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Wren waves me off, so I trail Lisa back into her office, closing the door behind me.
“Confidential call?” I ask. Lisa glances over, shrugging one shoulder.
“Yeah. Illegal stuff. Best you don’t know.”
I blink. Did she say that with a fucking straight face?
“You’re a long way from Pinedale,” I note lightly. Lisa’s eyes search my face before she rolls them.
“Why? Because I’m open about doing crime rather than pretending it’s all legal from my office in a fancy thousand-dollar suit?”
Ouch. Home truths I wasn’t ready for. Smirking, I shrug, looking around again.
“So, what do you do here?”
Lisa launches into an explanation of her job – answering the phones, organizing invoices and payments, that kind of thing. It’s kind of fascinating.
She’s in the middle of showing me how to do a produce order for the café when the door swings open again. Palmer doesn’t even blink when he sees me sitting beside Lisa. Instead, he raises his eyebrows, jerking his head at the door.
“Fuck off, Shelley,” he advises cheerfully.
I’m about to argue, but I remember Lisa giggling about how Palmer fucks her at work. Yeah. I’m out. Wrinkling my nose at him, I beat a hasty retreat.
Wren’s door is closed, and through it, I can hear the faint whirring of a breast pump, so I avoid it. At the other end of the corridor is another set of double doors. Lisa had pointed them out on our way in, vaguely advising me to “never go in there.”
There are two other doors on the other side of the corridor to Lisa and Wren’s. One has another “Keep Out” sign. The other is open. An empty room lit up through a large window looking out on the parking lot.
I move along the corridor with nothing else to look at, examining the black and white photographs. They are all men mounted on motorcycles. Some of them are bordered with black – I think they may be dead. That’s sad.
Stopping when I get to Merch, I study it. He’s standing, leaning against the seat of his bike, his arms crossed over his chest, looking dead at the camera, a familiar smirk playing over his lips. Holy hell, how am I being turned on by aphoto? I have serious issues.
“You lost?”
I jump, tearing my eyes away from Merch’s photo and spinning. A tall, hunky blond guy with geometric flower tattoos flowing over both arms is standing behind me, his eyebrows raised. I shrug, gamely meeting his green eyes.
“No. Just waiting for Palmer to finish his delivery.”
“What’s he delivering?”
“Sperm.”
My new companion does a double-take, his eyes flickering over to Lisa’s closed door. His lips twitch as he catches my meaning, a low chuckle breaking free.
“You can’t wait in here.” He slings his arm around my shoulders, steering me back out through the first set of double doors. Oh. Shit. I don’t want Lisa to get into trouble. Hell, I should have thought to leave the corridor. “You can wait in the bar.”
I should have asked about the rules. Wren would have told me them. I hope I haven’t got Lisa in trouble. Palmer would kill me. To be fair, Palmer didn’t tell me to go out to the bar. He just told me to fuck off. And I did.
MERCH
Smirking, I trail Palmer as he strides purposefully from the parking lot into the clubhouse. He’s on his way to fuck Lisa, like always. I peel off, wandering over to the auto garage.
Strafe is working under the hood of a Ford Explorer and looks up when I lean against the vehicle, my arms crossed over my chest.
The man might be an enforcer now, but he’s always down to work on cars. If he’s not rolling around on the floor with his two-month-old son, Jack, or being clingy as fuck with his wife, Nan, he can be found here, neck-deep in motor oil.
These cars are his first love. Though Bruiser swears they are his second, and he only started hanging around here because of Nan. She would have been fourteen when he first appeared on the scene, so I doubt it.
“Figures you’d be here.”
