The Aces MC Complete Collection

  “I don’t realize I’m makin’ a fist, how de hell am I goin’ to stop it?”

  “Any time you think you might be getting anxious, tap your fingers.” I tapped mine again in a short pattern. “Eventually, you’ll do it automatically, and the fist thing will be gone.”

  “Oh, yeah? How do ye know dat?”

  “Because I used to suck my thumb,” I told him with a small smile. “I did it for a long time, until finally my parents started punishing me for it. So I figured out that any time I was worried, if I tucked my thumb into my palm I wouldn’t put it in my mouth by accident.”

  “I’ve seen ye do dat.” He said with a grin.

  “Not very often anymore. But, it worked back then.”

  “I’ll try it out.”

  “It’ll work.”

  “We’ll see.” He cupped my cheeks in his palms and tugged me gently until my face was close to his. “I’ll figure dis out,” he told me seriously. “It won’t be dis way forever.”

  “Will you have to leave again soon?” I ran my fingers over his eyebrows and down the sides of his face, soothing both of us with the repetitive movement.

  “Not if I can help it. I have to take small trips back, but I t’ink I can spend most of me time here.”

  “That’s a relief, at least. What’s happening with your dad?”

  “I’ve no idea. If Mum forgives him, he might stay here. If she doesn’t, I guess he’ll go back to his flat.”

  “This was what she was so afraid of all these years, isn’t it? She didn’t want him pulling you in with him.”

  “Yes.” He settled me more comfortably over him, my legs on the outside of each of his and our torsos pressed together from hips to chest. “Dough, I t’ink it wasn’t for nuttin’. If she’d have let him stay, I wouldn’t be de man I am. Ye see? I wouldn’t have de clear sight dat comes from watchin’ somet’in’ from de outside. I’d be full of zeal, ready to take on anyt’in’ dey gave me wit’ a sort of blind obedience dat dey’ll never get from me now. She protected me de best way she knew how, and I’d like to t’ink dat it gave me somet’in’ of a chance to keep me head around dose men.”

  “Why is life so freaking hard all the time?”

  “It just is, me love. But it makes times like dis—wit’ yer sweet body on top of mine while we talk and de sun goin’ down outside shadin’ de room—it makes dose times all de sweeter for it.”

  “I thought you weren’t a poet?” I asked, tilting my face until our mouths were barely touching.

  “I’m not. I’ve probably stolen it from someone and I just cannot remember.” He pulled me deeper into the kiss as his hand slid down to cover one of my ass cheeks.

  “I’ll try not to be afraid,” I told him quietly, as the room became darker with the setting of the sun. “I love you.”

  “I’ll protect ye always,” he said back, rolling slightly, switching positions so I was beneath him. “Dis is just a bump, me love. We’ve plenty of smoot’ road ahead, I promise ye.”

  He leaned down to give me a soft kiss while I reveled in the weight of his body above mine, and before long the heat between us grew. My husband was home. No matter what life had in store for us in the future, no matter what he had to do to survive or what I had to live with—that was what mattered. The weight of him above me, the feel of his arms surrounding me, the wetness of his kiss as his tongue slid against mine, and the feeling of absolute joy I felt whenever he was near... those were the things I would focus on.

  We were quiet as we pulled off our remaining clothes and Patrick took one of my nipples into his mouth. He made love to me slowly, with soft touches and smooth movements that made my eyes grow heavy and my skin break out in goose bumps.

  Peg never made dinner that night. I’m not even sure if she and Robbie ever left her room. I think we all just wanted that night to hold our lovers close in the calm of the storm.

  I had no idea then the lengths the men Patrick worked with would go if they felt the need. I was naïve. My biggest fear was that Patrick would somehow be taken from me, that he’d be picked up by the police or killed fighting a war that I didn’t understand.

  I didn’t realize that the big bad wolf was closer than I could imagine.

  Not even when Patrick turned from me as I fell asleep, pulling me in against his back as he lay facing the doorway to our room, a pistol in easy reach next to him on the floor.

  Chapter 28

  Patrick

  I’d always thought my da was an idiot, but I couldn’t help but respect the man. He knew everything about everyone, and he never forgot a face. We were on a job that was taking days instead of minutes, and I swear the man had the patience of a saint. I guess that had worked well for him in the years before I’d taken over his job.

  They called him The Executioner. At first, it had been hard to reconcile the fact that the man who loved my mother so fiercely and had taught me to tie my shoes was a cold-blooded killer—but it hadn’t taken long before I understood it to some degree.

  He’d learned how to separate the two different lives in a way that was still a struggle for me after two months. It was as if he shut off one part of his brain when he was at home, and the other part while he was working—though I knew he’d struggled with that when I’d been brought in. In his mind, the two lives were completely different. He was two different men.

  I wasn’t able to compartmentalize my life that way.

  Sometimes, it took all I had to wrap my arms around Amy when she raced to meet me the moment I got home. She couldn’t see the blood on my hands, but I could. I felt like a monster… and those were on the good days.

  I woke her in the middle of the night just to lose myself in her body. I sat at the pub where she worked just to watch her move around the room. I couldn’t stand to be at home without her. I shook like a man with palsy when she left for school in the mornings, and found myself sitting on a bench across the street more often than not, waiting for her to finish for the day.

  It was finally the day of her commencement ceremony, and I knew without a doubt that I was going to miss it. The man we’d been watching was moving around his house as if he didn’t have a care in the world, and there wasn’t anything I could do to speed things up and give him a dose of reality. His wife and three kids showed occasionally in the first floor windows, and we couldn’t move until they were gone. It was bloody frustrating in the extreme.

  We’d been sitting in the car all morning, and I had to piss so bad I felt as if my eyes were floating. I should have known that coffee wasn’t a good idea when Da had refused a cup, but I’d been so tired I hadn’t been thinking straight. Sleep was getting harder to come by as the days went on, especially on nights that I was away from Amy. I’d found myself plagued with either insomnia or nightmares, the two intertwining until I was no longer aware of how long it had been since I’d slept.

  The morning was moving into afternoon when Da finally sat up a little in his seat and nodded toward the house. The wife and husband were moving between the house and the car, carrying what looked to be luggage.

  Fuck.

  He had better not be leaving town before we could get to him. My orders had been clear. Eliminate him before he had a chance to do any more damage than he’d already done. I wasn’t sure whose ear he’d been whispering in, but the information we’d been given said he was passing things on that he shouldn’t have been and it needed to be stopped.

  We watched silently as the man kissed his children as they piled in the car, then stepped over to his wife to kiss her long and hard. I didn’t quite understand what I was seeing until I heard Da mumble, “Well, fuck me,” as the wife got into the car and drove away.

  It was our chance.

  We waited about a minute after the wife’s car turned the corner before we stepped quietly out of our car and moved toward the house. It was a stroke of luck that the family seemed to have been going on some sort of trip. They wouldn’t find him for days.

  As we re
ached the side of the house, headed for the back door we knew led out to a small garden, we heard the shot. Both of us ducked down and searched the street, but nothing was moving.

  “Jesus Christ,” Da hissed as he stood to his full height and looked into one of the windows. “De man shot his bloody head off.”

  I moved in behind him to get a look and then wished I hadn’t.

  The man was sitting on his sofa, a hand-stitched afghan wrapped around him like a cocoon, with one hand out—holding the gun that was resting on his chest. He’d pulled himself so far into the blanket that he hadn’t even tilted his head back before putting the barrel into his mouth and pulling the trigger.

  He’d wrapped himself like a baby before ending his own life.

  “He must’ve known we were comin’,” Da said quietly, pushing me from where I was frozen. “It’s time to leave. Now.”

  We made our way to the car in what seemed like slow motion, and for the first time in over a month I felt the urge to vomit.

  It took us over an hour to get home, and we didn’t speak one word during the entire trip. I was sure that my father had seen much more gruesome sights in the past twenty years, but he didn’t seem any more inclined to talk than I was.

  I had no idea how I’d articulate my thoughts if he had tried to speak with me. I was completely and utterly without words at what we’d just witnessed and it seemed odd to me that the scene had affected me so much. I’d killed. I’d taken other men’s lives, but the sight of one man comforting himself with a blanket before he blew the back of his own head off seemed to have pushed me over the edge.

  “It looks like yer mum and Amy are still at de commencement ceremony,” Da said as we parked in front of our small house. “Shall we drive over dere and see if we can catch dem?”

  I couldn’t make myself form the words to tell him no. I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t even move my mouth. I just stared at him blankly.

  “Right. Let’s get ye inside den.”

  He opened his door and climbed out of the car before leaning back in. “Get out of de fuckin’ car Patrick,” he ordered, knocking me slightly out of my stupor.

  I followed him inside and stood by the couch, replaying over and over in my head the way the man had kissed his wife before she left. He’d known. He’d known what he was going to do, but she hadn’t. She’d probably assumed that her husband had to work, or some other excuse he’d given to make her take a trip with three kids on her own. He’d made sure that they were gone, out of the house before we got there, and then he hadn’t waited before taking care of his death himself.

  I’d seen many men beg and plead for mercy and promise their own mothers for a chance to live. I’d never before seen the courage I had that morning.

  “Let’s go, son,” my da said gently, pushing me into the bedroom, and shoving me slightly onto the bed. “I’ll tell Amy ye weren’t feelin’ well.”

  He pulled off my coat and boots, then flipped back the blankets on the bed and motioned me to crawl inside. Once I was there, he covered me slowly then leaned down to kiss my forehead like he had when I was a child.

  “Put it out of yer head,” he commanded quietly. “He made his own decisions, and he paid for dem.”

  I lay there silently for a long time after he’d gone, breathing in the comforting smell of Amy and trying to marshal my thoughts into some sort of understandable pattern. Then I slid my hand down the side of my leg and began to tap the rhythm that Amy had taught me the month before.

  Chapter 29

  Amy

  Life was a mixture of incredible highs and frightening lows. Since Robbie had moved back in with Peg, Patrick and I were looking for an apartment or a small house of our own. Peg’s house just wasn’t built for four adults, and it felt like we were tripping over each other constantly.

  My job at Dillon’s pub was working out well. I was getting more and more hours every week and had been setting aside most of my pay in a coffee can inside our dresser. The only downside was that Peg and I worked pretty much opposite shifts, so I barely got to see her anymore. I couldn’t complain too loudly, though, because Patrick had found mechanic work at a used car dealership and spent most nights after work sitting at the bar to keep me company.

  We were living. That was the only way I could explain it. Finally, after months of surviving in that weird limbo, we were finally building a life. It wasn’t what I’d imagined, and I wasn’t sure how the hell we would manage if Patrick got me pregnant like he’d been trying to, but we were finally together and that fact made me practically giddy.

  I didn’t ask about Patrick’s other job. He hated it and he’d come home looking like he hadn’t slept for days, even if he’d only been gone for a few hours. It made my stomach burn, and I’d been drinking so much milk to try and soothe the feeling that I had gained at least five pounds. I wanted to help him somehow, to take away the shadows in his eyes and get him at least one full night of sleep—but I couldn’t. There wasn’t anything I could do for him.

  Sometimes, he’d walk through the front door and come directly to me, pulling me away from whatever I was doing and taking me straight to bed. Other times, he’d pass right by me on his way through the house, completely silent as he went into our room and shut the door solidly behind him, knowing I would follow. His moods were unpredictable, he barely slept, he carried a gun that I’d never seen before, and he spent most of his time at home glued to my side, even if he wasn’t speaking.

  But it wasn’t all bad.

  He also brought me flowers home. He brushed out my hair. On rare occasions when we had the house to ourselves, he’d run a bath and tug me in with him. He took me out to dinner, taught me how to play basketball, sat beside me in church and held my hand throughout the service.

  He showed me he loved me in a million different ways and I tried to do the same for him. I think we were happy, as happy as we could have been under the circumstances.

  ***

  “Hey, gorgeous, can I get another beer?” The American accent coming out of the stranger’s mouth had a wide smile breaking out across my face.

  “Sure!” I chirped back, tossing down the rag I’d been using to wipe off the bar. “What were you drinking?”

  “You’re American.” The man leaned over onto his elbows on the bar and smiled back. “What the hell are you doing all the way over here?”

  “She goes where her husband is.” Patrick must have seen our interaction, because he’d come up behind the stranger and moved smoothly around him.

  The man started to laugh. “That makes sense.” He lifted his hand between them. “I’m Charlie.”

  “Patrick,” my husband said with a nod, shaking Charlie’s hand. “Me wife, Amy.”

  “Nice to meet you, Amy.”

  “She’s workin.’ Ye can talk to me.”

  I felt my face heat over the way Patrick was behaving. He might as well have pissed on my leg. The guy was just being nice, and he hadn’t even tried to flirt.

  “I think you’ve got the wrong idea,” Charlie said, chuckling.

  Patrick’s fingers began to tap on the bar top, and before I knew what I was doing, the palm of my hand slapped down over them, pinning them to the polished wood. “Knock it off, Patrick,” I warned through my teeth.

  “Vera!” Charlie yelled across the pub. “Come over here, baby.”

  A thin woman around my age stood up from where she’d been sitting surrounded by a big group of rough looking men and strutted toward us, her eyes never straying from Charlie’s. “Whattya need, baby?”

  “Patrick and Amy, meet my wife, Vera,” Charlie said proudly.

  I snickered, looking over at Patrick, whose expression hadn’t changed.

  “Nice to meet you, Vera.”

  “Whoa, you’re American.”

  “Born and raised.”

  “Well, shit,” she pushed Charlie out of the way and slid onto a barstool. “It’s nice to finally hear someone who sounds like home.”

>   “Where are you guys from?” I asked, wiping my hand down the cool wood of the bar top.

  “I’m from Washington, but Charlie’s from Oregon, so we live there. How about you?”

  “I’ve lived all over. Moved here less than a year ago, though, and it looks like I’m staying since I married an Irishman.” I smiled at Patrick, who still hadn’t said a word, and watched his eyes go soft.

  “Well, hello there, handsome,” Vera said, following my gaze to Patrick. “Vera.”

  “Married,” Patrick replied, making me want to flick him in the forehead.

  “Yeah, I got that from your wife.”

  “Get your man a beer, Amy,” Charlie said, sitting on the stool between Vera and Patrick. “On me.”

  “I’ll buy me own,” Patrick argued.

  “After the first one you will. I just made a new friend and I’m gonna buy his ass a drink.”

  “Yer delusional.”

  “I’ll grow on ya.”

  “He will,” Vera piped in, nodding her head. “I didn’t even like him at first.”

  “Sounds familiar,” Patrick mumbled.

  “You just watch, man. You’ll dig me.”

  My gaze shot between them as I watched them banter back and forth, and for the first time in weeks I saw my husband’s shoulders lose a little of their tension.

  “What are you guys doing in Ireland?” I asked Vera as Patrick and Charlie started talking about motorcycles.

  “We’re on our honeymoon. Well, sort of.” She sighed. “His club had some business over here, so Charlie brought me along, promising a romantic getaway. Romantic … shit. You see the big one over there, bigger than all the others? His room is next to ours in the house we’re staying at, and when he busts ass at night, we can fuckin’ smell him through the vent.”

  I snorted. “Sounds romantic, for sure. Club?”

  “Motorcycle club.”

  “Oh,” I whispered, not really sure what being in a motorcycle club entailed.