CHAPTER FIVE
Cat
I WAS FINISHING up my shift at Lucky’s when the door opened with a bang and Smoke strode in.
Carl, who owned Lucky’s Bar, wasn’t a fan of the Knights, and he didn’t much like Smoke and the other brothers hanging around. He could make life difficult for me when he was in the mood, so Smoke tended to steer clear of Lucky’s whenever I was working.
Though tonight it looked as if he had something important to say.
Dear God, if it was about that blow job again, I’d get security to haul his ass out of there myself.
‘Hey, Cat.’
His deep, husky voice rolled over me as he approached the bar and I had no idea why I found myself staring at him like a complete idiot. Because there was no reason to stare—none at all. Not when he was dressed like he normally was, in black boots, worn black jeans and a faded black T-shirt, his cut over the top. Nothing special, nothing fancy.
Yet I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
Looking at how the cotton of his T-shirt pulled over the hard muscles of his chest and biceps, how the waistband of his jeans sat low on his lean hips, how one corner of his mouth curved in a sexy half smile, how black his eyes were and how they drew me in, made me feel like I was drowning.
What was wrong with me? It was like he was projecting some kind of electric field, sensitising my skin, making it prickle with awareness and a heat that was totally unwelcome.
No. Just no. The weirdness of a couple of nights ago was fresh in my mind, and I’d been hoping that it would have all gone away and everything would be like it was.
Seemed I was destined for disappointment.
Smoke leaned his elbows on the bar and raised an eyebrow without saying anything.
I jerked my gaze away, busying myself with folding some of the cleaning cloths we kept behind the bar for drying glasses.
‘What are you doing here?’ The question came out quick and graceless, but I couldn’t seem to moderate my tone.
If he took offence, or even noticed, he didn’t show it.
‘I got to talk to you.’
‘Now? I’m in the middle of work.’
‘It’s important.’
I folded the cloth in half, lining up the edges and making sure they met. ‘Can’t it wait? You know Carl doesn’t like you hanging around.’
‘Yeah, but, like I said, this is important. It’s about Annie and you.’
I couldn’t avoid his gaze any longer—avoiding it was already strange enough as it was. Bracing myself, I finally looked up and met his dark eyes.
There it was again, that electric shiver moving over my skin like static.
Crazy. He was here to talk about something important, to do with Annie and me, and all I could think about was my physical reaction to him.
I had to get a grip. I had to put this stupid...whatever it was...to one side and forget about it. I wasn’t getting involved with a biker—not after the lesson my dad had taught my mom, let alone the fact that the biker in question was my best friend. So there wasn’t any point fixating on this irrational attraction.
I was over men—possibly for good.
I had to let it go.
‘Okay?’ I leaned a hip against the bar. ‘So what’s the deal?’
‘I’ve figured out a way to make sure Grant never comes near you or Annie.’
I blinked, my heart leaping inside my chest. ‘Seriously?’
‘I’m always serious, kitten.’ He didn’t smile, and there was an intense look on his face. ‘Especially when it comes to you two and your safety.’
I let the kitten go, sagging against the bar in relief. ‘How? What did you do?’
He still didn’t smile, which maybe should have clued me in to the fact that what he was going to say next wasn’t going to make my life any easier.
‘You’re not going to like it.’
The relief ebbed, my muscles tensing. ‘What exactly am I not going to like?’
‘It involves the Knights.’
Smoke was always like this when he was telling me stuff I didn’t want to hear. Calm. Direct. Straight-up. Laying out the unpleasant facts so I knew exactly where I stood.
‘It involves you and Annie being under their protection.’
My first instinct was no fucking way in hell. I hated the MC and didn’t want to have anything to do with them—and I especially didn’t want any child of mine anywhere near them.
‘I told you I didn’t want to involve—’
‘I know what you told me. But hear me out, okay?’
I bit down on my protest. I didn’t want to hear him out, but if he’d gone to the trouble of figuring out a way to help Annie, then the least I could do was listen.
‘Fine. So how are Annie and me going to be under their protection? We’re not part of the club.’
He shifted on his feet, and if I hadn’t known any better, I would have said he looked uncertain. Which was strange, because Smoke was never uncertain.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’s the hard part. To be under their protection you have to be a club member.’
‘How? Unless they’re suddenly recruiting women?’ I put a little sarcasm into that last part, because obviously no outlaw MC would allow women to be full members.
Smoke ignored that, gazing at me in a very focused, very intent way. It made that electric current stronger, lifting all the hairs along the back of my neck and my forearms, making me short of breath.
‘There’s one way,’ he murmured. ‘If you’re my old lady, you’ll have the full protection of the club and so would Annie.’
Shock held me still. I had no idea what to say—no idea what to even think.
First there was the whole issue of the club. Then there was being his old lady... He couldn’t be serious.
But he wasn’t smiling. And the look in his eyes... Shit, I knew that look. He always had it when he meant to do something and he was going to do it whether I liked it or not. He’d always been a guy who liked his own way, and he got it enough that it made him unhappy when he didn’t.
‘You’re not serious, right?’ I tried to sound normal and not like a shaky little girl.
‘Yeah, I’m serious.’
Of course he was. He was never anything but.
‘You and me will be together as long as it takes for Grant to get off your back, but it won’t be real or anything.’ He stopped all of a sudden, as if he’d meant to say something else and held himself back at the last minute. ‘We only have to make it look believable to the club.’
Make it look believable.
What the hell did that mean?
You know what it means, idiot.
Heat shot through me—a flare like a lighted match held against my skin. I tried like hell to ignore it. To concentrate on the facts instead.
‘So,’ I said carefully, busying myself with folding the cloths again. ‘Let me get this straight. You think that if you make me your old lady, the club will protect me and Annie from Justin.’
‘I don’t think. I know.’ He said it like the gospel truth, handed down from God himself.
‘I thought your president didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the police chief. If Justin comes after Annie and the club stops him...’ I let the sentence hang.
‘Checked it out with Keep this morning.’ Smoke put his hands flat on the bar. ‘He won’t lift a finger if you’re not part of the Knights. But if you’re one of us, you’ll have an army at your back. Club comes first, and the chief can go fuck himself.’
Club comes first.
Wasn’t that the lesson I’d learned all through my childhood? That the club, the brothers were the most important things in my father’s life.
My mother had learned that lesson, too, when she was still a silly socialite, falling for a badass biker with tats on his arms and a gleaming Harley. She’d thought he was going to give her the freedom from her wealthy family that she’d always craved. Instead he’d given her a one-way ticket to Junkieville.
He never married her—never made her his old lady. He got her pregnant, then left her in a shitty apartment trying to bring up his kid by herself because her family had cut her off. And the only reason she’d stayed was because he kept her in drugs.
Oh, yeah, and apparently she loved him, even though he used to hit her sometimes.
A real prince, my dad.
To this day I have no idea why he didn’t make her his old lady. It was like he thought we weren’t good enough to be part of his precious club—like it was far too special to share with us. Not that we wanted to be part of it... Or at least I didn’t.
I hated him and, because of its influence on him, I hated that club.
I hated the Knights for their influence on Smoke, too. The day he told me he was going to sign up to be a prospect I didn’t speak to him for two whole weeks. I didn’t want him to join. I didn’t want them to take him away from me.
We got over that years ago, but sometimes I still felt the betrayal of it.
Like now.
‘Cat.’ Carl’s voice behind me was mean with annoyance. ‘You’ve still got fifteen minutes. Get back to work.’
Smoke pushed himself sharply back from the bar.
‘Don’t—’ I began.
But it was too late.
‘She’s finishing early tonight.’
Smoke’s voice had that hard, flat quality it got whenever he was giving orders. Or stating facts. Or making decisions. Not that there was any difference between them.
‘Excuse me?’ Carl sounded pissed. ‘Are you her fucking boss?’
‘Smoke, don’t.’ The last thing I needed was trouble with Carl. It was shitty work, and the pay was terrible, but I needed it. Especially when my day job barely paid the bills.
But Smoke ignored me, digging his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans and grabbing a couple of bills out of it. He tossed the bills down on the bar.
‘Here. Her pay for the last fifteen minutes of her shift.’ His black gaze shifted to me. ‘Come on. We need to talk.’
I glanced at the money on the bar—I really did get paid shit—then turned to Carl.
‘Carl, look,’ I said. ‘Smoke didn’t—’
‘I don’t care what he did or didn’t do. I told you I didn’t want him hanging around here, and yet here he is.’ Carl grimaced, then jerked his head towards the exit. ‘Go on—get out of here.’
‘But I—’
‘And don’t come back.’
Anger flared inside me. Wonderful. Not only did I have Justin making threats to take Annie away from me, and Smoke wanting to protect me by involving me in his goddamn MC, now I had to find myself another job.
Life was just getting better and better.
Swallowing the few choice words I wanted to level at both Carl and Smoke, I set my jaw, collected my purse and strode out from behind the bar. I headed towards the exit, not bothering to look behind me to see if Smoke was following.
Slamming open the door, I stepped out onto the street, then headed straight towards the bus stop.
‘Cat—wait up.’
I didn’t.
Frustrated rage burned in my gut. Rage at the world for the situation I was in, for all the decisions I’d made in good faith that had turned out to be really shitty ones that had not only put me at risk, but also my kid.
I thought Justin was one of the good guys. Clean-cut and earning good money—not some low-life asshole like my dad. I wasn’t going to be like my mother, attaching myself to some man because I was desperate for drugs or love or whatever other crap people get needy over.
I was going to fall for a good man and we’d have a good life together. Have great kids and a nice place and a fulfilling career.
Instead all I got were black eyes, a shitty apartment and a hand-to-mouth existence.
There was only one good thing I’d got from Justin and that was Annie. Now she was under threat, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I hated being so helpless. It brought back all those crappy feelings I’d had when Justin first showed his true colours. Of powerlessness. Of worthlessness. Of weakness.
I’d promised myself never again, and yet somehow he still had the power to hurt me.
‘Cat.’ Warm fingers wound around my arm and held on, bringing me up short. ‘Stop.’
I halted, keeping my gaze on the bus stop ahead of me. ‘Thanks for making me lose my job, Smoke,’ I said. ‘I’m sure I really don’t need that money.’
‘It was a shitty job anyway.’ He sounded completely unrepentant. ‘And I have money if you need it.’
Arrogant son of a bitch.
I turned to look at him, his handsome face shadowed by the streetlight behind him. The intense look in his eyes hadn’t faded one iota, making me feel restless and shaky, wanting something I couldn’t put a name to.
‘The money isn’t the point,’ I said. ‘You made me lose my job, and I’m not feeling very happy about that right now.’
‘Sure, you’re pissed about the job, but tell it like it is, Cat. You don’t like my idea.’
‘About being your old lady? Of course I don’t like it. I think it’s stupid.’
Something crossed his face—I didn’t know what it was. Maybe hurt or disappointment or a combination of both. And his mouth hardened. He didn’t often get pissed with me, but I knew when he was. Like now.
‘Yeah, well, maybe you should stop being so fucking one-eyed about the club.’ There was a dangerous edge to his voice. ‘Maybe you should stop thinking about your own issues for a change and start thinking about Annie’s.’
Anger flared inside me, hot as a Fourth of July bonfire. I’d just lost my job because of him, and now he was telling me I wasn’t thinking of my kid?
Everything I did was for her. Everything.
‘Don’t you dare tell me I’m not thinking of her just because you’re pissed that I didn’t like your idea.’ I jerked my arm out of his hold, too angry with him to think about what I was saying. ‘She’s my kid—not yours. You’re not her father. You don’t get a say!’