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“Whoa!” I said, holding up my hands, stepping away from the beautiful woman and my former family. “Montana never said the package was a woman and four kids. What the fuck am I supposed to do with them? She needs medical attention. We’re not outfitted with the proper equipment and what about the kids? I’m not running a fucking daycare.”
“Not my problem,” Malice said, opening the back of the SUV, grabbing several bags and placing them on the ground as a car pulled into the compound and Pence rushed out of the clubhouse with Widow.
Fuck.
Pence walked over to the car and opened the driver’s side door, helping the pretty woman out. Quickly kissing her lips, he pointed at the ambulance and the woman nodded. “I’m looking for a Dr. Lansing?”
“That’s me,” August replied. “You the home health care nurse?”
“Yep. I’m Vivi, the wife of Pence. What do I need to know?”
Pence walked over and stood next to me.
“You know about this?”
“Hell no,” my brother growled, keeping a steady eye on his wife as she listened attentively to August. Before I could stop this fiasco, Vivi and August were into deep medical shit. Malice was busy emptying the SUV of bags. My mother was talking adamantly with Pence as a little girl with blonde ringlets yanked on my pant leg. Looking down at her, I asked., “Yeah?”
“You gonna protect my momma?” the little girl asked, crossing her arms over her chest, challenging me to say otherwise.
Pertinent little thing too. The little brat was going to be a pain in the ass. I just knew it. When I didn’t answer right away, the little brat kicked her little foot out, hitting me in my shin. “Well?”
Looking around for help, the brat snarked, daring me to deny her request. “I waiting.”
I was going to kill Montana.
Two
Kansas
What the hell have I gotten myself into?
Leaning against the wall in my room, I closed my eyes as I listened to her cry. One wall. That was all that separated me from the woman who somehow had seeped into my dreams, slowly melting my frigid heart. She and her kids had been here for a few days now, and in that time, everything changed.
Every night since her arrival, after the kids fell asleep, and the brothers had long gone to bed, I would hear her. Like a heartbeat, I would wake, losing my sleep to hear her whimpers. It started off softly, like a gentle whisper waking me in the dead of night. Drawn to her, I would wake and stay up with her until she cried herself back to sleep.
During the day, she was fine. Happy it seemed, but at night, when she thought no one would hear, she released all her pain, her sorrow, her regret out into the world, crying until exhaustion set in and lulled her back to sleep. In those early hours, I would sit and listen as she wept for what happened, what she lost, everything she endured. Her pain was gut wrenching. Part of me wanted to go to her, hold her and tell her that everything would be alright. But I never did. I couldn’t. I refused to lie to her. Life wasn’t easy. It never would be. The pain she endured was just a blip on the road of life. There would be more tears, more anger, more fear. Whatever she was fighting, she needed to get rid of it. It served no purpose to her now.
Yet that didn’t stop me from wanting to soothe her. There was something about the quiet woman that called to me. It was there in her eyes when she looked at me. Almost as if she knew my pain, shared my grief, letting it swallow her.
Everything about this woman was trouble.
I knew that from the moment I first saw her, and my heart started to beat once more, almost as if my body knew her. I tried to stay away from her. She was just a marker I was fulfilling to gain my freedom. I didn’t want, nor did I need, any complications in my life. Listening to her whimpers, I silently prayed she quickly found peace.
In the nights that followed, I tried to stay away from her, but I wasn’t strong enough. By the fifth night, I couldn’t handle her cries anymore and went to her. Climbing into her bed, I pulled her close as I held her, letting her tears soak into my shirt. For the next two weeks, that’s how my nights went and when she was finally sleeping again, I would quietly leave her and return to my room.
As time moved on, I still didn’t know what the hell I was going to do with Kali and her four kids. It wasn’t as if we set the clubhouse up for them. I knew she was going to need round-the-clock care and putting her up in a house somewhere wasn’t going to cut it. Not with four little ones who needed tending to. The only logical place was the clubhouse, where all of us could help when needed, but that opened a new slew of problems I wasn’t ready to tackle. Mainly telling the brothers why I was helping the woman and the truth about where I came from. Then again, there was never a shortage of brothers milling around the clubhouse. In the end, Kaliope and her children stayed with us.
Even the little brat she called a daughter. The bane of my existence. I wasn’t thrilled with having an obstinate three-year-old calling the shots, though the brothers seemed okay with it.
Vivian, my V.P.’s ol’ Lady, assured me that the kids wouldn’t be a problem, especially the boys, who were still little. It was the holy terror that had me second guessing my decision.
I was correct in my first observation.
That little girl was a brat.
A demon on wheels.
Demanding, infuriating, stubborn, and cute as a button. The brat was going to give me gray hair before she turned four.
