The passenger’s-side window rolled down. Dalton hadn’t touched the button, and he couldn’t help but notice that both of Heath’s hands were still on the wheel.
Was he being punked or was this car actually alive?
“So, um, how exactly did you and Cherry Cherry meet?” He couldn’t help thinking about the first Transformers movie, when Sam bought Bu
mblebee at a used-car dealer. Maybe the same thing had happened to Heath, and this old Caddy was an Autobot. What kind of robot would she turn into … some sort of bitchy, buxom bombshell with a Neil Diamond obsession?
Jesus, now he was doing it. Were mental health issues contagious?
He tried to be open-minded, told himself that Heath naming Cherry Cherry wasn’t so different from when his father had named his motorcycle Loretta. Only, Dalton was pretty sure his dad hadn’t thought Loretta was alive. Then again, even if she had been, she was truly dead now after his dad had tried to wrap her around a tree almost fifteen years ago.
“I bought her off a baggage handler at the Austin airport. They were out of rental cars.” Heath kept his eyes on the road. “Lyric needed to get home. Her father was sick.”
“Sounds like an adventure.” As they hit the freeway, the wind got to be too much and Dalton tried to roll his window up. Apparently, Cherry Cherry approved of him enough to give him button privileges, because the window slid closed.
“The biggest of my life. We ended up married.” The corners of Heath’s mouth curled up in a smile that Dalton was quickly becoming familiar with.
It was definitely his Lyric smile, and it looked good on him.
* * *
Chapter 7
* * *
Thirty minutes later, they pulled into Dead Shot’s dirt parking lot. Dalton’s first glimpse of the bar told him it hadn’t changed one bit in the last fifteen years. It was still a windowless, gray, cinder-block box with a saggy, brown, shingle roof.
Then again, what else could he expect from the bar that the Bastards of Hell owned? At one time they’d owned him too—and he hadn’t been much different than this place.
Fifteen years changed a lot. Instead of being just another biker, he was now just another suit … albeit a perfectly tailored Armani one.
He’d be lying if he said he didn’t like the changes he’d made in the last decade and a half. Just like he’d be lying if he said there wasn’t a small part of him that also missed being on the back of a Harley.
BA, short for badass, the leader, was either going to hug him or shoot him—there had never been any middle ground when it came to the Bastards of Hell. You were either in or out; they didn’t deal in gray area. At one time he’d been grateful for the black and white of it all. Paradoxically, it was what had finally given him the strength to walk away.
Taking a deep breath, he told Heath, “You should know … I have history with the gang that owns the bar.” He really wasn’t prepared to give any more than that.
“Good history or bad history?” Heath turned off Cherry Cherry and pocketed the keys.
“Depends on who you ask.” He opened the door and stepped out onto the dirt parking lot of the last place on earth he wanted to be.
“I don’t have a weapon. Do I need one?” Heath pulled out his phone. “I can call the defensive line. They’re intimidating as hell, but I kinda need them to not get hurt.”
Dalton buttoned his navy suit jacket. His tie was in his suit jacket pocket. Should he put it on so his armor/disguise was complete? He took a deep breath and let it out slowly and tried not to show just how badly this little trip down memory lane was messing with his head.
“You’re the offensive coordinator. Shouldn’t you be calling the offensive line?” Dalton hoped rather than believed they wouldn’t recognize him. He was the spitting image of his old man.
“Come on? Really? Everyone knows the defensive line is expendable.” Heath grinned. “Don’t tell them I said that.”
“So your sister-in-law … does she normally get into this much trouble?” Dalton rolled his shoulders because his knots of tension had knots of tension of their own.
“Yes, only Lyric is usually blamed for all of the messes that Harm starts.” He shook his head. “No idea why.”
Dalton had been cleaning up his father’s disasters ever since his mother tapped out when he was ten and Cat was two. Life wasn’t fair, God knew. He’d committed that mantra to memory about five minutes after he’d learned the word Da-Da.
“Well, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it.” The voice came from a large figure smoking a cigarette next to the double glass front doors.
Dalton walked toward the voice he knew instantly, even if it had been fifteen years since he’d last heard it.