Price of Angels (34 page)

              “I’m with you so far.”

              “Now all the boys vote, and they have offices, but it’s mostly a monarchy, with a president in power. Prospects have no civil rights within the club. The president is the absolute authority. The law is something to get around. It’s a way of life,” Ava explained. “Not a hobby. One that most gently-bred women with college backgrounds simply cannot wrap their heads around. Women don’t ride, you understand. They don’t vote, and they don’t make club decisions. Bitches ride bitch…and the old ladies have more power over their men than anybody can even begin to understand.”

              Ava smiled. “My mom holds my father in the palm of her hand. She is the club queen. Every man in a cut shows her the utmost respect. She’s den mother and home front backbone, and Ghost Teague couldn’t live without her support.”

              She sighed. “I guess this sounds very old fashioned and backward.”

              Holly said, “It sounds like the men are men and the women are women.”

              Ava’s eyes widened in pleased surprise. “Yes. Exactly.”

              “And I think,” Holly said carefully, “that when men are really men, and men are strong, they don’t mind it when their women are even stronger.”

              Ava’s smile was brilliant.

              “I won’t lie to you: Mercy terrifies me. But he looks like a happy Labrador puppy when he’s around you.”

              Ava laughed. “Oh, I’m so telling him that.” She sobered, still smiling softly. “I didn’t tell you all that to scare you; I wanted to prepare you, because Michael’s crazy about you and I think you ought to know what you’re getting into.”

              Holly felt the sting of happy tears at the back of her eyes. “Ava, I want…I want very badly to have the chance to be a woman. That would be the best thing I’ve ever been. And Michael’s so good to me.”

              Ava must have seen the wet sheen in her eyes, because her expression became fragile and sympathetic. “They love so ferociously,” she whispered. “No self-proclaimed feminist has ever made such a cherished queen of a woman as these boys will. I promise you that.”

              The waiter arrived with their salads, jarring them back into the café. It was like the volume had been turned down, and suddenly the restaurant was full of the sounds of cutlery, china, and tangled voices.

              “Thank you,” Holly said, dabbing at her eyes as her plate was set before her.

              As they ate, they chatted about lighter things, namely Ava’s problems with getting the correct consistency in her oatmeal.

              Ava paid the tab. “My treat,” she insisted. “This was fun. My best friend has this new boyfriend and I hardly ever see her anymore.”

              And then, before they left the table, Ava said, “There’s a big New Year’s party the day after tomorrow at the clubhouse. Tell Michael to bring you. You ought to be there.”

“Hey, Mama.”

              Ava tipped her head back for Mercy’s kiss, the slow, warm press of his lips lingering against hers. “Hi,” she said when he drew back and settled beside her on the couch. She sat leaning against one arm, reading by the lamplight as night fell beyond the window.

              “Poe?” he asked, of the book in her hands.

              “ ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ ” she said, smiling.

              “How dark you are, Mrs. L.” He unwound the rawhide strip from the knot in his hair and shook out the dark lengths of it, flopping his head back against the sofa with a relieved sigh.

              “More imports?” Ava set the book on the floor.

              “God,” he said with a groan. “That’s all they’ll give me. I just want some American steel under my hands.” He waved them helplessly in the air to demonstrate and Ava snorted. “This is all your brother by the way.” He rolled his head toward her. “I had to take a little time off, and he’s gotten way too big-headed, thinking he runs the damn place.”

              “Aidan’ll do that,” she agreed.

              He sighed again, for dramatic effect, then said, “So what’d you do today?”

              She smiled to herself, anticipating his reaction. “I had lunch with Holly.”

              He stared at her. “With Holly?”

              “Holly the waitress,” she explained, and his brows leapt. “Michael’s Holly.”

              “Why the hell would you do that?”

              “Michael asked me to.”

              He looked well and truly shocked. “Why the hell did
he
do
that
?”

              “Because…” She hesitated, feeling sure that Michael wouldn’t want her relaying anything he’d told her to a fellow Dog. But right now, in their living room, they were not Dog and old lady, but husband and wife. She never wanted to alter the openness of her relationship with him. “He thought she might need a friend and, well, you know how he is. Where was he going to run across someone her age to try and hook her up with?”

              “Michael asked you to have lunch with her,” Mercy said, disbelieving. “
Michael
asked
you
to have lunch with his waitress.”

              “That was the gist of it.”

              “But
why
?”

              Ava sighed. “Because he cares about her. Because he thinks she needs a friend. I don’t know.”

              He glanced away from her, staring out across the floor, frowning. “He’s been acting extra strange lately.”

              “The strange can only get stranger.”

              His gaze came back. “Well what did you talk to her about?”

              “The club, mostly – nothing major, no worries. Just telling her what I think someone on the outside looking in ought to know.”

              It was cute, really, how troubled he seemed by this scenario. “Are you going to see her again?”

              “I think so. She said she could help me with my tragic oatmeal making.”

              “Your mom could do that. I could do that.”

              “Merc.” She hitched herself up straighter against the arm of the sofa. “Why is this bothering you?”

              He grew reflective. “Getting involved with someone who’s involved with Michael sounds like a dangerous idea to me.”

              She lifted her brows in silent question.

              “Don’t ask me to make it any more specific than that, because I can’t. Holly seems like a nice girl, from what I’ve seen, but she wouldn’t be spending time with someone like Michael if she was safe to be around.”

              “And what about a girl spending time with someone like you? How safe would she be?”

              His face darkened. “As safe as I can keep you.”

              “I think,” she said, “that’s what Michael’s trying to do, too.”

              He snorted. “Who knows.”

“I ought to be mad at you,” Holly said as she set a steaming dinner of pub burger and French onion soup under Michael’s nose and deposited his whiskey in reach of his right hand. She hadn’t waited for him to order; she’d come straight to him from the kitchen, food-in-hand, her temper insufficient.

              He sipped his drink and his eyes came to her as she slid into the booth. “Why?”

              She gave him a
really?
face. “Lunch. With Ava.”

              He frowned and picked up his spoon, punched a hole in the browned provolone seal over the crock of soup. “You don’t like her?”

              “Of course I like her. She’s lovely.”

              “So what’s the problem?”

              Holly sighed. “Problems, several of them. For starters, she’s like biker royalty.”

              He stirred his soup and gave her a pointed look. “That doesn’t make her better than you.”

              She was surprised by his vehemence, the firm set of his jaw.
Madly in love with you
…Ava had said. Holly shivered with wanting, so wanting it to be true, sure she didn’t deserve it, afraid Ava was wrong, not willing to give voice to it.

              “I’m not part of her world,” she said. “I like her, sure, but I don’t want to be a burden. I don’t want to be this girl she thinks is pathetic and lonely and who she needs to be friends with because you asked her to as a favor. I don’t want to be anyone’s favor, Michael.” A touch of vehemence of her own.

              He made an exasperated sound. “Why would you be a favor? If you get along, why can’t you be friends? Why can’t it be that simple?”

              “Things are never simple.”

              “They ought to be.” He ate his soup quietly a moment as she watched him, managing not to dribble it off the spoon or send the slick onions flopping down onto his plate. “I didn’t know I was starting a buncha shit,” he grumbled. “Just nevermind.”

              “You didn’t,” Holly assured. It was too difficult to stay mad at him in this instance. He thought he’d been helping, emotional cripple that he was. “It was a very sweet gesture.”

              He shot her a dark glance.

              “It was. But it–” She broke off, under the intensity of his scrutiny, struck by the notion that, though he’d never admit it, she was hurting his feelings. If she told him what she’d planned, that friendship wasn’t as simple as putting two people at the same lunch table and telling them to get along, he would read it as her rejecting a gesture that was, at its core, kind and selfless.

              So instead, she smiled and said, “I was nervous, is the only thing. I still am. I don’t want to force myself on anyone.”

              His expression eased, the tension going out of his jaw. His snort sounded amused. “You sure never worried about that with me.”

              Her cheeks warmed. “I was trying to strike up a business deal. That was totally different.”

              “It was?”

              “There’s no such thing as ‘too forward’ in business.” She laughed. “At least, that’s what I got from
Wall Street
.”

              He shook his head and bit into his burger. Crisis averted. Tension gone. Holly shoved down her fears about her miniscule social life and rose to leave the table.

              “Midnight?” he asked, and she knew he meant the time her shift ended.

              She nodded. And knew he’d sit right here at this table until then.

              She glanced back over her shoulder once, when she was halfway back to the bar, and saw that he’d produced a book from inside his cut and was reading while he absently stirred his soup.

              Waiting for her.

It was in the entombing dark of just before dawn that Holly remembered what Ava had told her that afternoon. She lay on her side, tucked back against Michael’s chest. His arm lay like a dead thing across her waist; his breathing was light, though. He was awake.

              She rolled slowly onto her back, and then onto her other side, turning in his arms. His legs shifted, opened up a place for one of hers to slide between. She marveled at this warm closeness under the covers, skin-to-skin, but even more marvelous was the way Michael had never seemed conflicted about it. He’d been that way from the beginning, wanting hands and arms on her, sleeping together after, staying in bed with her, keeping her close. He liked the intimacy, and he wasn’t self-conscious about it. He’d never given her reason to question it; it was just the way things were.

              “Michael,” she said, a whisper in the total dark, smoothing her hands across his chest.

              “Hmm?” His hand was warm against the small of her back.

              She took a deep breath. Here went nothing. “Ava said you guys were having a big New Year’s party.”

              No answer, which she took to mean “yes.”

              “She said I should come with you. That you should bring me.”

              She cringed, waiting.

              “I didn’t figure you’d want to.”

              She held her breath.

              “Do you want to?”

              She wanted any chance to be with him, even if the idea of a big club party scared her witless, so she said, “Yes.”

              His hand stirred at her back, fingers stroking lightly at her spine. “Okay.”

Eighteen

There was a real good chance this had been a terrible idea. Holly glanced down at herself, what little she could see in the shadows, second-guessing her jeans, her boots, her sweater, the $7.99 drugstore hoop earrings. Michael had been no help when she’d asked him what she ought to wear. “Whatever you want to,” he’d said, and she was uncertain now.

The innumerable rumors about the Lean Dogs that circled through the bar had left her with the impression that this would be a wild, wild night for the MC. She wanted no part of wild. She didn’t want to be around any of the alcohol-filled men she saw moving in and out of the main door of the clubhouse, smoke blooming in clouds over their shoulders as they puffed on cigarettes. She didn’t want to be some sort of cheaply-dressed laughingstock among the women. She knew nothing of them, save that Ava had been kind enough to have lunch with her. She didn’t want to be crushed among so many people.

But she wanted to be with Michael. And his arm was around her waist, as they stood at the dark outskirts of the indoor/outdoor party that raged against the night.

              It was a spectacle.

              The clubhouse was a low, gray building, a hybrid of home and warehouse in its aesthetics. Beneath its expansive steel portico, colored and white Christmas lights were strung in thick tangles, and the glow radiated out with the power of sunlight and the punch of Mardi Gras. Fires blazed in fifty-five gallon steel drums, crackling, filling the air with the tang of wood smoke. Plastic cloths draped the outdoor tables. There were people seated at some of them, Dogs and women drinking beer out of longnecked bottles.

              Holly didn’t recognize Ava or her mother among the females outside; these women were in painted-on jeans and sleeveless tops, despite the weather, throwing back their heads to expose their throats as they laughed, tidying their hair with lacquered nails.

              There were bikes, so many bikes, lined up like dominos, black paint reflecting the Christmas lights in brilliant pinpricks that turned fuel tanks and fenders to shiny, insectile shells.

              “There’s out of town guys here,” Michael said, and didn’t sound happy about it.

              “It looks crowded.” Holly let her weight rest against his side, shivering inside her sweater, the backs of her knees and the creases of her elbows clammy with nervous perspiration. Her pulse was a high flutter in her throat; she was lightheaded; she wished her stomach had been calm enough to handle lunch, so she wasn’t queasy now.

              She felt Michael’s face against her hair as he turned his head to look down at her. “You’re nervous.”

              She nodded. “Not for any specific reason. I’m…I’m just always nervous,” she admitted in a whisper. “Michael, I’m scared.” It caused her physical pain to say it. “I’m sorry that I am, and I don’t want to be, because I wanted to come with you tonight, but I’m scared.”

              He held her a moment, keeping still, letting the tremors pass through her. He said, “Listen to me. They don’t like me, most of ‘em, but they’ll like you. Everyone who’s been to Bell Bar likes you, Hol. So no worries there. And if you’re scared, just stay right with me. And we can leave whenever you want.”

              She let out a shaky breath and rested her head on his shoulder.

              “Ready?”

              “Yeah.”

              He kept his arm around her was they walked toward the door.

              They stepped into a narrow entry hall with a linoleum floor. Two passing Dogs ducked their heads once in emotionless, silent greeting to Michael, and kept moving.

             
They don’t like me, most of ‘em.

              Holly felt a sharp pang of sympathetic loneliness for him. He was trying to find her a friend, and the man had none of his own. Which wasn’t a bit fair; the dormant sweetness, the automatic chivalry lurking beneath the silent exterior – that warranted friends. Good, loyal friends.

              The thought distracted her, and for a moment, when the hall opened up to a massive hardwood-floored space, she forgot to be nervous.

              There were more lights here, strung up along the ceiling, and opaque clouds of cigarette smoke, the smell burning her nostrils on the first breath. She spotted a horseshoe-shaped bar off to the left, with overhead racks dripping wineglasses and beer mugs. She had glimpses of furniture: couches, round dining tables, chairs, rugs, conversation groupings and a wall-mounted flat screen.

              The music was loud, some sort of classic rock that she hadn’t yet discovered in her self-education in all things pop culture. It had a squealing guitar line, and a deep, throbbing bass line, and it pulsed through the wide, human-packed room in a way that was almost drugging. She felt it in her temples, in her throat, trying to force the beat of her heart into submission.

              On a small raised platform in the back left corner, a girl in a bikini danced above a knot of watching, admiring men in Dogs cuts. She was pretty, but not professional, her movements inexpert. She swayed back and forth in time to the music, working her hips, pitching forward now as Holly watched and shaking her shoulders so her breasts threatened to spill out of her bikini top.

              Holly swallowed hard and glanced away from her. Through the smoke and incandescent light, she began to notice the other women. Halter tops, tube topes, miniskirts, leather pants; cigarettes and beers in their hands, smiles on their painted faces.

              A Dog she’d never seen before sat in an easy chair, a woman on his lap. She was in jeans and mid-calf boots, and a black bra with little rhinestones sewn onto the cups. She was kissing the side of the man’s neck and he was pulling down one of her bra straps, baring her breast, covering it with his hand.

              Sex. This party was nothing but sex, thinly veiled by club leather. It rushed across the boards to her, tunneled down into her lungs on the currents of acrid smoke, assaulted her eyes and ears and overwhelmed all her fragile nerves, reminding her that those old tattered ends might never heal.

              What would have caused a regular woman off the street to blush was threatening to send her into a full-blown panic attack.

              She turned and pressed her face into the cool leather over Michael’s shoulder, drawing in deep breaths of his personal scent, trying to blot out everything else with it.

              His stubbly cheek brushed hers. His mouth was against her ear, and he said, “You’re here with me.
With me
, Hol. Nothing’s going to happen.”

              She lifted her head as he pulled back, meeting his gaze, the bright security of his eyes, promising her a dozen unsaid things. He tilted his head, gesturing toward the Dog in the easy chair – the girl’s rhinestone-studded bra was around her waist now; her mouth was stretched wide with laughter as she used both hands to urge the man’s face down between her breasts – and frowned. “Just ignore it. It can’t touch you.” His hand closed gently on her waist, a fast reassurance.

              Holly nodded, forcing her mouth into a shaky semblance of a smile. “I’ll be okay.”

              He watched her a moment, looking unconvinced, but finally gave a sharp nod of assent. “Let’s go get a drink.”

“Where’s Jackie?” Mina asked, leaning low over the table so she could be heard. Rottie’s wife had taken extra care with her hair and wardrobe tonight; they were using the excuse of a club party to have a date night, a babysitter at home with their boys. Mina was in a stiff blue cotton dress with a leather jacket over it, her hair curled and sprayed and held back at the crown with silver clips. She was drinking vodka rocks out of a short, wide glass, fishing out a piece of ice between manicured fingers to crunch it between her teeth.

              Maggie sighed. “I don’t know. I left her a few messages, and then gave up.”

              “She came to your house for Christmas, right?” Nell asked. Her throaty, smoke-ravaged voice carried, despite the din around them.

              Maggie shook her head. “She called last minute and said she was going to see her folks. Haven’t heard from her since then.”

              Mina’s china doll face plucked with worry. “She has to know we still want to include her, even with Collier…” She gestured helplessly.

              “That’s what I’ve told her,” Maggie said. “But if I’m being honest, I think I might be doing exactly what she’s doing. Withdrawing.”

              “No, you wouldn’t,” Ava said, drawing all their eyes. She still didn’t have the hang of this old lady thing, participating as the pathetically youngest member of the circle.

              “You have Aidan,” Ava said. “And Tango, and Carter now…you have other attachments.”

              Maggie gave her a consenting glance. “Yeah. Jackie doesn’t have any, though.”

              Their small, out of the way table fell silent a moment, as they grieved the loss of one of their own, and the party raged on around them.

              If she was honest with herself, Ava didn’t like these parties. The raucous, out of control ones; the debauched ones. She always felt safe, because the club was her home, her upbringing, the life she knew best. But there was no appeal in watching her brother fondle a stripper, or having her eardrums blasted out, or worrying – like tonight – that she looked pregnant and ungainly in the midst of such a sex-charged throng, in which she wanted to look beautiful and desirous to her mate.

              She’d left off the baggy sweaters for the night, opting instead for jeans and a clinging black top beneath her favorite leather jacket. She sipped water and wondered how damaging all this secondhand smoke was for the baby.

              “Ava Rose!” Mercy boomed behind her, his accent extra Cajun. Either he was drunk, or she was in trouble, or he was super excited.

              She twisted around as he came up to their table, resting his hip against the edge beside her drink. Super excited, she decided, judging by his bright, glowing face, and she couldn’t help but smile.

              “That’s my name,” she said, dryly, biting back a wider, truer grin.

              “Do you know who’s here tonight?” he asked.

              “I’m gonna guess everyone.”

              He opened his mouth to correct her, and before he could speak, a shout came from the other side of the table. A loud, irreverent, jubilant call, also accented, but in a very different way.

              “Swamp Thing!” the call came, and bodies parted to reveal Mercy’s Texan bookend: Candyman.

              “You son of a bitch,” Mercy shouted back, laughing.

              Maggie waved her hands, strong shooing motions. “How ‘bout you both go hug it out and quit screaming over the table, huh?”

              “Yes, ma’am.” Mercy moved around them.

              Candy gave Maggie an exaggerated bow, grinning broadly at her as he straightened. “Queen Mags. Beautiful as ever.”

              Maggie smiled. “Hi, Candy.”

              Then the big Texan’s eyes came to Ava, a light pearly blue that gleamed bright in the dim clubhouse. “I understand you got married, Miss Ava. Congrats, darlin’.”

              “Thanks.”

              “You got bad taste in men, though,” he said, just before Mercy reached him and pulled him into a back-slapping man-hug that was more of an assault than an embrace.

              Ava shook her head.

              At six-four, Candyman was the only other Lean Dog with Mercy’s towering height, though Mercy liked to hold his own extra inch over the man’s head. He didn’t have Mercy’s exotic, obvious Frenchness, was instead fair-haired, tan, blue-eyed, the long and lean picture of a Texas working man. He was the sergeant at arms for the Texas chapter, and his reputation for violence was rivaled only by his reputation for burning through women faster than cigarettes.
Womanizer
wasn’t the right word, because he could charm a nun out of her habit. He was more like an addict. A cheerful one.

              “Texas is in town?” Ava asked her mom.

              “Some of them, apparently.”

              Candy drew Mercy back into the thick of the crowd, an arm slung across his shoulders. They were like two giant little boys separated over the summer, coming back together at the beginning of the school year and anxious to swap stories.

              They left a gap behind, an opening in the crush, and Ava felt her brows go up when she saw Michael step into it, heading for the table. And then she saw that he had his arm around Holly, and was towing her along with him.

              Under the table, Ava touched her mom’s boot with her own, catching her attention, asking for her cooperation.

              Michael reached the table, standing behind Nell, his face harsh and tight. He spared all of them a blank glance, then settled his eyes on Ava. The stress in his gaze told her the true story of his expression: he was anxious and nervous as hell about having Holly here. He was pleading for her help and cooperation.

              “Holly,” Ava said, getting to her feet. “Hi. You made it.” She stepped around Nell and pulled the other girl into a fast hug.