And last, we knew she owned her own business.
She planned parties.
All parties.
Weddings. Anniversaries. Bar mitzvahs. Bat mitzvahs. Quinceañeras. Corporate gatherings. You named it, she planned it, and after Elvira had called the references listed on her website, we’d found that she did it very well.
She also had an add-on to this business where she’d design the schemes, then decorate houses or offices, inside and out, for holidays. Any holiday (but mostly Christmas). And from the pictures in the gallery on her website, she was really good at that.
After learning all of this, Elvira had concocted a plan where she scheduled an appointment, ostensibly to plan her upcoming nuptials, this happening so we could get a “feel” for Millie and from that feel, decide for ourselves if we should officially wade in.
And without girl posse consensus, Elvira had put that plan into action.
Thus we were there, sitting in my Mustang on the street in front of Millie Cross’s (very quaint and unbelievably pretty) little old house in Cheesman Park.
We were there because, at the back of the main house, there was a small mother-in-law cottage where Millie had a studio in which she ran her business. You got to this going up a drive that was two narrow strips of concrete between wider strips of tufted lawn. These were under an overhang that was, back in the day, probably to protect cars or even carriages and it had a wall of trellis covered in wisteria.
And Elvira’s appointment was two minutes away.
Elvira turned her attention to me. “How can you not have a good idea about this? It’s the perfect plan.”
She would think that, it was her plan.
“Well, you might not have gone through the initiation ceremony, that being becoming an old lady, but you’re still de facto Chaos,” I stated. When Elvira opened her mouth to retort, I kept going. “And you know it. Which means, if Millie Cross is who I think Millie Cross is, and we can fix what’s broken with her and High, which means she might come back in the fold, do you think the first thing we should do as her possible future Chaos sisters is pull a fast one?”
“What I think is you gotta know what you’re dealin’ with here and you got your man’s strong words. She’s got her man’s strong words.” Elvira jerked a thumb at Lanie. “And those two boys are far from dumb. Loyal, perhaps to a fault, but not dumb. So I think you gotta proceed with caution.”
Elvira wasn’t wrong. Lanie had gently probed Hop about his knowledge of the history of High and Millie.
Hop’s response had been, “Heard she showed her face. I’ll say what Tack said to Cherry. Bitch is not welcome anywhere near Chaos. So do not stick your nose in that, woman. You do, you won’t be prepared for the extreme.”
Lanie being married to a biker and the mother of one of his sons, getting this warning and sitting in the back of my Mustang with crazy Elvira on a mission was one of the many reasons she was my bestest bestie.
I still didn’t have a good feeling about this.
“I hear you,” I told Elvira. “But I think you should call her, reschedule, and we should talk this out further before—”
Her phone beeped before I finished. She held the screen out to me.
I saw the appointment alarm on the display just as she said, “Go time,” turned to the door, tossed it open, threw out her Valentino pump, and hauled herself out.
The door was slammed and she was gone.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“Shit is right,” Lanie agreed, and I looked to the backseat. “I can’t help but feeling, one way or another, this is going to go south for us.”
I had that feeling too.
I was worried Tack and Hop, who both knew Millie and had been around when whatever went down went down, were right.
I worried more seeing Millie Cross’s neat, trim, pretty old house that obviously was lovingly restored and taken care of.
It did not say biker babe.
Nor did her clothes say it at Wild Bill’s.
Then again, before I met Tack, mine didn’t either and in many cases, at least with my clothes, they still didn’t.
Lanie’s didn’t either. You took one look at her, you thought, Retired Supermodel and Current Muse to Couture Designer. You did not think, Biker Bitch.
So Millie’s look and her house meant nothing.
Millie’s expression that night meant everything.
And I was hanging a lot on that because the boys did not like meddling in their affairs and Tack was not wrong. If one of the guys got a hangnail, the rest of them would rally around staring balefully at the unfortunate who wielded the cuticle clippers until it was successfully clipped out.
Okay, so that was a slight exaggeration.
But there was a lot expected of earning the Chaos cut.
Loyalty was at the top of that list.
If High was done with this Millie woman, he was done.
The thing was, no man was in a foul mood for three days after he saw an ex unless he wasn’t over that ex, if she was an ex for twenty minutes, but especially for twenty years.
Since it had been twenty years, something was going down.
And I intended to get to the bottom of it for High, who I might not be tight with but I liked him. I respected him. And he was the only Chaos brother I knew who wasn’t happy.
He lived. He loved his brothers. He loved his kids. He put up with his recent ex-wife.
But down deep, the man was existing.
Joy came from his two girls.
That was it.
And I wanted more for him.