Jack & Coke (The Uncertain Saints Book 2) (2 page)

God, if there was any way I could rewind a year, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

I would’ve never invited my now wife, Jennifer, to the club party.

Jennifer was the exact opposite of Annie.

Rude, opinionated and selfish.

Now she was six months pregnant with my child, and I hated every fucking second of my life.

“You’re welcome,” I said roughly. “I’m gonna have a few men over here in the next few days to install an alarm and make sure nobody can ever do that to you again.”

“Mig, what the ever loving fuck are you doing over there?” My wife screeched.

I winced and slowly dropped my hand, looking over at Jennifer like one would a pile of fish heads and vomit.

Then I turned around when I saw she was dressed in little to nothing.

How
not
surprising.

The woman didn’t know what the fuck clothes were.

I’d get home in the evenings from work, and she’d be wearing clothes that revealed her ass, her breasts and belly.

And honestly, for a six-month pregnant woman, she looked great.

But nobody needed to see that.

And I hated that she went out in the front yard to ‘greet’ me when I got home from work.

What she was really doing was trying to make me jealous.

Little did she know, I couldn’t get jealous of any other man when it came to her.

I would have to care about her first, and I didn’t.

And I’d give her up in a heartbeat if she wasn’t having my kid.

“Be safe. Make sure you lock your doors,” I ordered Annie.

I saw the pity on her face as I turned and walked down her front walk, crossing through her yard into my own.

I walked into the house, completely ignoring the fact that Jennifer was still looking at me with suspicion in her eyes.

I’d never cheat on her, but she constantly accused me of it.

“Annie’s house was broken into,” I said by way of explanation as I made it to the kitchen.

I grabbed a beer.

And just in time, too.

“I can’t fucking believe that you left me here to go save another woman,” my wife hissed at me.

I narrowed my eyes on my beer bottle as a thousand different things went through my head at once.

I can’t believe you trapped me into marrying you.

I can’t believe you gave me a date rape drug to make me fuck you.

I can’t believe we now have a baby on the way and I can’t fucking leave because my morals don’t allow me to leave a woman that’s carrying my child.

I can’t believe you think I care even a single bit about you. If you weren’t carrying my child, I could give any less of a crap about you.

I didn’t answer her.

Instead, I stayed quiet, even though every inch of my being wanted to yell at her…tear her apart with my words.

I slept next to the woman every single fucking night, and my skin crawled the entire time.

Instead, I stayed awake and watched the window beyond my room, wishing it was Annie in bed with me instead of the woman currently looking at me like I’d skinned her pet rabbit in front of her eyes.

I flipped on the TV once I reached the living room, ignoring Jennifer and the fact that it was nearly four AM.

I had to be up in less than an hour anyway, so what was the point of trying to go back to bed?

Then again, I hadn’t slept well in over four months since I’d married Jennifer.

“Are you just going to fucking ignore me for the rest of the night?” She hissed.

I finally looked away from the TV, unaware what was even on, and stared at her.

“Go away.”

Jennifer narrowed her eyes.

“You’re my husband, I can talk to you whenever I fuckin’ want to,” she murmured.

I narrowed my eyes at her.

“That’s crass. Stop talking like a piece of trash and leave me alone,” I growled, turning my eyes back to the TV.

“I don’t even know why I married you. I should divorce you,” she hissed.

I wish you would. Then I’d be off the hook.

She wouldn’t do that, though.

Not with my father being who he was.

What Jennifer saw was dollar signs, meaning she would never leave.

I smiled to myself.

What she didn’t know was that I couldn’t touch my money until I was forty years of age.

I kept my accounts to myself, too.

I paid for Jennifer’s doctor bills, the house note, all the utility bills and food.

What I didn’t pay for were Jennifer’s clothes, her car note, nor her credit card bills.

I’d also made her sign a pre-nup that was not only iron clad, but it gave her absolutely nothing.

Nothing.

And the first time she cheated, she’d get slapped with a custody suit a mile wide.

And she
would
cheat.

It was only a matter of time.

I didn’t expect it to happen yet, seeing as how she was pregnant with my kid, but I wouldn’t put it past her to try.

Nobody in this town would do her, though.

She’d have to go find it somewhere where everyone didn’t know me.

“I wish you didn’t treat me so badly. I’m your wife and the mother of your child,” she hissed.

I looked back at her.

“And how did you get to be that again? Was it my beer that you dropped the drug in, or my Jack and Coke?” I challenged.

She snapped her mouth shut, knowing when it was time to shut up and leave.

Which was good for her, because I was about to fuckin’ lose it.

She left with a stomp of her feet, and I smiled.

Goddamn that woman was a piece of work.

I turned back to the TV, groaning when Annie’s commercial came on.

God, now that woman was somethin’.

She was a fuckin’ beauty, and I’d give my left nut to have her.

“
Come down and visit me,”
my Annie on the commercial smiled at the camera. “
I’ll give you a massage and style that you’ll love.”

Maybe a massage was in my future.

Almost every hand you’ve ever shaken has had a dick in it at some point.

-Proven Fact

Mig

“Can you repeat that? I don’t think I heard you quite right,” I said into the mic I had in my hand.

I was working a case with the local Sheriff’s Department, and I was currently about five minutes away from the only diner in town to get food.

Something I’d told to about three sheriff’s deputies, one of those being my good friend, and MC brother, Ridley.

Ridley was a member of the Uncertain Saints with me. He’d also been one of the men that’d recruited me for the club.

“I said there’s a man wielding a chain saw at the diner. I’m asking you to be cautious when you go,” Ridley replied seriously.

I pinched the bridge of my nose with my forefinger and thumb, and sighed.

“Got it,” I said, pulling into the driveway that would lead me down to the diner.

The diner was located on Uncertain’s claim to fame, The Caddo River.

I dropped the mic into its holder and got out of my company issued truck.

I was a DEA agent stationed in Uncertain, Texas.

The Caddo River was also the reason I was here as an agent.

Caddo was a hotbed of drug and firearm transport activity.

After about four major busts within two weeks of each other, the DEA opened a satellite office in the little town of Uncertain.

The DEA and the Texas Rangers were on a joint task force that was commissioned to combat the drug and firearm trade that was taking over this small town. Although it’d slowed down since we’d started it, there was still a lot of work to do.

Movement in my peripheral vision had me turning in time to see Griffin, a fellow member of the Uncertain Saints, as well as one of the Texas Rangers on the joint taskforce, walking toward me.

“See you’re in that cage instead of on your bike,” Griffin said, swinging his leg over his bike to dismount.

“My boss got upset with me that I had a ‘perfectly good company vehicle’ that I wasn’t using,” I answered as we both walked around to the back of the diner.

“You
know about the chainsaw wielder?” I asked.

Griffin nodded. “Heard it on my scanner,” he said, indicating the portable radio on his belt.

When he was on his bike, he had to take the portable radio since it didn’t have a scanner like his company-issued vehicle did.

Something I did as well when I was on my bike.

I took the issued vehicle every couple of days to make my boss think I was using it.

Mostly I hated it, and usually tried to take my bike since riding in a cage made me feel closed in and claustrophobic.

See, I was an adrenaline junkie, and nothing gave me more of a rush than flying a F-16 through the sky at Mach 2.

The closest I could get to that feeling was riding my bike at over a hundred miles an hour. Sure, it wasn’t fifteen hundred miles an hour like I could do in the air, but it was nothing to sneeze at either.

I nodded, and we both made our way into the back door of the diner that led into the kitchen.

“You’re gonna go get him, right?” Elton, the cook for the diner, asked.

I nodded and pushed the kitchen door open slightly to see what was going on, and froze.

A familiar woman with dark brown hair, a very distinctive tattoo on her shoulder, from collarbone to elbow, of a peacock, and a look of death in her eyes, reared back and slammed the napkin holder over the man wielding the chainsaw’s head.

The chainsaw dropped to the floor with a clatter, sputtering for a short time before the engine finally died.

The diner was completely silent as the man who’d had the chainsaw in his hands turned around with a look of rage in his eyes.

“Freeze,” I said to the man as he reared back his hand to strike out at Annie.

Annie didn’t look scared in the least as she backed away from the man whose fist was still raised.

And then even further until her back was against the counter

I wanted to reach out and touch her.

My hands practically burned with the urge,
but I didn’t.

Instead, I moved around the counter and placed my body in front of hers, protecting her from another man that wanted to do her harm for the second time in less than twenty-four hours.

“Put your hands behind your head,” I ordered.

I sounded like a fuckin’ broken record.

First this morning, then this afternoon.

The chainsaw wielder raised his hands part of the way up, albeit very reluctantly.

“Turn the fuck around and put your hands on your fuckin’ head!”

Obviously, he wasn’t moving fast enough for Griffin’s liking, because at Griffin’s shouted order, the man jumped, turned and placed his hands all the way on top of his head.

Griffin had him cuffed in seconds, and I finally replaced my weapon in the holster under my arm.

“Nice swing,” I said, tossing that comment over my shoulder at Annie.

Annie’s brilliant smile lit up the fuckin’ room.

“My father taught me everything I know,” she responded cheekily.

I winked at her and turned around, addressing Francine behind the counter.

“Can you make me and Griffin a burger and fries to go?” I
asked her.

She blinked, then nodded slowly.

She was one of the oldest waitresses I’d ever seen, but she was damn fine at her job.

She reminded me a lot of my grandmother, and I couldn’t wait to introduce my Nonnie to her.

They’d get along famously.

I’d been stationed in Uncertain, Texas for a while now, and not once had I convinced her to come down.

“As soon as you get yourself a fine woman, I’ll come,”
was always my Nonnie’s answer.

My Nonnie had yet to meet my wife, and I hoped she never had to.

I planned on taking our child up to visit Nonnie and my mother the week he or she was born.

What I didn’t plan on doing was taking Jennifer with me.

I knew it’d be a fight, but I didn’t really care at this point.

Even the thought of my Nonnie being in Jennifer’s presence made my stomach churn.

My Nonnie was what you would call softhearted.

She loved everyone and everything.

I had no doubt that Jennifer would get my Nonnie to love her.

Jennifer was a manipulative bitch, and she’d use absolutely anything to get closer to me.

To sink her claws in further.

“You should go into the protection business or something,” Annie supplied as I turned to survey the room.

I looked down at her twinkling eyes, and snorted.

“You do know I’m a DEA
agent, right?” I asked.

She nodded.

“I guessed you were by the shirts I see you wearing on your way to work,” she teased.

She was out in her yard every morning watering; I saw her every morning as I left.

It wasn’t a surprise that she knew what I wore to work.

“Here you are,” Francine said from behind me.

“What the hell?” I asked.

It took them less than three minutes to get it done.

“It’s on the house, too. I snagged another order so you wouldn’t have to wait any longer,” Francine explained.

I nodded.

“Oh, okay. Thank you,” I acknowledged.

Francine smiled a little wobbly.

“You deserve that and so much more,” she said emphatically.

Annie

I watched Mig talk to Griffin as surreptitiously as I could.

“What are you looking at?” My sister, Tasha, asked me.

I tilted my head in the direction of Mig and Griffin.

“The one on the left. With the tight black jeans and black t-shirt that says DEA on the breast pocket,” I whispered.

My sister’s eyes went to Mig, and she smiled.

“That’s your neighbor, isn’t it?” She confirmed.

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s him.”

“Who’s the other guy?” Tasha
asked.

I glanced quickly in their direction, then turned back to my cold burger and limp French fries.

“The other one is Griffin Storm.
He’s married to Lenore, you remember her, right?” I asked.

“She’s the one that owns Uncertain Pleasures, correct?” She said, popping a cherry tomato in her mouth and looking at me with a raised brow.