“Can I help?” I asked.
“No.”
“Are you sure?” I pressed.
“Don’t try,” Poppy warned. “You’ll get nowhere. Can I get you some wine?”
“Ah, no, thank you,” I said. “Water’s great.”
Maisie gave me a secret smile, and I appreciated she hadn’t spilled the beans, so to speak.
“I’m gonna help Hatch with the meat,” Doom said, and I raised an eyebrow.
“Do you think Hatch needs help with his meat?”
“He has a lot of meat, love,” Maisie said. “He often needs help.”
“Oh, really?”
“So much meat,” Maisie said. “It’s thick and he may need assistance getting it—”
“Mum!” Poppy snapped. “Enough talk about Dad’s meat. I mean,really!”
Doom laughed out loud and headed out the back slider.
* * *
Doom
“Heard you needed some help with your meat,” I said, closing the door behind me.
Hatch smirked, setting the empty platter on the table beside the grill. “My woman’s tellin’ stories again, huh?”
“Somethin’ like that.”
Hatch handed me a beer and I twisted the top and we clinked bottles.
“Congrats on VP,” he said.
“Thanks, brother.”
“You prepped on the Spider shit?”
“As much as I can be,” I admitted. “Anything new?”
“No,” Hatch said. “They’re layin’ low, which doesn’t sit well with me. I’ve got feelers out, but you need to stay alert. They’re plannin’ something big, and I don’t think Savannah’s immune.”
“Got it,” I said. “Let ’em come. Fuckers need a lesson in manners.”
Hatch raised an eyebrow. “Don’t get cocky, Doom. That’s when you’re most vulnerable.”
I sighed with a nod. He was probably right.
“How do you like yours?” he asked, pointing the tongs toward the steaks.
“Medium rare for me, medium for Lyric.”
We put club business aside for lighter subjects and spent the rest of the evening getting to know the Wallace family. By the time I took Lyric home, we both felt we’d made life-long friends and neither of us could wait to come back to Portland.
