Her Grizzly Outlaw (12 page)

Tarren
looked out the window and
watched her climb into the front seat of a bright red Mustang. The guy in the
driver’s seat had a hell of a lot of piercings and tattoos, and
Tarren
couldn’t help but realize he was a lot more bad
boyish than the last guy Tawny had gone out with.

“Ugh, her new boy-toy,”
Tarren
said under her breath, and she didn’t think Alexis
had heard her until she answered.

“I bet your dad’s real pleased
about that.”

Tarren
continue to watch Tawny smile at
the pierced out guy. But what she noticed then, just the slightest of
expressions, was when Tawny glanced over at the garage where Dakota stood. And
what she seemed even weirder was when Dakota looked up at Tawny, and this angry
mask covered his face for an instant.

“You should have seen his face
when my dad caught them all but screwing in that douche’s car.” Although to her
sister’s credit though Tawny might be more rebellious when it came to getting
her father worked up with the bad boys she went out with, she was actually
pretty tame in general. And
Tarren
knew for a fact
she was still a virgin, so whatever this wild streak was that had bitten Tawny
in ass over the last year or so, she hoped it didn’t get any worse.

“And this would be my cue to
leave. No way am I hearing about Dallas’s kids and that shit. No fucking way.”

Tarren
turned around and saw Stinger
mumbling under his breath. He grabbed the bag of food and left them alone in
the office. As soon as the door shut behind him they burst out laughing.

“You’d think the way these old
men act when sex is being talked about that they were virgins back in the day
or something.”
Tarren
started chuckling harder. She
moved closer to the desk where Alexis was and sat down in the chair across from
her.

“Yeah, but I think hearing about
the kids having sex by the men they consider brothers probably crosses the line
for them,” Alexis said. They both started laughing harder that time.

“So, I feel like it’s been
forever since we actually talked, even though we did when you first got back,”
Tarren
said, and started picking at the edge of her shirt.
There was a lot she wanted to tell Alexis, stuff she hadn’t said that concerned
her and Lucas. Since she’d seen him last week at the clubhouse for the
gathering the club had thrown, it had been a little awkward, a little tense,
and she had stayed away since then.
Tarren
wanted to
get her thoughts together, wanted to figure out if she wanted to just put all
the years she had loved Lucas behind her and focus on starting her life, or if
she should lay it all
bare
for him. He had texted her
a few times, wanting to meet up, but their schedules had been vastly different,
and she hadn’t seen him since.

She stared at Alexis, and wanted
to be open and honest with her friend. It wasn’t that she was trying to keep it
from the girl she considered a best friend. It was more of the fact that she
didn’t know how to handle all of this.

“I know. I’m sorry I’ve just been
swamped with all this information from my mom and Stinger, and I want to make
sure I get it all right,” Alexis said with a little defeat in her voice. She
leaned back in her chair as she stared at
Tarren
.

“I know, girl. I just miss you.”
She reached across the table and grabbed and picked up one of the invoices.
Taren knitted her brows as she read it, seeing a list of serial numbers, makes
and models, and names. “Is this for guns?”
Tarren
held the invoice out to Alexis.

“Who knows what any of this stuff
is really for, if you get my drift,” Alexis said in a softer voice.

Tarren
nodded and dropped the paper
back on the table. “Yeah, I am sure there is more illegal money floating around
than the legal kind.” It wasn’t a secret to anyone that the club had to make a
profit somehow, and doing it the “right” way only brought in so much revenue.

The silence stretched between
them, and then
Tarren
just got right down to it. “So,
I have been meaning to tell you—”

“Do I need to be sitting down for
this?” Alexis smiled.

“Funny,”
Tarren
said in a bland voice, knowing that Alexis was trying to make the situation a
little lighter, because even
Tarren
heard the strain
in her voice. “You remember when I told you I fucked Lucas? Or I guess it was
the other way around because all I could do was
hang
on for that ride.”

Alexis shook her head and then
started chuckling. “Please, no details.”

Tarren
was not about to go into it with
her, but also not knowing where to start. She wanted to talk to her family
first about this, tell her dad about it all and see where he stood. But Alexis
had been there for her the entire time they were growing up. She was like
Tarren’s
sister, and she wanted to be honest. “No, but,
well, I thought it was only going to be that one night,
ya
know? Anyway it seemed like that since we went our separate ways and all for a while,
but then things kind of picked back up.” Of course Alexis knew about Lucas
going away for those last couple of years, and that they had been together
sexually during high school. But
Tarren
hadn’t told
her about the sex they had had together right before he had taken off to
Arizona, or the time they had gotten back together in the last six months. She
had been embarrassed, confused, and had wanted to just put it behind her. And
“picking back up” really meant they had slept together, had this weird relationship
now, and she didn’t know where the hell they stood.

“So you’re Lucas’s old lady?”

Honestly she didn’t know what in
the hell was going on between them, if anything at all. Lucas had said he
wanted to talk to her later, but was he trying to rekindle their friendship
only? Being an old lady was serious, and of course that was what she wanted,
but was that what Lucas wanted? When she came clean about her feelings how
would he feel, react?
Tarren
wanted things to
desperately work out after they talked and she decided to tell him exactly what
she felt inside for him. But she also knew that they had to tread lightly.

So, she did what she did best.
She played it off as if it were nothing.
Tarren
held
up her hands. “Hold the fuck up now, let’s not
get
crazy.
Being an old lady is serious shit, you know that.” She felt stupid, ridiculous
even for playing this off as if it were nothing more than a few sex sessions
with the Grizzly. It was so much more than that.

Alexis nodded.
“So
then what?
You’re like boyfriend and girlfriend then?” That label was
weak compared to what she felt for him, and not even what they were. They
weren’t anything but two people that had shared some pretty incredible sex
together, had a few awkward moments, and that seemed like strangers when they
were in the same room anymore.

“You want to be his old lady,
don’t you?” Alexis said more quietly now, and
Tarren
knew that her friend could read her even when she was trying to play it off.
“Why don’t you just talk to him? You guys have something between you. I know
you do because I can hear it in your voice whenever you’ve talked about him.”

Tarren
exhaled loudly. She picked at
the hem of her tank top and then rested her head back on the chair after a few
more seconds. “Yeah, you have always been the one to see through my bullshit.”
She stared at the ceiling.

Lucas had a past that made the
term man-whore a reality, but he wasn’t like that anymore, at least she didn’t
see him in that light. He didn’t flaunt and brag about the pussy he had bagged,
or make out with and all but fuck club whores whenever she had seen him at the
club after they had slept together. Those years apart had done something to
him, had softened that hard exterior he always wore, and she noticed it
whenever he looked at her, spoke to her even.

“If you care for him—which I can
see on your face that you do—then you need to tell him.”

Tarren
nodded. They spoke about it for
a few more minutes. Alexis trying to get to the heart of it all was obvious,
and she wanted to just spill it all out, but not at the clubhouse. “I honestly
don’t know what Lucas wants out of life...”

Alexis smiled softly, and
Tarren
knew that no matter what happened she’d always have
someone she could talk to, no matter what. She may not have said it all to Alexis,
but her friend had known.

Tarren
stood. “Thanks for listening to
me. I honestly have had no one I trust as much as I do you, Alexis.”

And then Lucas and
Nico
pulled up on their Harleys, and the sound of their
engines was so loud it blocked everything else out.

They both stood and walked over
to the window to stare out of it.
Nico
and Lucas were
off their bikes and speaking to each other. And then like out of some cheesy
porn movie, Red, a club whore for the Grizzly patched in kids, came sauntering
out of the clubhouse. She stopped beside
Nico
, but
instead of her going after Alexis’s man, she moved her red claws toward Lucas.
Red all but pressed her tits against the side of Lucas’s arm, and when he
turned away, disengaging her from him, she walked over to his bike. God, that
damn slut was like watching a train wreck, and
Tarren
wanted to look away but couldn’t.

Red moved her hands along the
gleaming chrome and leather of Lucas’s bike, and although she couldn’t hear
what the bitch was saying, her body language told them she was trying to seduce
Lucas.

“God, what a skank,” Alexis said,
and they both started laughing. It pissed
Tarren
off
for sure, but she did love the fact that Lucas didn’t even pay attention or act
like he cared.

“Yeah, well at least she isn’t
all up on her like I thought she might be,”
Tarren
muttered under her breath. Red was pretty much posing on the bikes like she was
in some kind of damn Harley magazine.

“If you guys are together he
wouldn’t do anything to betray you.”

But they weren’t together, no
matter how much
Tarren
wanted that. She looked over
at her friend. Alexis clearly thought there was more there than the reality of
the situation, and maybe she would be with Lucas once they spoke and once she
came clean. Hell, he might tell her he was in love with her as well. Her heart
sped up at that thought.
Nico
headed toward the
clubhouse, and she knew Lucas would be coming in soon, too. She didn’t want to
see him right now, not after all this time, and the awkward exchanges they had
had over the last few years, but her car was parked right by his damn bike.
Yes, they had spoken just last week when she had come to his welcoming party,
but even then the exchange had been strange. She needed to get home, sit down
alone in her room, with the quiet around her and only her thoughts as her
company.
Tarren
needed to decide how she wanted to go
through with this.

“Okay, I better get out of here.”
Tarren
turned away from the skank and gave Alexis a
hug.
Nico
was already moving into the meeting
room,
and
Tarren
kept walking
through the main room, passed the pool table, over by the front door, and
looked out the window once more to see only Red still standing by Lucas’s bike.
She hated that she was so nervous around him, that things had changed so much
between them over the years.
Tarren
was a coward, and
weak for wanting to avoid him until she figured shit out.

She grabbed her sunglasses out of
her purse, opened the door, and before she stepped outside she was slamming
into Lucas’s hard chest. He grabbed her arms to steady her, looked at her in
the face, and this pained expression crossed his face.

“
Tarren
,”
he said her name low, like he was breathless almost. God, he looked so good, so
masculine, and a little dirty because he had been clearly working on his bike.
But he smelled clean, like fresh sweat and a mixture of his cologne. He was
only twenty-two, the same age as she was, but he seemed more masculine, older
even. She felt like she was falling into this hole, and she didn’t know if she
would land on solid ground.

Her hands started shaking, her
breath became shallow, and she didn’t understand why all of a sudden she felt
like this. Yes, she had been nervous, but right now, seeing
him
again, feeling her love for him grow even more, had her going into some kind of
shock. Pushing away from him, she uttered an apology, not feeling like she was
herself around him anymore, and tried to control her nerves. They stared at
each other for a moment, and then she was moving outside.

“
Tarren
,
wait.”

She glanced over her shoulder,
and slowed her steps, not wanting to be weak and run away from him.