Secretly, I was grateful for the distraction. Otherwise, I would have been forced to return to Barrett’s big, empty house. Alone. With Ruby.
That was…not a good idea. Not while she was flashing thosefuck meeyes.
Under normal circumstances, it would have been fine.
But something was shifting between us. Something dangerous. Intoxicating. Sizzling with sexual tension.
We arrived at the clubhouse in the late afternoon, when the alcohol was flowing but the intoxication levels were still relatively mild and manageable. It wasn’t as busy as it could be, especially during this time of year, when every inch of the placewas covered with gaudy Christmas decorations. But it would be enough to keep my self-control reined in.
“Gentlemen!”
Hillbilly—President of the Reckless Order—gestured to us from a table on the far side of the room where a game of poker was taking place. His country boy drawl had remained unchanged after all these years, although his hair had turned fully white by now.
“Get in here,” he called. “Bring those sweet little ladies with you. There’s plenty of beer to go around. Feel free to raid the fridge in the kitchen. Ironside cooked up some holiday hams for the crew. We’ve been eating leftovers for days.”
“Old Ironside is still kicking?” I asked in disbelief.
“You’re not getting any younger either, wiseass,” Hillbilly replied. “Can we deal you in for the next round?”
“Sure. Christmas is already burning a hole in my pocket. Might as well try to score a few bucks to make up for the damage.”
“What about you, Dash?” Hillbilly offered.
Dash shook his head and hooked his arms around Sierra and Ruby.
“I’ll grab some of that ham with the girls and get them settled in.”
I scrubbed a hand over my mouth, my gaze straying to the flounce in Ruby’s mini skirt, barely covering her ass. The scrape of a chair on the wooden floor drew my attention back to the poker game. Hillbilly pushed a chair out with his foot.
“What are you eyeing that jail bait for, Titan?” he demanded.
“She’s twenty-five,” I protested. “She just looks like jail bait to you because you born in the fucking stone age or some shit.”
Hillbilly snorted as I took the offered seat.
“You’re one to talk. Aren’t you staring down the barrel of becoming a senior citizen yourself these days?”
I grimaced. This conversation was sobering me up fast, like an ice cold bucket of water thrown on those scorching hot, forbidden feelings I’d felt for Ruby in the bookstore.
“Just deal the damn cards, would you, Prez?”
He chuckled and started shuffling with expert hands. This felt familiar, traversing the ruts of my past. Playing poker with my brothers. Celebrating Christmas in our own fucked-up way.
When I was VP, the club would always wait until the last possible minute to pick up a tree. So we would be left with the bottom of the barrel to choose from—the scraggly runts of the litter, crooked, gnarled, with broken branches and missing pine needles.
It seemed somewhat poetic and fitting actually, to rescue a misfit tree that no one wanted for a quarter of the price. Adopted by a bunch of bikers who didn’t belong anywhere else in this world except right here, in the clubhouse, in the home that we built together.
This year, the tree looked like another one of those unfortunate rejects. It leaned to one side, and a portion of the trunk was exposed, bare, from the branches getting stripped away.
Nevertheless, it had been draped in our finest assortment of decorations—popcorn garlands and shiny tinsel, twinkling lights and pictures from bygone years. At the top was our trusty Christmas angel—Santa Claus on a Harley-Davidson, with his long white beard blowing back and his tattooed knuckles gripping the handlebars.
“Do you miss us yet?” Hillbilly asked, sliding the cards across the table’s surface with a flick of his wrist, dealing them out to each player.
I smiled ruefully, gathering my cards under my palm.
“Maybe. A little.”
There was a lot of nostalgia wrapped up in this room. Down the hall would be the Chapel where meetings took place. I sat at that table for years, with the VP patch on my chest. Hillbilly’s right hand man, and his second in command.
