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She knew her father had been really handsome as a young man, and he was still good-looking for a man his age, but a lifetime of fighting had left quite a lot of scars on his face and given him a craggy look. The grey in his hair and stubbly beard added age to his face as well. A few more years, and ‘grizzled’ would be an apt description.
And his hands were bad. The knuckles were scarred and swollen with arthritis. The skin was hard and sun-crisped. She knew that mornings were hard for him; it took half an hour, sometimes more, to loosen up the joints in his fingers so he could ride.
He was still strong and fit, still had a flat belly and contoured muscles. From the neck down, if you ignored his hands, he looked like a man twenty years younger. But he had the hands of a man twenty years older, and his face wasn’t far behind.
As she cleaned his face, her father closed his eyes and sighed heavily. “Feels good, pix.”
“Enjoy it while you can. Because next I’m going to set your nose, and that won’t be nearly so relaxing.”
“You’ll be gentle, I know.”
“It’s a good thing I love you.” She rinsed the bloody cloth in the basin, wrung it out again, and came back for another pass.
“You gotta stay away from him, Kelsey. He’s not right for you.”
Kelsey was torn. On one hand, she didn’t want to talk to her father about this because it wasn’t his business. She was grown. She was independent. Her love life was her business alone. Also, she was angry at him. Not only was he behaving like a rabid animal, but he was also laying down law like he was still in charge of her.
On the other hand, though, it could be said that she’d invited this much interference. After she’d finally seen Greg for who he was and had broken up with him, he’d started an intensifying series of dangerous behaviors. He’d forced her to reject him over and over, and every time, he came back again, twice as frantic. She’d gone to her father and brother for help before Greg had shown up at the Bull’s clubhouse with an assault rifle and not a single drop of sanity left. Duncan and the Jessup brothers had beaten him senseless. They’d convinced her father to stand back, because Daddy would have ripped Greg apart with his bare, arthritic hands.
After he’d recovered from that beating, Greg had responded by trying to kidnap her and nearly causing a bloodbath at the clubhouse. And Dex had put a bullet in his head.
In her father’s mind, Kelsey had been too vulnerable. She wasn’t a good judge of men. More importantly, he believed he’d let her down. He’d allowed her her independence, and she’d been hurt. She might have been killed. He hadn’t protected her enough.
Kelsey had, in fact, been badly shaken by the whole string of awful events. She felt extremely vulnerable, and agreed that her instincts about men weren’t great. Hence going more than a year without even a date.
So she knew where all this rabid-bull insanity was coming from. She understood it; she even loved it a little bit, for the way it wrote her father’s deep love in bright, sparkling letters.
But her life was her life. It had to be. She had to be allowed to love whomever she loved, even if it wasn’t someone her father would have chosen for her. She didn’t love Dex, or know if she ever could or would. But she liked him. She was interested in him. When she looked at him, she saw a good man.
Not a clean cut, polite, respectable man—Greg had been that, and it had been all for show. Dex was glowery and taciturn. He was awkward and wouldn’t even meet her eyes half the time. She hadn’t yet seen anything like a sense of humor in him.
And not a single Brazen Bull could ever be called ‘respectable.’ Respectful, yes, but that was another thing entirely, wasn’t it? ‘Respectable’ was for show. ‘Respectful’ was for real. And that was worthy of real respect in turn.
“I don’t know if he’s right for me, Daddy. But I’d like to see. I like him. He’s a good man.”
She rinsed the cloth again and drained the bloody water from the basin.
“Kelsey. He’s not a good man. I’ve seen him do things you couldn’t imagine.”
Removing the nitrile gloves and replacing them with a new sterile pair, she returned to her father and lifted his chin, taking a good look at his nose. “Like what?”
“It’s club stuff. Not for you.”
“Then I discount it. You can’t make an accusation like that and not back it up.” She put her hands on either side of his nose, felt the direction of the break, and set it with one fast, sharp movement. The bone and cartilage ground together before they snapped into place.
“Ow! Hey, easy.”
“Sorry,” she said, and almost meant it.
“A couple years ago, I watched him remove the skin from a man’s arm. Just the fuckin’ skin, Kelse.” His voice sounded doubly congested now. “Peeled it back like a sticker. The guy shrieked like nothing I’ve ever heard in my life, but Dex didn’t flinch. Not once. The guy died of a heart attack—thepainfuckin’ killed him. And Dex didn’t react at all. Do you understand what kind of man can do that and notfeelit?”
Kelsey went back to her array of supplies and thought about what her father had said. She considered herself pretty savvy and levelheaded about the life her father and brother, all the men in her family, lived. They trafficked guns for Russian mobsters. They settled their problems with violence. Heck, she was looking at the result of violence they readily perpetrated on each other, sorting out their differences like cavemen. She’d lived with and around such men her whole life.
She also understood what it meant to be the SAA of an MC. Chief protector. Chief warrior. Chief executioner. Chief interrogator. In the Bulls, at least, the SAA was the guy who did the dirtiest, wettest work. She knew that. For most of her life, Uncle Rad had been the club SAA, and everybody talked about how quick to violence he was. Kelsey had even seen that in action a few times.
Her father didn’t think Rad was a bad man.
She picked up the prepared hypo of Novocain and turned to him again.
