And all he’d had to do was leave a message on Blue’s voicemail that Priest was dead and he was needed, and here Blue was. No bullshit about his busy, important life, like Prince yesterday. None of that crap about how he had a different life now, like that asshole Cash, who was in Florida and had acted like Ajax had ordered him to swim in from Cuba. Ajax shook that off. He’d deal with those two when they showed up. Reintroduce the concept of brotherhood and loyalty, maybe with his fists, if he didn’t feel the tide shift a little. The four of them had been exiled together. That should have cemented a few things. It had as far as Ajax was concerned.
Then again, this was a world where Priest let some tourist trap art fair take over the clubhouse, apparently. All bets were off.
He and Blue stood there a minute, scowling down the alley.
“The fuck,” Blue muttered, sounding disgusted.
“I feel fucking violated,” Ajax grunted in reply, scowling at an offensive watercolor painting of the very street they were standing on, propped up on an easel. And Ajax was a practical man. He liked tourist dollars as much as the next guy. But here? In the Deacons’ home?
None of this made any sense. It was one more piece in the puzzle of Priest’s last ten years and his death, and he couldn’t see it clearly yet. He couldn’t make it come together.
But he would, Ajax vowed. He would.
When he couldn’t take it any longer he started walking, and Blue fell into step with him the way he always had, like there had never been any rhythm but this. Their loyalty was stamped deep into their backs and they walked shoulder to shoulder. They always had.
He hadn’t been alive, Ajax realized then, in ten long years. He hadn’t been anything close.
“I need a drink,” he said now. “And you can tell me why the fuck you spent the last ten years out in that swamp, of all places.”
Blue shrugged, as talkative as ever.
Ajax laughed and clapped him on the back.
“I hope you brought your game face, brother,” he said as they headed into the Priory. “We got some shit to do.”
—
Sophie woke up late, alone and confused—and then in a panic when she realized that ringing sound that had jolted her awake was the phone.
The whole day was like that.
She spent hours on the phone, calling as many old friends of her father’s as she could think of and letting them know about the funeral service on Friday. She played phone tag with her father’s obnoxious lawyer. She had to go over to the funeral home and deal with a thousand decisions she hadn’t wanted to make, ever. She and Priest had never talked about these things, and they probably should have, given the life he’d led. He’d always laughed when she’d expressed any worry about the way he conducted himself, full throttle and full on, like he was invincible. Took you away from that junkie bitch and kept you safe, didn’t I? he’d tell her. That’s not gonna change, angel.
Even if, these last five years, especially, Sophie had felt that she did a lot more taking care of her dad than the other way around, some part of her had loved that. She’d always known he could have handled the situation the way a lot of the men they knew had and simply left her with her mother—and god only knew what would have become of her then. Instead, he’d raised her in his own eclectic fashion. She knew he’d loved her in his own stern, gruff way. She’d liked that the drunker and more erratic he became in these last few years, which she’d thought was him feeling lonely, she’d had the opportunity to love him back the same way.
But that hadn’t prepared her for this. For the reality of dealing with what had to happen now that he was gone.
Somewhere in there, after her seventieth or eightieth phone call, she realized that she was going to have to throw some kind of a reception after the funeral on Friday to take care of all these people who were going to want to gather afterward and lift a glass to Priest and who would, of course, head straight to the Priory to make that happen. Which meant planning for the inevitable and accepting the fact that on some level, her dad would have liked that his life was going to be toasted on a Bourbon Street Friday night, with all the cheesy pageantry and tourist influx that entailed.
And of course, word of Priest’s death had spread through the French Quarter already. That meant Sophie couldn’t walk three feet down the street without someone stopping her to pay their respects, and ask after her, and then talk a while. This was New Orleans, where folks didn’t think community stopped at the cemetery gates. She assured them all that as far as she knew, everything would carry on the way it was. She’d keep running the bar and collecting the rents, just without her grumpy, usually pissed-off father to complain about everything while she did it.
By the time she made it to her evening shift at the bar, she was dragging. She’d compensated for that with too much eye makeup, and she’d told herself that there was absolutely no reason for her choice of outfit—a very skimpy little plaid skirt over killer boots and a white T-shirt like a very naughty Catholic schoolgirl. No reason at all.
She was fine, she told herself as she poured drinks. Perfectly fine. It didn’t matter that Ajax had slept in her bed. That she’d woken up at one point and found him wrapped all around her, big and tough, as if they’d slept entwined like that a thousand times before. Or every night.
Or ever would again.
He hadn’t been there when she’d woken up. She certainly hadn’t heard from him all day. The only reason she knew he hadn’t disappeared off into the ether was because that gleaming black Harley was still squatting there at the bottom of her steps, reminding her. Of last night. Of the life. Of too many things that crawled around inside of her, restless and achy, that she didn’t want to name.
She was washing glasses when he shouldered his way into the bar from the back hall, and every ache in her body went electric. Hot and liquid, calling bullshit on every little lie she’d spent the long day telling herself.
His blue gaze was hard and hot when it hit hers, and she hated herself for freezing. Ajax didn’t seem affected. He took in her outfit at a glance, and when his gaze moved back to hers there was something much darker there. Something she told herself she didn’t recognize, even as her pussy clenched down hard, like she was getting ready for him. Like she was already…
How could he still be so potent? When she’d already had him and the way he was looking at her was not exactly friendly?
That last part sank in.
It felt a lot like he’d kicked her in the stomach.
He walked up to the bar, tourists falling out of his way like water, and jerked his chin at her.
“Bourbon,” he said in his hard voice, not a hint of that grin of his anywhere, and flashed two fingers. “Neat.”
Then he waited. Watching her. Waiting for her reaction, she understood.
And Sophie thought exactly one thing: Oh hell, no.
She was not one of his little bitches. She hadn’t been the one to start shit with him. She’d walked away and given him his goddamn space last night and what had he done? Walked into her shower and then cuddled up to her in her bed.
Sophie would rather chew on glass than let Ajax think he was letting her down easy.
So she dried her hands and kept her expression blank. She slapped down two shot glasses on the bar and poured them out.
“Seven fifty,” she said, not that he’d made a move to pay. “A discount since you were a friend of my father’s. He never could resist a stray.”
Ajax’s hard face went stonier, but Sophie ignored him and looked at the man who’d stepped up beside him. And cursed a little bit, deep inside. Because this was happening whether she liked it or not. The Deacons were coming back. It was one thing to deal with the older men, like that sweet Rigger across the street who ran the strip club and whose groceries she sometimes collected, to save him the trip when his longtime old lady, Annie, was up north visiting her people in Shreveport.
But this was Blue. Tall and built, just like Ajax, with that
poet’s face and a head of shaggy gold hair.
“Holy shit,” she said, trying to look more welcoming than dismayed. “Blue. I thought you were dead.”
His mouth twitched faintly. “Happens.”
“Glad to be wrong,” she said, and smiled at him.
Only at him, not that he was any more responsive to that than the average rock wall, but that wasn’t the point. And then she found a way to be really, really busy at the other end of the bar.
She hoped they’d leave, but they didn’t. Ajax didn’t pay, either. They settled in, taking over that back corner where her father had always sat as if there were ten of them instead of two. She frowned past them at one point, down the hallway, realizing they must have been back in her father’s office. It pissed her off—but then, she knew that wasn’t exactly reasonable. She hadn’t wanted to go in there. She’d lived with her dad in the apartment up above the bar, but his office had always been off-limits. His office was about club business, always, and he was the president of the Deacons of Bourbon Street when he was at that desk, not her father. She’d learned that lesson the hard way over the years.
Over and over again.
Fuck all of this, she thought fiercely. The Deacons and Ajax and everything else. In two days they’ll be out of here and everything will be normal again.
Including her. She hoped.
No matter how that man might have made her feel last night. That part was irrelevant.
—
Later that night, the place was full of the usual carousing tourists. A bachelorette party was wreaking a little bit of havoc over near the doors, carrying on as if it was a Saturday night. And it took a minute for Sophie to register the sleek, dangerous-looking man who cut through the pack of shrieking women like a shark. He didn’t appear to notice them, though he did brush a nonexistent piece of lint from the cuff of his crisp suit as he went by. He was so polished that she had to look again to realize there was absolutely nothing soft about him. Anywhere.
He came to the bar and stopped there, directly in front of Sophie. She was aware of the enduring menace of Ajax and Blue to her left and the way the two of them stilled as they lounged at their table, and for a moment there was nothing but the music wailing into the bayou night and the bachelorettes making ribald bets about whether this man wore boxers or briefs under all of his excellent tailoring.
“Did I miss happy hour?” he asked, looking at Sophie and yet raising his voice loud enough that he could be heard over the music. “That’s a shame. Here I was looking forward to a sweaty Hurricane mixed with the vomiting masses and a tetanus shot.”
“Look at that.” Ajax’s voice was hard, and it came from much closer than that table. Sophie blinked and found him standing right there on the other side of the bar, his gaze a hard, icy thing and entirely focused on the man in front of her. “I tell him to get here today and this bitch walks in at exactly five minutes to midnight.”
“It’s been ten years, Ajax,” the man drawled, “but I live to serve you, of course. To the precise letter that keeps me in possession of all my teeth and nothing more.”
“Welcome home, Prince,” Ajax replied. “Did you mug a banker to get that suit?”
Blue said nothing, still sprawled there at the table, but his hard mouth crooked.
“I was going to dress like a douchebag but then I thought, no wait, then we’ll all look the same,” Prince shot back.
Ajax’s smile then was edgy. It made Sophie flush, and he wasn’t looking at her.
“Outside,” he ordered Prince, and maybe Blue too, it was hard to tell. “Time to get off your ass and do some real work.”
“Great,” Sophie interjected, because maybe she had a death wish. “Are you going to settle your tab, Sean?”
And Sophie didn’t get a chance to see how either Prince or Blue reacted to being ordered around, or to her use of Ajax’s real name. Because Ajax’s hard fingers were on her, grabbing her chin and pulling her face around to his, in a move that hauled her up on her toes like he was considering yanking her right over the bar.
Her heart went wild. His gaze, if possible, got harder. Colder.
“Don’t ever insult me by talking about money again,” he bit out. “This is Deacons territory. You know better. Your father would have beat your ass if he heard you disrespecting a brother like that.”
She knew she couldn’t jerk away from his grip, so she didn’t try. She refused to show him the faintest lick of fear, no matter how hard and cold his eyes were, as if he hated her. As if he’d never been inside her at all.
“My father would have emptied his entire gun collection into the back of your head if he knew what you did to me last night,” she threw back at him, her voice every bit as hard as his was, and she’d never been so proud of herself. She met that harsh, incredulous gaze of his and she didn’t flinch. “So maybe you want to take a step back into your glass house, put down your stones, and save your self-righteousness for someone who doesn’t know what a hypocrite you are.”
Ajax let out a little laugh that made everything inside her tense, and then hover somewhere between cold and hot. That same place he’d shown her last night, where pain and pleasure were almost indistinguishable from each other.
“Careful, Sophie,” he warned her, and then he dropped his hand, his gaze dark and harsh. That voice of his like a rough caress, stirring her up inside, making her ache all over again. “Be very, very careful.”
And when he swung away and headed off into the night, she told herself it was a victory. Not a loss.
Chapter 9
Ajax stood just inside the busted-open door of the dingy apartment in this crappy section of the city, leaning against the peeling wall like he was on a fucking vacation, though he figured the look he was giving the man cowering there in front of him and Blue was not exactly an all-expense-paid trip to Hawaii.
“You’re beginning to hurt my feelings,” he said, and he wasn’t breathing heavy, the way the little shit half on and half off his grimy-looking couch was. It made his voice that much darker, he was aware. And he didn’t have to look over at Blue, who was making a show of shaking the splintered remains of the door off his booted foot. “I’m sensitive like that. Blue, didn’t I tell you how much I was looking forward to a tender reunion with my favorite lying, cheating piece of shit?”
“It was like fucking poetry.”
“And then this crap, like we’re not old friends.” Ajax shook his head sorrowfully, and goddamn it, he’d missed this. “Why’d you run, asshole?”
“Nothing but a misunderstanding, man,” the slimy little turd known as Bobby to his poor mama and Boner to everyone else unfortunate enough to encounter him stammered out. He raised his hands in the air, which only showed off how little he washed them. “I thought you were somebody else, that’s all. It’s late and this ain’t a great neighborhood.”
“Who did you think I was?” Ajax asked softly. Dangerously.
Boner made a pathetic roll to the left and attempted to throw himself past Blue and out the door. Blue merely reached out a hand, caught the bitch by his face, and hurled him back to his previous position on that flea-infested-looking couch.
Ajax smiled. “Because I’m forced to conclude that you coming out of a known Ministry hangout at this hour of the night, all liquored up and smelling like a cheap bang from a bored hooker, made you take one look at two Deacons’ cuts and fall down memory lane with a thud. Way back in time to when you were hanging around the Priory trying to suck up and be a man. Both extreme failures, to my recollection. Do you have a different memory of the situation, Blue? It’s been a long time.”
“Not so long I can’t smell a punk-ass bitch from halfway across the Quarter,” Blue replied, his cold gaze on Boner. “Once a punk, always a punk.”
“Amen, brother.”
“Come on, guys,” Boner protested, looking from one to the other, his beady little eyes about as wide as they got. “You don’t have to do this. You broke my fucking d
oor.”
“Like you have any shit worth stealing,” Ajax scoffed. Then he focused on Boner and let his scowl deepen into pure ferocity. “And your door is the least of your problems tonight.”
He nodded at Blue, who grinned in that icy way of his and stepped forward—and Boner screamed. Actually screamed like someone had kicked him in the ribs, right there beneath the skirt he was apparently wearing, when no one had even touched him. Yet.
Pathetic.
“I’ll tell you whatever you want!” he cried out, the way they all had tonight. One New Orleans miscreant after the next. Ajax and Blue had kicked down doors and reintroduced themselves to old friends all over the Big Easy, and it was the most fun Ajax had allowed himself in years. It felt like old times. “Whatever you want!”
We’re gonna take a little inventory, Ajax had muttered outside the Priory, Sophie’s fucking smart mouth still biting at him and the feel of her chin in his palm like a burn. He’d had to shake it off, stamp it down deep, and preparing to kick a little ass was the only way he knew how to do that.
Not me, Prince had said, no surprise, the pansy.
Afraid you might get some blood on your pretty dress? Ajax had sneered.
More that I don’t give a shit, Prince had replied. I’m here to pay my respects to Priest, not play these stupid games with you.
Do I look like I’m playing a game, motherfucker? Ajax had demanded, even though it wasn’t Prince’s ass he’d wanted to kick. He was flexible.
With me or with Priest’s daughter, asshole? Prince had thrown right back, and Ajax had gone for him. Only Blue’s intervention had held him back from planting his fist in the smug bastard’s face.