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Every single one of them was attractive in their own way.
How was that even possible?
"She brought baked goods?" the guy from the night before asked, eyes brightening.
"For Malc, not you," Fallon said, shaking his head.
"Hey, she knows me. She probably wants me to have one of those too. Don't you, baby?"
"That's Dezi," Fallon explained. "He has no manners to speak of," he added.
"And I don't apologize for it either," Dezi agreed.
"Why don't you make yourself useful and go get... oh," Fallon said as the hulking figure of Malcolm moved out from a hallway between the bar and what looked like the kitchen. "Never mind."
"Holly," Malcolm said, sounding taken aback as his gaze moved over me.
"She brought us cookies," Dezi declared.
"Oh, yeah, I, ah, I just wanted to thank you. You know, for last night. I, well, I used to bake for a living. I show my thanks in the form of desserts," I said, shifting my feet, uncomfortable with so many eyes on me.
"And we accept whole-heartedly," Dezi said, moving forward to take the container from my hands, ripping off the lid, and taking a deep breath. "I'm gonna marry her if you don't," Dezi declared, opening the container, taking out a cookie, and shoving the whole thing in his mouth.
At my side, massive Tommy sat down and leaned his head into me, nearly knocking me sideways with his impressive weight.
"Somehow, she knew Tommy and Chuckie's names too," Fallon said, giving Malcolm a pointed look. It was one that said they were going to talk about it later.
"Holly, you want some coffee?" Malcolm asked, ignoring his friends. Or, apparently, as the bikers called one another, "brothers."
"That would be great," I agreed, moving forward as Malcolm reached into the container of cookies, taking a few.
"They'll be gone in five minutes if I don't take some now," he told me as he led me into the kitchen. "For the record, you have nothing to thank me for," he told me, biting into one of the cookies. "Fuck. But if you did, this is how you do it," he told me with a soft smile.
"You got arrested because of me," I said, shaking my head at him.
"I got arrested because that asshole had pictures of you on his phone, and that shit is fucked up. You didn't ask me to do it."
"No, but I called you."
"And I hope no one in my life ever hesitates to call me if something is wrong," he said, shrugging, before stuffing another cookie in his mouth.
In his life?
Surely that was a slip.
He didn't mean that I was in his life.
But, God, how a part of me responded to that possibility.
"Are you in a lot of trouble?" I asked.
"No."
"Don't lie."
"I'm not. Reign is pulling some strings. Even if he couldn't, though, it was probably just going to be a fine."
"How can he pull some strings?"
"How much do you know about bikers?" Malcolm asked as he moved closer to me. Or, rather, closer to the coffee machine to start making a pot.
With him standing so close, I felt like he was sucking all the oxygen out of the space, making me feel a little breathless.
"Not a lot," I admitted. "Pretty much just that you have a clubhouse, wear cuts, and call one another brothers."
"Do you know what this means?" he asked, putting a finger to the breast of his cut where a little white and black badge sat. It was the same place Dezi had tapped the night before, threatening the guy taking the pictures.
"One-percenter? No," I admitted.
"Ninety-nine percent of biker clubs are just casual. Guys who liked to ride and party together kind of shit. One percent of bike clubs carry out illegal activity for a living."
"Oh. Oh," I said as the words penetrated.
Malcolm did illegal things for a living? What kinds of illegal things?
"I see the gears turning," he said, turning away from the coffee to face me fully. "I probably shouldn't tell you this, but if you asked just about anyone outside of this clubhouse, they would tell you this same thing anyway. We run guns. That's what we do."
"Run guns. You... you sell illegal guns."
"Yeah."
Well, that was better than them being, like, enforcers or drug dealers, right? Or was I trying to justify what was inherently unacceptable behavior?
I'd never met a criminal before.
And now here I was, in a biker clubhouse full of them.
"What I'm trying to say here," he said to my stunned silence, "is that when you're in this sort of lifestyle, you tend to get to know people. And those people might be willing to do favors for you. Which is what Reign is going to make happen for me."
I was fairly certain that no favors in the outlaw world were done out of the goodness of someone's heart. Which meant money was exchanging hands to get Malcolm's charges dropped.
