“You’re gonna get me fired one of these days, Apollo.”

Deirdre handed him the folded paper, pressing her palm against his. The tone of her voice and the gleam in her eyes showed the artifice in her words; she knew damn well she wouldn’t get fired. But Apollo played along. He curled his fingers around the paper and snagged her hand, pulling her more deeply into the little nook at the storage room door. Pressing her against the wall, he slid the paper into his jeans pocket and then grabbed a handful of round little ass encased in a sinful red skirt that hugged her body all the way to her knees.

She sucked in a sleek breath and bit down on her bottom lip. She had this fascinating mouth, the bottom lip fat and tasty, and the top lip just a thin line. It made her look all the time like she’d just had the sense kissed out of her.

“You won’t get fired, sweet thing. I won’t let that happen.” He lifted a hand to smooth it over her blonde hair, but stopped and dropped it back to her ass. Her hair was up in an intricate style, full of little clips with glittery flowers. Women’s hair had gotten ridiculously complicated over the past few years, and they all ducked like they were about to get hit if a guy tried to touch it.

She batted improbably long, definitely fake eyelashes up at him. “I hope so.” Hooking her manicured finger into his jeans, she curved that great mouth into a smile and said, “I get off at four today. You want to come over and get me off at five?”

He did not. Deirdre had three cats, all of them long-haired varieties, and he always left her place wearing a damn fur coat—and found cat hair in inconvenient places until his next shower. Plus, it smelled exactly like she had three cats in her one-bedroom apartment. No, he did not want to go to her place and get her off.

But he didn’t let women come to his place. Ever. And that piece of paper she’d pressed to his palm was important intel. As an administrative assistant in the Detective Division of the Tulsa Police Department, she had access to all the best information about active cases, and he needed to keep her happy.

Jim Novak, the Tulsa Police Chief, was a friend of the Brazen Bulls MC, but it didn’t do for the Chief to be doling out intel on his own, and it didn’t do for the Bulls to flaunt their relationship by making a scene about gathering intel. So he cultivated his little crop of office workers, and Novak could plausibly deny knowing anything about it.

Deirdre was one of several contacts Apollo had in and around Tulsa—most of them women, and most of the women single. He preferred to deal with the few guys and married women, who wanted less of him in return for their information. Striking a balance between keeping the single chicks happy and avoiding their hooks kept him limber, to say the least.

He put on his seductive smirk and laid a kiss on that sexy fat lip. “I’d love to get you off, sweet thing.”

She arched her back and shoved her hips up against his. He wasn’t hard, and she noticed, so he shifted his hips out of her way and kissed her again, putting some muscle into it, until she forgot to be offended that she hadn’t turned him on.

When she was breathless and trembling, he stepped back and skimmed his thumb over her lip. “Thanks for the help, Didi. I’ll see you later. Wear something skimpy for me.”

He left her leaning against the wall, dazed.

She was a decent lay, at least. He’d get it up for her later.

As he walked out of the building and into the warm, early June sun, his cellphone rang.

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

Apollo turned the corner and almost crashed into Rad, the Bulls’ Sergeant at Arms. Rad shoved him back, his face twisted with aggression, and Apollo shot his hands up between them. “Whoa, bro. Easy.”

Rad backed off and growled, “Sorry.” Still scowling murder at him, he shoved his hands into his pockets.

“What’re you doing out here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be in the room with Willa?”

“They’re doing that thing where they shove their hands up inside her. Couldn’t handle that the first time, can’t handle it now.”

Apollo laughed. “Pussy.”

It probably wasn’t the best move to tease the SAA when he was this stressed out. “Fuck you, pretty boy. You got no idea.”

“Okay, okay. The others in there?” He pointed toward the waiting room.

A door nearby opened, and a round, middle-aged nurse came out. She smirked at Rad. “Okay, Daddy. I’m all done. It’s safe.”

“Thanks, Janet.” Without so much as a glance at Apollo, Rad went into the room.

Before the door closed, Apollo caught a glimpse of Willa propped in a bed, a thick white strap across her huge bare belly. He honestly had no interest whatsoever to ever know anything that went on inside a labor and delivery room, thank you very much. He liked other people’s kids fine, and he’d smooch on this one when it showed up, but that was as close as he ever intended to get to the miracle of life.

The nurse—Janet—gave Apollo a less familiar, more professional smile. “Your friends are in the waiting room. It’s going to be a little while before there’s news.”

Out of habit more than anything, he turned on his best charmer of a grin. “Thanks, sweet thing.”

She rolled her eyes at him and walked away.

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

Six of his brothers were in the waiting room already: Delaney, Ox, Gunner, Maverick, Becker, and Wally. The old ladies Mo, Leah, and Jenny were there, too, taking care of the little kids—Jenny and Maverick’s little girl and baby boy, Kelsey and Duncan, and Willa and Rad’s first kid, Zach.

Apollo knew the rest of the club would show up eventually—except for Simon and Deb, who were still on their honeymoon. The other Bulls were probably keeping Delaney’s Sinclair open, or working security at Signet Models, or doing some other club work. He had no idea where the other old ladies were, but it wasn’t currently his job to keep track of them.

Life was calm these days around Tulsa. After a brutal war last year, they had a strong truce with the Street Hounds, the gang that ran Northside Tulsa. The club’s gun routes for the Russians were smooth and steady, and everything was just cool. It felt good, not to have to watch his back every damn second.

Delaney saw him as he came into the room and waved him over. “You got it?”

Apollo grinned and pulled out Deirdre’s folded paper. “Of course I got it.”

Pulling his reading glasses from his kutte and perching them on his nose like the old man he was, Delaney unfolded the paper and read the list of recently updated cases.

“It’s not on here.”

“Second page.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Delaney flipped the page and read some more. His greying eyebrows went up, and Apollo knew he’d hit the right entry. “That’s good news.”

“Yeah, it is.” After more than a year, Tulsa PD had finally cooled the case on the burning of the Alice Dunbar School—which was good, seeing as it was the Bulls who’d burned it down and killed a man they hadn’t known was inside. The list Apollo had retrieved from Deirdre was a confidential internal memo, showing cases that had been quietly reopened or set aside to the cold case files. The kind of cases that were public relations kryptonite, like innocent men getting killed in what the whole city knew was a strike in a ‘gang war.’

The Detective Division had removed the case from active investigation. The Brazen Bulls were as in the clear as they could be on such a high-profile unsolved case.

“Novak said he’d put pressure where and when he could.” Delaney folded up the pages and slid them and his glasses into his kutte. “Looks like he finally got it done.”

The Chief had stretched his neck all the way across Tulsa keeping the Bulls out of law’s way on this case. The mayor was usually tolerant of the Bulls—they did a whole lot of charity work and donated a whole lot of money to make sure Tulsa government was tolerant—but the war with the Hounds had been bloody and destructive, and newsworthy, and the mayor was up for reelection next year.

A year and a half before the election, the campaign was already hot. His opponent had made the Tulsa ‘crime wave’ a focus of his platform, and Mayor Stanley had had no choice but to do the same.

So Novak had had no choice but to have detectives actively and ostentatiously investigating the fire while it had the public’s attention, and he’d done all could in the background to discreetly muddy up the works.

Luckily, the public was notoriously short in the attention-span department, and after a year, nobody cared about the fire anymore, except probably the people in that neighborhood. But Tulsa as a whole didn’t much care about that neighborhood. A sad fact, but a fact nonetheless, and one to the Bulls’ advantage.

The dead man’s family probably still cared, too. That family had come damn close to the Bulls. A former member’s girlfriend had been related to him—something the club hadn’t known until after the fact. The girlfriend was dead, now, too, and so was the former member. And their former VP. All of it related to the fire, and to the Bulls’ war with the Hounds. And there’d been much more death and pain and destruction on top of all that.

Yeah, that had been a shitty-ass fucking year.

“Took a year, but he got it done,” Apollo said to the club president. “As long as things keep quiet and chill, that case should die in the back of the file room.”

Delaney scoffed a dry chuckle. “Knock on wood or somethin’, kid, when you say that.”

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

They were still waiting six hours later. The thinly padded seats in the waiting room had become uncomfortable after about an hour, and medieval by the time the prospects Gargoyle and Fitz arrived with beer and pizza for everyone.

It wasn’t the Bulls’ first vigil in the L&D waiting room—they’d all been there for Rad and Willa’s first kid, three-year-old Zach. In Apollo’s time with the Bulls, Maverick’s old lady had had a kid, too—their boy, Duncan, who was just a year old—but the Bulls had been right in the middle of the final fight with the Hounds when that kid had made his appearance, and the only one who’d sat vigil for Mav and Jenny had been the prospect guarding them.

But, aside from times of war, Delaney wanted the club camped out at the hospital when a club baby was coming. The old ladies spent the day taking care of the little kids, and taking turns going in and out of the delivery room, bringing back updates and gossiping about Rad’s worried foul temper and Willa’s eroding patience, but the Bulls sat in the room and shot the shit—and drank beer and ate pizza.

There was nobody in the waiting room but them. Apollo figured they’d scared off any other families waiting for new members. A room full of big guys with tats and beards and Brazen Bulls kuttes tended to intimidate the civilian masses. It was worse since the Bulls’ star in Tulsa had tarnished. What had been respect had in many cases become fear instead.

He set his empty paper plate on the table at his side and slouched down in the blue vinyl torture device, stretching his legs into the middle of the room, digging the heel of one boot into the thin carpeting with the manic green and blue swirl pattern, and resting his other foot on his ankle. Closing his eyes, he tried to clear his head, which was crowding with too many thoughts of shit that was behind them. Things were good. They were smooth. The few snags that were left would work themselves out, too.

Becker came over and sat beside him, offering a fresh beer, wet from the ice in the cooler. Apollo took it with a nod for thanks.

“You see that new nurse?” Becker asked before he put his bottle to his mouth.

Apollo answered without opening his eyes. “The redhead? Yes, indeed I did.” A tiny thing, but what a rack on her, and an ass to match. She filled out her scrubs like she painted them on every morning after her shower. Her hair was short, and Apollo wasn’t into that, but he’d rate her a seven-point-five, maybe even an eight.

“Do me a favor, and don’t do that thing you do.”

Now he opened his eyes, so he could scowl at his brother. “What the fuck’re you talking about?”

Becker rolled his eyes. “You know what the fuck I’m talking about, shithead. That thing where you turn on your Greek god grin and every pair of panties for ten miles around soaks through. It’s fuckin’ nauseating.”

Apollo turned a grin on Becker. He couldn’t help it if the ladies liked him best. “Hey man, you need a head start, be my guest.”

“You’re an asshole,” Becker muttered and finished his beer. He set the empty on the table and stood. “I call dibs. Keep your ass in that seat.” He flipped Apollo off and left the waiting room.

Apollo wished him well—maybe a beej in a storage room. Those were always nice.

Fuck. He’d forgotten about Deirdre. He checked his watch—seven-thirty. Again: fuck. That was a mess he’d have to clean up.

Apollo got up to find a phone. He couldn’t use his personal cellphone; the coverage was dead in the hospital. As he left the waiting room, he figured out what his apology would be.

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

Deirdre opened the door and crossed her arms. She wore a huge, ratty t-shirt and saggy shorts. No makeup, and her ornate hair was undone and put back up in a messy ponytail. Most definitely not the something skimpy he’d had in mind earlier. A cat wound around her ankles, and she picked it up and held it to her chest like a shedding shield.

“It’s almost ten o’clock, Apollo. I have work in the morning.”

She was whining, and he hated that. But she’d given him good intel today, and he needed to be able to rely on her as a channel for more, so he activated maximum charm. He leaned on the door frame just right and turned on his smile. “I know, sweet thing. I’ll go. I just wanted to apologize in person. I didn’t forget you, I promise.”

A dramatic scoff greeted those words. “You didn’t even call until seven-thirty. I sat here like an idiot in a see-through nightie for two and a half hours.”

“I’m sorry, Didi. Things got crazy with the baby coming.” In truth, he’d sat on his ass for hours, tormenting Becker, until Rad had staggered into the waiting room after nine, holding a little squirt in a beanie and a blanket.

She sighed and let the cat jump out of her arms. White fur covered the front of her black t-shirt. “Is the baby okay, at least?”

Seeing his in, Apollo pushed off the door frame and stepped into the apartment. The smell of litter box slapped his nose, but he ignored it and flipped his expression from charmingly abashed to sensually entranced. He brushed a finger over her cheek. “That’s sweet of you. Yeah, the baby’s great. Little boy. They’re calling him Jacob. Mom’s doing good, too.”

She smiled, and gave up her resistance completely. Babies were just about as good at softening chicks up as he was. “That’s a nice name. Strong.”

Fixing his eyes on her lips, he answered, “Yeah,” breathing the word as if he’d suddenly become so distracted by her beauty that he’d almost forgotten what they were talking about. “Sure would’ve liked to see that see-through thing you say you were wearing.” He hooked his arm around her waist and brought her body to his.

Her eyes went all soft-focus and sleepy as she gazed up at him. “I could ... I could change back.”

“That’s okay,” he murmured, pressing his lips to the skin just below his ear. “I can’t wait that long.”

He scooped her up in his arms. In the gasping sound of her pleased surrender, Apollo heard that he’d have to be careful, or he’d fall off the balance beam between keeping her happy and feeling her hooks in his back.