Murphy clears his throat and leans forward. “I want to formally adopt Alexa. We thought you could—”
God damn does that fuck me up. In a good way. He’s officially been with my sister not even a couple months. Barely engaged and he’s already planning to take Alexa on as his own forever.
By now, everyone’s staring at them. Heidi twitches from having all of our attention on what she somehow thought would be a private conversation. But honestly, she should’ve expected this reaction. We’re always in each others’ business.
Murphy and Hope are more practical about our interest, they ignore us.
“I haven’t,” Hope answers. “And I might not be a good choice because of our relationship.” She’s quiet for a minute. Thoughtful. “You know who could probably do it, Heidi? Your former law guardian, Charlotte.”
Charlotte.
“Oh. Wow. She’ll probably be disappointed—”
“Hey,” Murphy says, beating me to it.
Hope seems to know exactly what Heidi was going to say, and flashes a sympathetic smile. “Charlotte’s not judgmental like that, Heidi.”
Oh, how I’d love to call bullshit on that one.
“And you have nothing to be embarrassed about,” Hope finishes.
Heidi glances at Alexa. “I know.”
“I thought it would make things easier, you know, when she starts school and stuff, for her to have my last name,” Murphy says.
“You’re right.” Hope hesitates, running her gaze over both of them before continuing. “You might need to wait until after you’re married. Like I said, I haven’t worked on any adoption cases, but from doing other family law work, I think that might be required. Give Charlotte a call.”
I sit back against my chair, hugging Alexa to my chest. Haven’t seen Charlotte in almost three years. Not since my grandmother’s funeral.
That whole scene has bugged me ever since. My own damn fault. She’s another in a long line of women-I-had-no-business-getting-involved-with.
Shit, what if she won’t help Heidi because of me?
“What if she doesn’t even practice law anymore?” I blurt out.
Hope glances over, a slight frown on her face. “I just spoke to her last week about a former client of mine she’s now representing.”
“Oh.”
Murphy narrows his eyes and studies me. Not even he knows about my night with Charlotte. I glance at Hope, who’s gone back to discussing things with Heidi. Now she’s sharp. She suspected something more was going on but didn’t say a whole lot at the time.
“I’ll call her. Thanks, Hope,” Heidi says.
Hope reaches over and squeezes Heidi’s hand then turns to Wrath and Trinity.
I tune them out and go back to feeding Alexa her blueberries. Fed up or tired, I’m not sure, she slaps the container away, sending it into Heidi’s lap.
“Someone’s cranky today,” I say, making a pouty face at my niece.
“She might need her diaper changed. Here, let me have her,” Heidi says.
“You all right, bro?” Murphy asks after she leaves.
“Yeah, why?”
He lifts his shoulder. Fuck, it’s bad enough having my sister babying me since the accident. Everyone does. Except Rock, who has no problem choking some sense into me. Wrath too. Cane or not, he’s happy to kick my ass and tell me when I’m being a dick. Today, he’s too wrapped up in his new bride to notice my mood.
I swallow hard and meet my best friend’s concerned gaze. “I’m fine.”
He’s watching me like he expects me to say something. It finally occurs to me he’s waiting for me to comment on him adopting Alexa.
“When’d she talk you into that?” I jerk my head toward the dining room doors where Heidi and Alexa disappeared a few seconds ago.
His jaw drops and the conversation at the table dies down. “She didn’t talk me into anything. Why you being a dick today?”
“Aren’t I a dick every day?”
“Yes,” Wrath says without taking his eyes off Trinity.
Probably to diffuse what she thinks is a situation, Hope reaches over and grasps Murphy’s arm. “If Charlotte can’t help, she can give you a good referral.”
Charlotte.
I both love and hate that name.
CHAPTER FOUR
Two Years, Six Months Earlier…
My grandmother’s death wasn’t shocking.
She was old as fuck and bitter as hell.
The shocking part was my baby sister being the one to find her. Heidi kept it together enough to call an ambulance. After that, it was too much for a seventeen-year old to handle and I took over. Rock let me bring her to the clubhouse so she could be surrounded by family. The only one my sister would talk to, oddly, was Rock’s girlfriend, Hope.
They’d seemed to form some sort of mother-daughter bond. I was both relieved and concerned. I loved Hope for always being so good to Heidi. I loved that she made my president happy. But I didn’t trust her. I worried that like all women, she’d eventually run off, leaving everyone who’d learned to depend on her in a state of chaos. Including my sister, who desperately needed a positive mothering influence.
No matter how much money I earned with the club, that was one thing I couldn’t buy Heidi.
Trinity was a huge help in planning all the stuff around the funeral. What the fuck did I know about any of it? She took over my grandmother’s kitchen and organized a menu to feed everyone after the funeral without me even asking or knowing it was something I should do.
Rock helped me make the actual funeral arrangements. In one way or another, the whole club helped, even though, except for Murphy, none of them really knew my grandmother. The club was, and always had been, my true family.
All of my brothers came to the funeral. To support me. To support Heidi. That’s what we did for each other.
I spotted Charlotte right away.
She was fucking beautiful.
Beautiful enough to make me forget how much her disappearing act had pissed me off.
Concentrating on the service was impossible. I wanted to make sure I spoke to her before she left.
Her scared gaze jackrabbited around the place.
Would she make trouble for me?
My sister had nowhere else to go. No one else to take care of her.
After the funeral, I planned to move Heidi’s belongings from my grandmother’s house into my apartment. There was a bunch of legal stuff I needed to tie up and I planned to ask Hope to help me with that.
The scheming fucker in me considered asking for Charlotte’s help instead.
What the hell had I walked into?
Heidi called me the day after her grandmother died, completely panic-stricken. Terrified she’d end up in foster care. After reassuring her, we spoke a little longer. Once we hung up, I thanked my good sense I didn’t get involved with Marcel any more than the one night.
I went to the funeral to support Heidi.
Not to see her brother.
What I never expected was the sheer number of bikers in attendance. Not just bikers. Outlaw bikers. Lost Kings MC bikers. Black leather, blue and gray skull and crown patches, and motorcycles filled the area.
They surrounded Heidi like an impenetrable, protective wall.
Icy fear dripped down my spine, swirled through my gut as I took in the scene in front of me.
Marcel’s lawyer, Hope, stayed the closest to Heidi.
I shouldn’t have come.
But I promised Heidi. And I didn’t want to be another adult on the long list who’d let this girl down in her life.
I straightened up, my gaze roaming the crowd until it landed on Marcel.
In his Lost Kings MC cut.
I almost died.
His patch read Treasurer.
When I fucked up, I fucked up huge.
I couldn’t have slept with a regular member? Had to be an officer of this MC?
Are you fucking kidding me?
He
was deeply tied to the motorcycle club that had run Empire County for as long as I could remember.
Hope—she’s a lawyer for fuck’s sake—she had to know Teller was in the life, but the sneaky bitch had presented him as some sort of good guy the whole time.
I lost a lot of respect for her then and there.
“Charlotte, thank you so much for coming,” Hope said, taking my hand. She was so sweet and kind, I wanted to punch her in her perfectly pretty face.
Or take her hand and haul her ass away, because she clearly had no clue what she was mixed up in.
A giant of a man—who could’ve been Marcel’s older, jacked up brother—slipped his arms around Hope’s waist and leaned down to whisper in her ear. She nodded, then introduced me to her fiancé, Rock.
President.
Lost Kings MC.
Jesus Christ, she was the president’s ol’ lady?
Rock gave me a perfunctory once-over. Not the perverted eye-fondling I was accustomed to bikers using on me.
I had to get out of there.
“Thank you for coming, Miss Clarke,” Heidi said in a tearful voice, breaking me out of my internal freak-out.
“Of course. How are you?”
She glanced at her brother and a big, red-headed guy before stepping closer. In a lower voice, she said, “I wanted to live with my brother. But not like this. I feel so bad. But also finally free.”
My heart broke for her. I’d always suspected the grandmother didn’t treat Heidi very kindly, but I could never get her to confide anything more than a few verbal arguments. The scant medical records of hers I’d been able to get my hands on didn’t reveal enough to prove my hunch without her cooperation.
I tried to find a few reassuring words. I wanted to take her with me and get her away from these guys. But obviously, she had to know something about her brother’s affiliation. To be an officer, he would’ve had to have been with the club for quite a while. The danger she was dealing with probably seemed perfectly normal to Heidi.
Torn, I didn’t know what to do.
Marcel’s eyes locked on me and he spoke a few words to his club brother before swaggering my way. My breath caught. How could I have been so stupid to get involved with him?
An association with his outlaw MC would bring me a world of trouble. It was the last damn thing I needed in my life.
I was practically jumping out of my skin while Hope and Charlotte made small talk after the service. Then she embraced Heidi and spoke some reassuring words to her. Seeing them together made something in my chest shift.
Once I got Heidi settled and figured out the complicated trust my grandmother had set up, part of me wanted to seriously pursue Charlotte.
“I’ll walk you to your car,” I offered when it finally seemed she was ready to leave. She stared at me as if we were strangers.
That pissed me the fuck off.
If we’d been anywhere else, I would have given her a graphic verbal recap of all the ways we knew each other.
That second of hesitation while I pictured her coming apart underneath me, gave her a head start to the parking lot. I mumbled something at Hope, who watched me with narrowed eyes.
I wasn’t concerned with what Hope thought.
No, the hunt was on.
Charlotte moved fast.
I was quicker.
Catching up to her was easy, but I waited until I cleared most of my brothers. I didn’t want any of them to witness me chasing some chick down.
“Charlotte, wait.” I pushed harder, easily pumping my legs over the uneven ground. She must have heard me because she sped up, practically running to her car as if a fucking lion were pursuing her instead of a one-night stand she wanted to forget.
“Charlotte, wait,” I called out. Louder this time.
She turned, flattening her back against her car. Fear danced in her eyes. Her breath came in quick harsh pants. Harder than a jog across the parking lot could explain.
I came to a stop in front of her, my mouth kicking into a grin. “Why you running, darlin’? I wanted to talk to you.”
“You didn’t tell me you were involved with—” she jerked her chin in the direction of the grave site where people were still milling around.
“What?”
“A biker gang!” she shouted. The unnatural way the words leapt off her tongue stopped me from correcting her. I sensed she was using the word gang instead of club to bait me and I couldn’t figure out why.
“What does my club have to do with anything?”
The fear in her eyes undid me. She had no reason to be afraid of me. She should’ve known that.
The sex had been rough, yeah. But she was the one who kept amping it up. Kept pushing me to the brink.
The memory had me ready for a repeat.
I sucked in a deep breath to calm myself. To show her I wasn’t a threat. That whatever she thought about MCs didn’t apply to this situation. “They’re my family, Charlotte. Been part of the club since I was a kid,” I explained.
Her hand went to her hip. “How did that not come up during the custody dispute?”
“It wasn’t relevant. Club’s got nothing to do with my ability to take care of my sister.” Technically that was a lie. The only reason I’d been able to provide for my sister since she was practically a baby was because of the club.
She shook her head and turned to get into her car. “I have to go. Tell Heidi to call me if she needs anything.”
I wrapped my hand around her arm and spun her to face me, pressing her back against the cold metal of her car. “You’re not going to make trouble for her, are you? I’m all she has.”
That fear entered her eyes again. “No. No. Just let me go.”
I brushed my knuckles over her cheek. “What’s your hurry?” I asked softly.
She shied away from my touch and that stung. I hadn’t stopped thinking about this woman in months. I released my hold on her arm. “Thank you for coming. I’m sure it meant a lot to my sister.”
“I need to go,” she said without looking at me.
What was I supposed to do, beg her to stick around? Christ, I still had so much shit to do, I didn’t have time to play games with this woman.
“I’d still like to talk to you sometime.”
Her gaze darted around, landing on everything but me. “About what?”
“How’ve you been?”
She puffed out an exasperated breath which only ended up exciting me more. “Fine. Look, sorry if I hurt your ego by not sticking around, but I figured we were done.”
I was on the edge of telling her to fuck off and leave. Or ask why she even bothered coming if I disgusted her so much.
The next words out of her mouth stopped me cold. “I never would have slept with you if I’d known you were part of a criminal organization. The treasurer, for fucks’ sake,” she muttered.
That was the last thing I expected out of her mouth.
“Criminal organization?” I repeated the words back slowly. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
She gestured to my cut, making sure not to actually touch me and then waved her hand toward the cemetery. “And Hope, she knows all about it, doesn’t she? She’s one of you. She must be out of her fucking mind.”
My head spun as I tried to keep up with her words. The dig at my president’s ol’ lady surprised and annoyed me. Whatever reservations I had about Hope, I sure as fuck wouldn’t tolerate an outsider disrespecting her.
“She doesn’t even know how much danger she’s in, does she?” Charlotte muttered.
Her hatred of everything I am came through loud and clear.
“Are you mental?” I sneered. “What are you talking about? What danger?”
She shook her head, clearly coming unglued. “How could you drag your sister into this dirty life? She’s just a kid.”
Irrational fear and anguish colored her words.
Irrational people were capable of reckless actions.
I set aside my
ego, my feelings, my curiosity.
None of that mattered.
I only had one concern.
Heidi.
The primal need to protect my little sister at all costs kicked in.
I’d been protecting her since I was a kid. It was second nature. Instinct. I loved my sister more than anything. Even the club.
Heidi had already suffered enough turmoil in her life. I wasn’t about to cause her any more grief because some woman I stuck my dick in had a vendetta against every biker in the world.
My vision blurred around the edges. Absolute fury at the thought of this woman fucking with my life because she had some stupid notion about who I was.
I leaned over Charlotte and she arched her body to keep her face away from mine, thrusting her breasts up. The position made me want to slide my hands under her skirt, yank her underwear around her ankles and hate-fuck her against her car. In broad daylight, where everyone in the area could watch the filthy biker claim her body.
Because in that moment I really fucking hated her for what she was forcing me to do.
“I’m all my sister has.” Each word slid out low and laced with enough menace to drain the color from her cheeks. “If you make trouble for us, you will regret it.”
Afraid or not, she had enough moxie to glare back. “You’re threatening me while trying to convince me you’re not a criminal? Seriously?”
I pulled back a few inches. “It’s not a threat.”
Her lower lip trembled and I felt lower than scum, but this wasn’t about me and it was too important to be distracted now.
Anyway, she’s the one who pushed me to this.
“It’s…there’s nothing I can do,” she finally said. “I was her attorney. I’d have to argue for what she wanted. And she always wanted to live with you.”
“That’s right. Forget about us. Otherwise, I’m sure there’s some ethics board who’d love to hear about a female attorney spreading her legs for her client’s brother.”
Saying it in the crudest way possible had the intended effect.
Her bright blue eyes snapped with anger. “Fuck you,” she spit out.