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Badly.
Jack is leaning against a fence railing pinching his nose.
I walk up to the fountain. “Get down, you crazy fuck.”
But Gabe is too drunk to pay me any attention. Instead, he serenades me with another chorus of the song.
“I swear to God, Gabe, if you make me come up there and get you, I’m gonna kick your ass all the way back to Las Vegas.”
“Las Vegas… where I left my heart,” he slurs.
“And your pants, by the looks of it,” I say because he’s only wearing his boxers.
“They were wet—” He hiccups and drops the whisky bottle. “Oh fuck—” He loses his footing and crashes down to the three inches of water below. The fountain dried up years ago, but it’s full of dirty rainwater and leaves.
“Get him out and help him to his room,” Jack says. “Tomorrow, I’m going to sit the fucker down, and we’re going to get his head straight.”
“Fine! But if he pukes on me, I’m gonna throw him back in.”
I haul Gabe out of the fountain and throw him over my shoulder.
“Take him through the back,” Jack says. “No one else needs to see him like this.”
There’s an old service entry around the back of the clubhouse. Back in the hotel days, it’s where the deliveries were received before they were taken inside to the kitchen. I carry Gabe in and down the corridors until we reach his room.
“Jesus Christ,” Paw says when he flicks on the light. “It stinks like the inside of a garbage refuge in here.”
Gabe’s bed is covered in a sea of photographs.
Pictures of him and his wife.
Paw scoops them off the bed, and I drop Gabe onto the mattress.
He rolls onto his side and wraps his arm around his pillow.
“Come on, he needs to sleep it off,” I say. I want to get back to the party. Face it, buddy, you want to get back to your girl. “Jack will sort him out tomorrow.”
We return to the party and I see Merrick has joined Rory at the booth. The man looks like a male model and is never short of female company. So when I see him flirting with Rory, my blood pressure shoots through the roof.
“Calm down, big fella,” Paw says. “He’s just being friendly.”
“Yeah, but his kind of friendly gets you pregnant,” I mutter.
RORY
For some reason, Ares can’t get me away from the handsome biker with the bright blue eyes and dimples quick enough, and the death glare I see Ares give him makes me feel a little giddy.
“I want you to meet someone special,” he says, leading me across the room to where an older woman stands at the bar. “Dolly kind of runs this place.”
“I thought Jack was president.”
“He is, and what he says goes. But when it comes to the clubhouse, Dolly rules the roost.”
“Like a clubhouse mom?”
He smiles. “Yeah, like a clubhouse mom. But don’t let her sweet face and kind eyes fool you. She can be frightening if you make her mad.”
We walk over to a blonde bombshell with big hair and a dazzling smile. She’s dressed in a pair of tight jeans, knee-high boots, and a denim jacket covered in sparkles.
