Tastes Like Candy (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 2) (4 page)

              “What are you going to do?”

              “Open it,” he said, “and figure out why the hell someone wanted it bad enough to blow up a street.” His free hand settled over hers, rough and callused. “But first I’m going to get you somewhere safe.”

              “Dad, no.” She came fully awake, heart slamming against her ribs. “You can’t–”

              “Can and will, love.”

              She gripped the arms of the chair, chest burning with anger, frustration, and a hot surge of grief. “You would exile me.”

              “No. I would protect you.”

              She’d known this was coming. If she was honest with herself, she’d been expecting it for the last few years, half-afraid every time he called her into his office that he was about to insist she venture out into the civilian world.

              “Michelle.” He pulled her head down to his shoulder, and she let him, exhausted and unwilling to fight. “I’ve been a poor father, putting you at risk the way I have.”

              She closed her eyes.

              “So I’m going to do the right thing this time. “Don’t call it exile, darling. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Three

Amarillo, Texas

Candy

“Today?” Jenny exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me she was coming
today
?”

              He shrugged and shoveled in more breakfast. Sausage and leek quiche with grits and fried ham on the side. If he didn’t know better, he’d think Darla was trying to kill them all with hypertension. “You’ve been busy,” he said around a mouthful. “Figured you had more important shit to worry about.”

              His sister folded her arms and gave him a look of mixed exasperation and disapproval. “Yeah, I’ve been busy. I’m always going to be busy now.”

              Jack, making laps around the common room in his father’s arms, gave an unhappy squeal to reinforce her point.

              “See?” Candy said. “That’s exactly why I didn’t bother you with this. It’s not your problem.”

              “Derek.” If anything, motherhood had made Jen more ferocious. Some of those soft, uncertain edges of her post-Riley mentality had been filed down to precise angles. This was more like the Jenny she’d been growing up; the girl who’d stepped in to replace their deceased mother. If he was honest, it was a refreshing change. His little sister had been a ghost after Riley got done with her. “Since you don’t have an old lady, the hostess duty falls on me. And Darla, to some extent,” she granted. “Which means if Michelle gets here and the place is a mess, that makes
me
look bad.”

              “And image is everything, right?” he challenged, grinning.

              Behind her back, Colin rocked Jack and pressed his lips together to keep from smiling.

              “Of course not. But the poor thing’s coming all the way from London, and terrible shit is happening over there, apparently, and I want her to have a nice room ready when she gets here.”

              “So go get one ready, then,” he returned.

              Her eyes bugged and she made a low growling sound in her throat. “Ass.”

              “Aw come on, now. Make Pup…”

              But she was already marching from the room, caddy of cleaning supplies in one hand.

              Candy looked over at Colin. “Okay, what the hell was that about?”

              Colin’s face cycled through a comical sequence of emotions. “It might be my fault.”

              “She caught you with your hand in someone else’s cookie jar?”

              “No!” His dark brows slanted down in stern disapproval of the suggestion and Candy wanted to laugh.

              “So what then?”

              “I…” Colin took a deep breath and patted Jack when he started to squirm. “I bought her a ring.”

              His bite of quiche hit his stomach like a cannonball. Jenny and Colin were together now. Old man and old lady. Hell, they had a baby together. But there was something in his big brother heart that still cringed every time the two of them took big relationship steps in front of him. That sense of being a bad brother, letting her be grown up and have sex and other things he didn’t want to think about.

              “You’re damn right you bought her a ring,” he said, two beats too late. Then… “Wait. That pissed her off? What, was it too small?”

              “Jen’s not like that,” Colin said, still scowling. “No, it…” Uncertainty stole over him, and he glanced down at the baby, one huge tan hand cupped against the back of his tiny head. “She said she’s not going to get married again.”

              The quiche cannonball in his gut did a somersault. “
What
?”

              “That’s what I said.” Colin sounded grim. “And then I said, ‘What, are you gonna have a baby with me and then marry some other guy’?”

              “And how’d that go?”

              “I think she thought about hitting me.”

              Candy pushed his half-eaten breakfast away, no longer hungry. “Hmm.”

              “Look, man,” Colin said, sounding uncomfortable, “don’t say anything to her about it, okay? I’m betting she doesn’t want anyone else to know.”

              “Just because you patched in doesn’t mean you get to give orders.”

              “It’s not an order,” Colin said, quiet, serious, and almost pleading. “Just a request.”

              Candy made a face. “Yeah. Sure.”

              He climbed off his stool and carried his plate to the kitchen, not wanting to look at Colin’s dejected puppy face anymore. The clubhouse had cleared out quick when Jenny first started her tirade about having everything ready for Michelle – a tirade that now made sense.

              “Darla,” he said as he set his plate down. “Was I supposed to give better warning about the Calloway girl coming?”

              She gave him a sideways look as she scrubbed the skillet beneath the tap. “What do you think?”

              “I think I’m glad I don’t have an old lady to worry about. One sister’s bad enough.”

              She chuckled. “You don’t mean that.”

              “Sure I do.”

              “Uh-huh.”

~*~

He’d gotten the call about a week ago. He’d spent the night in a waitress’s bed and he’d rolled over at five in the morning to dig his ringing cell from his jeans pocket on the floor. “Mmph,” the girl had said behind him, and one of her manicured hands had grabbed at his shoulder, trying to keep him under the covers with her.

              “Candy,” Albie Cross’s voice had greeted. “Did I wake you up?”             

              Candy had smiled tiredly. “Would you care if you did?”

              Albie laughed. “Not especially.”

              But laughter aside, if someone from London was calling him before the sun was up, then something was bad wrong on the other side of the pond. As he listened, he managed to tug his jeans on one-handed, light a smoke, and paced around the waitress’s kitchen while Albie explained the bombing and Phillip Calloway’s subsequent fear.

              They’d called Walsh first, Albie explained, and that was where Michelle was headed now. But Walsh had heard Candy was looking for an accountant, and had suggested they call Texas.

              It hadn’t been much of a decision, really. Michelle was club family, and blood family to a large number of his brothers. She was trustworthy. And one little girl wouldn’t displace things at the clubhouse, so it was more a case of not turning her away rather than inviting her out.

              Either way, her arrival was imminent. Walsh was driving out with her, and until the moment she showed up on his doorstep, Candy wasn’t going to worry about her. Unlike his sister, apparently.

              He found Jinx out front, doling out the day’s orders to the salvage crew.

              “Uh, bro,” Gringo said, turning to him. “What’s with Jen?”

              “The kid fucked up already?” Blue asked of Colin.

              Candy shook his head and tried not to grimace too harshly. He didn’t like talking family shit with the guys. “Nah. Girl stuff or some shit.”

              Sage nods all around, as if any of the bachelor dumbasses knew jack shit about “girl stuff.”

              “Speaking of ladies,” Gringo said. “When’s Phillip’s girl getting in?”

              “Later. And before you even think it, no. No you may not fuck Phillip’s only kid. Got it?”

              “Hey.” Gringo had the nerve to look affronted. “Did I say anything about that? For all we know, she’s ugly as shit.”

              Yeah, she might be. Who knew. Candy had no clue what she might look like. She’d been a cute kid, little cherub face and flyaway blonde hair; he remembered her asleep on one of the clubhouse sofas, cuddled up beside her uncle, Tommy, who Phillip had pulled out of an orphanage and raised as a son.

              A strange family, Phillip’s. Maybe because he was the oldest, or maybe just because that’s who he was, he’d taken it upon himself to look after the whole brood of half-siblings. Candy was impressed he remembered them all: Phillip, Walsh, Albie, Fox, Raven, Shane, Tommy, Miles, and Cassandra. Nine – their father had sired nine children. The thought gave him heart palpitations.

              “You’re not gonna even look at her,” Candy told Gringo, “so it won’t matter what she looks like.”

              “Don’t worry,” Fox said from his perch on one of the flatbeds. “She wouldn’t have him anyway.”

              Everyone laughed and Gringo turned red around the ears.

              “Right,” Candy said. “Can we stop talking about chicks and go make some money?”

~*~

Michelle

“God, it’s like another world out here,” Michelle said to herself as the landscape slipped past the window. The initial shock of the US east coast was rapidly being eclipsed by the shock of the Midwest. The endless, whitewashed blue dome of the sky. The infinite road laid out before and behind them, sizzling black pavement livid with cracks and asphalt patches. When she rolled down the window, the air smelled thin and hot.

              “I like Tennessee better myself,” Walsh said from behind the wheel. “But it’s not so bad out here.”

              When she glanced across the cab at him, she saw the downward curve of his mouth, and she felt guilty again.

              “Uncle King.”

              His eyes were the same shocking blue as everyone else’s, and they seemed to glow against the desert backdrop beyond his window.

              “You aren’t going to apologize again, are you?” she teased, and he gave her a rare grin.

              “Out of character, isn’t it?”

              “You shouldn’t feel bad for me,” she said, leaning back against the headrest. “I’m the one who dragged you away from your pregnant wife and your bloody gorgeous horse farm.” She smiled a little wistfully, remembering it.

              Walsh and his wife, Emmie, had picked her up at the airport in Alcoa, twelve miles south of Knoxville, and that was when, embarrassingly, it had all hit her. She’d said her goodbyes to Albie, to her aunts, to her father, and, heartbreakingly, to Tommy, and she hadn’t let slip the tight rein on her emotions. But when she set foot in Tennessee, and saw her stalwart, spiky-haired uncle waiting for her, the loss of her former life had crashed over her like a wave. She’d been sobbing by the time she reached him, and he’d hugged her tight, murmuring endearments against her hair.

              His wife, Emmie, was tiny, blonde, and cute, and tactful, too. She’d produced a travel pack of tissues, a Coke, and a chocolate bar. “I thought you might need these,” she’d said with an understanding look, and Michelle had hugged her, too, on impulse.

              The farm was beautiful. Far grander and more expensively embellished than she’d dreamed. She’d slept in a guest room the size of her flat back home. She’d wandered down to the barn in the fading light and watched Emmie teach a riding lesson. She was just barely pregnant, and not showing, but had leaned out of the arena once to puke bile onto the grass.

              “Gotta love morning sickness,” she’d said, gargled with water, and gone back to her lesson.

              Michelle had been effectively impressed.

              She was likewise impressed with her loner uncle having settled so deeply, roots dug down into the soil of a place, with an old lady, a real house, and a child on the way. So she felt guilty, yes, for pulling him away from all of that for her own personal reasons.

              “Em and that farm don’t need me around all the time,” he said with a snort. “I’m just there for when she gets lonesome.”

              “Quite the romantic, aren’t you?”

              “Oh, definitely.”

              Michelle rolled her head, so she could see the landscape again. Melancholy touched her again, a fisting in her stomach that made her feel hollow.

              As if he could sense the disquiet in her, Walsh said, “Fox is here, you know. You like him, don’t you?”

              She smiled, faintly, and her ghostly reflection in the window smiled back. “He’s not Tommy. Or even Albie. Or even you.”

              “No,” he agreed.

              “But he’s blood. And that’s something.”

~*~

Candy

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone out in one of the flatbeds. He’d been holed up in his office for months, trying to sort the financial situation. This was a much-needed respite, he decided, as wind funneled in through the open windows and battered his hair flat to his head.

              He rode shotgun, Jinx driving, Pup’s scrawny self between them, a wrecked truck up on the lift.

              If Skynyrd would come on the radio, it would be the perfect afternoon.