Chapter 14

Forgive your enemy, but remember the bastard’s name.

-Something you probably shouldn’t say to a five-year-old

Winnie

My eyes took in the two stray dogs that were running on the side of the road, and I kept them there as I tried not to yell at my kid once again.

However, when we pulled into the Dixie Wardens’ clubhouse moments later, my cool had again evaporated.

Conleigh trudged behind us, pissed off that I was forcing her to miss a day with her friends to instead spend it with me, her brother and Steel.

She didn’t give one single shit that we were meeting Steel’s friends.

All she cared about was that she had some money, thanks to a job that Steel had gotten her at the police department of all places, and wasn’t going to get to spend the cash she’d made over the last week.

Not to mention that because of her anger toward me, I’d taken her phone away. The phone that she’d been using to talk to a boy on for the first four hours of the day. Which had then set her off all over again.

“How long do we have to stay?” Conleigh hissed at my back.

Steel looked down at me, caught my anger, and winked.

I rolled my eyes and turned my head so I could look over my shoulder. “As long as I feel like staying, Conleigh, and not a moment before.”

She growled at me under her breath, and her brother jumped in.

“You sound like a bear,” Cody observed.

“She’s acting like one, too.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Conleigh snarled.

My lips twitched when Steel gave me a laughing look.

I guess that was what it would take not to take Conleigh’s attitude personally.

When Steel was around, she was an angel. Literally, there was the child that Conleigh was when Steel was around, and the one that she was when we were alone.

Sure, she’d complained in front of him when we’d had the verbal smackdown after she’d tried to wear daisy dukes to school, but eventually Conleigh had gotten her act together and had changed. Today? Well, today she was still the girl that I knew and loved…even though sometimes her attitude made me question my sanity.

Conleigh had shared her anger far and wide, and even Steel, her very best advocate, didn’t get spared.

She’d raged at him right along with me, accusing him of being the antichrist, and then informed him that ‘his shit stank just like the rest of the population.’

She was still bitching, moaning and complaining as we walked through the front doors.

And then she came to a halt right inside the doors, just as I did.

Her reasoning was likely due to the hunky looking man boy standing in our way. Mine was due to the fact that Steel’s face had split into a wide smile as he threw his arms around the boy and said, with great affection, “Linc!”

I found myself grinning, even though I had no clue who this Linc character was.

What I did know was that he was tall, toned, and in fucking awesome shape. He had a beard, his hair was on the longer side, and he was a near body double for Jessie James—one of the members of the MC that Steel belonged to.

My lips twitched when I got a look at my daughter’s face.

I looked over to Steel to gauge his reaction, and I saw the moment he realized that Conleigh was enamored. The man missed nothing.

“Linc,” Steel said, stepping away from him and shifting sideways to allow Linc to see us more fully. “This is my woman, Winnie, her daughter, Conleigh, and Cody, her son.”

It took a few moments for me to process what, exactly, was said, but when I did, my eyes widened right along with my daughter’s.

Linc caught both and started to chuckle. “Y’all could pass as sisters.”

We got that a lot. I would’ve told him so, too, but I was still stuck on Steel’s declaration.

My woman.

My. Woman.

Winnie, Steel’s woman. That was me—he was referring to me!

Steel caught my reaction and started to grin, but before he could say anything else, kids came out of the woodwork and started to pat Steel’s pant legs.

I backed away as more and more came and then started to laugh when he bent down to their level.

They loved him. Every last one of them.

“So…Steel and you?”

I looked over at my daughter, who’d whispered to me, “Uhhh, yeah. I…yeah…”

Conleigh smiled at me for the first time that day.

“I like it, Mom. I’m glad. Steel is a good guy and doesn’t freak out when I do something stupid.” She paused. “But, Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“I thought I heard you say the other day on the phone with Krisney that Steel was still married.”

I winced. “It was a mix-up,” I began to explain, not leaving anything out.

I didn’t want Conleigh to think that I would ever condone this had the situation not been as it was. I wasn’t a cheater, and it didn’t matter if you were as hot as Steel was. I had standards, unlike my ex-husband.

“Steel isn’t a cheater.”

I looked up to find Linc, who was incredibly good at blending into the woodwork, staring at us. He’d obviously heard every word that we’d discussed.

“I know,” I agreed softly.

His eyes turned to Conleigh. “You can trust him. He once came and got me when I was drunk off my ass and hours away from my college acceptance conference. He sobered me up, got me cleaned up and dressed, and then dropped me off in time for the televised event. All of that without telling my dad. He’s trustworthy, and you won’t find a better man to have your back.”

Conleigh took every single word in that he said to her and then smiled.

Linc’s body went taut and that was when I realized that Conleigh’s appreciation of him was not only reciprocated but possibly even more disadvantageous on his end.

Shit.

Conleigh, my beautiful girl, was only sixteen.

However, she’d had to grow up fast. Since she was a young girl, she’d had to do things that a normal child wouldn’t have to do. Such as stay on her own when she was really much too young to be allowed on her own while I worked. She’d been cooking for herself since she was tall enough to work a microwave, and not a day went by that she didn’t try to pay for something that a child shouldn’t be paying for.

She had a good head on her shoulders, so I wasn’t worried in the least that they’d do something stupid.

But, as I watched Linc gesture for us to follow him away from the crowd of kids who still hadn’t let up, I realized that neither one of them were stupid.

That didn’t mean that the attraction that I could practically feel moving between them might not outweigh their common sense.

I’d have to talk to Steel, as well as Conleigh.

From what Steel had told me, Linc was a freshman at LSU and on the fast track to the NFL once he was eligible for the draft, which made him eighteen or nineteen. That was a two-to-three-year age difference between the two of them.

But, at least I’d started talking to Conleigh early about things like STDs, birth control, pregnancy, and money problems. I didn’t spare her the gritty details at all.

I was very blunt and upfront with my girl.

“Mommy?”

As they walked away, my son stopped me with a tug on my arm as I wondered if she’d use the common sense that God gave her and would hopefully not act like I did when I was her age.

“Yeah, baby?” I asked.

“Is that a wolf?”

I looked over at a dog that did, indeed, look like a wolf.

“Uhhh,” I hesitated.

“Part wolf.”

I looked over to see the older version of the boy who’d just walked off with my daughter and grinned.

“It’s cute,” I said. “But I thought they were illegal.”

Jessie shrugged, his eyes going to where his son was now standing on the back deck reaching into a cooler. He came back up with a Dr. Pepper and handed it to Conleigh. “Sooo…”

I burst out laughing. “Yeah, so…”

He snorted, then held his hand out to me.

I took it as he introduced himself.

“I know who you are,” I said. “I was in the police cruiser with Steel a few days ago when you pulled up next to us at a stop light. It’s nice to officially meet you.”

I’d also seen him from afar at the hospital when, on the rare occasion, he came to visit his wife, Ellen.

Speaking of Ellen, she came sauntering up, a half glass of wine clutched in her hand and a mutilated sandwich in the other.

“Uhh,” I said. “Were you hungry?”

Ellen snorted. “My daughter has decided that anything other than the crust is the devil on sandwiches. Last week, she’d only eat the filling, sans bread. I guess we’re making progress.”

I grinned.

“Cody,” I placed my hand on Cody’s head, who was very interested in the wolf-dog at the moment. “Went through this phase where he’d eat only meat. I couldn’t get him to touch a vegetable or a carb to save my life for about six months.”

Ellen chuckled as she handed Cody the sandwich. “Tell him to sit, and then give it to him.”

Cody took the sandwich without flinching, his interest in the pup too great.

He loved dogs. The two that we’d seen on our way to the clubhouse had been fussed over, quite a bit, as we’d driven.

“Sit,” Cody ordered the pup.

The ‘dog’ sat, and Cody handed him the food between his fingers.

My belly clenched when I saw the dog lean forward quickly, horror filling my veins, but all the dog did was gently take the food, and then swallow it whole.

“Shit,” I muttered. “That just scared the crap out of me.”

“Oh, don’t worry about my baby. He would never hurt anybody who wasn’t deserving of it. I can’t say that about any other dog, though.”

I agreed.

Working in the ER was enlightening, to say the least.

There was at least one dog bite a week, and sometimes they were really bad. It’d left a bad taste in my mouth, so I was wary of nearly every dog, small or big, now.

“Did you hear about the one last week?”

I nodded.

While I’d been gone, a young girl that was all of eighteen months old had been mauled by the family poodle. The poodle had mauled her before the parents could so much as react. She’d been flown to a neighboring hospital where she’d immediately undergone emergency surgery, but her face would never be the same.

“I did.” I frowned. “What were those parents doing while their dog was biting their kid’s face?”

“I don’t even know.” She shook her head. “It was awful.”

I could imagine.

“What’s awful?”

Steel threaded his arm around my back and pulled me into his chest, and I couldn’t help the sappy smile that lit my face.

Steel was hot and hard all over, and I wanted to bury my face in his neck and inhale his scent.

I managed to contain myself because of my son only a few feet away from me.

“A dog bite.”

Steel grunted. “I had to deal with that one when I got back. The parents will likely be charged. Kid’s fucked up for life.”

I rolled my eyes at Steel’s eloquent use of words.

“Yeah, I’m sure.” I frowned. “Did you go see the child?”

He nodded once. “Yeah. She’s got a long road ahead of her, that’s for sure.”

Terrible.

“Mommy, I want a dog.”

I snorted. “I can’t get a dog right now, buddy. Maybe next year.”

Cody gave me a look that clearly said what he thought about my lie.

“You said that last year.”

Steel started to chuckle.

I shot him a mock glare, and he winked, causing my heart to flip over in my chest.

“Are y’all going to have a baby?”

Startled, I looked over at my son and immediately started to shake my head.

“Ummm, no,” I disagreed. “You and Conleigh are all I need, and Steel has a son that could very well be your father. Trust me, kids aren’t ever in the cards for us.”

Steel squeezed my hip. “Plus,” he drawled. “You’re a handful. I’m not sure we could handle having another kid like you.” Then he looked at me with alarm. “Maybe I should get fixed.”

Wasn’t that the truth.

“What does fixed mean?” Cody questioned.

I held my smile in check. “It means that he would no longer have the necessary products to achieve making a baby anymore.”

Jessie started to laugh as he tugged his wife’s hand. “Let’s go. Watching them try to explain this to a young kid is like watching a train wreck.”

“Just wait,” Steel called after their retreating forms. “You’ll have to have this talk with your own kids soon!”

That I didn’t argue with. They would. Every parent eventually had to.

It was always painful and likely always would be.

“Can we go get ice cream after we leave here?”

My eye twitched.

“The speed in which you change subjects makes my head spin,” Steel murmured. “Are you hungry? There are hot dogs.”

“Steel?”

Cody’s quiet words had Steel dropping down beside my son, his face serious. “Yeah, buddy?”

“Did you know that the average human body holds enough bones to make a human skeleton?”

At that, Steel wasn’t the only one to burst out laughing. We all did.

All of us but Cody.

That was my boy, though. He loved spouting off useless facts, even if sometimes he didn’t understand them.

“Yeah,” Steel said once he had himself under control. “I think I did know that.”

Cody patted Steel’s cheek. “I don’t like hot dogs. Is there any steak?”

Steel took Cody’s hand and walked off, leaving me to watch after them with a smile on my face.

“Careful.”

I looked up to find Fender standing next to me now.

“About what?”

“I see you falling.”

I blinked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I hedged.

There was no falling. I’d already fallen. I was literally head over heels in love with the man, and there wasn’t a single thing I could do about it.