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He’s pissed off—which is unusual for Everett since he’s the most level-headed of my brothers. I scan his expression for answers to his bad mood. He gives me nothing, but a face full of condescension and exhaustion. It looks like he’s been up for hours, and if he’s up, then Sander and Luke are. They’re likely to gang up on me if I don’t shut down Alex’s visit quickly.
“Lay off, Ev,” Nadia tells my brother. “Anna’s allowed to live a little.”
I ignore them both.
My knees knock as I step out onto the back patio.
“Charlie said you wanted me, Dad?”
Three heads turn to look at me.
Sander glares.
Alex smoulders.
Dad grins.
I concentrate on my father. Unlike Everett, he’s easy to read. Brutus Mayberry is not a man of facades. He says it how he sees it. Tells it how he feels it. Dad expects everyone to bow down to him, including Hades, even though he’s the president of the Australian mother chapter of the Black Shamrocks MC. For some reason, mine and Zeke’s dads relationship is backward. I’ve never understood the situation, especially when my father has somehow managed to be both VP of the mother chapter and president of the chapter he runs here in the wheatbelt of Western Australia. It’s never been done before, and I don’t know of any other chapters within the wider club that have a similar setup.
But that’s a conundrum for a different time.
“I thought I could pick you up, and we could head into the city for dinner on Friday night. If you don’t already have plans?”
Before me I discover three distinct reactions to the question Alex just posed.
Sander is full of rage.
Alex tries to charm me.
My dad offers tacit approval, and maybe even an edge of desperation for me to give Alex a go. He looks between me, his only daughter, and the son of his political nemesis, with hope and pride. For a moment, I think I’m reading him wrong until I see that Sander feels the same way.
Drowning in worry, bogged down by my moral dilemma, I choose to jump in with both feet, then decide if I want to swim with the current or against it.
I nod. “That sounds good to me. What time would you like to pick me up?”
Sander groans.
Dad slams down his beer.
Alex preens like that cat that got the cream. His reaction soothes the gaping wound Zeke’s rejection inflicted on my ego—and my soul—last night. “Would five o’clock be all right with you?”
Again, I incline my head.
Then I mentally check out of this fiasco.
I’m exhausted.
Emotionally wrecked.
Ethically challenged.
Confusion reigns for the next fifteen minutes as I do my best to pretend that Sander’s invisible while I speak at appropriate intervals and smile wide when it seems to be expected.
Miffed at my lack of morals, my mind deserts me.
Succumbing to sentimentality and Nadia’s promises, my heart delights in the path its set me on. It’s one I never thought I’d travel. Yet, despite Sander’s vocal objections, I’ve agreed to a date with Alex. My father’s pride in my decision is palpable, thick enough to wrap around my shoulders to act as a buffer from my twin’s scorn. It’s just heavy enough to shield me from the residual pain of Zeke’s defection and make me believe in my plan to salvage something from his denunciation of my maturity and my decision making.
I jerk in my seat when Alex squeezes the shoulder that he bit last night.
