by Rie Warren
The accordion strapped across her chest, she tapped her foot, barely giving me a passing glance from eyes as icy as Nordic waters. Not that I knew what the hell Nordic waters looked like, but something about Honoré put flowery words in my head.
First the acoustic guitar and now an accordion? Was there anything she couldn’t play?
I clapped slowly when she stopped, waiting until others threw money into the slouch hat beside her before I added my own bills to the growing pile of cash.
The only sign of recognition Honoré gave me was another bland look and a sighed out, “You again?”
Not like I’d been stalking her or anything.
In fact, I’d made it a point not to search her out after the wedding for fuck’s sake.
But yeah. Me again.
I tried to strike up conversation. “We didn’t get a chance to meet properly. I’m Saint Baptiste.”
I could tell the beautiful blonde wanted to tell me she wasn’t interested, but manners prevailed.
“Honoré Parrish,” she said through tight lips.
’Course I already knew her name. And I’d gotten enough info out of Mercy to track her down here. But I really didn’t wanna come across as some creepy fucker, so I tried to play it cool.
“I noticed your ink.” I nodded toward the filigree tats across the backs of her hands.
“I bet.” She gave a scathing glance at my inked arms.
Determined to make a go of this, I hitched my thumbs in my front pockets. “I’m part owner of a tattoo parlor. The one next door to the bar. Got shares in the business too.”
She still looked one hundred percent unimpressed.
“I could do you for free.”
She halted packing away her instrument long enough to ask, “Do me?”
No way was I goddamn fucking blushing.
I’m so goddamn fucking blushing.
“I meant a tattoo. I design all my own stuff and—”
“No thanks.” Honoré shut me down again.
“Can I help you carry that?” I pointed at the bulky case.
“Nope.”
Jesus, I’m gasping for my last breath here. Yet every denial Honoré uttered made me more intrigued than any other woman ever had.
“Can I walk you home?” I persisted.
“Definitely not.”
Haughty, beautiful, blonde Honoré deftly strapped all her stuff onto a wheelie-cart, glared one last time at me with all the attitude in the world, and swished off in the opposite direction.
She left me standing there with my ego oozing out all over the pavement. I stayed planted right where I was, watching her ass jiggle like her ripe rear end was some kind of consolation prize. For such a small woman, she had some damn party going on in the back.
Not that I was ever gonna find out for real.
I stalked away and thought about hooking up with the first hot-for-my-cock honey I could find.
But doing the deed like that didn’t appeal to me anymore.
Honoré with her haunting voice and her icy eyes.
Honoré. What the shit?
Chapter Two
HONORÉ
JUST BEFORE I ROUNDED the corner, I glanced back at Saint. He stared right at me and, when he caught me looking, a half smile slid across his lips.
I hustled away from him as fast as I could. The man spelled danger with a capital D, and I definitely couldn’t risk getting tangled up with him. Regardless, my heart had started pounding the moment I noticed him among my small audience. Tall and broad shouldered, he was hard to miss. He had an easy grin, and his dirty blond hair and the long sharp goatee set him apart in a crowd.
But I hadn’t let on to my immediate reaction to him.
And I never would.
I’d already given him the big brush off at Angel and Mercy’s wedding fais do-do, and still this biker dude had tracked me down.
I didn’t know all that much about the Blood Legion MC except they had a notorious history. I’d met Mercy last summer when she stopped to listen to me play. First noticing the tall man by her side, I was taken by how he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Then she’d won me over with her sweet charm. So when she’d asked me to play at the reception for a pretty decent chunk of change, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
I hadn’t expected the sexiest biker of them all to ask me to dance. Saint had been frowning the entire time and looked highly uncomfortable, which was pretty amusing looking back on it now.
To say I wasn’t amused at the moment was a massive understatement.
I’d gotten messed up in the whole MC lifestyle years ago. No way was I going back to being some knuckle dragger’s easy broad no matter how easy Saint was on the eye.
Saint. Right. I’d known my fair share of bikers, and not a single one of them was anything close to a saint. I was determined to dislike him and everything he stood for.
Unfortunately, he was ridiculously hot, and I did feel bad for shutting him down with a frosty glare and a totally cold shoulder. At the very least, it was flattering to be pursued by this gorgeous man. It wasn’t that I was completely uninterested in him but . . . I wasn’t willing to make the same mistake again.
And it wasn’t just me in the picture.
I liked my life just fine the way it was now. I was an outsider, and I preferred it that way. Getting attached meant giving up my freedom and giving in to a wild side I never wanted to revisit. The only time I gave up my precious control was when I lost myself in my music. It was through instruments that I explored my passions.
Not men.
At my car, I stowed away my accordion then navigated through the streets. The closer I got to my destination, the bigger my smile grew.
When I finally reached the location, I heard all the happy laughter and high-pitched voices. Kids streamed from the elementary school like brightly colored birds. The year was almost over, and the coming summer vacation seemed to infect the children with even more energy than usual.
Stepping out into the commotion of parents picking up their kids, I searched through the semi-ordered chaos for my own towheaded son.
“Mommy! Mommy!”
I heard the call that always made me grin and turned toward Caleb who jumped up and down like he’d just glugged a can of Red Bull.
He skipped-ran toward, arms waving madly.
As he caught up to me, I said, “Hey, baby boy.”
“Mommm! Don’t call me that here.”
I bit my lip to hold back my laughter then crouched down for a hug.
Again, he gave me the big brush off. “Mommm. Not in front of all my friends!”
Now I knew how Saint felt.
Caleb’s too-cool-for-mom attitude caused a bittersweet tug on my heart, but I laughed it off and tousled his hair instead. “My bad. Mr. Big Man is about to be in the second grade, and we’ve got to maintain a cool reputation.”
His head fell back on his neck, and he groaned dramatically. “Oh my gawd, Mommy.”
I rolled my eyes at his theatrics and ushered him to the car. “Learn anything new today?”
He jumped up and down some more, his giant backpack bobbing with him. “There’s a new battle royale group player mode on Fortnite!”
“That game?”
“Yeah. And Davis? He told me something weird about his mom. That she always gets real mad like once a month and his dad said to blame it on the TMZ. But what’s a TV show got to do with Davis’s mom?”
I was not about to explain periods and PMS to my misguided seven-year-old son. I was just glad he and Davis got it all confused with TMZ.
“Yeah, I don’t know about that one, honey.” I unlocked the car and helped him struggle out of his backpack.
As soon as he jumped into his booster seat, and I buckled into the front, he asked another doozy.
“What’s a spliff, Mommy?”
“What?” My head shot around so fast I could’ve been in The Exorcist.
“Someone in fifth grade was talkin’
about roaches. And someone else asked if he meant cockroaches. And the other kid said no he meant the butt end of spliffs.”
Holy hell.
“Another type of insect that’s really, really poisonous. So you should know to never touch one.” I fibbed big time.
“But like, are they around here? In the city?” He scratched his head until the white-blond strands stood up like a rooster’s comb.
“Sometimes.” I started the car and edged onto the road. “But you don’t have to worry about them because you’re a good boy, and bad things only hurt bad people.”
“Like Daddy you mean? ’Cause he’s not very nice sometimes.” Caleb’s nose had scrunched up when I peered back in the rearview mirror.
Lord. I didn’t even know how to answer that one. Caleb’s dad had messed me around but good. Yet, Reggie was still the boy’s father.
I’d gotten pregnant at an early age, which had never been my plan. I’d been on track for Julliard. Music had been the sole purpose of my being. Then I’d hooked up with this badass biker of a man and lost all common sense and any semblance of self-control.
Not getting my college degree was one of the bigger regrets of my life yet, no matter how much I harbored a deep burning hate for Reggie, I could never regret having Caleb.
Despite my life taking a completely different turn than expected when I’d become a young mom, I managed with the help of Reggie’s mother—Caleb’s grandma also affectionately known as Momma Joan. I busked and took gigs when I could get them. I existed solely for Caleb and the rush of performing.
I glanced back at him again. “Well, Momma Joan gave birth to him. She’s your dad’s mom so he can’t be all that bad since she’s so good, can he?”
“But I heard grandma say daddy’s as mean as a gator on the hemorrhoids once.”
Steroids. Not hemorrhoids. And yeah, that about summed Reggie up. Mean as an enraged gator.
Miraculously, he still managed to pay child support more often than not. And when the court ordered him to cough up the missing funds, he found the cash somehow. I didn’t want to think about where it all came from. He’d never been to jail—another miracle, I was sure—and the cash was quite possibly dirty.
“Hey, baby boy, how about we stop for some ice cream?” I suggested in hopes of changing the subject.
Caleb’s consternation flipped like a switch, and he bounced in his seat. “From that place I like? And then I’ll do my homework super fast first thing promise. Promise, promise!”
“You bet.” I winked at him through the rearview mirror.
Awkward conversation averted.
But at least that little talk with Caleb cemented my resolve. His dad was the reason I needed to stay as far away from Saint as possible. Reggie was a rotten asshole to the nth degree. I only realized that later, because I’d been too young and dumb to see what was right in front of my eyes.
I wasn’t that young or dumb anymore.
* * * *
Two days later, and Momma Joan and I finished up our morning coffee in the living room. We’d just been watching the latest news about the disgraced would-be mayor of New Orleans, Roark Finnegan.
That disgusting excuse for a man had actually run a black-market adoption ring. I knew through Mercy that one of the Blood Legion men had cracked the whole illegal operation, and that Finnegan had been the one taking gross advantage of the heavily pregnant woman who had been at her reception.
And I thought my ex had done me wrong.
At least I hadn’t been prostituted out.
“Well, I think that’s just about enough of that.” Momma Joan clicked off the TV with loathing curling her lips. “Don’t need news about that loser making you even more anti-men.”
Momma Joan lived with Caleb and me. She’d moved in as soon as I’d given birth—her sense of responsibility much stronger than her son’s. She was more than a mother figure to me and a grandma to Caleb. She was a friend, a damn nosy one at that.
“Maybe I’ll just become a lesbian,” I replied tartly.
“Ha! You and I both know that wouldn’t cut it.”
“How do you know what I’m into?”
She knitted her fingers together around her cup, pretty brown eyes dancing. “I found your vibrator. And you’re not that quiet.”
I would’ve been mortified if this conversation happened with anyone else, but Joan had zero filter, and over the years I’d gotten used to her. She was a pistol.
And a darn busybody.
Her soft dark brown bob swung forward when she leaned toward me. “You know, you’re in danger of becoming a nun.”
“Seriously Momma Joan.” I rolled my eyes, knowing full well I sounded just like a surly teenager.
“Well, what about that nice man from the fais do-do?”
Oh dear god. I knew I shouldn’t have even mentioned the sexy stranger who’d asked me to dance.
“He wasn’t a nice man. He was a biker probably with a criminal record as long as his inked sleeves.”
Joan stared pointedly at the tats on my hands. “Pot, kettle, black? And just because one particular biker—my Reggie—isn’t the man I raised him to be doesn’t mean the whole lot of them are cut from the same cloth.”
I harrumphed.
“He can’t be that bad with a name like Saint.”
“Ya think?” I sighed.
“Honoré, child, all I’m saying is I’m a lot older than you, and I still get my pipes cleaned from time to time. You’re too young to be getting cobwebs all up in your hoo-ha.”
“Oh my god, Momma Joan.”
“What about that swipe-right thing? It’s basically just a hookup app.”
“Joan!”
Our back and forth was cut short by a knock on the front door, and Joan hustled from the rocking chair to answer it.
I could only see a tall broad shadow beyond the screen. Then I heard Joan say in her most sultry tone, “Well, hello there, stranger.”
Then Saint stepped inside.
His dark green gaze swept immediately to me, and I was mortified. I could tell he’d overheard probably everything by that smug smirk on his smug hot face.
Chapter Three
SAINT
OH, HELL YEAH. I was loving this.
I’d listened in on a verrrry interesting conversation between Honoré and the older woman who appeared to be her mom. About how it was time for Honoré to get back in the saddle, so to speak. And I was just the man to fulfill her clearly unmet needs.
Maybe the lack of sex explained her waspish behavior.
Whatever motivated Honoré to keep giving me the big fuck you wasn’t actual disinterest, I could read that much. I remembered the way she’d glanced back at me the other day just as she reached the corner.
Her eyes had lingered. Her cheeks had blushed. If I wasn’t mistaken, her pulse had fired off like mine, evident in the rapid rise and fall of her breasts.
She wasn’t as indifferent as she wanted me to believe.
But she was all het up.
She popped up to her feet while slamming a coffee mug down on an end table.
“Are you following me?” she hissed as soon as I took two steps inside the living room.
Meanwhile, the other woman gazed up at me with nearly unblinking eyes, pink coloring the apples of her cheeks. “My, aren’t you a tall one.”
I smiled, extending my hand. “The name’s Saint, ma’am.”
She slipped her much smaller palm into mine. “Pssht. No need to ma’am me. You can call me Joan. Or Momma Joan if you like.”
“Momma Joan.” I pulled my hand back and tucked a thumb in my pocket. “Pleased to meet you.”
“And I’m thrilled to meet you. I’ve heard all about you, matter of fact.”
“Have you now?” My gaze landed on Honoré, and her face turned the color of ripe tomatoes.
“Dammit, Momma Joan!”
Heedless of Honoré’s outburst, this momma pulled me farther into the room. “Can I get you a cup
of coffee?”
“No need for that.”
“How about a beignet? I got ’em fresh this morning.”
“Now that might be an offer I just can’t refuse.” I winked at Joan and was rewarded with another large smile.
Honoré eyed me with lethal intensity until the older woman returned. Joan passed me a small plate then motioned for me to take a seat.
Don’t mind if I do.
As I munched on the pastry, Joan and I made small talk while Honoré continued to sulk. She reluctantly took the only seat left once Joan perched in a rocking chair. Settling as far away from me as she could on the couch, she stewed while I bit into the delicious pastry.
Honoré’s petulance just amused me that much more, and I couldn’t resist rubbing it in. I slouched right into the couch, making sure I jostled her with my elbow, and she actually snarled at me under her breath. When I leaned across her to accept a napkin from Momma Joan, Honoré squished so far back into her corner I wondered if she was searching for loose change in the cushions.
I finally let up on her to sit back and enjoy the company.
Damn but Honoré was stunning when she was all fired up. Her ice blue eyes flashed dangerously, and her lips took on a delicious pout. I bet she looked even better when she unleashed her inner sexpot.
I didn’t have to pursue women. Wasn’t my style anyway. But there was a spark in her, and her fieriness spiked my temperature. I saw what Angel and Mercy had, what Slade and Grace had . . .
I wanted something like that, with a woman who was more than my match.
“So you live here too?” I directed my question to Joan.
“Mm hmm.”
“Sweet set up.” I took in the house that definitely had a woman’s touch from soft throw pillows to paintings hanging on the walls.
Probably a three bedroom, the place was one story, and there were flowers blooming out front that reminded me of the courtyard Mercy had planted up behind the bar.
Finishing the beignet, I licked the last of the powdered sugar off my lips. And Honoré watched, her mouth slightly parted. When I spread my thighs just that little bit more, her gaze darted to my crotch where there was a significant bulge even though I wasn’t hard.
