Chapter 19

“I hate you,” Preacher muttered over his shoulder. “You know that, right?”

Picking up his pace, Preacher hurried through the campground, Joe on his heels. They’d already combed through the west side of the park searching for Sylvia, and now they were searching the east.

They’d both been rudely awakened by Ginny, who’d been frantic with worry when she’d woken and found that her very pregnant and very emotional daughter-in-law had gone missing.

It was early, the park was still quiet, the sky streaked with the colorful beginnings of sunrise, and all Preacher wanted to do was go back to Joe’s foul-smelling tent and sleep for another hour.

He’d had difficulty falling asleep last night, having spent most of it listening to the devil seated on his left shoulder tell the angel on his right to go fuck itself.

At one point he’d spent almost an hour trying to convince himself that Debbie’s age didn’t matter because of her situation—there was no one in her life to care what she did or didn’t do. If there was no one to care, then what did it matter? Then he’d felt like shit for thinking it and had spent another hour wide awake, telling himself what an asshole he was.

“This ain’t my fault!” Joe protested. “I tried tellin’ Mom that Sylvie just ain’t been sleepin’ good lately and she’s probably off walkin’ around somewhere.”

“You shouldn’t have brought her. What kind of man brings a pregnant woman camping?”

“You try tellin’ Sylvie no! I told her no way in fuckin’ hell was she comin’, and you should have seen her, all pissed off and haulin’ her fat ass up into Dad’s van and givin’ me that look!”

Preacher glanced sideways at his brother. “What look?”

“You know, the look. That fuckin’ look a chick gives you, tellin’ you that you ain’t got a choice in the matter. It’s do or die, man, do or fuckin’ die. That’s the look. I get that look every fuckin’ day. I married that fuckin’ look. That fuckin’ look is gonna kill me.”

Preacher glanced up at the sky and made a face. “Idiot. That ain’t the look she was givin’ you. She was givin’ you the look that said she knew what the fuck you were going to be doin’ up here if she didn’t come.”

Joe fell silent, and Preacher rolled his eyes. It was no secret to anyone who knew Joe that he wasn’t a one-woman kind of guy. He hadn’t been faithful to Sylvia when they’d been dating, and anyone with half a brain would know that marriage hadn’t changed him. If anything, Preacher guessed Joe’s new situation had only increased his brother’s appetite for women—he was probably screwing every piece of ass he could get his hands on.

 “I told you not to marry her,” Preacher muttered, shaking his head. “Remember? This is your own damn fault.”

Joe had come to visit him in prison to tell him Sylvia was pregnant, and Preacher had told him point blank not to marry her if he didn’t love her—and that he’d regret it if he did.

But Joe had succumbed to The Judge’s and Ginny’s demand that he do right by Sylvia, and if Joe felt trapped now, it was his own damn fault and none of Preacher’s concern. What was Preacher’s problem was Ginny forcing him to share a tent with his idiot brother.

Gripping his arm, Joe wrenched Preacher to a stop, forcing him to turn around and face him.

“Mom made me,” he seethed, his eyes wide and glinting with anger. “She said no grandbaby of hers was gonna be a bastard!”

“Mom made me,” Preacher mimicked. He shook his arm free from Joe’s grip and shoved his brother in the chest, sending him stumbling backward. “Man, you know you sound like a little girl, right?”

“You weren’t there!” Joe shouted, a vein in his forehead throbbing angrily.

Preacher knew Joe was seconds away from hauling off and slugging him. A recreational boxer with fists of steel, Joe wasn’t someone you wanted to piss off. But the way Preacher saw it, a concussion and couple of black eyes were preferable to wandering around the park at the ass-crack of dawn bickering like a pair of old women. Balling his hands into fists, Preacher readied to duck and swing.

“Dad told me if I wasn’t gonna do the respectable thing, he wasn’t gonna have a place for me at the table!”

As Preacher’s jaw went slack, so did his fists. “What?”

“Yeah,” Joe hissed. “He was gonna take my patch. And then what?” Joe threw his hands up in the air. “And then I’d have nothin’!”

Preacher raked a hand through his hair. “Man, I didn’t know. If I woulda known—”

“Joey?”

Both men turned and found Sylvia rounding the corner of a nearby trailer. Appearing freshly showered, she was wearing a blindingly bright polyester number that made Preacher wish for temporary blindness. Then he spotted who was turning the corner behind Sylvia and Preacher suddenly couldn’t remember what he was doing out here in the first place.

Debbie’s long dark hair was wet and messy in a way that looked sexy. A pair of aviator sunglasses hid her eyes. She wore denim cutoff shorts and the same yellow T-shirt she’d had on yesterday, only today she’d gathered the hem and knotted it off to one side, exposing several inches of flat, smooth stomach. Barefoot, she held her sneakers in one hand and her backpack in the other.

Debbie paused beside Sylvia and lifted her sunglasses, her gaze on Preacher. He found himself smiling at her and then grinning when she suddenly flushed pink and her bottom lip disappeared behind her teeth.

“Dammit, Sylvie,” Joe growled, shoving past Preacher and holding his hand out to his wife. “You can’t run off like this! Ain’t nobody gettin’ any damn sleep!”

“You think this is what no sleep feels like, do you?” Sylvia’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “What about when the baby comes? Then you’ll see what no sleep feels like!”

Joe’s arm dropped to his side. “Fuck this,” he muttered, turning away.

“What did you say?” Sylvia shouted, hurrying after him. “Joey, did you hear me? I asked you a goddamn question! Don’t you walk away from me! Did you hear me? Joey, you come back here right now!”

“She talks a lot,” Debbie murmured, joining Preacher.

“You have no idea.”

“She’s nice, though. But sad, too.”

Frowning, Preacher glanced over his shoulder at Sylvia’s retreating form. “Sad? Really?”

“Maybe sad wasn’t the right word. Maybe lonely.”

“Lonely? Why do you say that?”

Preacher actually couldn’t care less about the South Jersey chatterbox who’d trapped his brother in a shitty marriage. But because he liked hearing Debbie talk and wanted to keep her talking, he kept the dialogue rolling. Debbie was the polar opposite of Sylvia, and while he didn’t like overly chatty women, he did appreciate some conversation.

Gazing off into the park, Debbie shrugged. “I don’t know. I just got that impression. I think she and your brother are equally unhappy and neither of them knows what to do about it.”

Preacher lit up a cigarette. “You know a lot about unhappy marriages?”

Her eyes found his, flashing fire, fire that was in direct contrast to the vulnerable expression she was suddenly wearing. “A little bit,” she said softly.

Preacher stared at her, wondering what she meant. And as his eyes roamed her face, he found himself noticing things he hadn’t before. The high cut of her cheekbones, the dashes of gold shining in her big brown eyes. And her nose wasn’t just small; it was straight and pretty much perfect. And her lips… shit, he just really fucking liked her lips.

He’d been wrong yesterday when he’d thought her no great beauty. She was beautiful—really beautiful.

And young. Too young for him.

“Preacher?”

“Hmm?”

“Why’d you run away from home?” The vulnerability in her expression had doubled, and Preacher got the impression that his response was important to her.

He took several pulls on his cigarette before answering. “It’s gonna sound stupid,” he said, and shook his head. “But I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.” Dropping his cigarette, he crushed it beneath the toe of his boot. “I felt like the goddamn walls were closin’ in on me.”

Debbie placed her hand on his forearm. “That doesn’t sound stupid,” she said, breathless. “I couldn’t breathe either.”

Their eyes collided, and what Preacher saw in her face gutted him. He’d already guessed there was pain in her past, but he hadn’t speculated the extent of it. Looking at her now, he knew someone had hurt this girl badly. And he didn’t know what to feel first—pity or rage.

“Wheels,” he started to say and then stopped. He didn’t have a clue what to say; he just felt like he needed to say something, anything at all, to try and close that raw, gaping wound he saw in her expression.

A sudden crash caused Debbie to jump, and Preacher spun in a circle, seeking the source of the noise. There was a splintering crack, and Preacher watched as the entire face of a trailer bowed outward and then shuddered, rippling. Then a muffled shout, and the unmistakable thump of a fist hitting something solid—wood or bone—and then the trailer door flew open, the wall of metal quaking around it, and a body came flying through the opening. A man wearing a blood-soaked T-shirt and boxer shorts hit the ground on his back with an audible thump.

A young woman appeared in the doorway, blonde and beautiful, with legs for days and big, bouncy tits, the kind a man could bury his face in and fall asleep happy. Wearing only a bra and a pair of underwear half torn off her, she fled down the steps and dropped to her knees beside the man. “Oh my God!” she cried, horror-stricken. “Are you okay?”

“Get the fuck off me, Christine,” the man hissed, shoving her away.

“It wasn’t my fault!” Wrapping her arms around her middle, she rocked backward. Tears streamed down her cheeks, black rivulets of smeared eye makeup. “I was sleepin’! He attacked me!”

“You motherfuckin’ stupid fuck.”

Preacher jerked. He knew that voice—that unmistakable Midwestern snarl.

Robert “Reaper” West, president of the Hell’s Horsemen Motorcycle Club, stepped out of the shadows of the trailer and into the growing daylight. With arms the size of tree trunks folded across an impressively built chest, and wearing a scowl forged in the bowels of hell, one couldn’t help but get the impression that “Reaper” wasn’t just a nickname.

Preacher instinctively grabbed Debbie’s arm and shoved her behind him. Doing a mental sweep of himself, he quickly pinpointed the blade in his boot.

Hailing from Miles City, Montana, the Hell’s Horsemen Motorcycle Club had been making quite a name for itself lately. It wasn’t a new club by any means, but it was less well-known than the Silver Demons. And their president was suddenly, desperately trying to change all that. Within the last five years, the Hell’s Horsemen had gone from making friends and forging alliances to acting like petty thieves and street thugs.

It had started out small—stealing business associates out from under the noses of other clubs and breaking the faces of anyone who tried to talk some sense into them. It hadn’t made any sense at first, and they had been more or less dismissed as a bunch of country-bumpkin bastards with a collective Napoleon complex.

But then they’d begun to grow. Hell’s Horsemen chapters had begun popping up all over the country, and as the club had tripled in size, so had Reaper’s ego. They’d continued with their overbearing tactics, ostracizing themselves and making powerful enemies. It was now to the point where the mere mention of their name created a sense of unease among other clubs, and when people became apprehensive or afraid, especially when said people didn’t work under the guidelines of a strict moral code, things tended to get messy. Or bloody.

The young man on the ground pushed himself upright. On his feet, his fists clenched, he straightened to his full height. Preacher blinked. Holy shit.

By Preacher’s estimation, Cole West was still a teenager, although he hardly looked like one. He’d doubled in size since Preacher had last seen him, grown into a beast of a man, and was nearly as big as Reaper now. But not even Cole’s size had stopped Reaper from giving his oldest son two black eyes and a bloody nose.

“Boy, you are as dumb as shit,” Reaper snarled. “Fact, you’re even dumber than shit. How many times do I gotta tell you, you don’t stick your nose where it don’t fuckin’ belong?”

Cole, his jaw locked and ticking furiously, his legs spread apart, his fists so tightly clenched that his knuckles had turned white, took a menacing step forward. “Fuck you, old man,” he gritted out.

Reaper smiled—a vicious showing of teeth. Arms raised, he tauntingly gestured his son forward.

Yep. Time to go. This was an explosion waiting to happen, and Preacher had no interest in witnessing it.

Still holding tightly to Debbie’s arm, he slid his hand into hers, interlocking their fingers. They’d taken only a single backward step when Reaper’s head whipped in their direction, his ice-blue stare catching sight of them.

“Well, well, well, what’s this?” Reaper’s gaze narrowed, then widened with cruel delight. “Preacher Fuckin’ Fox, that you, boy? I’d heard you gone and gotten yourself locked up.”

Preacher cursed under his breath. The next person to call him “boy” was going get spoon-fed his balls.

“Free as a bird, as you can see,” Preacher drawled lazily, though he felt anything but lazy—or free, for that matter.

Reaper let out a laugh that was more of a sneer. “Prison finally make a man of you?”

Preacher shrugged. “Depends on your definition of a man.”

If by man Reaper was referring to someone like himself, a madman who apparently ruled his kids like he did his club—with an iron fist—then no, Preacher wasn’t that kind of man. And God willing, he never would be.

Reaper raised a menacing brow. “That so? Maybe you shoulda stayed locked up. Then that pussy-footin’ daddy of yours wouldn’t have to worry ‘bout you fuckin’ everything up. How much did that fuck-up of yours cost the club? I’m bettin’ it was more than you’re worth.”

Preacher’s heart rate picked up. “What are you tryin’ to say?”

Reaper shrugged his massive shoulders. “Nothin’. Just that maybe you were safer behind bars.”

Releasing Debbie, Preacher took a step forward. Reaper’s insinuation wasn’t lost on him—that was a threat if he’d ever heard one. And Preacher didn’t back down from threats. If he’d learned anything at all during his twenty-four years on Earth, it was that men like Reaper didn’t respect you for being the bigger man and walking away. Respect from men like him was hard earned, usually only after you beat it into them.

“Preacher!” Debbie hissed, grabbing his arm. “Don’t!”

Shaking her off, Preacher growled at Reaper. “What the fuck are you really tryin’ to say?”

Reaper grinned—one hell of a sadistic smile meant to egg Preacher on. And it worked. Preacher took another step forward, thinking only about how satisfying it would be to wipe that grin off Reaper’s face. With his fists.

Instead, he found himself face to face with Cole.

“Walk the fuck away, Preacher,” Cole ground out hoarsely between clenched, bloodied teeth. He lowered his voice. “He’s mine.”

Staring into the teenager’s light blue eye, the one that wasn’t swollen shut—an eye alight with so much anger, anger that needed an outlet—gave Preacher pause.

This wasn’t his fight and it was none of his business.

Behind Cole, Reaper began to laugh, a deep, bloodthirsty rumble that would have sent lesser men running for the hills.

Cole’s nostrils flared wide in response, his fists clenched tighter, and the muscles in his arms twitched, bunching restlessly. He was primed and ready to fight, and Preacher knew it was only a matter of minutes before father and son went at it again.

“Give him hell,” Preacher said, dipping his chin and taking a step back. Finding Debbie where he’d left her—the stupid girl didn’t seem to know when to run—he snatched up her arm and strode quickly toward the dirt pathway that would lead them back to their campsite.

• • •

Holy crap.

Debbie glanced at where her arm was being squeezed uncomfortably inside Preacher’s unforgiving grip, then up at his face, her gaze tracing the hard edge of his jaw all the way up to the tightness around his eyes. He was tense, practically vibrating with unspent energy and aggression.

She didn’t blame him. That had been intense. And those men? She didn’t really know how to describe them. Combined with their encounter with the Road Warriors, intense didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the type of people Preacher knew.

 “Friend of yours?” she asked, hoping some humor would lighten his mood.

He glanced down at her briefly, his dark eyes nearly black. “I’m gonna tell you right now, stay the fuck away from those two and anyone else wearin’ a Hell’s Horsemen cut.”

Debbie’s eyes narrowed. Did he really think she was as stupid as all that? She liked to think she was a somewhat decent judge of character. Maybe she hadn’t been at first, but she’d gotten smarter as time had passed. Just like she’d learned where to look for the things she needed, she’d learned to read people, figuring out who she could and couldn’t scam, who was safe to hitch a ride with and who was not.

“Can’t be pullin’ stupid stunts like you did with the Road Warriors,” he continued to mutter. “Gonna find yourself in a world of shit.”

Debbie gaped at him. “Are you kidding? I was trying to help you!”

Preacher stopped suddenly and turned to face her. He lifted one dark, questioning brow. “Help me? Seems to me like you’ve been in nothin’ but trouble.”

With a huff, she pulled her arm free from his grasp. “You’re the one who knows all these—these crazy people! You’re the one who’s—who’s been in prison!” She hadn’t so quickly forgotten that juicy revelation.

Shadows swirled in Preacher’s gaze. His eyes narrowed, his expression turning cold, hard. “That scare you?” he asked evenly. “You think I’m the next Son of Sam or somethin’?”

Debbie didn’t appreciate his twisted humor. Glaring up at him, she snapped, “I don’t know, are you?”

They both fell silent as an elderly couple passed by, regarding them curiously. All around them the park was waking up. People were puttering around their campsites, while others headed to the bathhouses.

Flashing the passing couple a quick smile, Preacher grabbed hold of Debbie’s arm and pulled her off the path into a small grove of maple trees.

“Don’t seem to me like you’ve got a single fuckin’ clue what you’re doin’ out here.” His hand on her arm flexed and squeezed. “What would have happened if I hadn’t saved your ass at the truck stop?” he demanded.

Debbie dropped both her bag and her sneakers and, with a hard shove to Preacher’s chest, broke free from his grip. “What would have happened?” she spat. “Nothing that I couldn’t handle!

“You don’t know me,” she continued, shaking her head furiously. “I can take care of myself!”

Eyes flashing, Preacher opened his mouth, and then promptly closed it. Unmoving, he breathed deliberately slow, as if he were fighting something back. The violent storm brewing in his eyes began to fade. Sighing, he ran a hand down over his mouth.

“Shit,” he muttered. “Shit, Wheels, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean that. That asshole back there had me all worked up. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

He sighed again. Looking at her, he held up his hands in defeat. “You’re right. You can take care of yourself. I watched you in action. I’m only sayin’… you shouldn’t have to.”

Debbie sucked in a sharp breath. That statement, you shouldn’t have to, had been both a punch in the gut and a soft caress. What did he mean? Was it a well-intentioned observation or… something more?

“Drugs,” Preacher said suddenly.

Debbie blinked. “What?”

“Drugs,” he repeated. “Dope? Junk? That’s why I went to prison. Got caught with some shit, did two years. Got out a few months back.” He gave her a crooked smile. “So you know I’m not some maniac killer.”

Though Debbie’s body was still buzzing with adrenaline, it was quickly waning, and she offered Preacher a small smile. “I didn’t think you were. But that guy back there…” She made a face that drew a chuckle from Preacher.

“Is that what you do, then?” she asked. “Is that what your club does?”

Preacher pressed a finger to Debbie’s lips. “Me,” he said quietly. “I went to prison for drugs. Not the club. Never the club. The club doesn’t do anything. And don’t ever let my dad hear you talkin’ about the club.”

Debbie stared up at him. For such a threatening statement, there was nothing currently threatening about Preacher. No longer tense, his shoulders were loose. Even his eyes were soft as he gazed down at her.

And his finger? The one that was slowly tracing the outline of her mouth? Debbie stared up at Preacher, her body buzzing with an entirely different feeling.

He moved closer, close enough that Debbie could feel the heat from his body whisper across her skin. She felt her nipples harden, and a delicious ache flared to life low in her belly.

The pad of his thumb paused on her bottom lip. He was going to kiss her again. He was definitely going to kiss her again.

Then Preacher’s finger was gone, as was he. Bending down, he scooped up her sneakers and backpack.

“I’m hungry,” he announced. “You hungry?” He didn’t wait for her to answer before striding quickly back to the path. “Fucking starving to death…” he continued to mutter.

Debbie had to take a moment to catch her breath and find her composure, and then she hurried after him.