Hot Mess (An Iron Tornadoes MC Romance Book 5) Read online

  Shit, it's my touch she finds repulsive.

  Oh well... Letting go of her arm, I place a hand on the small of her back to guide her toward the door and ask, "Don't you have a bag or something?"

  Most women carry a load of crap with them wherever they go, and nothing in this room, aside from a pair of red pumps, looks to belong to her.

  From the doorway, Earplugs answers my question. "I left her shit in her car." One frown from me and he adds, "And her car is in the barn at the back of the lot."

  "What?" Cracker barks at him and surprisingly, the young prospect holds his ground. He stares right back at my father.

  "I had my orders to bring her in and let me tell you, she's not the quiet type. There was no way I could have made her ride behind me," Earplugs protests.

  Despite the fact he fends perfectly well for himself, Brains steps up to defend his protégé.

  "You did good, son."

  Brains’s sentence makes me cringe. I don't mind the cussing and the swearing, but I can't stand poor English from a native speaker. It's like nails on a blackboard. And that's all my mother's fault. She made me a fucking snob!

  "Right, Daniel did well."

  Brains smiles at me and shrugs. "What's done is done. We can move it later after everyone's left."

  "Now the question is what do we do with her for the rest of the day." Ice's thinking out loud.

  "I guess she'll need to stay here," I admit with regrets. No matter how much I would like, there's no way I can parade with her at the party. She's not mine to show off anyway. "Burger or hot dog?" I ask her.

  She blinks and stares at me.

  "It's not a trick question," I tell her. My voice doesn't betray my exasperation. "I'm pretty sure you eat."

  She reacts as if I had slapped her. What's with her?

  "Yeah, I do," she snaps back. "And you didn't need to be mean about it."

  Ice laughs and I get it when I catch him staring at her luscious ass. Oh, fuck me sideways, she’s another one of those who hates her curves. What's wrong with these women? I shrug as I walk out of the room. I turn to Earplug and say, "Get her a burger and a frank and have her ready to leave at six sharp."

  Ice catches up with me and wraps his arm around my shoulder in a brotherly fashion.

  "So what's the plan?" he asks. "What devious method are you gonna come up with to make her talk?"

  "Damned if I know," I answer honestly.

  "She's getting to you, right?"

  I look into my brother's eyes and all I see is compassion. Not a feeling I usually inspire.

  "Yeah, yeah, I know. She's got me all twisted," I admit. "But I'll find a way to make her talk."

  "Oh, I have no doubt you will." Suddenly I'm transported back in time, way back in our teenager years when his mother used to let him spend the summer with us. His eyes are full of mischief as he says, "Just remember, bro, it's not your name she's supposed to scream. It's the name of the guy who's supplying that junk."

  I mock punch him and laugh. He's right, I badly want the woman, but I want the people killing our local kids and racers even more. His reminder helps. Next time my dick tries to override my brains, I'll think of the seventeen-year-old corpse in a drawer at the local morgue.

  Stupid dick.

  4

  As we leave the building, my mother waves from her table, beckoning us to sit with her. I send my father to her while I get us food from the grill.

  Two minutes later, I return with three plates and find my parents arguing about what post graduate degree Juliya should pursue next year. I want to laugh. No way is Juliya staying away from Point Lookout for another day after she's done with her degree.

  "Oh honey, I've eaten already," my mother says when I give her the plate. "But I'm sure we'll find someone to share this with." She smiles and looks over my shoulder as she says this.

  I barely have time to turn around when a vanilla smelling tidal wave wraps her arms around my neck. It takes me a second to identify my attacker. When I do, I take her into a huge bear hug, lifting her from the floor.

  "Bunny, when did you get back?" my mother asks.

  Her question is almost drowned by Bunny's gales of laughter.

  "I can't believe you can still lift me!" she says as I gently put her on her feet. I push her to arm's length to figure out why she's saying that. She looks the same as she always had. Maybe there's a little more of her, but even so, she's still the mouthwatering girl I've known all my life.

  Some days I wonder what it will take to boost her self-confidence. God knows I've done everything in my power to show her how luscious and desirable she is.

  Bunny settles on the bench next to my mother and finally answers her question.

  "I got back a couple of days ago," my best friend says. "And I'm here to stay. I got a job at the hotel."

  My mother slides her plate over to her while I take a place just across the table from them, next to my father who's taken two bites of his burger and set it aside.

  "Come on, Cracker," I tell him pointing at his plate. "You can do better than that." He growls at me, but when my mother moves his food back in front of him, he doesn't push it away.

  I leave my two parents to their staring match. A long time ago, I gave up trying to understand their weird relationship. No matter how long I study psychology, I'm pretty sure I won't get it.

  Ignoring them, I turn my attention to Bunny and just looking at her brings a smile to my face. Happy flashbacks come to my memory, and I'm pretty sure she can read it in my eyes, ‘cause she blushes as she raises her eyes from her plate to look at me.

  She shakes her head slowly and winks. Yeah, she knows what I'm thinking about. We were each other's testing grounds when we were young. Experimenting all kinds of stuff with her was mind-blowing. We would talk to each other and share our thoughts without any inhibition. Anything one of us wanted to try, the other was game for. Some days, when I remember what I let her do to me, I shudder, but then it was nothing more than what I was doing to her, so how could I have possibly refused?

  "Any news from the bitch?" Bunny asks.

  My mother sighs and mumbles, "Language, dear."

  Years of habit kick in and Bunny answers, "Sorry, Deb." It's fascinating how my mother's kept her authority over all those who grew up while she was the ruling queen of the Iron Tornadoes’ compound.

  "Funny you should ask," I answer. "I actually ran into her while in Miami last week. She was driving some slick new car with her two and half brats in the back."

  "Two and half?" Bunny raises a questioning eyebrow.

  "Yeah, two boys and a poodle," I explain.

  "She did you a favor when she dumped you," Cracker declares before taking another bite.

  "You're probably right," I admit. It took me a long time, but I got over it. In hindsight, I realize that her dumping me hurt my ego more than it actually hurt my feelings, but at the time, I was devastated. I drank myself into a stupor for an entire week until Bunny came back from college for spring break and forcibly pulled my head out of my ass.

  Bunny nods and suddenly stops chewing. She turns pale and stands abruptly.

  I think I hear her say, "Oh shit, not again!" as she rushes away from the table.

  My mother looks at my father and says, "I guess it's true, what they're saying." My father grunts back, which basically means he has no clue what she's talking about, but he'll be damned if he'll admit that he's no longer on top of all the club's gossip.

  Turning to me, my mother asks, "What are you still doing here? Someone's got to hold her head so she doesn't knock herself out heaving over the bathroom seat!"

  Fuck, she's pregnant! I reach out for my mother's water bottle, grab a handful of napkins and dart out of my chair in pursuit of Bunny. She hasn't gone far. I find her by the front door of the main building, both hands on the wall of the building, retching miserably.

  "Go away," she grumbles. "I don't want you to see me like this. I look horrible."

&nbs
p; I pour water on a napkin and answer, "No, you don't, honey bunch. You should know by now that to me you'll always look sexy."

  "Oh, Everest, if only you knew."

  She turns and looks at me. Her eyes are full of tears, not just those that come spontaneously to the eyes when one gets sick, real tears. I wipe them away and give her the bottle of water.

  "Come on, drink a little, wipe your face, and then we'll talk," I tell her, pushing her curls away.

  "You don't need to babysit me. I'm gonna be fine."

  If I was a good son, I would take this opportunity to bail out. Without being morbid, I know it's one of the last opportunities Ice and I have of spending some sort of quality time with our father. But then, what's quality time with Cracker? The very concept of it is a joke. As far as he's concerned, Ice and I are pawns he's been playing one against the other all our lives. In vain.

  We joke that he's the wedge that glued us together. If he did it on purpose, using some sort of twisted reverse psychology, he's a fucking genius.

  Or maybe not, he got Ice to rebel from his vision of law and order by enlisting while I decided to use my education to become a cop. Surely not an MC President's dream career for his sons.

  I smile at Bunny. "Yeah, sweetheart, I'm sure you're gonna be fine." I kiss her forehead and add, "But I would feel like a jerk if I weren't here for you."

  5

  Ten minutes later, Bunny and I are cuddled in one of the battered leather couches of the meeting room with a glass of iced tea for her and a beer for me.

  Color is back in her face, and she's munching on crackers I found behind the bar.

  "So?" I ask tentatively.

  "Yeah, I got knocked up," she admits reluctantly, stuffing another cracker in her mouth. "God, it makes me hungry all the time. I'm going to end up looking like a blimp."

  "But you'll be the sexiest blimp around," I tell her.

  She shakes her head sadly, showing she doesn't believe me for a second. I wait for her to tell me more. I'm certain she knows who the father is. She's a wild one, but not so wild as to string several guys along at the same time.

  Bunny looks away, and I decide to give her a few minutes before I stop pussyfooting around her.

  "There was this bar next to the campus," she begins. "It was a biker's hangout and they hired me 'cause, you know, I could handle it all and most importantly, I could be trusted to keep my mouth shut."

  She blinks several times as if chasing fresh tears, and I hold her tighter against me. I love this woman and seeing her so heartbroken tears me apart. Bunny is my best friend. When I say it in public, guys snicker. They don't believe that men and women can be friends. Well, we're proof of the contrary. We were madly in love once, like teenagers can be, but somehow we grew out of it. Our initial passion morphed in time into a more simple, almost sibling, sort of love.

  "He's a Knight," she whispers.

  "A Category 5 Knight?" I ask and she nods.

  The Knights are a southern MC like the Iron Tornadoes. And like us, they're mainly decent men. Of course out of greed, they sometime do stupid things like get associated with unsavory groups, but basically they're all right. They've always had a chapter in the area, and so far, we've never had bad blood.

  "Does he know?"

  She shakes her head and says, "He's a nomad. By the time I figured it out, he was gone." She shrugs, which is her way to say "shit happens" and I kiss her forehead again.

  "He said he would be back within a month or two, but I guess he got held up somewhere, 'cause the summer term was over and he was a no-show. Maybe he decided to settle in a western chapter. Maybe he got arrested for doing stupid shit. Maybe... Anyway, I was done with college and I figured ..."

  She pauses and I finish her sentence for her. “You figured right. You'll be fine here. We'll take care of you."

  "I know you will. The Tornadoes are my family. I should have known better than to fall in love with a stranger."

  "As if we have any choice in the matter," I tell her ruffling her hair gently. "If only we could command this ..."

  It's my turn to leave a sentence unfinished because she knows. We're perfect for each other. We grew up in the same world, we have the same values, the same beliefs, in bed we were amazing, but the magic is gone and we respect each other enough not to lie about it.

  Staying together would be convenient, but we both deserve better than that.

  "So what's his name?" I ask after a minute of silence.

  "Doc." She gives a sad smile. "He served somewhere." A broad gesture of her hands indicates she has no clue where. I'm not surprised; geography was never her thing. "Seems he was a good medic, so the nickname stuck after he became a civilian again."

  I nod and understand the need to drift better. It's common for men to crave the freedom of being a nomad after years in the military.

  "What about a real name?"

  She shrugs again. "I think I heard one of his brothers call him Gab once, so it could be Gabriel, I guess."

  "Okay." It's not much intel, but enough to reach out to the Knights and figure out who the guy is.

  She frowns at me and shakes a menacing finger. "Everest, you've got to promise me you won't give him any trouble."

  "I promise." I can do it with a light heart 'cause I won't cause any trouble at all. What I may do - will do - is reach out to the man. He has a right to know. I figure if I had knocked someone up, I would wanna know.

  Of course, I won't tell her about it. No use breaking her heart a second time if he turns out to be a rat who doesn't want anything to do with her and the kid.

  We remain together for the rest of the afternoon, Bunny resting with her head on my lap, and me staring into the distance.

  The noise of the party outside makes a nice background sound. Kids laughing, men taunting each other. It's one of the things I love about this community. We're a weird bunch, but then it's probably the case with most extended families.

  Bunny tells me about college and her plans for the future. Well, the immediate future. She's got a job, at least for the next six month or so. She's almost finished with the first quarter and her health insurance should kick in before the due date. Bunny had me patting her tummy to feel for her precious bump when Earplugs comes looking for us with Kristal in tow.

  Shit, I had totally forgotten about her.

  As they both walk in the room, Kristal watches us intently while Earplugs tells me he'll drop my ride at the Styx later tonight.

  Bunny and I stand, and when my sweet friend sends me off with a peck on the lips, I think I read something interesting in Kristal's eye. It can't be jealousy, per se, since we barely know each other, but it's a close cousin.

  Good.

  From where Kristal stands, it sure looks like Bunny and I are a couple. I smirk. Maybe it's better that way. Kristal is nothing but trouble, very tempting trouble. It will be for the best if we keep some distance.

  Who am I kidding?

  6

  Kristal is silent during the drive to Styx. I'm driving her car. It's a tiny little thing with New York plates more suited for city streets than Florida roads. If she gets caught in a storm, her engine will drown and leave her stranded.

  The backseat is hidden under a pile of rumpled clothes. Looks like she's been living in her car while coming south and maybe since she arrived. The open ashtray is filled with credit card receipts. Earplugs has sorted and clipped them together. The earlier ones show the route she followed to drive south. The last one was used to get gas in Miami on Monday, yesterday.

  She doesn't comment, but she frowns at my nosiness as I take advantage of a red light to flip through the bundle. Silently, she crosses her arms in a defensive position and stares at the road. Her eyes widen when we reach our destination. The building doesn't look like much. Solid concrete walls with no other openings than two doors on opposite sides of the facade. There's access to covered parking in the back, but unless a tropical storm hits, we never think about using it.
<
br />   No one could imagine from the outside that it's anything else than a warehouse, or guess that inside it's all glass. Full floor to ceiling windows open on the inside to a lush green patio.

  I love it here. The Styx is my oasis. It's actually home. There are four apartments on the top floor. One is mine, one is Patricia's. The two others are empty right now, but will be rented out at top price to some Palm Beach royalty when the season starts.

  "What sort of place is this?" Kristen asks.

  "A sex club." No use being coy. "But don't you worry, you heard my brother. It's closed on Mondays."

  "What makes you think a sex club would frighten me?" Her surprise seems genuine.

  I laugh. "Well, I guess I shouldn't presume." But then I do that again since I ask her, "Sub or switch?"

  "Neither," she shrugs and explains, "I was a dancing barmaid in an upscale club in Manhattan."

  "All work and no play?"

  "You can say that again."

  I'm not sure I believe her. Usually club managers attempt to hire staff that is interested in the lifestyle. It makes things easier to manage when the employees going about their jobs are not judgmental.

  "And you were never tempted to explore?"

  Kristal deflects my question by jumping out of the car. She opens the back door and sighs. "Can I take a bag for the night?" she asks.

  "Sure. What do you want?"

  I open the backpack she points to and carry out a quick search. There's a change of clothes, papers in a large plastic folder, and toiletries. I pick up the bag and gesture for her to follow me.

  The main door opens to Patricia, our resident dungeon mistress. Dressed in civilian clothes, she invites us in and locks the heavy door behind us.