I didn’t know Lila’s brother very well. He’d been presumed dead, missing in action from the military overseas for all the years I’d known her, and when he returned, he’d mostly stuck to Lila, Zeus, Bat, Smoke, and one of the promiscuous club hangarounds, Tempest Riley.
But now he was there in my living room, tall, broad, dark-skinned, and as beautiful a man as I had ever seen. And he was looking out for me even though he didn’t know me from Eve.
I smiled beatifically at him. “I make the best coffee. Harleigh Rose even says so and you might not know this, but she has a serious coffee addiction.”
“First thing we bonded over,” Dane told me with a wink of his absurdly curly-lashed, unusually pale blue eye. “Lead the way.”
Bat and Cleo had already made themselves at home in my kitchen, Bat sitting on a stool at the island while Cleo unpacked her picnic basket.
“What did I do to deserve this?” I asked her as I leaned over her shoulder to press a kiss to her cheek as a distraction so I could steal a peach from the rattan basket.
“I saw that,” she said mildly, but she let me take the fruit and continued to busy herself with breakfast. “You don’t have to do anything for me to do something nice for you, Bea. You know that. But in this case, I figure you being obsessed over by a psychopath is reason enough to bring you breakfast.”
I blinked with the fruit held to my mouth, the soft flesh as smooth as Priest’s surprisingly plush lips.
Cleo caught my look and laughed. “I meant the serial killer, babe, not Priest. Although, after what seems to have happened last night, maybe this should be a celebratory breakfast instead of a consolation breakfast.”
A blush fired my skin, making Bat laugh, and Dane shoved him with his shoulder as he sat down beside him.
“Why don’t you get dressed for church?” Dane suggested, pointedly nodding at my blanket robed nakedness. “We’ll take you after breakfast.”
“Tempest’s bringing Shaw and Steele by too,” Bat told me, mentioning his twin sons, who I happened to adore. “Amelia’s got some appointment, but she wants the boys at church with her this mornin’, so we figured we’d go together.”
I blinked at the massive war veteran with tattoos from neck to wrists, trying to imagine him in the hallowed halls of First Light. “You’re going to church?”
Bat smiled sharply as he plucked the peach from my limp fingers and brought the fruit to his mouth, taking a monstrous bite. “Fuck no. But I’ll wait outside and shoot the shit with Dane while you do your business.”
“Where’s…I mean, is Priest going to meet up with us?” I questioned pathetically because I couldn’t help myself.
I knew he’d left because the intimacy had been too much for him. He was a wild animal, so it wasn’t as if he could be domesticated overnight. I wasn’t angry, and I wasn’t even really sad about his abandonment. I was just happy he’d opened up as much as he had the night before.
And I wanted an opportunity soon to take another crack at those concrete walls.
Bat’s lips tipped in a small, sympathetic grin. “Nah, man’s got club business this mornin’.”
I nodded with my lower lip pinned between my teeth, the pain a slight comfort. Without another word, I quickly put my white SMEG coffee machine on to drip and went to get dressed.
Surprisingly, Cleo followed.
“What’s up, honey?” I asked as she hesitated at the door to my bedroom, hugging the doorframe as if for comfort. “Are you okay?”
She bit her lip, a lock of short, rumpled brown hair swinging into her green eyes, tangling with the lashes. In the glamour of the biker babes, it was easy to overlook Cleo with her sweet, full-cheeked prettiness, the freckles on her nose and the shyness in her expression. But I’d always found her lovely, her beauty growing on you the more you studied her. The problem was, with Cleo, she did not like to be studied at all.
“Cleo?” I repeated as I shucked the blanket and quickly pulled on a ruffled set of underwear. “You’re scaring me a little. What’s up?”
She sighed, pushing off the door to plod over to my bed and collapse on top of the covers with a gusty sigh. “I think I’m in love.”
I blinked.
She went into a half crunch on the mattress to look at my expression and winced, then giggled a little. “I know, I know, I’m sorry. I should have told you, but you’ve been busy with a murdering psycho and a certain redheaded enforcer.”
“Honey,” I emphasised as I quickly chose a wintry cream dress from my closet and dragged it on before going to her side and sitting on the bed. “There is seriously no excuse for not telling me! Even if I was busy, you should have hit me upside the head and told me your news.”