All the love in the world for his wife.
Both those women, sitting pretty, basking in the glow of all the love Kane “Tack” Allen could give.
And that was a lot.
We got it all now, Naomi. We got everything we’ll ever need.
Naomi turned her head to look out the window, a stabbing pain hitting her in the gullet.
She ignored it.
She was good at it.
She’d been doing it for years.
This Was Not Free
Rebel
That same day, 12:17 . . .
“Well, uh . . . this is awkward,” I said.
The beautiful, redheaded woman with the cute blouse and tight skirt and classy, but oh so fuck-me heels—dressed like she worked at a fashion magazine, not a garage—stopped glaring out the window in her office and turned her eyes to me.
Oh boy.
I was going to kill Rush.
He said I was going to go to Ride to hang while he had his meeting with his brothers.
He did not say he was going to take me to Ride, dump me in his beloved, adored stepmother’s office, and go off to have his meeting with his brothers.
Well, looking at her, one could say the Allen men had a type. And that might skeeve me out, if she wasn’t a more sophisticated, more gorgeous, older version of me (with green eyes).
If I looked like that in twenty years, I’d count my lucky stars.
Hell, if I looked like that in ten, I’d be golden.
“Yes,” she said softly, looking me up and down, and I really wished I’d had the time at least to do something with my hair, maybe suss out a decent outfit instead of standing there in a Saliva baby-doll tee, ripped jeans and cowboy boots, or, say . . . have a freaking shower. “Yes. This is very awkward.”
Yup.
I was gonna kill Rush.
Rush
“Where’s Punk?”
When he realized Hop was talking to him about three seconds after he walked through one of the double doors to their meeting room at the Compound, he asked, “Punk?”
“Pretty Punk Princess with her lace dress and clod-hoppin’ motorcycle boots,” Hop explained.
Fucking shit.
“Get her to tell you where she got that dress,” Shy put in. “Gotta get one for Tabby.”
He was going to be sick.
“Fuck off,” he said to his brother, and brother-in-law, pulling a chair out from the table with the ratty Chaos flag (the first one ever stitched) set under Plexiglas in the middle.
He planted his ass in the chair.
Shy grinned at him.
“Gotta say, outside the Rock Chicks, never seen a woman shovel attitude at Eddie Chavez. Impressive,” Dog grunted.
“Too bad I missed that,” Big Petey muttered.
“Multi-tasker, givin’ a good cuddle to her hippie-chick, freaked-out, old-lady landlady and throwin’ ’tude at Chavez, all this wearin’ underwear as outerwear. Full package,” Brick said.
“Why you late for the meet, Rush?” Arlo jumped in to give him shit.
“We can stop talking about Rebel now,” Rush growled.
“I wanna talk about her some more.” Even High was getting in on the act. “I mean, I know you got yourself some speeding tickets, brother. Physically incapable of going slow. But movin’ a girl in on a first date?”
“Maybe you need a reminder of that dress,” Joker said to High. “Someone should have taken a picture.”
“When’s your wife due?” Rush asked Joke. “Like, pretty much any day now?”
“I got my girl,” Joker replied. “She’s givin’ me a family. My baby loves bein’ pregnant. She’d keep our kid in her belly for a full year, she could get away with that. But she still practically asked me to draw a picture of that dress when I told her about it.”
Rush shot him a kill look.
He turned that look to his father who was sitting at the head of the table. “Don’t we got important shit to talk about?”
“Sure we do,” Tack agreed amicably. “Though, life’s way too short not to fully explore giving shit. And we might as well wait until the sandwiches get here.”
Rush sat back in his chair, setting his jaw.
His father smiled at him.
Fuck.
Rebel
“I can go, you know, hang out in the store,” I offered Tyra Allen.
Her green eyes strayed back to the window.
“This is not good,” she said to the window. “This is indication of years of hurt. Maybe I need to start taking Valium now.”
I decided not to respond.
“Tab, well, with Tab, I screwed up.” She looked back at me. “She’d lost Jason in that car accident right before their wedding. So young, too young to sustain a loss like that. Got hooked up with Shy. Good guy. Good brother. He still had to build a new pitch, he’d played the field so much.”
Before she found her husband, Rush’s sister had lost a fiancé in a car accident?
Man, these people had been through a variety of circles of hell.
And they were still together, tight, loving.
All my mom and dad and brother had to do was accept Diesel for who he was.
And we fell apart.
“I shared my feelings about that, how I thought she might not be making the right decision about Shy after her loss. She let me know. Boy, did she let me know,” Tyra went on.
Hmm . . .
I bet that hadn’t gone so good.
Her gaze moved back to the window.
“Miz Allen,” I murmured.
“This,” she whispered. “I don’t know how, but this is worse.”
I shut up.
“He’s moved you in,” she stated to the window.
“Temporarily, until the danger has passed,” I said swiftly.
Her eyes cut to me and I braced.
“You know, Benito Valenzuela targets vulnerable girls. Gets them hooked on drugs. Takes payment in pussy. Whores them out or does it a different way, filming it.”
“I know,” I told her.
“He did that to your friend?” she asked.
I nodded but said, “She was already gone on drugs when his people got their hooks in her.”
“And you thought it was a good idea to go work for him?”
I shut up again.
She moved from where she’d been standing in front of a couch that was in front of her window to behind her desk.
But she remained standing.
“I have three boys,” she declared.
Three?
I thought Rush said he only had two little brothers.
Oh God.
Their circles of hell.
Did some horrible thing happen to one of her kids, making him not there anymore so Rush wouldn’t talk about him, but a mother would always claim all her kids, even if one was gone?
“And I thought it would be easier,” she continued. “You worry about the girls. You worry about what man they’ll choose. Will he play around on her? Will he take out the garbage? Will he pitch in with the kids? I didn’t think it’d be so much worse, learning I needed to come to terms with letting go of one of my boys.”
Oh.
When she said she had three boys, she included Rush.
That was sweet.
“We’ve only had one date,” I told her.
“You’re living with him.”
“Temporarily.”
“You read the Rock Chick books?”
I really needed to read those books.
Hell, Hank and Eddie were heroes in those books. They each had their own one.
Though, I had been kind of busy risking my life to find a murderer.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Temporary is a non-existent word to certain kinds of men. The kind who find what they want at the same time find themselves in a position they have to protect it.”
Why did that make me super freaking happy?
And super freaking freaked.
“You’re the one,” she declared.
More super freaking happy and just . . .
Well.
Super freaking happy.
“Maybe not,” I replied.
God.
Why was I assuring her I might not be the one?
“Chaos has safe houses. If you weren’t the one, Rush would move you into one of those, and if he was still interested, come visit.”