by Mia Malone
The sheets were also torn at the edges as if someone had put them on the cake and then removed them again. I looked at them for a beat, took a small sharp knife and swiftly cut out Cinderella and placed her on the cake. Then I put white, swirly piping up and down all around the side and added flower shaped dots of frosting in various colors around the top and bottom edge. The area around Cinderella, I decorated with thin, swirly ringlets.
“What’s your girl’s name?” I mumbled.
“Maria.”
I piped the name in curly letters above the princess and stepped back to survey the result. Then I added a few more flowers and ringlets and sprinkled some sparkling glitter over the whole creation. It was far from fantastic, but it was lightyears better than what I’d started out with.
Huh, I thought. It seemed I hadn’t forgotten how to decorate a cake after all.
“Jesus,” Jenny said hoarsely.
“Effing Christ with a cherry on top,” the younger woman added succinctly.
“You like?” I asked with a grin that must have looked smug as all get out because that’s how I felt.
“Uh, yeah,” Jenny said, still staring at the cake.
“Excellent,” I said
Then the younger woman suddenly squealed loudly and got to her feet.
“I’m Maddie, and I’m so incredibly grateful, and I have to go. The birthday party is ongoing, and they’re eating burgers right now, but I have to get home with this for dessert.”
Before I could say anything at all, they’d boxed up the cake, and she left, holding the cake-box in front of her as if it was made out of delicate china.
Jenny and I stared at each other, both grinning widely.
“That was fun,” I murmured.
“You’re not looking for a part-time job by any chance?”
“Not really.”
“You don’t look like a Charlene,” she said suddenly. “You look like a Lee. Anyone ever call you that?”
“Way back when,” I said, suddenly remembering my girlfriends in high school.
“Good enough. So, Lee, not really isn’t the same as a firm no. I’ll work on that and perhaps you’ll work part-time here while I do?”
I started laughing, and told her, “I rented a cabin in the area for a year and thought I’d celebrate with some cupcakes. Let’s start with them, shall we?”
“Girl, you don’t celebrate something like that with cupcakes. We’ll go to my brother’s.”
I stared at her, wondering what in the heck she meant.
“Bar across the street. Oak. We’ll have tequila.”
Oh. Yeah, I could totally do that, and she was right. One didn’t celebrate huge life decisions with a few lonely cupcakes. That, one did with tequila.
***
We were on our third shot and had shared the abbreviated versions of our lives, our divorces and how we loved being our age, but hated how everything on our bodies seemed to move slightly downward with each year.
I’d told her about Ms. Skanky and how my ex-husband Bob now fell asleep on the couch with her in the house instead of me. She’d shared how her husband had used his hard hands on her and how she’d thrown him out of the house before her brother found out because, she said, he’d surely kill him and end up in prison for life.
She had a dry, sharp sense of humor, and I liked her a whole lot more than the kind of women I’d spent time with back in suburbia.
“Crap,” I said when we debated whether we should go for a fourth tequila or not. “I have a car.”
“I’d imagine you do,” she said and made a gesture toward the waitress which I assumed meant we’d get another shot.
I’d planned on having one more, so I grinned but moved my arm in a wide arc to indicate the general outside, and said, “It’s there.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “That’s where it would be.”
Our eyes met, and we both started laughing loudly.
“I don’t know how to get home,” I shared. “My rickety shed is far away, and this town doesn’t strike me as a place which has a taxi service.”
It took fifteen minutes to drive to the town limits, so I was perhaps exaggerating the distance a little, but it was still too far away to walk, especially since we’d been sitting in a corner of Oak for quite some time and dusk was well underway, so I knew it’d be dark soon.
“You live in a rickety shed?”
“No,” I said with a small dismissive wave of my hand. “I’ll call Jonah; he’ll pick me up.”
“Jonah?”
“Anderson.”
“You’re renting Jonah’s cabin?”
“For a year. I’ll fix it up.”
She leaned forward slowly and put her forehead in her hands. She knew about the state of the cabin, apparently.
“What?”
She slowly raised her head and looked at me.
“Lee…” she said. “You’re crazy.”
“No, I’m not,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “I’ll do some of it myself, but Jonah said I could bring in builders for the heavy stuff.”
“We’ll talk to Paddy,” she said.
“Paddy?”
“Callaghan construction. They do good work. Joke will help you. It’s a pity Day left, but Mac will pitch in, and of course –”
“Jenny.”
She ignored me and kept mumbling names, and was in the process of pulling out her phone.
“Jenny,” I said again, this time louder and with a snap in my voice. “Who are these people?”
She froze.
“God, I’m sorry. It’s so weird, Lee, because it feels like I’ve known you forever and I forgot that you don’t know anyone here.”
“So, who are they?” I asked again.
“Right. Joke is my brother. His name is really Zacharias, but no one calls him that. Day is one in their group of friends, but he’s away for a while. Mac’s another one, and he’s the goddamned chief of police. They all hang with Paddy and –”
“Jenny,” I cut her off again.
My belly had turned to ice because I recognized one of the names. Joke. One of the men from the horrible night in the mountains six months earlier had been called that, and it was too unusual a nickname, so all the names she was throwing at me had to be the group of gorgeous men I’d seen.
Shit.
“What?” she asked when she saw my face.
“I’m calling Jonah now. I have to leave. I’ll… Oh, God. I’ll leave tomorrow morning. I’m sure he’ll let me out of the contract. I’ll offer to waive the depos –”
I had started to get up, escape the only thing on my mind but she grabbed my arm and pulled me down again.
At the same time, a waitress put two shots on the table with a murmured, “Looks like you’ll need these.”
“Lee?” Jenny said, ignoring the waitress.
“Your brother? Joke?” I swallowed and whispered, “Does he ski?”
Her head reared back a little, and she nodded.
“I’ve kind of met him.”
“Fucked him,” she said calmly.
“No!” I shouted and looked around the half-empty bar. “Of course not.”
“Day?” she asked, and I shook my head and opened my mouth to protest. “Mac? Paddy? Or –”
“I haven’t fucked anyone at all,” I hissed.
She blinked, and added with a small smile, “You were married for twenty years, so I doubt that’s entirely true.” When I kept staring at her, she said softly, “Tell me.”
So, I did. I told her about the weight I’d lost, and my weekend with Marianne and the barracudas. About the stupid shots. And what I’d heard outside the restrooms.
Her eyes widened as I spoke, and by the time I finished, her mouth had fallen open. Our eyes held and there was kindness in hers, but slowly it was replaced by… mirth?
Then she started laughing.
I glared at her.
/> “I know, Lee, but it’s not you anymore, and you have to admit that it was kind of funny?” She laughed some more and added, “Grandma Myrtle!”
Suddenly what had seemed so insulting and hurtful wasn’t such a big deal. I’d had helmet-hair, no makeup and layers of ski-clothes which were a couple of sizes too small. The description had probably been quite apt.
She raised her glass and slowly I did the same with mine.
“To the death of Grandma Myrtle!” she called out, and I started laughing.
We downed the shots, and I shuddered a little as the alcohol burned its way down my throat and warmed my belly.
“God,” I said. “Which one was it?”
She turned her head toward the door and murmured absentmindedly, “Which one was what?”
“The smoking hot guy with the muscles who called me Myrtle,” I said, with a rueful grin. “I don’t want to meet any of them, but I especially never, ever want to lay my eyes on that dude again.”
She started laughing and turned back to me.
“That was Gibson. And he just walked through the door.”
Chapter Two
Gibson
Gibson Ward was cursing profusely and trying to wipe off the blood from his left eye with the sleeve of his shirt as he entered Oak. Joke shuffled him toward the bar at the back where he kept the first aid kit, but they both turned when Jenny laughed loudly, and Gibson froze.
All blood that wasn’t on his face and shirt went straight to his groin.
The woman next to Jenny was short, blonde, fit in a way that looked really good on her, and utterly and completely gorgeous with large dark eyes and a small straight nose. Jenny said something, and the woman’s pretty mouth fell open. He suddenly wanted to ignore the cut in his brow, the blood running down his face and the dull ache in both his fists, and walk over to her.
“Who’s that?” he grunted and twitched his head toward the corner where Joke’s sister was sitting with her friend.
“Huh,” Joke said.
“Dibs,” Gib added quickly.
The men at his sides froze, and he felt their stares but kept his own on the woman. She was staring back at him, and then her mouth moved to say what looked like, “Oh.” Gibson raised his brows, which made him scowl because he’d forgotten the cut above his left eye, and it hurt. The woman looked away immediately.
“Dibs, Gibson? Really?” Paddy snorted. “What are you – fifteen?”
“Don’t care,” Gib said, and he meant it. “She’s mine.”
“Gib,” Joke said. “Let’s get the blood off your face and then we’ll talk.”
“What in the holy hell happened?” Mac said as he came through the door.
Gibson sighed, turned toward the bar and accepted the paper towels Joke handed him. He wondered the same thing himself. He usually didn’t get injured, partly because everyone in the area knew not to fight him but mostly because he was that good.
He’d been in his workshop sanding down a table he’d just finished and had been trying to decide if he should use the soft amber colored varnish or perhaps go with a deeper golden brown. The crash from the front of his house hadn’t registered at first but then his dog started moving restlessly, and he realized what he’d heard. It had taken him less than a minute to get in through the unlocked back door, which the two idiots breaking into his house hadn’t thought to check.
One of them had held a gun, the other a knife and Gibson had been unarmed, cursing himself for it, but who the hell sanded down a table armed and ready for something like this?
The wise thing would have been to back out of the kitchen, but Gib had never been that kind of man and immediately attacking the man with the gun would anyway save him from getting a bullet lodged somewhere in his body as he retreated. His quick move surprised them, and a firm hold of the gun with one hand as he let the other swiftly slam into the throat of the idiot disarmed the man quick enough, but the other one had come at him from behind, and in the scuffle, he’d gotten sliced across his brow.
That pissed him off, so he threw the gun out through the back door and proceeded to beat both men up. They had clearly never met anyone like him and had not expected the kind of fury he unleashed on them with his fists. One went down on his knees, and Gib was about to finish him off when the other pushed him into the wall, pulled his buddy up and out through the front door.
Gibson followed, but he had blood running down his face, so they got in their car and were speeding away before he caught up with them.
That’s when the cursing began, and he kept at it through the following phone calls to Mac at the police station, Paddy in his office and Joke who had been at home.
A couple of police officers arrived first, and then Paddy.
“We’re meeting Joke at the bar,” Paddy said. “Clean you up there, see how bad that cut looks.”
Being the owner of a biker bar in a town full of bikers, Joke had a huge medical supply at Oak, and it wasn’t the first time they’d had to use it, although it usually wasn’t to patch up Gibson.
“Couple of butterflies and I’ll be fine,” Gibson muttered. “Can’t believe the fuckers got me.”
“You’re getting old,” Paddy said with a grin. “Let’s go before you bleed to death.”
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Paddy said. “Who the hell was it?”
“Don’t know. We didn’t introduce ourselves.”
“They from any of the clubs?”
“Nah. Looked like small-time idiots. No vests, no patches.”
“I’ll make some calls anyway.”
“Yeah,” Gib grunted.
They usually didn’t have any problems with any of the MC’s in the area around Wilhelmine. Paddy was good at alliances, and everyone knew not to mess with any of them, and especially not with Gibson. To have two men breaking into his home was astonishing, to say the least, and now he’d have to spend time hunting the fuckers down to give them what was due for the cut on his brow and having to replace his front door. All of this pissed him off in a big way, which was why the profuse cursing restarted when they got out of the car and still went on as they entered the bar.
“Um, excuse me,” a soft voice murmured. “You have a cut in your brow.”
He turned to look down at the blonde woman who was suddenly standing next to him.
“I know,” he said and scowled because it had been such a stupid thing to say.
Then he scowled because he scowled, something most women backed away from. Maybe he should have smiled instead. Fuck it. Maybe Paddy was right. Maybe he’d reverted to fifteen again.
“Sit,” she said calmly. “I’ll take a look at it.”
He blinked.
“Sit,” she repeated, and this time it wasn’t a polite request.
Was she giving him an order?
She kept her eyes on the cut on his forehead, and there was a surprisingly stubborn look in them. So, he sat down, suddenly feeling like laughing and wondering what the hell she was going to do next.
***
Charlene
What the hell was I doing?
The gorgeous man who had called me a mousey grandma was sitting in front of me with a rather deep cut in his brow and a look in his eyes that could only be described as humor.
“Are you laughing at me?” I asked and started wiping the blood off his face.
“Just a little,” he assured me.
I was about to snap at him when I heard Jenny make a hoarse sound and whipped around to glare at her. She was apparently also finding the situation humorous.
“Not. One. Word,” I snapped. “If there’s a first aid kit in this bar then get it for me.”
“Here,” a deep voice said, and an enormous red box was placed on a table next to me.
I stared at it for a beat, thinking that I’d never seen such a gigantic collection of medical supplies outside a hospital before.
“
Holy cow,” I whispered and wondered what kind of place I’d walked into if it warranted a box of that size.
The man in front of me shook a little, and I looked down at him.
“Are you laughing at me?” I asked again, stupidly.
“Yep,” he said and grinned up at me.
“Do you want me to clean you up?” I asked.
“Yeah. Just put a couple of butterfl –”
“Are you a nurse?” I snapped and went back to wiping blood off his brow. “No. You are not,” I added, which was a guess, although not really a guess at all because there was no way the man in front of me was a nurse. Random thug or hitman were occupations that came to my mind as I leaned forward to inspect the cut. “What happened to you?”
“Dealt with a couple of idiots,” he murmured.
Suddenly I felt hands on my legs, pulling me closer. I looked into Gibson’s eyes for the first time and immediately got lost in the pale, silvery gray gaze looking back at me. His big hands slid up my legs, still pushing me closer and I heard someone snort out laughter but couldn’t make myself look away from him.
“What are you doing?”
Shit. I sounded breathy and silly and not at all like the mature woman I was supposed to be.
“You’ll see better like this,” he murmured.
Oh.
That made me feel like an idiot because of course, he was right. He’d widened his legs to pull me in between them, and instead of leaning forward I’d have a good angle to get the wound taken care of this way.
“Okay,” I said and reached for the bottle of antiseptic.
He didn’t even wince as I cleaned up the wound and poked the edges.
“Knife?”
“Yup.”
“Just now?”
“Yup.”
“You’ll need stitches.”
“No.”
I stopped looking at the wound and looked down into his eyes.
“You’ll need stitches,” I repeated.
He opened his mouth, presumably to protest again but I raised a finger.
“Either you get a scar as wide as Grand Canyon, or… You.” I pointed my index finger at him for emphasis. “Get.” I made another stabbing movement with my hand. “Stitches.”
