“Knows what?”
“What do you think?” Warren looks up.
I crossed my arms and looked up at Hudson as his eyes came back to me. They were hard and threatening. He opened his mouth to speak, but Warreninterrupted him.
“Stand down, Hud, Wave won’t say anything.”
“You don’t know that.” He said it to my brother, but he was looking right at me.
“For Christ’s sake, will you stop with this holier than thou fucking attitude?” I snapped at him. “I’m here for as long as my father sees fit. Deal with it. And deal with the fact that my friend and my brother will want to talk to me even if you don’t. Get the hell over yourself, Hudson Kelley.”
He looked as if his head were about to explode. Warren got between us, putting a hand on Hudson’s chest. “I don’t need this shit right now. Where did Connor go? He seem okay?”
Hudson let out a heavy breath. “No, he didn’t seem ok. Why do you think I came looking for you? What happened?”
Warren rubbed the back of his neck, then kicked the door closed, which had still been open. “I said we weren’t a couple, that we never could be, explaining stuff to Wave. He took it the wrong way.”
Another death glare my way, like this was my fault.
“He was headed for the hot tub with Smokey and Jolene.” Hudson relented. For how long was anyone’s guess, but I was so over it.
“Great,” Warren sighed.
“He’ll be fine with them. But we got a lead. We need to go,” Hudson said.
Warren dropped his head, his hands lodged on his hips, gathering himself and shaking off everything that happened so he could be what the club expected of him.
I leaned into him and kissed his cheek. “I’ll go to Connor,” I told him softly. “Maybe we can go get coffee in town.”
Warren laughed at me. There was no way in hell either me or Connor would leave to get a coffee and Warren would make sure of that just as much as King would.
“Take him down to the lake. It calms him,” he eventually said as he walked back to his room, kindly leaving me facing Hudson.
“You need to keep your mouth shut.” Hudson leaned down so his face was a few inches away from me. “No telling Rosa, no blabbing to your friend back home,” he sneered at the word friend. “If this gets out, I will know where it came from.”
“We might have our issues, Hudson, but I would never sell out my brother.”
He didn’t move back right away, and my core clenched at his nearness. I could feel the heat from how close his body was to me, and I used everything I had not to look affected by that. He stared into my eyes, searching for the truth. After a few seconds, he believed me and straightened up.
He cleared his throat, looked me up and down, then walked away. I slumped against the doorframe. Being that close to him was not good for my health. My heart was racing a mile a minute. I clutched at the front of my t-shirt and took a deep breath.
“What was that guy’s name again?”
I grabbed Connor’s sneaker from the floor and threw it at Warren as he hurried down the hallway. At least he was laughing. But he was dead if he insinuated anything like that again.
The next day, after a quick catch up with Declan before he headed to work, I sat chatting with Lily and Isla. I was settling into the old lady’s house and getting to know everyone. They were giving me the low down on the club whores and surprisingly, it was Lily who had taken them in hand.
They weren’t allowed to stray from the designated areas Lily set for them. Their limits were the clubhouse, using the pool only at certain times and the rooms they’d been allocated in the annex, where before they used to wander all over. Like lizards.
I found it amusing Lily could overlook the criminal activity that went on within the MC, but she eyed the club whores like they were the devil’s own children.
She had run an errand in town and brought us all back cappuccinos from a local coffee shop. I’d eyed up the pool because it was hot, and Lily took it upon herself to ban the whores from the pool for the rest of the day so the old ladies could use it. I’d loaned a two piece from one of the other girls. Lana was eight months pregnant and planning her wedding as soon as the baby was born. She’d sighed when she sawme in the bikini, bemoaning her ‘huge’ belly, though she barely looked pregnant from behind.
I swam in the pool with Naomi and Isla while the other ladies drank and sunbathed. Itchy, a prospect came out to grill some burgers for us when it started getting later and a few more of the brothers had come out to join us, including most of the ladies’ husbands.
Some of the kids had returned from school and joined us out in the pool too. Casper was handing out drinks from a cooler and everyone was having a good time. There was music, dancing, and laughter, but it wasn’t a wild party atmosphere.
It was a pre-cursor to the party that would be happening tomorrow, when the girls could mingle again. They were watching through the windows of the annex building, desperate to come out, but Lily told them smugly it was family only. Anyone who wanted time with one of them had to leave the party and strangely enough, nobody did.
