Checkmate With Bishop: A Hellions MC Novel (2 page)

I’d put my old existence away, keeping a tight rein on the memories so I could move forward.  And I had, for the most part, been successful in sloughing off the old and creating the new.  But by the trepidation, the almost
fear
that was bubbling inside me at just the glimpse of a Montana phone number, maybe I hadn’t resolved that old life at all.  Perhaps all I’d done was to pretend those years were over and done with, telling myself lies in order to move forward.

Because right at that moment, at the thought of hearing Stan’s voice, I didn’t feel like I’d settled anything from that earlier time.  Not one damn thing if the idea of my old life intruding on my new one scared me so badly.

You don’t have to listen to it
, I told myself as I propped my chin in my hand, still staring at the stupid phone that I, at that moment, considered to be arch-enemy number one.  With two, no
three
, swipes of my finger the voice, his goddamn sexy-as-sin vocal sounds could be erased and out of my consciousness.   Which would have been fine and dandy except…I was curious as hell. 

And the thing of it was, my inquisitiveness was quickly outpacing my feelings of panic from before.

Drumming my fingers on my teeth, I tried to justify the ‘need to know’ that my brain seemed to insist on.  Who wouldn’t be questioning why their ex-husband was calling them after so many years of no contact?  What could have gone on that required him to call me, especially after the speech he’d given moments before I’d climbed into my car and left without a backward glance.  

The one where he told me that if I left, I could consider myself dead to both him and the club.  A speech delivered with such total and complete seriousness, I’d known he was speaking a truth from the core of his being.

So why was he trying to reach someone who was, and had been, dead to him for so very, very long?

I took in a deep breath and held it as I again picked up the phone.  My fingers only shook a little as I turned the device on and pressed the pad to access my voicemail.   Realizing I didn’t want the intimacy of having Stan’s voice in my ear, I made sure the speakerphone was engaged before pressing the green key to listen to his message.

“Dory?  Hey, it’s Bishop.  I mean, Stan.  It’s been a long time, huh?  Are you surprised to hear from me?  Listen, I’ve got…” his sigh, one of the deep variety, came through loud and clear.  As did the clearing of his throat before he resumed speaking.  “I’ve got something I need to talk to you about.  It’s important.  Can you call me back, babe?”

He listed a series of numbers but I wasn’t paying a damn bit of attention.  Mainly because my heart had done a damn double bump at hearing the endearment he’d used, at what he’d always called me back in the day.

I was hoping he’d said it from something along the lines of ‘force of habit’ so that my body’s reaction to both it and his voice could be categorized as the same.

“I’ll look forward to hearing back from you, Dory.  The sooner, the better, babe.  Okay?”  The message came to an end and I pushed the replay button to listen to it again just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.  Something I told myself was okay because sometimes a person needed to replay a message in order to get it right.

But I couldn’t use that same reasoning when I listened to it the next eight times, soaking up his voice, picking apart his wordsall the while having my heart stutter at the sound of ‘babe’ whenever it was spoken.

“Enough,” I whispered, saving his voicemail and dropping the phone back onto the desktop and reaching for the stack of invoices that needed to be entered into the system.  They were, after all, one of the reasons I stayed late on Thursdays.  Not to sit and listen to my ex-husband’s frustratingly cryptic voicemail again and again!

As one of the co-owners of Luscious, Casper’s premier hair salon, the paperwork portion was my responsibility while Joy handled the merchandising and displays.  And since Thursday was the only night of the week we stayed open until seven, it just made sense for me to take an hour or so afterward to make the entries and do the ordering.

But my mind wasn’t on the paperwork even as my fingers flew over the keys of the laptop.  It was still running in circles, parsing Stan’s voicemail and comparing it to the man I’d left behind.   He wouldn’t know that I was a hairdresser with her own successful salon just as I hadn’t a clue about whatever career he was involved in. 

Stan couldn’t have any idea about the struggle it had taken to get where I was, about the life I’d made for myself and my son.  It was bad enough he’d somehow discovered my number.   He didn’t need to know any of the rest of it.

Completing the entries, I quickly filed the stack away before pulling my purse from one of the desk drawers.  Reaching for my cellphone in order to stow it in my bag, my hand stilled.

I still had a few minutes before I was expected home.

And maybe listening to his voicemail a few more times would give me more information as to why he had called.

Or maybe I just needed the privacy the closed shop provided to once again hear Stan’s voice call me ‘babe’.

Chapter Two

 Bishop opened his eyes and stared blearily at the clock on the nightstand, surprised to note he still had a couple of hours before the alarm was due to go off.  And for the first time in a long while, he hadn’t woken up in pain.  Although he knew it was coming.  Knew that the agony was waiting, preparing itself to strike, to double him over and have his body trying to empty itself in wave after wave of tortuous hurt.

But it wasn’t there yet and he took a few moments to enjoy the relief even if it was going to be short-lived.

Running a hand over his face before pulling his long braid over his shoulder, he turned over onto his side and let his eyes drift to the window that overlooked his backyard.  It was a sight that never failed to both comfort and calm him, even if he was already experiencing a momentary cease-fire in his body’s war with itself.  A battle that he knew people were starting to take notice of, if the constant harping by Trey, his best friend and Hellion president, was any indication.

“Swear to fuckin’ Christ, Bish,” the man had bellowed just yesterday afternoon in an impromptu meeting in Bishop’s office.  “Either you fuckin’ get your shit together or I’ll fuckin’ drag your pretty ass down to the doc myself!”

Bishop had no doubt Trey meant every goddamn syllable.

Which told Bishop it was time.  Time to get everything in order, to get with an attorney and get everything in place.  Because he knew that once he went to the doctor for the necessary tests, for all the poking and prodding, where all the different machines would be employed in order to determine what was doing in the deepest parts of him, that he wouldn’t be released.

No.  Bishop knew.  Knew that he wouldn’t be allowed to leave, to return home or back to his office at Hellion Construction.  The only way he’d be leaving the hospital would be by way of a body bag.

He’d seen it go down with his dad and with his grandpa so he knew the drill.  Understood the way medical shit worked, which is why he had made the choice not to get tested until he could no longer function. 

What for?  The outcome was all going to be the motherfucking’ same!  At least by waiting, he got to live the remaining bit of his life on his own terms for as long as he goddamn could. 

And that was all he was asking for at the moment.

Well that, and to be able to talk to Dory. 

Just one more time to talk to the woman who had left such a huge hole in his heart and in his life.  A gaping chasm in the center of his chest that Bishop swore had never healed completely.  Not if his body’s reaction to just hearing her voice on the outgoing message was anything to go by.  Of how he’d closed his eyes in order to better savor the sound of it after so many years without hearing it except in his memories.  And how every joint in his body had gone to liquid as his mind supplied the picture of her mouth as it rounded over the words telling him to leave a message.

Following her sultry suggestion, he had spoken but he didn’t remember what he said.  He knew he wouldn’t have fucking offered up much since leaving dumb-ass voicemails was not one of his strong suits.  More than likely, he’d just told her who it was, given his number and demanded she call him back. 

Reaching for his phone that sat next to the clock, he checked it.  No calls, no texts and no voicemails.  Would she even respond?   He sure the fuck hoped so.  It had taken a lot to admit that there were words that needed saying, of amends that had never been made that he wanted to get off his chest before…

Shaking his head at where his thoughts were headed, Bishop threw off the covers and sat up carefully, uncertain that his sudden movement wouldn’t arouse the sleeping bitch that had taken up residence on his insides.  When no pain followed, he stood and made his way to the kitchen in order to start the coffeemaker.  Without even thinking, his hand reached for the small bottle of pills he’d purchased on the sly but he stopped the movement half-way to goal.  He didn’t want to take them if there wasn’t a need and at that moment, there wasn’t one.  Having already done the addiction road in his early teens, Bishop didn’t need to go there again.   And taking pain meds when he wasn’t hurting was one sure as shit sign he’d be walking that avenue again.

True, when the agony was on him, he’d swallow three at a time just to escape the sharp shards of torment his body inflicted.  But that didn’t give him permission to start his day in a drugged fog.  There’d be plenty of time for that later. 

After he got his affairs in order. 

All of them.

While the coffee brewed, Bishop fired up his laptop, determined to find an attorney outside the sphere of Hellion influence who could help him with all the legalities that needed to be in place beforehand.  One who could tell him in advance what documents were needed so that his will could be carried out without the goddamn government taking everything first.  A lawyer who knew his shit and yet who wouldn’t blab Bishop’s fucking bidness to everyone who had no need to know.

In other words, someone who could have Bishop wrapping up the end pieces of his life in the right fashion and in the right sequence so that those he left behind wouldn’t suffer.  Something neither his father nor grandfather had done before the colon cancer that ran on the male side of the Bastian family claimed them. 

Each of the men had been in their forties when they were first diagnosed and each had gone through bouts of chemo and radiation to try and kill the disease without killing the patient.  But the treatments, at least to Bishop’s mind, hadn’t done anything but further weaken their already depleted bodies. 

And he was determined not to allow that to happen to him.  To become so frail and weak, he couldn’t control his bladder or bowels, so high on painkillers, he wouldn’t be able to complete a sentence.  No fucking way!  Bish didn’t believe all the stuff on the Internet that talked about the latest breakthroughs and treatments for the insidious disease.   In his opinion, until the medical community could guarantee their goddamn results, you could count him out!

Which is worse, dude?  Having your guts on fire or your head and heart?
 Christ, he’d been doing that a lot, talking to himself even if it was the silent kind.  Shaking his head hard enough to flick his braid, he poured a cup of coffee and looked around the kitchen which was just becoming illuminated in the morning light.  A soft focused brightness that caught on the worn linoleum and the chips in the paint of the cabinets.  To his mind, the kitchen was well broken in, had character after all its years of use.  Some of which had included him as he was growing up.

The crew should be arriving in a couple of hours to begin the initial work on the refurbishment.  It had been the first decision he’d made in what he knew was to be a long string of them, but he couldn’t sell the old place without giving it a facelift.  And the kitchen was the first area that was going to be done.  By his estimation, it should only take a month to get most of it done in order to put a ‘for sale by owner’ sign in the front yard.   Unlike the house next door which had taken three years to bring into the twenty-first century.

No.  He needed it done.  The sooner the better in his estimation since he didn’t know how long he really had before... 

But experience with both his dad and grandpa taught him well on how short the time could actually be after the disease got to a certain point.

Of how each goddamn second counted.

*.*.*.*.*

He was just putting the finishing touches on his work day, closing screens on his computer and preparing to lock some of the more important documents in his fire-proof vault when Trey wandered in.  And ‘wandered’ was the operative word since his big friend and Hellion brother didn’t say anything.  Just entered and eventually sat his ass down in one of the guest chairs of his personal office, propping his size thirteen boots on the edge of Bishop’s desk.

Bishop glanced his way once but when no words were said, he kept on with what he was doing, letting his mind roam where it would as he went through his evening and end of the week routine.

He’d felt blessed and lucky that he’d only had two bouts of pain throughout the day and neither one so bad he’d thought he was gonna pass out.  On a scale of one to ten, which all the different websites recommended, he assigned the pain as a six during the worst of that day’s episode.  And all during the day, the residual ache had only been a four.

Bishop could deal with fours.  Fours were a cake-walk, fucking easy-peasy and let him endure the day with his mind functional.

Enough so, he’d made an appointment with D. Arthur Whitcomb, Esq., attorney at law for Monday morning.  From the man’s website, he appeared to be a one-person firm with only a secretary and a receptionist.  Perfect in Bishop’s mind.  And when he’d called, the sweet, little thing on the other end of the phone sounded very happy that he was willing to make an appointment.  But then it stood to reason that an attorney with all the qualifications listed on the webpage might receive a lot of ‘emergency’ calls of the nefarious variety.