Chapter Seven
Charlene
I had another hangover.
Since I moved to Wilhelmine, I’d had more hangovers than I’d had in the previous fifteen years altogether. Three precisely, which didn’t exactly put me on the path to alcoholism, but I still vowed yet again to never have another shot of tequila.
“Coffee,” Gibson’s voice said next to me, and I pushed my face deeper into the pillow and groaned.
We hadn’t talked much the evening before, but he’d been at my back with an arm around my waist for what remained of the evening. This could admittedly have been because I was on the verge of sliding off the barstool, but I didn’t care because it had also felt nice. Then he’d helped me into his truck, where I promptly fell asleep, after which he carried me into his home.
“How bad do you wanna hurl?” he asked matter of factly.
“Scale of one to ten?” I mumbled, and went on, “Three. Maybe four.”
“Not too bad then,” he chuckled and turned my head around to look at me.
“I look like shit,” I said and tried to keep my face hidden in the pillow.
“You’ll feel better after some coffee and a shower,” he said, which I guessed was his way of saying that I did indeed look like garbage and needed to wash the makeup off my face. Then I remembered that I had washed my face. Then I remembered some of the things I’d said.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured.
“For what?”
“For last night,” I said.
“Why?”
I had been way out of line, and I had to get my apology out of the way, so I braced and said quietly, “I’m sorry I just blurted out what Jenny said about the size of your… um.”
He grinned.
“What?” I asked, probably a little more sourly than the situation warranted but I was also embarrassed.
“My cock.”
I stared at him.
“Say it,” he murmured, “and we’re even.”
Oh, God. That was not a word I’d ever said out loud. Penis or dick, yes. That? Um, no.
“Say it,” he prompted again. “What Jenny said about the size of my…?”
“Can’t I use another word?” I asked.
He grinned.
“Penis is a perfectly appropriate one,” I heard myself saying.
He started laughing.
“My cock,” he repeated.
“Dick?” I suggested.
“Baby, what are you afraid of?”
He’d stopped laughing and was watching me intently.
“To sound ridiculous,” I heard myself admit.
“Babe.”
“I’m not like your other women,” I told him.
“Don’t have any other women.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Actually, no. I don’t.”
I stared at him, and he wasn’t teasing anymore. He was watching me calmly, and my stupid mouth told him what I meant with no preamble.
“I haven’t had sex in a long time.”
There. I’d blurted it out, so I closed my eyes and waited for him to leave.
“In a long time?”
“A very long time,” I clarified.
“Okay. I know you haven’t gotten any since you came to Wilhelmine, Lee. How long before that?”
“I’m not telling,” I said.
“Weeks?”
I didn’t answer.
“Months?”
I still didn’t answer.
“Jesus,” he said, put a hand on my cheek and pressed gently until I opened my eyes. “Baby, how long have you gone without?”
“A year and a half,” I whispered.
His mouth fell open, and he looked angry suddenly, but it passed, and his eyes turned gentle again.
“No wonder you have toys.”
“I didn’t get them until after I left Bob,” I confessed.
Oh God, why had I told him that?
“You used only your fingers before that?” he murmured.
His voice was suddenly even lower and more gravelly than usual, and he pulled one of my hands out from under the covers.
“These?” he kept murmuring and raised it to his mouth. When he put my index and middle finger in his mouth and sucked gently, electricity went straight to between my legs, and I gasped. “Was it enough, Lee? Or do you want more?”
I couldn’t help myself. I whimpered.
He pulled the fingers out of his mouth to grin at me and put my hand back on the cover.
“The week is up on Sunday. Let’s talk about getting you some then.”
He moved away from the bed, and I stared at him. Sunday was two days away.
“Gibson,” I said, not sure exactly what I wanted him to do, but it did not involve leaving.
“Nurse your hangover, babe. Sleep for a while, go get breakfast at Jenny’s. Paddy and I need to deal with some shit today.”
“Gibson,” I repeated.
“Don’t worry about dinner, I’ll get us something on my way home.”
“Okay,” I said but he was halfway out the door by then, and I lay in silence, listening to his footsteps and the whistle for Boo.
Then his car drove off, and I sank back into my pillows. I’d been moving toward an orgasm just from him sucking my fingers. And on Sunday we’d talk about… getting me some.
I was in way over my head with this man.
***
Gibson
He stopped the car outside Paddy’s office, leaned forward and put his forehead on the steering wheel, breathing deeply and trying to calm down. The urge to hunt down Lee’s fucking ex-husband and shove his nuts far enough up his ass he could taste them made him grip the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white. What in the hell had the man been thinking, letting his wife satisfy herself with her own goddamned fingers for over a year? He should have -
What the hell was he thinking himself? If the assclown had done what he was supposed to have done with his wife and not some other woman, then Lee would still have been the unhappy Charlene in the suburbs. Now she was in Wilhelmine, in his home.
Two more days. He could do two more days, and if Lee had some fucking idiot idea that she’d not sleep with him, then he’d… He pressed his lips together and focused on breathing. He’d figure something out.
“You okay, bud?”
The knock on the window jolted him out of his thoughts, and he turned to find Paddy staring at him with a look on his face that was a mix of anger and concern. He wondered if the concerned part would ever go away. So, he’d had himself a fucking breakdown. He was good again. A lot of people snapped, and he hadn’t killed anyone, had he? Not even himself.
“Yeah,” he said as he opened the door and stepped out. “Lot on my mind, that’s all.”
“How the hell does Jenny know the size of your dick?” Paddy asked sourly.
“What?”
“Tell me you haven’t done her.”
“Man, calm down. No, I haven’t done her, you know that. I have no fucking clue what she knows about my dick but the hens of this town peck absolutely everything to pieces so my guess? Someone told her.”
Paddy took a step back and nodded.
“It’s not that big,” he muttered.
“Bigger than yours,” Gibson retorted, although he hadn’t actually seen his friend without clothes in years, and had only vague memories of the dimensions, so it was more a taunt than anything else.
“Huh,” Paddy grunted.
“Hey, sorry I’m late” Mac called out as he jogged over, narrowing his eyes when he saw their faces. “What are you talking about?”
“The size of my dick,” Gib muttered.
“It’s not that big,” Mac snorted.
“Bigger than yours,” Gibson repeated, again guessing.
They entered the reception area of the construction company Paddy had taken over from his father when he died of a heart attack. Paddy had been twenty-six and had worked around the clock for the next ten years just to keep it going and then the next twenty to make it grow. Gibson looked around the fancy offices and wondered if it had been worth it. Padraig Callaghan had never married, not even when one of his girlfriends had become pregnant, and he was living on his own since his daughter moved out.
“Hey,” Joke said as he joined them.
“It’s bigger than yours too,” Gibson muttered, ignored Joke’s surprise, and nodded at Edna, the receptionist. “Hey, Eddie.”
“Hey, Gibson. How’s Lee?”
“Hung over.”
“Well good for her,” Edna quipped. “Tell her we’d love it if you joined us one of the nights next week. Billy said he might turn on the smoker. Get us some ribs.”
“She’ll call you. Thursday might work,” Gibson said, and walked into Paddy’s office.
His friends were staring at him as they sat down on the leather couches and chairs.
“What?”
“You’re invited to Eddie’s?” Paddy asked. “For Billy’s ribs?”
“Apparently,” Gibson said and pulled out his phone when it beeped to indicate he had a text message.
“The devil will make dinner for us. Pick it up at six?”
Lee.
“Devil?” he replied with a grin.
“Did you know Jenny doesn’t do hangovers?”
“Yup.”
“I’m never drinking tequila again.”
“Babe.”
Silence.
“Sorry I brought up the size of your cock last night. See, I could at least type it.”
She’d added a smiley to the last one. Cute.
“Gibson?”
He raised a finger to indicate he needed a second and used it to let Lee know he’d pick their dinner up.
“What?”
“What are you doing?”
“Texting?” Gib asked, wondering why Mac had to ask that when he held his fucking phone right in front of him.
And why the hell did he sound so weird?
“Or sexting?” Paddy asked with a grin.
Well, hell.
“You said we’d have a meeting,” he reminded Paddy.
“We are having a meeting, as soon as you’ve finished organizing dinner plans which include ribs which I at the ripe age of fifty-five yet have to earn the honor of tasting. And sexting Lee.”
“Sorry. I’m done. What did you want to meet about?” Gibson said, hoping they’d act as the grown-ups they were supposed to be, which meant not ribbing him more about Lee.
“Yeah, Pad, let’s get to the meeting part, but Gib…” Mac trailed off until their eyes met. “If this is going where I think it’s going then I’m over the fucking moon for you. Don’t fuck it up, buddy. Hold on to it while you can.”
“Mac,” Gibson murmured.
“Day isn’t here, but he’d say the same thing.”
There was a flash of something in Mac’s eyes which he hadn’t seen in a very long time. Christ, he thought. They’d all thought Mac was okay. He worked and laughed and partied with the rest of them, and the flash of pain had been brief, but he’d recognized it for what it was. And he hadn’t seen it in Mac’s eyes for more than ten years. Not since they buried Corinne.
“Mac,” he said again with a sigh, not sure what to say and feeling like an idiot for grinning over a stupid text from Lee.
“Don’t,” Mac warned, reading his face accurately. “Didn’t say it to make you feel like shit over sexting with your lady instead of paying attention to your brothers.”
Right, Gibson thought. Mac didn’t want to share, and that was his choice to make.
“We weren’t sexting,” Gibson protested. “Dinner plans.”
“You’re telling me there were no words describing any kind of genitals?” Mac said, and the usual calm humor was back in his eyes.
“No -” Gibson started but remembered what Lee had texted him.
Fuck it but she was cute, he thought. She’d been so embarrassed that morning, but she’d texted the word cock to him after all, which meant she’d been thinking about it. He looked forward to making her say the word out loud. Hell, he wanted to hear her screaming it while he was buried deep inside her.
“Maybe one,” he said with a crooked grin.
“Aha!” Paddy said. “Which one?”
“What are you? Fifteen?” Gibson muttered.
“Just wondered what our sweet Lee would think about you talking dirty.”
“It wasn’t me -”
He cut himself off too late, and after a brief but stunned silence, the room erupted in loud cheers.
“Coffee?” Edna said from the door and since Gibson was grateful for the interruption he got up and took the tray from the older woman.
She winked at him, and he wondered how thin Paddy’s walls were.
Paddy grinned at him but started asking about his trip to Chicago, and they all focused when he shared that one of the men breaking into his home had indeed been found shot in the chest and floating in the Chicago River. He’d turned out to be a smalltime crook, known to the Chicago PD but no one had any insight as to why the man had been in Wilhelmine. They also had no suspects in his murder case.
When they had turned it around without finding anything more to investigate, they split up, Mac going to the station, and Joke to do something he described as a fucking administrative nightmare at Oak.
Gibson went with Paddy to take measurements on a home Callaghan construction was building where he would do the custom-built bookshelves and a few other bits and pieces. He’d told Lee he worked with Paddy, but in reality, he was only brought in when the customers wanted something unique. And when they could pay what he charged for his things. People who could afford to buy a place in the ski-resorts could apparently afford all kinds of extras, so he had enough work to keep him happy. He knew what getting too immersed in his job had cost him once, though, so he was conscious of how much work he took on. He wasn’t going down that fucking road again.
Two hours later, he straightened and groaned. He worked out daily, but during the trip to Chicago, he’d cut his routines short, and he was stiff. He’d seen Lee do yoga on his back deck in the mornings and wondered if he should join her but decided that doing yoga with a huge erection would mostly be embarrassing so he’d pass.
They were walking toward the car, arguing about whether to go to Jenny’s or one of the fast food places for an afternoon snack when there was a loud crash in the house behind them.
Paddy swore, and muttered, “Give me a sec. Just wanna check.”
Gibson spent the second which turned out to be fifteen minutes standing in the sun, thinking about Lee and feeling little ridiculous but wondering what she was doing right then.
“Stupid, fucking morons,” Paddy growled. “One of the supporting beams came loose, part of the roof caved in.”
“Yeah?”
Paddy’s crew were usually doing better work than that.
“New guy on the crew and the others didn’t check his work properly. Not on the crew anymore.”
“Harsh.”
“You and I were in that fucking room less than half hour ago, Gib. The prospect of having all that shit crashing down on my head does not make me happy.”
“They need help?”
“Nah,” Paddy said with a sigh. “Ben’s leading the work, and he was unhappier than me. Heard him tell the guys they weren’t leaving for the day until it was cleared up, and they were working unpaid overtime to catch up of they got behind schedule because of what happened.”
“Bet new guy left quickly.”
“Yup,” Paddy said and started the car.
Gibson grinned and thought about all the times through the years he’d sat with starry-eyed women who talked about how sweet Paddy was. How nice. Anyone who’d ever worked with Padraig Callaghan used slightly different words. Fair, honest, and straight-talking, for sure, but also tough, demanding and damned unpleasant when things went wrong. Gibson supposed Paddy wouldn’t have managed to build Callaghan construction up from a small-time shop to the biggest construction company in the area without the streak of ruthlessness he hid so successfully.
“I think this earned us a piece of pie at Jenny’s,” he said with a grin.
***
Charlene
When I heard Gibson’s truck drive up to the house, I looked at the long dinner table and cursed. Then I removed the candles and napkins and moved the plates to a corner so we wouldn’t face each other. Then I cursed again. The man had candles and napkins, and he’d have them because he wanted them to be used, wouldn’t he?
“Hey,” he said and put a couple of bags on the kitchen counter. “This smells good.”
“Yes,” I said and began to bring out food which indeed smelled just as fabulously as Jenny had promised it would taste.
“Feeling better?” he asked and put a hand on my cheek when I was about to pass him.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “Let me just get Boo some chow, then we’ll eat. I’m hungry.”
“You could have left him with me. I love dogs,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about getting one.”
“Someone to lick you all over?” Gibson asked with a wink.
“Yes,” I said and started bringing the food to the table to hide the blush I felt on my cheeks.
Damn, I thought. We’d been talking about pets for crying out loud. Why did everything that man said sound like a sexual invite?
Maybe because it so very often was one? Maybe because he was hot? Maybe because of the way the seam of my tight jeans scraped over my undies, making every move a prelude to orgasm?
“Tea?”
I yelped when Gibson appeared behind me, and he chuckled. He couldn’t know what I’d been thinking about, could he?
“Sure,” I said breezily, and then we ate.
During the meal, Gibson talked about the break-in, and I was surprised to hear that he and his friends were investigating it. I would have thought they’d leave it to the police.
“It’s what we do,” Gib said and leaned back.
“Do?” I asked.
He sighed and pulled his hands through his hair a couple of times, which messed it up in a way that made him look even more handsome. It had grown since I moved to Wilhelmine, and he needed a haircut. I hoped he wouldn’t get one.
“Lots of shit going on, Lee. Can’t have that in Wilhelmine, so we’re making sure it isn’t.”
I jerked out of my admiration of his unruly hair and blinked.
“What does that mean?”
He took hold of my hand and raised it to give it a soft kiss.
“Mac’s wife died ten years ago, baby.”
“No,” I murmured.
I’d thought they were all single by choice, and Mac hadn’t seemed like… I wasn’t even sure what a widower was supposed to act like, but he’d appeared to be same happy-go-lucky kind of guy they all were.
“Drugs were pouring into the area. Drug cartels were making headway, and the motorcycle clubs were unhappy. Small time dealers got into the mix. Shit, anyone and everyone seemed to be heading this way, and Wilhelmine was right in the center of it. Mac wasn’t chief back then, but he fought them. God, we all did. I started going back on weekends to help out where I could. Had a rep already back then and used it. Joke got into fights in the bar. Day had his own issues and didn’t give a shit, so he was reckless as all hell and Paddy… He tried to hold us all together and run his company at the same time.”
I held on to his hand and tried to breathe slowly, hurting with him as he got lost in his memories.
“Mac did everything by the book. Crossing all t’s and dotting the i’s as fast as he could. Believing in the system and that we would beat it all back.” He turned to me, and I felt my eyes burn when I saw the look in his eyes. “Corinne got caught in crossfire on her way back from picking their boy up from a friend. They both died.”
“Oh, God. Gibson…”
“We all lost something that day, Lee.” He paused and continued quietly, “She was the first girl I kissed. Used to rib Mac about that all the fucking time. She was Jenny’s best friend. Hell, she was Jen’s only friend.” He paused again and raised our hands to his cheek. “And she was Paddy’s sister, baby.”
Tears pooled in my eyes, and I tried to stay calm but when our eyes met, I felt my lips wobble. It didn’t matter how hard I pressed them together, the tears spilled over anyway and ran silently down my cheeks.
“Lee,” he murmured.
“I’m so sorry,” I said and thought about all the time I’d said those words in the ER, holding someone’s hand after the doctors had delivered that godawful message no one wanted to hear.
It felt just as inadequate now as it had back then.
“You get over it,” he said. “The hurt fades until it’s just a part of who you are. Then you dig in and keep walking.”
“I’m so sorry, Gibson,” I repeated. “What happened?”
I meant after, and he understood.
“We released a shit-storm of epic proportions.”
Since I had no clue what releasing a shit-storm of any proportion meant, I squeaked out a confused, “What?”
“We got together, the five of us, a few days after Corinne and Robbie’s funeral. They wanna fuck with us then we fuck back, Paddy said, and by God we did. Took them all out. Pushed back so hard they left, and they left running. Then we announced high and wide that we were the top dogs here. Told them we had our own club and they’d better not mess with us.”
“Club?” I asked.
And what did he mean, took them all out? As in out?
“Best we could come up with.”
“You’re a motorcycle gang?”
He chuckled and wiggled his brows.
“What?” I asked because I didn’t understand.
Were they like those outlaw bikers? The… what were they called? But Mac was a cop so they couldn’t be?
“They prefer the term club over gang, babe, and no we’re not. We’re not a motorcycle club, babe, although we all ride. Made it out as something like it, though.”
“So it’s not… illegal?”
“We’re not one percenters, Lee, if that’s what you’re asking. And we don’t do paraphernalia.”
“Paraphernalia?”
“Don’t have any of the vests or patches or shit like that. Told them Paddy was president, though. Gave us all roles just so they’d know who to talk to about what, so yeah. We’re a club, but not exactly.”
“Okay,” I said weakly.
“It’s not a big deal. Shit’s calm for the most these days. No one farts in our county unless we’ve served the beans.”
His calm explanation was funny, albeit somewhat gross, but I didn’t feel like laughing when there was so much I just didn’t understand.
“Do you have, like, a club name?”
“No. The MC’s call us the Brothers. Don’t know what the cartels and others call us. Don’t much care.”
“Okay.”
I was silent for a good long while, thinking about what he’d just sprung on me.
“It’s not a big deal,” he said quietly.
It was actually a pretty big deal to find out that the man I was contemplating sleeping with was some kind of vigilante, taking care of shit by taking people out, which I still didn’t know what it meant. I wondered if staying at his dinner table was crazy, and if running for the hills whilst screaming loudly wouldn’t be a better decision.
“What are you?” I heard myself asking.
“What?”
“You said you have roles, so what are you?”
He winced and gave me a crooked grin.
“Babe.”
“What?”
He looked calmly back at me and I thought I heard a sigh, but the way his face had turned soft was more reassurance than any of his words had been, so I relaxed a little.
“Sergeant at Arms.”
“Sar… what does that even mean?”
“Muscles.”
“Huh?”
“Someone wants a fight, I give it to them.”
I blinked.
“You’re fifty-five,” I told him.
“Trained martial arts, boxing, you name it, all my life. Got a temper. I’m also an above decent shot.”
“That’s what they mean when they say you’re a badass.”
“Probably.”
“You have a bike?”
“Yup.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Our eyes held for a while, but I couldn’t interpret the look in his silvery gray ones. He seemed to wait calmly for me to say something and I didn’t know what.
“This gonna be a problem for you?” he asked when I stayed silent.
“Why would it be?” I frowned, still a little confused, and trying to remember what I’ve read about the kind of organizations he’d just described. “I’d really prefer it if you don’t kill anyone.”
“Okay,” he said calmly.
He hadn’t confirmed if he had or denied that he possibly would, which I found a little disturbing but decided to ignore because the four men I’d met had seemed like regular guys. Ridiculously hot, very cool alpha-male type guys, but not maniacal killers. Mac was the chief of police for crying out loud, and Gib was, in essence, a carpenter. Then a thought hit me.
“I will tell you this, Gibson Ward, if either of you ever call me an old lady, I’d better be on the other side of ninety.”
I hadn’t meant it as a joke, exactly, but he burst out laughing.
“We’re not an MC, babe.”
“You’re Sergeant at Arms in a group of men who drive motorcycles together? You’re totally in a biker gang.”
“Jesus. Motorcycle Club or MC, babe. They don’t joke around with that shit in the clubs. And I’m not in one.”
“You totally are,” I said primly and got up to clear the table. “Do you have any tattoos?”
I knew he did because I’d seen them when he pulled off his shirt after I stitched him up.
“Uh, what?” he stalled.
“See!” I squealed and pointed at him. “Motorcycle Club.”
I drawled the last part out and fought to hold my grin back at the look on his face, but I suspected he caught on because the lines around his eyes deepened. We kept squabbling about this while we loaded the dishwasher, and while we did, a familiar ache started to build low in my belly. Damned jeans. They did wonders for my butt, but I should have gone for soft yoga pants instead.
“Wanna go for a ride on the bike?”
I’d been about to go and change into something comfy but figured yoga pants would not be the best attire for being on a bike, so I didn’t.
“Okay,” I said instead. “Although, I’ve never been on one.”
“You’ve never been on a motorcycle?”
“No.”
I’d just said as much, hadn’t I?
His grin turned wicked in a way I didn’t understand, and then he pulled me outside, got a helmet on my head and rolled out a big motorcycle. It wasn’t black, which would have been my guess. It was army green and very, very cool.
He put a helmet on the seat and started to point out stuff on the bike, but I didn’t listen. The helmet was a matte black. It had his name in simple, white, army-type letters on the back and underneath, it said, “SAA.”
I could guess what that was an abbreviation of.
“Gib?”
“Yeah, babe.”
“You not in an MC?”
“Nope.”
I grinned and knocked my knuckles on his helmet.
“This shouts biker-gang so loudly I’d not be surprised if they hear it down on the plains, babe.”
He started laughing, grabbed the helmet and swung a leg over the bike. Then he motioned for me to climb on, so I did, immediately wishing I’d gone for the yoga pants after all. The seam pressed even harder into my crotch and the way I’d spread my legs around his hips felt… yum. He turned to say something, caught the look on my face and grinned knowingly.
“I know what those jeans of yours does to you, babe,” he said. I felt the rumble of his voice in my chest when he spoke and tried to move back, but he grabbed my hands and pulled until I was pressed against him. “The bike will add to it. Hold on to me if you come, can’t have you falling off.”
What?
“Gibson!” I squeaked. “I’m not going to… have an orgasm from riding a motorcycle.”
Would I?
“Perhaps not,” he rumbled and turned forward. I still heard his next words clearly. “But you would have one if you were riding me.”
The bike roared before I could say anything, which was good because what on earth was I supposed to say to that? When we drove down the gravel road leading up to his home the vibrations between my legs increased.
Wow.
Maybe I would have an orgasm from riding a bike after all.