It takes me a minute, but when her words finally penetrate, I squeal and jump up, throwing my arms around her. I squeeze her, laughing, then crying.
“I’m so happy I’m not doing this alone,” I mumble into her hair. “Congratulations, Ally. I bet Sam is stoked.”
“He is.” She leans slightly away from me so that she can see me. “We haven’t told anyone yet. I’m not that far along. We reckon it happened around the end of October, so if you were the second of November, we’ll literally only be weeks apart.”
“Phew, you’re right—Dad’s going to shit a brick!” I exclaim.
“Jesus, Jeanie.” Ally snorts, laughing hard. “You certainly have a way with words. Are you sure being a nursery schoolteacher is the career for you?”
“Eh,” I shrug, “for some reason I don’t need to swear when I’m with little ones. Now, do you happen to have an address for the Queens Wraiths?”
“I do,” Ally replies, pushing me away so that she can stand. I follow her back to her office and wait while she clicks a few keyson the keyboard. Taking a sticky note, she writes the information down and hands it to me.
“Here you go. Are you sure you don’t want Sam to find out if he’s there first?”
I shake my head. “No, I have a feeling he is, and I’d rather tell him to his face and see his reaction. Once I’ve done that, then I can speak to Mum and Dad, and I can begin to plan.”
“Okay,” Ally nods. “But let me know when you go out there and call me if you need me.”
“I will,” I agree. “But honestly, he was a nice guy, and I think he’ll be fine about it. And if he isn’t, then I’ve got you all.”
“Too damn right,” Ally agrees, squeezing my hand. “And if he’s a shit head, I’m sure we can make use of The Hole.”
We grin at each other. The Hole is somewhere that those who do the O’Sheas wrong are taken, but I don’t think I’ll be needing it. I have a good feeling about Bolt.
CHAPTER 3
BOLT
It has been six weeks since that night in Southampton. I haven’t been able to shake Jeanie. She lives in my thoughts, and I replay that night over and over again. I’ve wracked my brain to remember as much about our conversation as I could to see if there are any clues on how to track her down, but there is nothing. She had a tattoo on her hip of a skull in a top hat, but I hadn’t been able to read the writing in the dark, and I now regret it. I have a feeling that I’ll never meet another woman like her. She somehow made the worst night of my life better, dragging me from my melancholy thoughts, and she brightened the world for those few hours that we’d spent together.
“You doing okay, little brother?” Coal asks, clasping my shoulder and giving me a little shake. Turning my head towards my older brother, the club president, I’m once again struck with awe at how much he’s accomplished in his life. He’s always been the one who’s pulled me out of scrapes, and I’m sad to say that after everything with Leila, I’d gone off the rails and caused my family a shit tonne of worry. I’ve grown up a lot in the last year. I take my position as Road Captain seriously because Coal put a lot of faith in me getting my shit together, and I’d hate to let him down. Especially now with all the shit that is swirling around us. We are a brother short with Copper undercover, and not having Copper here is stressing Coal out. The two of them are close, being the eldest of us siblings. They’ve always been there for us, no matter what idiotic thing we’d done. Realising I haven’t answered him, I reply, “I’m okay, Coal.”
“You sure?” he asks with concern, his brow creasing into a frown. “You haven’t been yourself recently. I mean, there’s a party going on, and you’ve ignored every woman that’s hit on you so far, and you’ve been staring into that glass of whisky for the last hour, and not drunk a drop.”
He isn’t wrong. We decided to have a party before our Christmas decorations go up tomorrow. It will be the last big bash until the New Year’s one that Mom and Thea have planned. Tomorrow our clubhouse will look like Christmas has thrown up all over it if I know my mother and sister.
“Leave the lad alone,a ghrá,” Thea chides him, gently slipping under his arm. An arm that he immediately tightens around her shoulders. “He’s allowed to say no to the whores.”
Thea winks at me when she catches my eye and, chuckling, I say, “Yeah, Coal, no means no.”
Coal rolls his eyes at me. “Okay, okay. I was just checking on you. I know what last month was, and you’ve been really quiet, so I was making sure all was good.”
His words warm my heart. I love my family, and I know I’m lucky enough to have been born into one of the best. Turning my head so I can see my brother and Pres better, I tell him, “I promise, Coal, I’m fine. Easy pussy...” I look apologetically at Thea, who waves her hand at me to continue. “Anyway, easy pussy isn’t doing it for me lately. I want what you two have, what Mom and Dad have. What Copper and his woman are building. Until then, I’m going to give women a break.”
Coal nods with understanding, and Thea’s looking proud. “I get it, brother,” Coal says, then continues, “Remember, though, I’m here if you need anything.”
“I know, brother,” I acknowledge. “Now respectfully, fuck off and enjoy the rest of the night with your old lady.”
Thea laughs and Coal grins, but they take me at my word and walk off hand in hand to Coal’s office where I know the door will be locked, and they’re only to be disturbed if it’s an emergency, or if their daughter, Shea, needs them.
I go back to contemplating my whisky, ignoring the party raging on behind me until Blue interrupts me when he leans over thebar. “Brother, there’s a woman at the gate asking for you, but she hasn't been cleared to come in.”
We implemented the background checks on all who step foot on our property not long after Thea arrived and Copper went undercover. We need to know who is on our property, as the undercover work we do is sensitive.
The last thing we need is to have our business out there for every man and his dog.
“If she’s not on the list, then she needs to leave,” I tell Blue.
