Nicole finished her accounting and was both happy with the results and a little sad about them, too. Once she crawled into bed beside Cole, she put her plan out of her head and curled up beside him. If she was forced to admit it, the one thing she did enjoy about the call girl life was that she didn't have to sleep alone most of the time. Being alone in bed was miserably lonely to her.

 

Having Cole's muscular warm body next to her was so calming and soothing; it surpassed basking in a hot tub. For those long nights she was alone while he was running cocaine from the Chicago Harbor into the mid-west cities, she was not only worried about him, but alone with that worry in bed. Her sleep was fitful and she woke often in the dark by imagined noises and threats.

 

She had planned out his homecoming much differently than it turned out. It was amazing to her that Cole and Jim were risking so much for her. Maybe she should have left for New Orleans, but after playing the scenario in her head, she realized it wouldn't have changed anything. If Antonio would have found Cole home, without her, then the conversation would have quickly turned to torture and the pain wouldn't have ended until Cole was forced to tell them where she was. The moment he broke, Antonio would have killed him. Cole would have been caught flat-footed at the door with no chance against Antonio and Davis.

 

The bottom line was leaving Gabriel had no meaning if she couldn't be with Cole afterward. The only place she felt the safe, recuperating sense of belonging was as a child with her mother. When her stepfather came into their house, he ruined her safe refuge from the world. After a few years of his presence, being away from home felt safer than being in her own room. But now she had a new refuge and he was stronger than a house. Now, Gabriel wanted to take this from her. Another insane man was ruining her refuge. She couldn't let that happen.

 

When shit with her stepfather began, starting close to her fourteenth birthday, she was too young and too inexperienced to do anything about it; she had no means of fighting back. Mama had already shown that she wasn't a refuge against her stepdad. He ruled with his anger and his fist, and Mama couldn't fight back or leave him. Nicole spent many hours before sleep wondering why Mama didn't tell him to go away. It made no sense to her at all.

 

Looking back on it now, those before-sleep thoughts proved just how naïve and young she really was. Her mother feared sleeping alone, as well, probably far more than Nicole did.

 

Her mother didn't believe she was beautiful or able to make it as a single mother with three children. Fear, Nicole had learned after countless demonstrations, was a powerful and paralyzing emotion. It made you do things you never believed you were capable of doing. It forced hands and drove wedges into the deepest commitments.

 

Since running away from Gabriel, layers of blinders, woven by fear, were falling away from Nicole's eyes. While Cole was gone on his run, she admitted to herself that the real reason she never left Gabriel before and never found any pursuit interesting enough to tempt her was that she was too frightened to leave. Not of Gabriel coming after her, why would he?

 

No, she was terrified of being out in the world alone again. She could have easily hooked up with Max and even thought about it several times, but while Max was extremely rich and powerful, he didn't project a sense of protection. Not like Cole did.

 

Cole felt protective, and strong and comfortable. He felt committed, as well, and while he might not offer to help fight all of her battles, he wouldn't leave her to face them alone. He would always be there and ready with a hug, and a safe place to rest. Cole attracted her so strongly, her blinders didn't have a chance of blocking him out.

 

Jim impressed her. He was by far the largest man she had ever met, but even larger was the feeling of pure loyalty flowing out from the man. He not only respected Cole. In a way, he loved him. She felt that same sense of loyalty extend to Brian when he came in the room and even to Hank, the bartender. The tone of his voice and the body language he projected bellowed the clear promise I have your back.

 

Toward her, he was sympathetic, and open and polite -- also he loved looking at her tits. But he held back the full commitment he extended to the others. Even without his full commitment to her, it made her want to impress him somehow. It made her want to be worthy of his level of loyalty.

 

His presence gave her the same desire to please as she remembered having toward her own father before he died. It wasn't mixed up with sex or attraction or any of that crap. She didn't have any desire to be a member of the Horsemen, but what Jim offered his men, what he demonstrated with Cole and Brian, was so attractive that it crossed her mind to ask Cole what the requirements were.

 

She wondered why the man wasn't married. Surely other women could sense the amazing amount of loyalty he projected. He would never cheat on his woman and always come home to her. With that last thought, she had an insight to her question, sensing that Big Jim wasn't looking for a wife, because he already had one.

 

He had the club, the Chrome Horsemen, who trusted him enough to make him president. A man with that kind of loyalty and protection invested into something he thought of as home, was not a man whose home you wanted to threaten. The reprisal would be tectonic. She realized then that Jim was all-in with this thing. He didn't do it because of her directly; he did it because Gabriel had proven to be a true threat, by sending enforcers to Cole's house, to come after her. Gabriel crossed a line that Big Jim felt was too bold and too obvious to miss on accident. He could not accept apology at this point any more than Gabriel was capable of contemplating his mortality.

 

"Men are going to die very soon," she whispered into the dark. This sentence made the commitment to her own plan even stronger and the expenditure an acceptable investment into the life she had fortunately had fallen into.

 

Besides, one of those men, lying motionless on the battlefield her mind conjured up, might be Cole and she needed to be ten years married to him. Needed to be. Those strange illusions she had with him were too good, felt too right to risk.

 

She was deeply excited when Cole asked Brian's thoughts on running to New Orleans. That Cole was thinking of getting her out of Chicago and coming with her felt wonderful. But with the outriders riding through the city right now, tearing up Gabriel's little world, the war had begun and Cole was too loyal to his club -- his family -- to leave them under these conditions.

 

Much of what he would be trying to protect with a move would still be threated by the same source with an equal amount of violence. So he wasn't going to run with her. He was going to stay. He would get her into a safe, hidden environment, and then he would turn his bike around and he would fight.

 

She snuggled closer to him. She couldn't ask him not to fight. The reasons he would ride into this war were the same strong qualities she loved about him. She couldn't and wouldn't change him. She may discover some things about him as they grew closer that she didn't like -- no man was perfect -- but these qualities were very dear to her. They saved her from a life of servitude and deep-current fear so powerful it blinded her. Now she had new fears created by love rather than despair.

 

When she woke, the sun outside was glowing along the edges of the thick hotel curtains and Cole was talking to someone named Rat on his cellphone.

 

"Again, man, sorry to wake you so early. See you at noon," Cole said after many short, unconnected things she couldn't make sense of. Cole set his phone down on the nightstand and slid onto bed beside her, "Hey, lover. Did you sleep well?"

 

"I'll let you know after you give me a kiss," she murmured.

 

"I have to earn your answer to a simple greeting?" he asked amused.

 

"Yes, before coffee, yes," she pouted. "Who is Rat? Is that his real name?"

 

"His real name is Rafael, but he refuses to answer to it. There are some seriously deep hate-currents between him and his family. So, now he is Rat. I asked him to let you stay at his house for a few weeks and he talked to his wife, Angie. They both agreed they can help us out."

 

"You're not going to be there?" she asked, feeling suddenly a little afraid.

 

"I'll be there, but with everything that is going on, there's a lot I'll need to pitch in with, too. So will Rat and everyone else in the brotherhood. Once we take care of this, though, we can get back home and try this again," he promised.

 

She nodded, but was unwilling to express agreement with words. He's found someplace safe and now he's already turning his bike around to ride into war. She knew it was coming; she was aware this was coming last night, but now that it was here, it hurt her in ways she didn't know she could hurt. Wrapping her arms around him, she clung to him with sudden desperation. "Don't die. I won't live if you aren't here with me."

 

He petted her like she was a great cat and his most precious possession, "While I don't have the pure conviction that Gabriel is thought to have about being bullet proof, I do have a strong sense of self-preservation. I promise not to get into anything I can't see my way out of, all right?"

 

She nodded into his chest, surprised that she got that much. She was expecting something along the lines of 'a man's got to do what a man's got to do', which she would have slapped him for. Then, after he fell asleep tonight, she would have put a pin in his butt just so he would remember that she was very upset. "Can't you guys just snipe him or something?" she asked, amazed that she suddenly felt gunning someone down was reasonable.

 

"If it gets to that point and we have a shot, I'm sure we'll take it," Cole told her, still petting her. "Things have rarely been that easy in my life, however. Have you ever had good things fall in your lap like that?" Cole asked her.

 

"You, but before that, no," she admitted.

 

"I believe on our first date, I was in a gun fight, so I can't agree that it has been all that simple for us to get together."

 

She nodded against him and then kissed his left nipple. "No, it really hasn't been all that simple, has it? Have you thought that I might not be worth all this … all of this?"

 

"Not once. Not even once," he told her.