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I jumped up, throwing my arms around his neck. “I knew you would win!” I cried, hugging him tight.
“I don’t know why I doubted myself so much,” he grumbled, but he was still grinning. Setting the bottle down on the edge of my desk, he hugged me back before pulling away to grab my coat off the rack by my door. “Now, come on, woman. We have to talk business, and I’m starving.”
I let him help me put on my coat then grabbed my briefcase as we left the office. His girlfriend had already left for the day, which surprised me. They should have been celebrating together, having a raging party as the town breathed a sigh of relief that Royce Campbell wasn’t going to step into Derrick Michaels’s shoes and take over where the other bastard had left off.
But I also kne
w that with Jenkins now the mayor, I would be taking over the law practice fully. It had always been part of the plan. When I started working for him years ago, it was written into my contract. I would work for him, learn from him, and then when he finally retired, he would have someone to inherit the practice.
Of course, I hadn’t realized at the time that it was all a scheme thought up by Hawk and the MC to give me enough money to pay for law school. Now that I looked back on it, I was thankful they’d done what they had. I probably wouldn’t have accepted the offer at the time if I had known, and I would have missed an incredible opportunity and the chance to learn from the best.
Jenkins opened the passenger door to his Audi and waited for me to get in before walking around to the driver’s side. On the ride to Aggie’s, we discussed all his open cases and what I would need to do to get caught up on them so I could step in. He knew I wouldn’t have any issues, but he was still like an overprotective father. Not of his clients, but of me.
We pulled up outside Aggie’s, and we were still talking about work as we walked in, so when everyone in the place screamed “Congratulations!” I nearly jumped out of my skin.
The entire town was laughing, throwing out praise and congrats. And for the next hour, instead of talking work, we celebrated.
“What’s the first change you’re going to make?” I asked when it was finally quiet enough to hold a conversation.
“First, I think I need to appoint a new sheriff until the spring election,” he said with a laugh. “Bates taking off for the wild blue yonder after you found out he was being paid by some unsavory people means we’re going to need a new official.”
I snickered. “The pussy.”
In my gut, I knew Bates was no more, but I had to pretend to believe like everyone else—that he’d just pulled up and left rather than face an internal investigation. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to defend any of the MC guys if his body was ever found. But that was a huge if.
Hawk and his men weren’t stupid. They wouldn’t leave any evidence of Bates behind.
I should have been upset even to be thinking about having to defend the father of my unborn child for the previous sheriff’s death, but it didn’t even faze me. I wasn’t sure what that said about me, but I’d learned not to give a damn since meeting Hawk Hannigan.
By the time I got home, I was dog-tired but all too happy to be back at the house. Hawk was still at the bar, the construction to patch up all the damage caused to it by the shootout a while back already underway. With Jet still at the hospital with Bash and Raven to watch over Lexa, Hawk and the other two Hannigan brothers had been overseeing the work that had been scheduled to start the day before.
With Fontana now no longer a problem, lockdown was officially over, and everyone had returned to their homes. Quinn and Kelli were in the kitchen when I walked in.
“Heard Jenks won,” Quinn said with a grin as I dropped my purse and briefcase on the kitchen table. “Best news of the year.”
“Agreed,” I said with a laugh as I pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge. “It doesn’t even matter that I’m about to start working sixty-hour weeks until I catch up on all his cases.”
“You better take it easy, though,” Kelli warned. “All that work stress isn’t good for the baby.”
I rubbed my hand over my still nonexistent baby bump. “Don’t worry about that. Work is nothing compared to the last few weeks.”
“Well, as long as you have enough time to hit pause and come to my wedding in two weeks, I’ll be happy,” Quinn said as she finished putting away the last of the dishes. “I can’t get married without all my new sisters.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” I assured her and grabbed my things. “I need a shower. See you two in the morning.”
Twenty minutes later, I was collapsing into bed, so exhausted, I was already falling asleep when my head hit the pillow…
“Shit,” Hawk growled low, probably trying to keep from waking me up.
I turned over in bed, already reaching for him, only to find the bed still empty. “Where are you?” I mumbled sleepily.
“Tripping over your damn briefcase,” he grumbled seconds before his heavy body dropped down onto the mattress beside me. “We talked about you leaving it lying around, woman. What if you were the one to trip on it?” His hand swatted my rear. “You want to risk falling and hurting yourself or the baby?”
I snuggled deeper into the pillow, hiding my grin. “Sorry,” I said…for the hundredth time. Knowing it would happen a hundred more times before I ever learned my lesson. I tended to drop my briefcase wherever and ignored it until I needed it or had to go to work.
“Why do I feel like your ‘sorry’ isn’t sincere?” he huffed as he stretched out beside me and pulled me against his hard body. For weeks, we’d done this back at the clubhouse, but it hadn’t felt as right as it did in that moment. Maybe it was because we were home again, or maybe it was just because the stress of Fontana and his crap was finally over. Whatever the reason, it made me happy.
But with the shot of happiness came the sudden flash of grief.
