“Fuck, no. She keeps trying to weasel her way back into everyone’s good graces, though. She remained friends with the daughter of one of our older members. She chose wrong in that regard, too. Roxy was shunned by the club, along with her mother for some things they pulled with Baffle. It put Simone right back at square one with no one to tie her to the club.
“That sounds like a whole lot of ‘not my business.’ Look, I really do have a busy day ahead of me. Apology accepted and no need to be in each other’s space now.”
“What do you mean, ‘no need,’ Cassidy? Are we going to ignore how we almost ignited the clubhouse from that kiss yesterday?”
Shit. Damn. Fuck.
He had to bring that up knowing my friends were listening in. I would never hear the end of it.
“You just can’t help yourself from putting my business - whether real or imagined - out there for everyone else to hear, huh?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders indifferently while his face gave way to a sheepish, almost shamed expression. “Sorry, but not really,” he finally tacked on.
“I knew even lesbians couldn’t resist taking that man for a ride. What did I tell you?”
“Did you forget who he was, Amberlee?” Collette asked.
“Of course not. That’s my point. He made her miserable and was one of the people who taught her that she wasn’t worthy of love or even for people to like and respect her. You know he gives off the wildest sex vibes when a woman can overlook bullshit like that and test drive a man anyway.”
“There’s a non-zero chance that you’re right. She acted on an old crush, not sex pheromones. And it’s not really our business unless she tells us otherwise.”
“Nuh-uh, I want details. I didn’t fail to share when I finally got Sgt. Marshal in bed.”
“Sgt. Marshal was only the slightest bit bi-curious and when you were done with her, she was one hundred percent straight as they come.”
I heard Amberlee’s giggle at Finch’s assessment.
“Yeah, I focused her so good she knew no other woman would compare.”
I could feel the eye-roll from Finch and Collette as I did the same. If anyone among us had an enormous ego to match that of what James described, it would be Amberlee.
I made the mistake of turning my attention back to James to see amusement twinkling in his eyes and something akin to relief. His smile grew into a grin that might have swept me off my damn feet if I didn’t know any better. He had said himself that he was still mostly ruled by his idiot ego, and that was all the warning label I needed to stay away from him.
“Motorcycle club or no, I will put that motherfucker in the ground if he hurts Billups again.”
“I know a guy with a pig farm,” Collette added.
It was Amberlee’s dead-serious rejoinder that finally made the smile slip from James’s face. “I’ll burn that entire club to the ground with him in it and make it look like their enemies did the job. I joked about sex to warm you up to the possibility of her crush possibly resurfacing because the man is dead sexy, but emphasis on the dead part if he has plans to treat her like shit again.”
“I’m really fucking happy that you found that,” James said as he tipped his head in the direction of where my friends took their conversation to whisper mode. “Death threats aside, it’s good tosee that you have a solid team at your back. Sorry for letting that slip, though. I honestly forgot they were listening in.”
“Yeah, we wouldn’t want anyone to know we slummed it through a surprise kiss together.”
“The first time may have been just a kiss, but when you came back last night, what we got into was far more, Cass. Don’t downplay it. We were so lost in one another that if it hadn’t been for Jasper playing lookout, anyone could have come by and gotten a show. A few people were talking about the two of us this morning and asking questions about you, so they have may seen the kiss or…”
That was a shocker. Then again, it could be because of video surveillance or someone heard us and spilled the beans, not because he told them about it for whatever reason. I turned away from the intense way James stared at me as waited for my response. The feet that were obvious beneath the kitchen doors were gone, but I knew they wouldn’t be too far away.
“We have each other’s six without question,” I ignored what he had to say about us hooking up and chose to backtrack to the bit about being glad I have friends who care. “They’re my family, not just a team. I don’t know what your plan is here or what you told your club, but I’m not alone to be used as someone’s pawn or discarded when I’m not convenient. It’s good that we cleared the air, but…”
His phone started to chime with an incoming call and I thought he might slip out to take it, since he’d obviously ignored the other incoming texts as we listened to my friends plot his demise. Instead, he shocked me by picking up the call with the speaker turned up loud enough that I could hear the booming voice on the other end.
13.UNEXPECTED
KNUCKLES
I had ignoredthe slew of incoming texts as my conversation with Cassidy continued. I couldn’t ignore when the texts turned into calls from my club president, though. “Sorry, it’s my prez. I need to get this.”
Cass stood. “Like I said, I need to get back to work.” Something about the way she said that made me think it was a lie or a half-truth. Judging by their restaurant, they weren’t ready for business yet. At least, not beyond catering gigs. There weren’t really a whole lot of reasons to have an event catered in Violence, New Mexico, though. I shook my head and held a finger up to stop her from leaving as I hit the button on my phone to take the call.
