A Very Christopher Christmas (A Death Dwellers MC Novella) (5 page)

As she reached her husband, she realized his asshole of a blood brother sat next to him, surrounded by their friends.
 

Stopping behind Mortician, she cleared her throat, and the handsome enforcer turned. The dreads framing his face covered his diamond studs.
 

“Red,” he greeted, putting his arm around her neck and drawing her into their circle.
 

She preened at the attention, grinning widely.
 

“Not Red tonight.” Johnnie pulled her away from Mortician and into his arms. “She’s Queen Marie and I’m her swashbuckler.”
 

“You mean you her fuckin’ dickhead,” Outlaw grumbled around a beer.
 

“Fuck off,” Kendall growled, searching Johnnie’s area to make sure he wasn’t lowering himself to their standards with lowly beer. His glass of whiskey pleased her. “Don’t start with your bullshit and upset me, Outlaw. I have seven weeks left until I deliver my daughter and I’ve been really tired. That’s why Johnnie suggested Rory and I stay home tonight instead of walking through a strange neighborhood.”
 

“First, cunt, it wasn’t a strange fuckin’ neighborhood. Derby and Gypsy live there, so shut the fuck up.”
 

Derby was the president of one of their support clubs, and Gypsy was his long-suffering old lady. Kendall had seen the asshole in action for herself. How Gypsy stayed with such a cheater was beyond the realm of even the lowest self-esteem.
 

“Her name’s Kendall,” Johnnie snarled. “Not cunt. I’m tired of telling you that.”
 

“I’m fuckin’ tired hearin’ it, so we fuckin’ even,” Outlaw retorted.
 

“Forget it, my love,” Kendall inserted, lifting her chin, determined to show she was the bigger person. “Where are the girls?”
 

“At the table,” Johnnie answered, rubbing their noses together and kissing her mouth.
 

Arms around Johnnie’s neck, Kendall smoothed her fingers over the blond hair at his nape. “We can’t stay long. I’m really tired. I just wanted everyone to see my costume.”
 

“Then you coulda took a fuckin’ picture and spared me havin’ to look in your miserable fuckin’ face.”
 

“Damn! Savage ass words, Outlaw,” Digger said, shaking his head, while everyone else studiously ignored the asshole.
 

“I loathe you,” Kendall snapped.
 

“I don’t give a fuck, cuz you can’t hate me worse than I despise your fuckin’ ass.”
 

Johnnie jumped to his feet. “You can’t let shit rest, can you, Christopher? If you don’t have anything nice to say to my wife, please don’t say anything to her at all.”
 

“Fuckin’ fine with me.”
 

Even if Outlaw was too much of an asshole to see how his attitude affected Johnnie, Kendall noticed. Her renewed antagonism with his brother upset him. It upset her, too.
 

Bygones had been bygones, except Outlaw had never given in and offered Kendall the chance at friendship. Everyone else had. In the past few months, Kendall went out of her way to undo any similarities that Johnnie had to Outlaw. She abhorred the asshole. Tonight, seeing Johnnie’s bleakness made her realize how her war with his brother affected him. She hated seeing Johnnie so unhappy. For that reason alone, she needed to change her modus operandi and find a way to break through to Outlaw and make him like her some kind of way.
 

“Let me say ‘
hi
’ to Meggie, then we have to leave, Johnnie,” she said in subdued tones, her feelings of hopeless despair as horrible as her irritability that turned her into a raving bitch.
 

After Matilda’s birth, Kendall had one more pregnancy to get through, hopefully, twins like Meggie had.
 

Kendall wanted at least three children, but being off her antidepressants was hard. Admittedly, before she’d found out about her pregnancy, she’d decided to stop them. The drugs affected her sexual desire. They affected her behavior at work and her performance in the courtroom when she’d just gotten in good with the law firm again after the
Spoon
incident.
 

Brooks forgave her enough to offer her a junior partnership, meaning she had to bring in the cases to retain her status. To bring in cases, she needed to win the ones she was assigned.
 

Lucky her, pregnancy was the perfect excuse not to take the meds. While she really didn’t want to hurt Matilda, she wanted parts of the old her back. Hopefully, she’d get pregnant again right away after this birth. Rory was no problem at all, well on his way to being a perfect little gentleman under her orders. Kendall would also start Matilda’s discipline early on. Have her potty-trained at an early age just like her son was.
 

“Gorgeous?”
 

Not wanting to worry Johnnie with her tumultuous thoughts, Kendall smiled. “Roxy said we could leave Rory with her for the entire night.”
 

Johnnie gave her a smoldering look. “That so?”
 

“Yes.”
 

He got to his feet, his dark breeches, white shirt, tan vest, tricorne hat, and eye patch turning him into a full-blown rogue and making her pussy ache to feel him inside of her. “Find Megan to give your regards, so we can get out of here, gorgeous.”
 

“Wait, John Boy, we didn’t toast yet,” Val pointed out. “Surviving the trauma of trick-or-treating.”
 

Regret entered Johnnie’s eyes and he turned to her. She knew he was about to ask to stay longer. But they rarely got time alone and she wanted them to have it tonight. Ever since she’d restarted her campaign against Outlaw, she’d also limited Rory’s socializing with the other kids at the MC,
especially
CJ.
 

“One more drink?”
 

Kendall stiffened at Johnnie’s question and he shrugged, smiling sheepishly. Disappointment dampened his enthusiasm, but he had his priorities straight and always put his family before whatever juvenile thing his club brothers wanted him to do.
 

“Another time,” he said. “Or we can do a quick toast now while Kendall finds Megan.”
 

“No!” Kendall inserted quickly, horrified at the thought. “One toast will turn into ten and we’ll never leave.”
 

“You’re right, sweetheart,” he said immediately, wilting a little more.
 

Kendall scowled at Val, annoyed he’d put the idea of a drink in her husband’s head. “Five minutes,” she commanded, then turned on her heel and marched to their usual spot in the club, where she knew she’d find Outlaw’s old lady.
 

“You’re a witch, Meggie,” Kendall chirped as she glided to the table with as much grace as possible, considering how close she was to delivering her daughter. “How original.” She smiled at Bunny’s adorable costume and indicated the whiskers. “So cute.” Zoann was dressed as a sexy nurse. Kendall snapped her mouth shut at the woman’s glare and she decided to withhold any comments. She didn’t want to start a big stink because Zoann couldn’t take a little honesty. “Lady Liberty,” she said in approval to Bailey.
 

“Hey Kendall,” Meggie said with a smile, setting off a chorus of greetings from the others. “Sorry you were feeling too bad to come with us,” she continued once Kendall responded. “The kids had a lot of fun. Rory would’ve enjoyed himself.”
 

A part of Kendall feared she was doing irreparable damage to her relationships with these women by her attitude. “Maybe next time,” she said lightly.
 

“Maybe,” Meggie responded, sounding as if it didn’t matter to her one way or the other. As if she wasn’t just a girl with a bunch of babies, a chauvinistic pig for a husband and a job in her sister-in-law’s business, couched as a partnership.
She
didn’t have the career. Zoann did.
 

Given those facts, Kendall could never understand why she was always the one made out to be the pitiful freak show when Meggie didn’t even have a high school diploma.
 

“Ready, gorgeous?” Johnnie asked as he walked up to the table.
 

“I’ll see you all later,” she said, not giving Johnnie a chance to get into a conversation with any of them. Well, not Meggie, since the girl wasn’t talking to Johnnie, still in a snit over the rightful way he’d screamed at her when Outlaw was stabbed.
 

Meggie not talking to Johnnie was all the better, to Kendall’s way of thinking.
 

It took them several minutes of stops and starts to make it out of the club and into the parking lot, where the party had spilled beneath a bright moon and starry sky. Grunts and groaning captured her attention and disgusted anger hit her at the sight of three bikers leaning against the building, having their cocks sucked by three Bobs.
 

“Ignore them.” Johnnie’s calm and simple words burst her jealousy.
 

However, the scene just reaffirmed her decision that Johnnie spend as less time as possible at the club, even as she swore she’d find a way to get on Outlaw’s good side.
 

 

The next afternoon, Johnnie walked through the deserted clubhouse and found it, for the most part, back to normal with almost no signs of the party from the night before. Only some Halloween decorations remained to be taken down and then replaced. Johnnie knew the deal. In a few days, the place would look like a fucking Pilgrim settlement with Megan’s ideas of Thanksgiving shit.
 

Why Christopher allowed her and the old ladies to fuck up the clubhouse, Johnnie would never know. That motherfucker had the audacity to talk about the way he gave Kendall her way when Megan hung shit better suited for schoolrooms than a motorcycle clubhouse. Christopher’s reasoning was the other old ladies enjoyed it as well,
and
, supposedly, Megan always hung decorations because of the club parties she planned. Never because he spoiled the fuck out of her.
 

On his way to the boardroom, Johnnie stopped to chat with Slipper, the brother in charge of the Probate fuckheads on the clean-up detail. Slipper’s hair hadn’t commiserated with shampoo and water in days, but other than random hygiene problems, he was a good fellow.
 

Johnnie clapped Slipper on the shoulder. “Keep up the good work, brother.”
 

Slipper sucked on a cigarette and puffed out his chest. “Thanks, John Boy.”
 

Scowling at the crepe bats hanging from the ceiling, Johnnie stomped down the hallway, flipping off the Grim Reaper mural. Laughter boomed from the boardroom and jealousy surged through him. He rarely participated in shooting-the-shit with the guys any more if it wasn’t by accident. During their weekly, rotating dinners at each other’s houses, Kendall clung to him and insisted Rory show what a “sweet, mannerly boy” he was.
 

Fuck, he missed the woman his wife had become when she’d followed her doctor’s orders and couldn’t wait until she returned. Johnnie hid a calendar in his closet, marking off the days until their daughter’s due date. As of today, she’d arrive in forty-eight days.
 

Thank fuck.
 

As he pushed open the door, he noticed the bottles of alcohol already in the center of the table. His whiskey was there, too, but not the glass he now required. He agreed with Kendall that children imitated what they saw. If he acted like a barbarian and drank from a bottle, Rory would do the same.
 

He sighed, missing the days when he’d just swigged from a bottle. Drank beer. Laughed with abandon. Kendall was teaching Rory the difference between an inside voice and an outside voice, so Johnnie had to follow suit.
 

“If it ain’t Black-Fucking-Beard,” Christopher said with a smirk, standing up and leaning toward the center of the table to grab his bottle of tequila.
 

Val looked up from his phone. “Fuck, about time. We’ve been waiting for half an hour.”
 

“I had duties to my family,” he snapped, stalking to a cabinet and finding a glass.
 

“You one shady motherfucker,” Digger said with a snort.
 

Johnnie stiffened. “What the fuck’s that mean?”
 

“That we all got fucking families, but our asses here, son,” Mort growled, throwing Johnnie a dirty look.
 

“You don’t have pregnant wives and a young son.” Johnnie sat in a seat across from Christopher, just then noticing Cash on a laptop, typing away. By the seriousness on his face, it was club business. “What’s going on?”
 

Christopher scrubbed a hand over his face, wiping away his scowl. “Remember the fuckin’ arms deal?”