Ever.
FORTY
STAN
With Kitty at my side, my hand now curving around her hip, I guided her toward the clubhouse as Storm stepped into place next to me.
He was a lot more diplomatic than I’d expected.
I had a rough idea of how he’d come to be the Prez in Ohio—the ex-VP of the New Jersey Sinners’ branch had evaded arrest back home and found a place for himself among the soybeans.
Storm as a Prez already seemed far less mercurial than the Hell’s Rebels’.
If anything, he exuded a level of self-control that I appreciated. The MCs led by crazy motherfuckers, i.e., Lucifer and her gang of demons, were always a massive migraine just waiting to happen.
“My office is this way,” Storm directed once we stepped inside the clubhouse.
This place was a lot less chaotic than the one in Texas too. I could see kids’ toys dumped in a couple corners of the rooms we passed through, and combined with the lack of clubwhores blowing brothers, it gave off a different vibe.
Kitty peered around, but she held her tongue until we reached the office, where a veritable jungle of plants bombardedus. The air felt humid, borderline sticky with heat, and a pungent scent of earth and fertilizer had my nose twitching. Not with distaste, but neither with pleasure.
She released a gasp then strode over to a particularlypinkorchid. “Is that a Cattleya Dominiana?”
Storm chuckled. “You know orchids?”
“Not really. My da used to buy them for my ma whenever he did something wrong and this one was always my favorite.” Her fingers hovered over the petal with a reverence that had Storm stepping closer to her.
“Mind me asking why?”
“I loved the scent.” She hummed as she moved closer to it. “And hers was more lavender than this. She had it for years after he passed, but one winter, a few years ago, nothing she did would bring it back from the brink.”
“That must have hurt when she lost it.”
“Yeah, she cried. I did too.” Kitty’s smile turned sheepish. “She asked me to toss it out. I couldn’t. I tried to revive it, but in the end, I had to. I actually talked to it. That’s how desperate I was.”
“I’m sorry it didn’t work.”
“Me too,” she echoed. “It’s lovely in here. I’ve no green thumb, but my ma would be happy as a clam.”
Storm barked out a laugh. “She would, huh?”
Mischief gleamed in her expression. “Oh, yes. She’d settle in that armchair—” She gestured to the seat in question. “—with a cookbook and a cup of coffee and she’d plot a family dinner.”
He tucked his hands into his pockets. “I don’t plot meals, but I definitely have sat there a time or two and worked.”
“I wouldn’t have said you’d be the gardening type,” she murmured kindly.
“Most of my men don’t get it either, but we all need something to keep us from going crazy, don’t we?”
“We do,” she agreed, her gaze drifting over to me. “Maybe you should take up orchid growing, Stan.”
I snorted. “Rory’s the one who can keep plants alive.”
“Your sister’s a gardener?”
“Has a greenhouse and everything. Which, twenty floors up, tells you how much she loves it. Has this wall in her kitchen that’s full of ferns and everything.”
Interest clearly piqued, Storm swept out a hand. “If you’d like to take a seat?”
