I head inside, nodding to members as I pass.
The main house is just as chaotic as outside.
Dakota—Phantom's youngest daughter—is setting the long dining table that seats twenty.
She's got music playing from her phone propped on the sideboard, some pop country bullshit that makes my teeth ache.
At twenty-three, she's all restless ambition and sharp edges, talking nonstop about her upcoming barrel racing season while she arranges silverware.
"Hey, Shadow!" She grins at me, arms full of plates. "Can you grab the extra chairs from the back room? Mom invited half the county apparently."
Mom.
She means Phantom's ex-wife, Jolene, who still lives in town and still shows up for family dinners despite the divorce being finalized years ago.
The relationship is… complicated.
Most things in this family are.
She still wears her old lady ink, still treats the club like family, still cooks for Sunday dinners like nothing ever changed.
Except everything changed.
But that's not my business.
"Sure thing, kid."
I head toward the back room, passing through the kitchen where Jolene is directing traffic like a four-star general.
Prospects are chopping vegetables under her watchful eye, club wives are mixing sides and laughing about something I don't catch, and the whole scene is domestic in a way that always makes me uncomfortable.
Because I'm not here for the food or the brotherhood.
I'm here for her.
Grace.
I spot her through the kitchen window before I even make it to the back room.
She's outside in the circular driveway, climbing out of her truck—a white F-250 with "Dr. Grace Dalton, DVM" painted on the door in professional lettering.
The truck's covered in dust from the back roads, mud caked on the wheel wells, a dent in the bumper from some ranch call gone wrong.
She's wearing jeans that should be illegal, the denim molded to her curves in a way that makes my mouth go dry.
A tank top the color of Texas bluebonnets shows off arms tanned and toned from ranch work—from wrestling cattle for examinations, from lifting fifty-pound feed bags, from the physical labor that comes with being a large animal vet.
Her soft pink hair is pulled back in a ponytail, light and glossy in the late afternoon sun.
No makeup.
Boots dusty from whatever call she just came back from, the leather worn and comfortable.
She's twenty-six now.
A licensed veterinarian with her own practice, a clinic on the ranch property where she treats everything from horses to cattle to the occasional club member's dog, or stray cat.
She's competent and confident and so goddamn beautiful it makes my chest ache every time I look at her.
