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“Good night, Daddy. I love you.” The words fell from Leo’s lips easily and the ache in my chest grew at his easy acceptance of me and our relationship. His little arms extended to the sky in a move I learned pretty quickly meant he wanted a hug.
I leaned in to give him what he wanted, squeezing him tight until he laughed. “Good night, little man.” I watched as he snuggled down into the blanket that I covered him with and closed his eyes, quickly falling asleep. I closed the door and let my shoulders relax for the first time in hours.
Holy fuck that kid had a lot of energy, more than any of the twenty-year-old prospects working day and night to join the MC. He asked a lot of questions, but he listened carefully to every word I said as if they were worth a damn. Running an MC was a lot like being a father to a bunch of frat boys, but this with Leo was different. It was humbling to have someone look at me like I was a hero.
I didn’t know how Ellie did it—work and look after Leo without falling to pieces—without letting the worry consume her. I understood now why she was afraid of losing the kid, and the sacrifices she made left me in awe of her. And along with that, watching her heart-shaped ass bent over with her head stuck in my fridge, made me want her even more.
“Sweetness,” I growled.
She froze and gasped before she slowly pulled herself out of the fridge and turned with two bottles in her hand. “How’d it go?”
I noticed that she was no longer correcting me when I used that name on her.
“Two bedtime stories,” I said proudly, feeling smug at my progress with Leo and with Ellie both. “He asked for four, but I put my foot down.” Ellie continued to stare. “Okay, he dozed off in the middle of the second story.”
She laughed and the sound was husky and low, like the hook to my favorite rock song. “You’ve earned this,” she said, and handed me one of the beer bottles.
“Thanks. Did you find anything yet?” Those damn boxes terrified her for some reason, and I was dying to know what it was.
“No,” she sighed. “So far, it’s just a bunch of files and what looks like business records, and it doesn’t make any sense. I’m going to try again tomorrow. Maybe if I put it all in some type of order, it will start to make sense.”
I watched Ellie’s growing unease, and wondered if she was keeping something from me. I realized that despite my hook up with her sister, I had known little about the woman. “What did Stacy do for work? Was she seeing anyone? Did she have any trouble with anyone?”
“Jealous?”
I barked out a laugh. “Not even close. Stacy hung around the clubhouse a lot. She was a fun girl and great at darts, but we weren’t a couple. One night after a few too many drinks, it just happened.” I drained half the bottle and sighed. “Your turn.”
She nodded and took a small sip. “She wasn’t seeing anyone that I knew about, but after you ghosted her, she was pretty much turned off men. She worked in the billing department for Steel City Enterprises and on the weekends, she bartended at Skid Row.” Ellie blew out a frustrated breath. “We were close, but she always tried to shield me from the bad things. She’d been doing that since we were kids, she was almost ten years older than me, and I guess it was just second nature. Anyway, she did her thing, and I did mine—I was a typical college kid then, so we didn’t have a lot in common. We had lunch together once a week and I was happy to watch Leo whenever she needed.”
Something in her expression was sad, almost guilty. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” she began, and shook her head. “I just feel like I let her down, like I should have asked more questions and pushed when she tried to evade them. In the run up to her disappearance I knew she was worried about something, but I just put it down to her being a fulltime working mom and the single parent of a six-month-old.”
“No, fuck that guilt,” I said. “You kept Leo safe and loved when she couldn’t and that’s what she would want you to do. It’s what I would want you to do. Got it?”
She blinked away her tears and a small smile touched her lips. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“I have a kid brother, Riley. He’s in the military and I’m pretty sure he’s going to make a career out of it.”
“Are you close?”
I shrugged. “We were close, but now he spends most of every month traveling, sometimes to places he can’t talk about, so we talk when we can. As kids we were very close. Had to be.”
Ellie’s brows crinkled and I knew she was ready to dig into my whole life, but I smiled and headed her off, standing with a smile.
“Follow me.”
She stood. “Where are we going?” She jogged to keep up as we walked down the hall behind the kitchen. “This place just keeps getting bigger,” she mumbled.
For some reason I was nervous as I gripped the handle and turned the knob. I pushed the door open and motioned for her to step inside. “You can use this room as long as you want.” If I had my way, she would use this room forever.
When she gasped and her eyes connected with mine, they swirled with emotions I couldn’t read. “Diesel. It’s an office. It’s your office.”
“It’s your office now.”
She shook her head. “I can’t take your office.”
“You can and you will,” I told her with a smile. “I use the office at the clubhouse.”
