“Are you having a fucking laugh?” Orla pushed her chair away from the desk, leaning back, her knockout body on full display. “Sea Rave is the only time he gets to go out without worrying about some wanker wanting to fight him. There’s no way I’m letting him stay home.”
“He might want to.”
“He won’t,” Rubi grunted. “Trust me, there’s nothing fun about a night in with three disgruntled O’Brian’s.”
Orla started to scowl. Then changed her mind and let me see her rueful, sexy-as-hell smile. “Sad, but true. And don’t even think about fretting over mysafety. Alexei will be there too. And Embry. No one’s getting past those crazy little bastards.”
It was a known fact that the smallest Kings were some of the deadliest.
I was one of the biggest. Did that make me the softest?
If it did, I wasn’t complaining. I knew it was a gift tofeel. “I’ll ask him when I see him. Wills will go mad for it if he does come. She loves him.”
Orla’s smile widened to the point where my chest expanded, blocking Rubi out so it was just me, her, and the swell of emotion we shared for that sweet, brave soul. “Honey, he’s easy to love.”
17
ORLA
My period was a bastard.
Painful.
Emotional.
Long.
It was ten days before I felt myself again, and by then, the world seemed different, and yet somehow the same as it had always been.
One new thing in my life was the constant company of Viktor the Russian’s dog. Lida only left Locke’s side when Ranger was in the room, and Locke only leftmewhen I asked him to or a cherry-red Fiat 500 pulled into the yard.
That was the second thing.
Willow.
Nash had deemed her car finished over a week ago, and she’d come to see her dad every day since. Chapel dinners where she bounced around, charming us all with her riotous energy. Her big smile. I don’t think any of us had ever known anyone so terminallyhappy, and it made me wonder if she was someone we’d needed as much as Locke.
God, I loved this kid. The only thing I loved more was the sheer joy having her around so much had brought her dad.
He needed this.
“Nice, isn’t it?”
The question came from beside me. From Decoy. I pried my gaze from where Locke had somehow ended up with every child in the room attached to him: Hope and Ivy on each knee, Willow and Liliana looking over his shoulder, watching something on Willow’s phone. Every man in this room was an amazing parent, whether they had biological children or not, but there was something so easy about Locke indadmode. So soothing. “Yeah.” I answered Decoy’s question with a sigh breathier than I was prepared for, but I was safe with him. Decoy saw me and Locke together every day. If he didn’t know by now how I felt about him, there was something wrong with us both.
The rumble of bikes pierced the air. Three, if my radar was on point. V-Rods. Which meant Nash, Saint, and Ranger were home.
They swept into the yard.
I frowned. “Folk’s not with them?”
Decoy wiped his mouth. “No.”
That was weird. Folk was slowly working his way over to the legitimate side of club business, but with everyone else here, I’d put him with Nash, an assumption I’d taken comfort in. Folk and Locke were different men, but they had the same capable way of making life seem safer. If Locke was with me, I always felt better if Folk was with Nash.
I felt unsettled now for reasons that were likely nonsensical, but no less real.
Also, Decoy was doing something with his face that kept me in my seat instead of catapulting myself into Nash’s embrace.I missed him. “Everything okay?”
