“You could take your shoes off and get comfortable, Ivy,” I murmured as I wandered to dresser.
“I didn’t want to mess up your bed, especially since I need to shower,” she said.
With a pair of socks in hand, I sat on the edge of the bed opposite her, and tugged them on.“Let’s go get you some ice, or I can run down and get it while you shower.”
She stood.“No, I’m curious about this building.It’s deceptively large.”
“That’s the damn truth,” I muttered, shoving my feet into my boots.
“Why do you say it like that?”
I chuckled.“As a prospect, we had to scrub every inch of flooring and all kinds of other chores to maintain the clubhouse.Trust me, you figure out how big this place is real fast that way.”
Once we were downstairs, I grabbed her hand and led her into the common room.Not many brothers hung out here on Monday nights, so I didn’t expect for there to be anything too wild and crazy happening.
Killian, Tundra, Rafferty, and I normally played a pool every Monday night.Now that Rafferty and Alexandra were serious, he’d been hit and miss around here.As we rounded the corner of the bar, I saw Rafferty lining up the cue ball to break a fresh rack and Tundra stood to the side holding a cue stick.
Tundra was older than us by about twenty years, and his eyes narrowed on Ivy.“What the hell happened to her?”
“Who is she?”Tic asked.
Tic also stood holding a cue stick.They must have asked him to fill in for me.He earned his patch around the same time as me, Killian, and Rafferty, but he’d started prospecting before us.I didn’t trust him.It took him longer to patch into the club.He loved the club lifestyle, but he rarely listened to the rest of us – about anything.It was one thing to march to the beat of his own drum, but it was a whole other thing to ignore his brothers.It rubbed me the wrong way, and I despised that he’d taken an interest in Ivy.I had to shut that down.
I stopped and twisted my head toward him.“She’s Ivy, and she’s off-limits to you.”
His brows shot up.“Is she now?”
“Yeah.It’s not a challenge.Forget you even saw her.”
Tic opened his mouth, but Tundra cut him off.“Leave it, man.”
Tundra wandered to the bar while I loaded ice into a plastic bag.“This have something to do with you being late?”
I nodded.“Those assholes who caused two fights at the bar when we first opened came back around.They saw her making an approach, and one of them cornered her and pulled a gun.I got in between them, but never pulled my piece.I should have just shot the asshole—”
Tundra shook his head.“No.That would’ve gone bad fast.”
I sighed.“Then one of the others came out and had a gun trained on her.They took us to a run-down dump way out near Sanderson.”
Tundra’s jaw ticked and he looked away.“Where are they now?”
“Out of the picture,” I muttered and tied off the bag of ice.
Tundra locked eyes with me.“You’re in the clubhouse, Nickel.I’m your brother, say it straight.”
I handed the bag to Ivy, but kept my gaze on Tundra.“Two of them are dead, but at least one other person knows or soon will know they’re gone because someone named Rusty was calling the shots.”
“Why’d they take you two?”Rafferty asked, sidling up to Tundra.
“They think I’m one of Lark’s kids,” I said.I glanced at Ivy holding the bag of ice.“Put that to your face, woman.”
She raised the bag to her temple, but shook her head while doing it.“Pretty sure this is a lost cause, Nickel.”
I shot her some side-eye because deep down I preferred her calling me Ryan.
“Why did you bring her here?”Rafferty asked.“Pretty sure she can ice that bruise at home.”
“I’m a realtor, and there’s a magnet on my car that lists my name and phone number.They shouldn’t be able to find my address that way, but Ryan, I mean Nickel, didn’t want to take that chance.”
