And there I was, standing before me, just a little older.
Dark hair, but she was letting the thick silver settle in.It looked gorgeous on her.
Hazel eyes that could change to more green or more lightbrown depending on what color she (or I) wore.
Tallish.We were both five six.We seemed tallerbecause our length was in our legs and we were slender.
We also tanned easily.Laughed easily.But were mostlyquiet, sometimes shy but not withdrawn, just not loud and feisty.
“Christ, God loves me,” my dad had said.“Gave me theperfect woman and then gave me her carbon copy so I get double the goodness.”
I remembered him saying that.We were living outside SanFrancisco then in a little two-bedroom house where we could smell the sea andMom had a big garden.I remembered how happy he was.
Always happy.
Always right where he wanted to be.
With his girls, his bike close, the world at his feet…or inDad’s case, his wheels.
I remembered those words he’d said nearly every time Ilooked at my mom.
And I hoped I never forgot.
“Who’s here?”I asked.
“Kane Allen and his old lady,” she said softly.
Damn.
“And also, um, his lieutenant andhisold lady,”she went on.
Damn!
Shy was his lieutenant.
I’d run into Shy and Tabby in a mall not long after he’ddumped me.I was now over him and not just because I had no choice since he wasnot only married to Tab, they also had a baby, but because I just was.
And now I was even more because I’d figured out I wasn’tover Shy because I’d had Beck.
But because I’d wanted Snapper.
“I don’t want to see them,” I told my mom.
“It’s Hopper Kincaid, not the other one,” she repliedquickly.
Well, at least Shy and Tabby didn’t march their way to mymother’s house to do whatever Kane “Tack” Allen and Hop Kincaid were there todo, this after the guy who came next when Shy was done with me gotdonewith me.
“I still don’t want to see them,” I said.
“Honey, they…” She looked down the hall then back to me.“Idon’t think it’s a good idea to refuse an audience with Kane Allen.”
She was right.
The Chaos Club had left their outlaw ways behind and was nowclean, but that didn’t mean the brothers were men you trifled with.And of allof them, you didn’t trifle with Kane Allen.
It wasn’t just in the physical (though he was physicallyintimidating).It was that the man was known to be killer smart.If heperceived a slight and wanted to act on it, that could come in so manydifferent ways, none of them pleasant, it wasn’t funny.
“Right,” I muttered to Mom, then, being careful with my bodybecause other parts might be healing, but my ribs still hurt like hell, Irounded her and walked stiffly down the hall, feeling her at my heels.
