THREE
Bambi was still thinking about the date last night. Steve had been a true gentleman, pulling out chairs and opening doors for her. He treated her to a wonderful dinner of caprese chicken and pasta with the most fantastic garlic bread she’d ever tasted—mouthwatering, all of it. Then he’d driven her home, walked her to the door, and instead of trying to kiss her, he simply kissed the back of her hand and promised to call.
She liked him, she really did. Sure, it lacked the fire and explosions she was looking for, but was that really so important? Steve was nice and he seemed…safe, and safe was what she’d been looking for. Right?
Checking her shopping list again, Bambi searched for where she’d left off. Mommy brain was still in full effect. Shouldn’t she be over that by now? Alas, despite the constant struggle to get things done, she was doing them.
Today was yet another grocery shopping day. She hated them. From the morning routine of getting Beau fed and presentable to doing the same for herself, she was exhausted. The prospect of going home and lugging all that food inside and putting it away was daunting. Yet she did it—every week. Gone were the days of eating takeout every night and never worrying about her hips paying for it later. Ugh.
But she’d been good lately, so tonight she planned to treat herself to a cake. Carrot cake sounded good, she thought as she scanned the bakery’s selections. Something nice and fattening, sweet, but that she could still lie to herself and say she was getting some vegetables in her diet. She picked one and smiled over the tiny icing carrots. She already knew which side of the cake she would cut into first.
She made her way around the store, Beau cradled in his sling against her chest so he could eat without creating a fuss for the fuddy-duddies who thought a woman should be secluded for performing the most natural part of life.
She’d stopped by the women’s clothing department to see what was new in stock when she heard someone calling her name.
“I knew that was you.”
Bambi silently cursed as she turned away just enough to make sure everything was covered and decent. Beau was dozing off again, which was a small blessing. Maybe her unwelcomed guest wouldn’t notice the ten-pound human strapped to her torso.
“Gabby, hey,” Bambi said with false enthusiasm. “What are you doing here?”
Gabby was beaming, her stick straight hair flat ironed to within an inch of its life, not a piece of frizz in sight, and those giant boobs leading the way. She was a real knock out, a total pin-up. It wasn’t hard to imagine why Quick had fallen for her.
“Oh, I was just in the neighborhood. Ash and I were getting ice cream at that new shop just off the highway? Anyway, I remembered we needed to pick up something for dinner and this was convenient.” Gabby’s eyes scanned over her form. “You look great,” she said, her smile a little twitchy.
She’d noticed the baby, just as Bambi had noticed Ash standing behind a shopping cart with a car seat perched in the front and the two prospects lingering a few feet away. They had their eyes on her, which made her wildly uncomfortable.
Playing it cool and hoping Gabby didn’t notice the sweat breaking out on her forehead, Bambi said, “Thanks. So you do!”
Gabby looked to be several months pregnant again, but the baby bump had yet to overtake her boobs, making it hard to tell how far along she was.
“Oh, thanks. Only a couple months left now, which is such a relief. When it’s not the baby,”—she thumbed over her shoulder at her own baby—“it’s the backaches keeping me up at night.” Her eyes roamed over Bambi, lingering on Beau. “But I guess you know all about that. Boy or girl?”
Bambi bit her lip. “Um, boy.”
“Awwww,” Gabby cooed, leaning in to try and catch a peek of him. “He’s so sweet. How old?”
“Uh, three months.” Bambi was growing more paranoid by the second. She wanted desperately to get the hell out of there. The way the prospects were watching them made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
“Well, he looks just like you,” Gabby commented. “Wow, though. You really do look great. I mean, I didn’t even know you were pregnant!”
In a panic, Bambi said the first thing that popped out of her mouth. “He’s not mine.” Her eyes widened, unable to believe she’d just disowned her own kid, as if she was ashamed of him. She needed to fix this. “I mean, I’m watching him for a friend.” Well, she was digging herself a hole wasn’t she.
“Oh, well lucky you getting to spend time with such a handsome little guy. I should give you my number. Maybe you can watch my little one. Lord knows once this kid pops out, I’m going to have my hands full,” Gabby said with a wink and another bright smile.
Bambi couldn’t tell if she genuinely believed the lie or if she was just playing along. The last thing she wanted was for the woman to run back to the clubhouse and tell Quick, who would then tell Curtis, that she had a baby. It wouldn’t take a lot of guesswork to figure out the timeline, and then Curtis would be breaking down her door.
“Yeah, for sure,” she replied as she started to push the cart slowly away, praying the offer of giving her her number would be forgotten. “Well, I’d better get going. I still have so much left to do tonight,” she said, hoping she wasn’t coming off rude or overly nervous. “It was nice running into you though.”
“You too,” Gabby said sweetly.
Bambi fully expected her to watch her leave, knowing she was lying through her teeth, but she didn’t look back to confirm. But she wasn’t perfect, and she couldn’t help glancing over that the prospects as she passed through the racks.
They were watching her like a hawk.
Shit.
Bambi picked up her pace and hit the self-checkout line, practically throwing her crap into bags. She needed to get out of there and get home where she fully planned to eat that entire cake and pretend that her quiet life was not about to implode.
***
“So she has a baby?” Ginger asked, and Gabby nodded emphatically. “But she said it wasn’t hers?”
“That’s what she claims, but I’m telling you, that boy looked just like her. Actually, I want to say he looks a lot like someone else we know, too, but I’m not sure I want to jump that far just yet.”
“What do you mean?” Ginger asked, trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.
When Gabby had spilled the beans about her run-in with Bambi, Ginger had been all ears, ready for some juicy gossip. There had been a lot of drama surrounding that girl when she’d been in town. She’d been obsessed with Country, and then she’d gotten into it with his current girlfriend, Talia, just before being outed as an undercover agent for the FBI. Her antics around the club—not so much her lies, as Talia had been undercover at the time, too—had been what had gotten her booted from the premises. After that, no one really knew what happened to her.
“Well, I don’t have any way to prove it, but I swear, he reminds me of Taco. Just something about his coloring and the shape of his features…” She shook her head, staring off over her cup of tea.
Ginger laughed. “Well, I highly doubt that. I mean, Taco is a manwhore, but I don’t think he’d be too quick to knock boots with crazy. Especially someone like Bambi, and especially after Country expressly forbid her to return to the clubhouse unless he gave the green light. Which he hasn’t, so that effectively makes her untouchable.” She knocked back the rest of her venti latte and started in on the double chocolate brownie. “Besides, it’s been what, a year?”
Gabby flattened her palm on the table and leaned in, whispering, “Yes, which makes it perfect. Nine months, and she said the baby is three months. Added up that makes one year. It fits.”
“But why Taco? That just seems…I don’t know, unlikely, if you ask me.”
“Any more unlikely than you and Repo hooking up?” Gabby’s eyes glittered with amusement.
Ginger gaped at her. “We are a perfect match, I will have you know. Just splendid.”
“Ha! You two were ready to kill each other. I’m surprised you still haven’t.”
Pursing her lips and giving her friend a mock scowl, Ginger said, “We have a very complicated relationship. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“Must be some good sex,” Gabby said with a little wink.
Ginger just raised her eyebrows and grinned as she continued eating her brownie. A year ago, she and Gabby hadn’t been friends exactly, since she’d always cared a bit more about her husband, Blake, more than she should. But when Garrick started gunning for her while at the same time the club was facing upheaval from outside and inside sources, Ginger and Gabby had become unlikely allies and subsequent friends.
Now the two made a point to meet up at least one day each week to catch each other up on gossip around town and blow off some steam as ol’ ladies. Sometimes, Talia even joined in, but her job tended to pull her away more often than not, leaving just the two of them.
“Ugh, this kid is going to kill me. I swear he knows where every one of my ribs are and is determined to jamb his toes between each of them.”
Ginger didn’t comment, instead offering a pained smile.
“How is the baby making going?” Gabby asked softly, looking as if she regretted her words. Sometimes, Ginger knew Gabby wasn’t sure if it was okay to share her fortunes when she was struggling to find her own. Ginger didn’t want her friend to feel like she couldn’t share her life, but she also couldn’t deny that it stung like hell see her have what she wanted so badly for herself.
“Nothing yet, but we’re still trying.”
“Have you thought any more about going to that doctor I told you about?” A month ago, Gabby had given Ginger the name of a renowned fertility doctor, hoping he could offer some answers.
“Not yet. Garrick and I decided to give it one more month. If nothing happens by then, I’ll make the call.”
They picked at their snacks after that, the solemnity of the situation falling over them like a pall.
“So have you heard anything more about what they plan to do with Tanner?” Ginger asked Gabby, shifting gears to a safer topic.
Last year, they’d gotten word that Moose’s nephew was a possible rat, the leak they’d been looking for. Word had it that he had been feeding sensitive information to former FBI agent Frank Kellerman, who had in turn been feeding it to the cartel and was now missing and presumed dead.
“Blake doesn’t talk to me about those things. Club business,” she mocked, her voice deep and grouchy. Sounded just like him, if you asked her.
“Yeah,” Ginger said, her sails deflating, “Garrick is the same way. He thinks I should just mind my own business and worry about the bar. But it’s hard to do that when you know shit is going down, but they don’t want to talk about any of it.”
“I know right? I mean, what’s the harm in it really? It’s not like we’re going to run off and spill their secrets all over town.”
Ever since she and Ginger and Talia had paid a visit to The Tavern last year in search of answers and in hopes of helping their men, Gabby told her how Blake had been even stricter with his words when it came to the club and its business. It hurt her that he didn’t seem to trust her anymore—not that she demonstrated much of that before when it came to the club, in Ginger’s opinion, but Gabby took it to heart now.
“No, but we can claim innocence if it were to come to blows with the legal end of the stick. They’re just protecting us and their interests, but it would be nice to know a little something now and then.”
Ginger understood that too, she really did, but sometimes she just wanted more than what Garrick was willing to offer. It sucked being kept in the dark, but she knew what club life was about for a woman ages ago. It didn’t come as a shock now that she was tied to one of the members. She’d been there, done that, and bought the T-shirt already with her ex-husband, so complaining about the injustice of it wouldn’t fly with Garrick. As a woman, she knew her place in the club well, and he was always quick to remind her of that.
“Well, I hope they know what they’re doing. I hate the idea of them working alongside someone they can’t trust. It gives me the willies every time Blake walks out the door just thinking that this could be the day that kid turns on them.”
Ginger understood where she was coming from. She worried about that, too. Working with a traitor was bad for your health. “Well, at least they know who to keep an eye on.”
“Yeah…”
As their conversation began to wind down, Ginger’s thoughts turned back to their earlier conversation. “So, you really think Bambi might of run off with Taco’s kid?”