“Coming,” she called out to her assistant. Pushing the Black Crows and their potential threat out of her mind, Celise stood and headed out of her office.
“Daddy, come on or you’re not gonna get any cookies!” Melody Gray Delacrox whined as she pulled her father down the main street of Rydal.
Bash smiled down at his daughter. Despite Claire being her mother, his daughter was the sweetest thing in the world. At almost five years old, his toffee-skinned daughter with dark auburn hair and deep-set eyes was always bringing home stray animals or feeding them from the back door of the clubhouse. He didn’t know how many cats he’d had to give to the local animal shelter because they were drawn to his sweet girl. “I’m moving as fast as I can, Melly,” Bash told her, using the nickname he’d given her at birth. With Melly smiling her sweet smile up at him, his heart melted. He and Melly had had a long road to get to where they were. After he’d removed Celise from his life and placed Claire in it, things had gone more or less how he assumed they would. Claire had believed he would make her his Old Lady and had thought she would run things. He’d had to put her in her place several times and each time he did, she would disappear for days without him knowing where she was – with his child still growing in her belly.
After a while, he’d placed a tracker on her, literally. There was always a brother or a Sweetheart watching her and Scottie, who seemed to always be by Claire’s side. When she’d gone into labor, he’d been called by one of the Sweethearts to come to the hospital. Neither Claire nor Scottie had wanted to call him because Claire was pissed he hadn’t taken her before the club and declared her his Old Lady. Something she’d been angling for but was never going to get. Once he’d arrived with Trigger and Danish, he’d gone straight to Claire’s room and seen the birth of his daughter. A daughter he’d named after his mother, once her DNA came back stating the little girl was definitely his. His mother would have loved being a grandmother.
Once his daughter was cleared to leave the hospital, he’d taken her to a home he’d had set up in Tennessee with a trusted and vetted, nanny. He’d been planning the baby’s move since Claire had hit her eighth month. Even if the child turned out not to be his he had made plans for the baby not to stay with Claire. The woman was unfit to be a mother. He would have found the baby a good home with loving and caring parents. But he hadn’t had to. No, all he’d had to do was make sure Claire couldn’t get her hands on his child and he had. With Melly in Tennessee, where Claire couldn’t get her hands on her, he’d come back to Rydal to deal with Claire who was pissed she hadn’t left the hospital with the baby. Bash hadn’t been a fool. He knew now that Melly was born she was in even more danger with Claire than she’d been when she was in the woman’s womb.
Claire hadn’t stopped partying while pregnant and when Melly was born, she’d had traces of opioids in her system. Traces that had Bash wanting to kill the woman, but he hadn’t. She was Melly’s mother and for that reason alone he hadn’t placed a bullet in her head. What he had done was ban her from the club. He’d also told the brothers she was no longer under the club’s protection or his responsibility. This declaration and the fact that she couldn’t find Melly had really pissed her off. For two years she’d tried to get any information she could about Melly’s whereabouts or some idea of when he would go to see his daughter. Scottie had tried too, but neither was getting the information they sought. Not even Danish and Trigger knew where Melly had been hidden or when he was enroute to see her. He trusted his brothers with his life and the life of his daughter but the less people who knew where his daughter was, the better.
After two years of sporadic visits under the cover of night, Claire finally realized she wasn’t ever going to see or get any information about Melly or her whereabouts. She’d then left town, not even telling Scottie where she was going. And Melly was finally brought home to her family. The Uncles, as she called his brothers at the club, were overjoyed to meet her. Even Rene, who was still pissed at him because of Celise, had smiled and loved Melly on sight and taken the baby under her wing. If he was on a run, Melly was with Rene, at Rene’s home on the compound. One she’d had built not far from the home he’d built. Well – built wasn’t the right word – he’d had a home moved onto his plot of land. With Melly finally coming home, he’d wanted a place for her, and the house Claire had lived in without him wasn’t going to be it. When Claire had been around, he’d kept his room at the club. A room that still had traces of Celise’s smell. He’d even kept his shirt that she’d worn that night in the back of his closet –refusing to wash it. Once Claire had left though, he’d rented out her house after having it cleansed of all her bad juju. The home he’d then purchased for his daughter and himself had been as close to the home he had grown up in as he could find. It was a one-and-a-half-story Victorian with a wraparound porch, four bedrooms with three baths. He’d looked at the pictures of the house and could see some updates had been made but not many. As he’d scrolled through the pictures that the real estate agent had uploaded, he knew this would be the perfect house
to move onto his land. It had taken a month to get the sale and move completed, then another three months for all the renovations to be completed for move-in day. But in the end, everything had gone as planned and his daughter had come home to a house which was filled with all the love he could give her.
“DADDY! LOOK!” Melly cried. “The line is really long and we’re gonna miss all the cookies!”
Scooping up his child, Bash kissed her cheek. Yes, the line was long, but Bash was positive his daughter wasn’t going to miss out on any cookies. “I’m sure they have enough,” he told her.
“No,” Melly shook her head. “They don’t. We shoulda come early! Your meeting was stupid and we gonna miss all the cookies with sprinkles!” she pouted.
“Melody Gray,” he warned. Bash could freely admit that his daughter was a bit of a brat but what could you expect when you had a whole MC who did as you insisted? It was hilarious to see men who had blood on their hands having a tea party with a four-year-old because she’d said it was time. The only ones who didn’t fall at Melly’s feet were the ones with kids of their own. But those brothers’ Old Ladies did cater to Melly because they all had boys and Melly was the little girl most of them wanted but couldn’t seem to have. “We do not act this way,” he told her as he placed her back on the ground. He hated being stern with Melly, but he wasn’t going to have her acting out either.
“Sorry, Daddy,” she kicked her little foot on the ground. “I just really want you to see the cookies we made when we came here with Ms. Tessa. She says they gonna be in the case with the rest of the cookies.”
