Wild Fire: A Chaos Novella Page 9

  She then pulled free of Dutch’s arms and Dutch watched her bend down and pick up a cat that was sitting at the sides of their feet.

  She turned it in her arms, cradled it like it was her child and started speaking to the animal, sharing big, but doing it in a cooing voice that was straight-up hilarious.

  “You can see, he’s gorgeous, and he’s a good kisser, so there’s reason I forgot all about you. But I’m so sorry I forgot about you. I’ll introduce you to him right away.” Her eyes came to Dutch. “Dutch, this is Murtagh.” She looked to the cat. “Murtagh, this is my New-Style American Biker I’m Starting to See, Dutch Black.”

  “Mwrr,” Murtagh replied.

  It took some effort, with Georgiana showing him more of the good that was Georgiana, to tear his eyes from her to look at the cat.

  But when he did, he experienced a sensation he’d never felt in his life.

  Love at first sight.

  Big round eyes. Poofy round face. Tons of thick, gray hair. Folded-over ears.

  It was the cutest damned feline he’d ever clapped eyes on.

  Not even knowing what he was doing, he took the cat from her arms and held it the same way Georgie had been doing.

  “Yo, Murtagh,” he greeted.

  “Murr,” Murtagh replied.

  “You’re gonna hang with me tonight.”

  “Mwrr?”

  “Yeah. Make sure Mom brings some toys. We’ll live it up.”

  “Mwwwwrrrr.”

  He turned his attention to Georgie and declared, “We’re all good.”

  He then clamped his mouth shut.

  Because she was staring at him in a way no other woman had looked at him.

  But he’d seen that look.

  His ma looked at Hound like that.

  Tack’s wife, Cherry, looked at Tack like that.

  Shy’s woman, Tabby, looked at Shy like that.

  Hop’s wife Lanie.

  Joker’s wife, Carissa.

  Snap’s wife, Rosalie.

  High’s wife, Millie.

  This list could go on.

  Georgiana was similarly frozen, and like two lovestruck idiots, they stood close, a cat held between them, staring silently into each other’s eyes.

  But so many words were flying, all of them full of meaning, it was not funny.

  Dutch broke the spell.

  “You got a bag and coat, baby?” he asked quietly. “We gotta go.”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  She then moved awkwardly, like she didn’t know how to use her limbs, and gave Murtagh a head rub before she moved away.

  Dutch started stroking Murtagh’s belly, and Murtagh shared he dug that by starting to purr.

  At the same time, Dutch used that opportunity to take his first look around.

  He didn’t know what he expected to see, but what he saw was not what he would have thought would be Georgie’s living space from what he knew of her.

  Or what he’d assumed.

  Erroneously.

  And last night, damagingly.

  He had thought, career woman, and ambitious, probably often on the road or at least out of the house, her space would not matter and that would show.

  He was again wrong.

  It was cluttered, but tidy, with a freestanding, open-backed bookshelf that made one room, two: a living area and a dining area.

  The space was roomier than he would have guessed. The couch had a gallery wall above it that looked interesting enough he knew he’d take a closer look at what she had up there later. The coffee table had a big wicker basket under it, probably to tuck away throws. There was a chair that was definitely there for looks, not comfort, made of clear plastic. And the look worked, it was sheer cool. Toss pillows that ranged from animal prints to florals that somehow worked.

  The coffee table was completely covered. Stacked with books, some in a tray. A small decorative bowl, a squat vase with a pink puff of fake flowers, a single taper candle adding dimension.

  The bookshelves were totally books, though artfully arranged, and not clogged, you could see through to the dining area which was a small round table with steel-legged, plastic-seated bucket chairs. With those chairs it was truth, it was kind of a marvel, how she’d made something cheap look chic.

  He’d furnished his own crib, so he knew the cost of shit, and the scale of quality that money bought you, and none of this was top-of-the-line or even middle-of-the-road stuff.

  But she’d made it work, it had personality, and it stated plain there was more to Georgiana.

  She dove deep into her job, it meant something to her, and she was good at it.

  Her roommate had abandoned her cat, and Georgie had adopted it.

  She’d blown it with Dutch, liked him, and went way the extra mile to make up for it.

  She was loyal to a sister that didn’t deserve it.

  She had guts.

  She had spunk.

  She was hilarious.

  She knew how to use her mouth, and almost better, when to stop using it and let Dutch take what he wanted, and in doing it, give her more.

  And she cared about the space around her, made it hers, stamped it with her style, and it was interesting.

  He turned his attention to her and finally took in what she was wearing.

  Another black sweater, this one a crewneck. A tan skirt. Pencil, fitting close to her hips, ass and thighs. Black boots, high heels, not ridiculous drag-queen high, but still hot. She had a little scarf tied around her neck that had a pattern on it that was black and cream with some pink thrown in. Her hair was up in a messy bunch at the back top of her head, with tendrils floating down. And she had studs in her ears that were little clusters of tiny pearls, and other than a watch glinting from under her long sleeve, that was the only jewelry she wore.

  Class. Professionalism. Personality.

  Jesus.

  Thank fuck Jag and Carolyn blew off picking her up from the airport.

  She’d pulled on a lightweight feminized peacoat and was grabbing her beat-up, cognac-colored leather backpack.

  “Ready,” she said.

  He jerked up his chin and looked down at the cat. “We’re outta here. Catch you later.”

  He got a buzzing “mwrr” before he put the cat down.

  “Be good, Murtagh,” Georgiana ordered.

  Sharing the affront he took at this, Murtagh turned his back on her and jumped on the couch, not bothering to reply.

  Outside the apartment, after she made sure the self-closing door latched, Dutch took her hand and held it all the way down the hall, while tagging the button to the elevator, waiting for the elevator, and then in the elevator.

  It wasn’t until then that Georgie spoke.

  “You’re a hand-holder.”

  He looked down at her, starting to let go, asking, “You’re not?”

  She held tight to his hand before she lost it. “I wasn’t. Until now.”

  He smiled at her.

  She smiled back.

  They held hands the rest of the way to his truck.

  “What’s for lunch?” she asked when he’d pulled out of his parking space.

  “Las Delicious.”

  “Excellent,” she muttered.

  And she had good taste in food.

  “So, I’ve been thinking about Carolyn,” he began.

  “Ugh,” she grunted.

  “Baby,” he murmured.

  “It’s okay. I’ve been thinking about it too. It’s time. High time.”

  “In the past, before this, have you talked to her about it?” he asked.

  “When we met, you said something about how Carolyn had spoken about me, so you knew about me, and my guess from how you said that, what she told you about me wasn’t stellar. What do you think?”

  “So you’re a pain in her ass because you ride her ass.”

  “Dutch, she…God.”

  She was struggling, she didn’t hide it, but instead of pushing it, he gave her time.
<
br />   It was the right call, because she didn’t take much of it before she said, her voice pained, “Essentially, she’s whoring herself for material items and dope.”

  Essentially, she was correct.

  Dutch kept his mouth shut.

  “Mother thinks it’s a phase.”

  Dutch said nothing.

  “Mother is wrong.”

  Dutch had a question about that. “You call your mom ‘Mother?’”

  “My mom is a ‘mother.’ Dad’s a dad. Mom’s worked hard at being Mother.”

  “You said your dad wasn’t around—”

  “He wasn’t. They split. He traveled for work so there were reasons he was absent in the beginning. He also found another woman, married her, they had a kid. Through all of this, Mom put a lot of effort into making his life hell. So he made the decision that life was too short to deal with her, and he put great effort into omitting her from it. The side effect of this was, to do that, he had to omit us. Carolyn and me.”

  “The fuck?”

  And back was the growl.

  “There’s that cute again,” she whispered.

  “There is no excuse to pick yourself over your kids. Christ, your daughters.”

  “A son would be different?” she asked curiously.

  “Okay, get this, it’s important. I don’t have any kids. I still know I’m gonna be protective as fuck if I get girls. Not that I won’t love and protect a boy. But it’s gonna be stratospheric with a girl. So my advice, file that away, and if you got a problem with it, get over it.”

  “So…crazy…cute.” Again with the whisper.

  “Georgie,” he warned.

  “Dutch,” she replied, sounding amused.

  “Haven’t met the man and already not a big fan of your dad.”

  “He paid support. He sent us money, a good deal of it, on birthdays, Christmas, even Easter and Valentine’s Day, and sometimes we’d get a card with cash in it just because.”

  “Money isn’t love. In this case, and brace, because this is harsh, it might be about guilt.”

  “You’re right, honey, but he wasn’t totally absent. And when we got older, had some independence and could get away from her, we reached out and he latched on. He helped me with college, for one. And I told you he floated me a loan to buy my condo. What I didn’t tell you was, that loan is being deferred, month to month every time I contact Dad and tell him I’ve got his check, and he says, ‘What’re you gonna do without this month if you give me that, sweetheart?’ Then even if I say, ‘Nothing,’ he still refuses it.”

  “Was he there to take pictures of you when you went to your prom?”

  “I skipped my junior prom and went to my senior prom with my posse of chicks and we wore Doc Martens and combat fatigues in protest to the patriarchy.”

  Dutch busted out laughing.

  He kept doing it when she added, “That was my militant feminist phase. Somewhat literally. At least in terms of garments.” And he didn’t stop when she went on, “I’m over that now.”

  “Those heels are hot, darlin’, that skirt is hotter,” he told her.

  She whacked his arm like she did the first time they were in his truck, he liked it just as much as he had back then, except this time he could admit that to himself, and she said, “Shut up, Dutch.”

  He grinned at the road, but did it knowing he had to get them back on track.

  Something he did.

  “Georgie, Carolyn.”

  “Right,” she mumbled.

  “What I was thinkin’ is that Jag doesn’t have to throw you under the bus. Carolyn doesn’t have to know you told me and I told him.”

  He saw her hand coming his way, but even if he did, it surprised him when she ran it down his jaw before she stretched across the cab and he felt her kiss his cheek.

  She stayed stretched when she said, “You’re unbelievably sweet.”

  “Just lookin’ out for him and tryin’ to do the same for you,” he pointed out.

  “Yes, and I appreciate it, but file this away, honey,” she used his words and kept on, “I don’t do that. It’s a white lie for kind reasons but it’s still a lie. And I don’t lie.”

  That said good things about her and what might become of them.

  But in this instance, it was inconvenient.

  “Babe.”

  She sat back in her seat and carried on, “What I was thinking is that whatever we’ve got going is happening with us and eventually Carolyn is going to know about it. It’s not cool what she’s been doing and it’s not cool I’ve kept my mouth shut she’s doing it. I’m not going to make the rounds of her guys and tell on her. I’m also not going to maybe start a relationship with someone that interests me a whole lot and have her mess sit there between us. She knows I’m that kind of person so she’s going to be angry, but she’s not going to be surprised. And the bottom line, maybe she needs some drama to shake her out of the disaster she’s making of her life. And losing your brother is going to shake her.”

  “Interests you a whole lot?” he teased, did it careful, because he could tell not only by her words, but by her tone that this shit was heavy, and he wanted to lighten it for her.

  She reached out a hand and squeezed his thigh, but she didn’t say anything.

  Dutch didn’t say anything either, because even though she removed her hand, he still felt it.

  And the touch on his jaw.

  The kiss on his cheek.

  Her hands curled around his neck earlier in her pad.

  Her fingers tightening around his in the elevator.

  Hell, just the way she looked at him when she opened her door.

  Years ago, Hound had told Dutch and Jagger to watch their mother to know what kind of woman to look for to make their own.

  And after watching Keely Black grieve for nearly two decades, at the same time watching his mom and Hound dance around each other, both feeling deep for the other, neither going there, and now them having what they had, it wasn’t nauseating, the love they had they did not bother hiding.

  His mother was not cuddly and gross.

  But she was affectionate and loving and open about it to all her boys. The ones she made and the one she made hers.

  He and Georgiana hadn’t even been out on a date, and she already communicated with more than words.

  Communicated the important stuff.

  The deep stuff.

  The right stuff.

  Georgie couldn’t be any different than his ma.

  Keely Black Ironside was biker babe through and through.

  But yeah.

  Evidence was coming clear Georgiana Traylor had the right stuff.

  Through and through.

  “So I’m gonna talk to her tomorrow,” she said, cutting into his thoughts.

  It occurred to him she was in his truck, working Carlyle’s situation with him, and now was dealing with her sister, and she had a job.

  “Is your latest story suffering because of all this?” he asked.

  “Well, uh…” She did not answer.

  “Babe,” he grunted.

  “Okay, so I am who I am, and once I got my teeth into Carlyle’s case, and because I, uh…well, watched Blood, Guts and Brotherhood again and I’d been so awful to you, I kinda got obsessed and called my editor and asked for some time off.”

  Dutch again held his silence.

  “I haven’t had a vacation in over a year, and our PTO accumulates, all the way up to eight weeks, so I have a ton of it. I think she was actually relieved to give me a couple of weeks off. And she said that I needed to do this more regularly, or burnout wasn’t a possible, it’d be an inevitable.”

  “You watched that film again?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she answered.

  He smiled big at the windshield. “You are so into me.”

  She whacked his arm again with her, “Shut up.”

  But he caught her hand this time before she took it away and held it against his thigh the rest of t
he way to the restaurant.

  Eddie and Hank weren’t there yet, so they got a table, regrettably. He’d prefer a booth and to have her cornered in it, his thigh pressed to hers and her close enough to touch. But they needed a table for the discussion. Better and freer eyelines.

  They got chips and salsa, their drinks.

  But neither of them even opened a menu.

  If you knew LD, you knew what you were going to order at LD.

  The end.

  Hank and Eddie showed, introductions were made, and it wasn’t only Dutch who noticed the intensity of interest they had in Georgie.

  And it wasn’t about her being with Dutch.

  Eddie, the more direct of the two, cut right to it.

  “You’re a reporter.”

  “I’m on vacation.”

  “And you’re here because…?” Hank asked.

  “Because she’s with me and she’s helpin’ me out by using her sources,” Dutch answered.

  His tone was undeniable, and these men were cops, neither of them even owned a bike, and the cloth they were cut from might be a different color, but it was the same cloth.

  So they read the tone, understood it, and that was the end of that.

  Hank nor Eddie looked at the menu either before they all ordered and then they didn’t waste any time with it.

  “We both read through it before we came here and the Khalon Stephens case stinks, man,” Eddie started it.

  Dutch straightened in his chair. “Stinks how?”

  “Fishy,” Hank said shortly. “From start to not-quite-end.”

  “What do you mean?” Georgie asked.

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin,” Eddie answered.

  “How about the beginning,” Dutch suggested.

  “Well, first, cops at the scene report, and pictures prove it, the resident of the duplex opposite the Stephens family had visibly been beaten. Bloody nose. Swelling. Contusions on face and arms. Like she’d been held by them and hard. There was also sign of a struggle in the room,” Eddie said.

  “Or a fight,” Hank added.

  Dutch knew that distinction meant something, but Hank left it at that, and Eddie carried on.

  “Bed had been slept in, but it does not appear there was a struggle there. The covers were thrown back like she got out. Not like she was awakened in surprise by an intruder and was pulled out.”

  Dutch glanced at Georgie.

  Georgie gave him big eyes.