Raine Falling (Hells Saints Motorcycle Club) (11 page)

CHAPTER 29

I
had a good night’s sleep. I woke up rested and in a good mood. I had decided that I was going to test the seriousness of Jules’s offer to take over those books. I showered and put on all my new stuff. I thought I looked pretty good in the pink tee shirt and the jeans. They were something that I would probably live in. They felt that good and they looked even better. Yep, I was going to give that one to myself.

When I walked out into the main kitchen area, I was met with applause from the dozen or so bikers who were hanging around drinking coffee and eating the great stuff I bought the night before. It felt nice to be appreciated and I blushed and smiled. Still no Diego. Thank God. But it didn’t escape my own notice that he was the first one that I looked for. I felt like a coward. The more time that passed, the more I dreaded seeing him again. I had stood up to Ellie. Oh, I certainly had. But that wasn’t me. I hadn’t wanted to respond in kind to the crude words that came spewing from her mouth. But I had and with a vengeance. Diego was just bad news for me, for my temper, and for my heart.

Diego was gone for now. But Crow was back.

He was having a cup of coffee with Jules. I couldn’t help but notice he took it black and hadn’t touched any of the pastries. He had on a white V-neck tee shirt under his cut and a worn pair of Levi’s that fit low on his hips. He had a beautifully beaded black-and-silver belt on, and his glossy black hair was in a long black ponytail that went halfway down his back. The fact that he was a truly beautiful man wasn’t lost on me. When he turned his eyes on me, he took my breath away.

“Raine.” He chin-nodded me.

“Crow.” I smiled a little at seeing him again.

He didn’t smile back. Crow, come to think of it, didn’t smile a lot. He was one of those guys who didn’t easily give away his thoughts. He was intense, even stoic, in the few dealings I had had with him so far. Except when we were playing music. I remember he was smiling at the end of it. But, then again, we had done some kickass harmonies.

His eyes softened when he looked at me though, and he leaned in towards me. His tanned hands curled around his coffee mug through the handle. He smelled like dark roast and Polo. I thought I could get used to waking up and smelling that. I felt the heat rise to my cheeks, and I was sure I was blushing. Crow raised an eyebrow.

“Jules was just telling me you’re gonna be takin’ over the books for Ruby Reds.”

I looked at Jules, who was pouring me a cup of coffee. He gave me a wink.

“She worked some magic yesterday, Crow. Man, I’ve got to tell you, I cannot wait to get rid of that bullshit. Prosper won’t hire anyone outside the club, and half these clowns can’t add two and two. Man, no fuckin’ shame in this game. Two plus two is about as far as I go.”

“That’s not true, Jules,” I said softly because I hated to hear the big man selling himself short.

Crow looked at me. “Thought you were a nurse?”

“I am. Formally, I will be after next week,” I said in way of explanation.

“What’s next week?”

“It’s the graduation. But I’m not going to the ceremony,” I added quickly. “I’ll get my degree in the mail. It’s just that I’m not sure it’s what I want to do anymore. I thought I could do some good. Maybe give back a little, being a pediatric nurse. But, honestly, it just made me feel sad and helpless.”

It was the first time I had ever voiced the concerns I had out loud about my chosen career. I wondered if Crow would think that I was being foolish and self-centered.

“I get it,” he said, taking a sip from his coffee mug, his eyes on me. “I’ve got two years towards a degree in architectural design myself.”

“You do?” I asked, my eyes wide.

“Yeah. I do,” he said in a tone that told me this was all the information I was going to get.

“So you ready to take on Ruby Reds? There’s three of them, you know.”

Jules stepped in. “I’m gonna have her break her economics cherry slowly. Brother, let’s not scare the chick off before she gets the first bite in.”

Then to me. “I’ll keep on keeping on with the other two. They aren’t as busy as Reds. Let’s see how you do with that one. You like it, we talk about you taking over all three.”

Jules was mopping up the counter with a bar cloth. “I have a couple of things to do this morning but I was thinking maybe later on you and I could take a look-see at those inventory sheets. Smalley was starting to plug all the numbers into some computer program. I think I’ve got the password somewhere. I find it and we’re in business. I should be all set to give you some time about three. You gonna be around?”

I nodded and checked the time. It was only ten a.m. and I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do the rest of the day.

“You up for a ride?” Crow was looking at me.

I processed real fast about the whole “back of the bike proprietary” thing and where that had gotten me last time.

“I was heading down to Reds this morning to check on some stuff.”

Jules interrupted by way of explanation, “Crow is our order guy.”

“Thought you might want to check the place out yourself to get a feel for it. Not sure where you’ll want to set up. I know Smalley used the back office. But I also know there’s a good chance he left it a shit hole. Jules works out of the back room. My guess is you might be feeling a little claustrophobic around here. So thought you might want to pick your poison.” Then he shrugged. “Up to you.”

“Let me grab my pocketbook,” I said just that quickly. Then to Jules: “I’ll see you this afternoon?”

“You got it, sugar.” Jules winked.

I liked being on the back of Crow’s bike. I tried not to think about Diego on the ride to Ruby Reds. It was another beautiful day and I was looking forward to seeing what my new job would be.

Crow didn’t talk to me on the way. I remembered how Diego had grabbed my leg and pointed things out to me on the ride. The thought of him messed me up. I needed to stop making comparisons. I chastised myself. That night with Diego, I had harbored a small secret hope it would be the beginning of something. That something died a few hours later. This was a ride to work. I concentrated on how nice it was having my arms around Crow. He was also tight and hard in all the right places. When my arms wrapped around him I felt solid steel. I pressed against him, my soft breasts hitting leather-encased back muscle. He leaned back into me and reaching back he moved his hand lazily up and down my thigh.

We pulled up in front of a bar and it wasn’t anything like what I had anticipated. I had expected a small biker bar, maybe down some alley or wedged between a few other bars. What I got was a newly constructed building at the end of a short private road. It was red brick with some cool trim and double-hung black wooden doors in the front. Next to them was a tasteful plaque that read simply “Ruby Reds.”

The door opened and an attractive woman about fifty years old came towards us with a smile. She wore her auburn hair in a dramatic up-do and had a Hells Saints support tee shirt on. A Rolling Stones tongue tattoo sat on the top of her left breast. Crow introduced her as Dolly. She explained to me that she had been overseeing the cleaning and maintenance of the bar since its beginning. She welcomed me immediately and gave me a big bear hug. She told me she was Reno’s mom and Pinky’s sister-in-law. Dolly was the widow of Pinky’s brother. The friendly redhead said she knew all about me. She said she remembered me as a little itty-bitty thing from that time we spent at the lake and called me “sugar.” She grabbed my face in her soft hands and told me I was a beauty. I liked Dolly. A lot.

Apparently Prosper had called right after we left the kitchen house. The message was that Pinky’s sister wasn’t doing as well as they had hoped. It would be a while longer before they would be back. Jules told Prosper about my prospective new role in the business. He was all for it.

“You sticking around for a while, Crow? I’ve got some questions on the inventory, and I need some more bar supplies. I’m gonna show this little sugar around for a minute. Then maybe you can spare some time?” Dolly had looped her arms around mine.

“I’ll be here most of the afternoon doing my thing and helping out Raine,” Crow answered. The three of us then headed into my new place of employment.

The twin black heavy wooden doors opened to, what I later learned, was one of the premium tequila bars in the area. It was big inside, both wide and deep. The color scheme was all red and black with a bar that ran half the length of the room. There were red-leather nail-studded bar chairs, and the bar itself was black granite. The whole room was backlit in crimson. A huge gas fireplace stood in the center of the room. The various booths were all ebony or red leather. There was a wrought-iron gate separating the tables from the booths. The lamps dropped low over the tables and glowed with bloodshot stained glass. There were a couple of Goth-inspired candelabras and some strategically placed gargoyles in the corner of the room. The whole atmosphere was Bela Lugosi creepy. It was all very old Hollywood without being tacky or silly. It was a great room. I honestly didn’t feel I had the significant cool quotient to be a part of it.

“Wow,” I breathed.

“Crow designed it. Ain’t it something?” Dolly chimed in proudly.

I looked at Crow in awe.

“Wow, this is your baby?” I asked him.

“Nah,” he said. “Thinking some long-legged, brown-eyed,
wiwasteka
is gonna be my baby.”

His eyes danced at me. “This,” he shrugged, “is just a bar.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. When I looked at Dolly she was fanning herself, grinning.

Then she grabbed me and headed off with me, whispering, “I thought you and Diego . . . ?”

I sighed. It seemed the gossip mill was running rampant in the Hells Saints MC.

When Dolly opened the door to Smalley’s office, I was enchanted. Wall-to-ceiling shelves and a file cabinet lined one wall. A brocade-covered Victorian couch sat in the corner. Of course, it was filled with what I could only assume were Smalley’s clothes. The office had its own bathroom, which was filled with man stuff. I wondered if Smalley had spent more than a couple of nights sleeping in this office. There was also a desktop computer and it looked new. Crow told me he had all of the passwords to the business programs that Smalley had used. I was familiar with most of them and my fingers were itching to get started.

Crow told me I could “throw all that shit out.” I took him at his word. I pulled my hair into a ponytail and pinned it on top of my head. I grabbed some plastic gloves, an apron, and other cleaning supplies from Dolly. She showed me how to turn on the built-in stereo system. The office had one of those half doors where you could close the bottom half but leave the top half open, and that’s what I did as I set to work. Dolly and Crow had their heads huddled together over some inventory and maintenance stuff. I was throwing out “shit” and disinfecting the office within an inch of its life. I started with the bathroom because I knew that would be the most unpleasant. And oh boy, was it! I just closed my eyes and wiped the place clean until my eyes stung from the disinfectant.

When Dolly came in to get me for a coffee break, she told me that they had a “person” for that. I should have waited. I smiled at her and dragged her in to show all I had done. She smiled right back and contributed some nice scented red candles, which I lit immediately. By the time I got back from my coffee break, the whole office smelled like a cross between musk and cinnamon and the bathroom was sparkling. I felt the satisfaction of a job well done.

I still had a lot left to do to get the office in check, but it was getting late. Crow indicated that it was time to get going. This he did by wrapping his arms around me and pointing at his watch. His forearms laid soft on the sides of my breasts, and he moved them slowly. It was the first time he had actually ever gotten that close to me, and he led with that.

Geez.

I pulled away, and Crow pulled me back against him and whispered in my ear, “Fuck, baby, you feel good.” He turned me around and pulled me in close. We were locked in tight, breast to chest, hips, crotch, and legs. His unbelievable deep emerald eyes held mine. Then he bent and kissed me.

Holy shit. There are kisses and there are kisses.
And that kiss made me hear bells. They weren’t the loud clangs of heart-stopping bells that I felt when Diego had touched his mouth to mine, but I heard bells nonetheless. Soft sweet chimes that tingled my lips, hardened my nipples, and wet my panties. Tingles that sent a thrill right through to my toes. I knew that starting something, anything, with Crow, when things were so up in the air with Diego was probably a really bad idea.

But sometimes bad ideas feel really good.

CHAPTER 30

C
row and I spent the whole next week pretty much together. He drove me to Reds each morning and we did our thing. Dolly was there most mornings as well. It was nice. I had cleaned up the entire office, and Jules and I had looked over the books together. With Crow’s and Jules’s help I was able to get into the computer records. They were actually in pretty good shape, but it was Smalley’s system and not mine. I switched things so they made sense to me and better sense for the business. I liked the work and was good at it.

Prosper was still with Pinky and the news was still uncertain regarding her sister. She seemed to rally a little, only to develop a dangerous blood clot that had to be removed surgically and some kind of filter put in. I understood a little of the procedure but not much. I had Crow take me to the florist one day on the way home from Reds and sent two huge bouquets of flowers, one to the family home where Pinky and Prosper were staying and one to the hospital for Pinky’s sister. Her name was Lilah. I was really hoping for the best for them.

Diego was still gone and I knew he was checking in with Jules. He left a number where I could reach him. But I never used it. He also called me every day on my cell. I deleted the messages before I listened to them. He was supposed to be coming back soon. Honestly, I anticipated it with really mixed feelings. He definitely stirred something up in me. I just wasn’t sure if that something was bad or something
really
bad because I knew it wasn’t something that could be good for me. That something was definitely unique to Diego and me. It wasn’t something I had ever felt with anyone else. Not even with Crow, although things had started to heat up between us. There had been more really hot tongue-exchanging sessions between us; it had never progressed much further than that.

Honestly, it wasn’t because I wasn’t willing. I was so willing I felt a dull ache between my legs every time I looked at him. After one particularly hot make-out session, Crow planted me on his bike right afterward. All that vibrating and bumping and holding on to that beautiful bad man caused me to have a major orgasm on the way home from work, riding on the back of Crow’s bike.

Soon after that, Crow became a little distant and that had started an ache in the pit of my stomach of a different kind. I was starting to feel like that “passed around and leave her” kind of girl in a high school kind of way. Which was ridiculous because no one had passed me around and no one had left me. But the two romantic interludes I had in the recent past still felt like they had ended in rejection. I was just feeling fragile, I guess. Something was definitely up with Crow and it wasn’t my imagination. He wasn’t exactly avoiding me since the last marathon make-out session, but he didn’t seem anxious to repeat it either. He drove me into work every day, and I started taking extra care with my appearance. I know he noticed because Jules did and so did Dolly. It wasn’t anything over the top, but maybe a few extra sweeps of mascara and some extra care with my hair. And all my new clothes all in one week. Like that.

I guess if the extra effort had worked, I wouldn’t have felt so . . . desperate. But it hadn’t. Crow remained pretty detached. It sucked because apart from all the other mixed-up, messed-up feelings that went along with my encounters with Crow, I had really begun to count on him as a friend. And as hot-and-heavy and all-around feel-incredibly-good, curl-your-toes, take-a-cold-shower kisser Crow was, if I had known going there with him would make me lose a friend, I wouldn’t have done it. I wanted to ask him what was putting us in this new place. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

So even though I was doing well in my new role as an employee of Reds, I was feeling out of sorts. I still couldn’t call Claire. Prosper was gone. I had left a career and a life behind. Honestly, I didn’t know if Gino was looking for Claire and me. Sooner or later I was going to have to face those demons again, and it looked like I was going to have to do it alone. It kind of made me sad. I looked at Crow heading towards me, and that made me sad too. I was tired of wanting what I couldn’t have.

“Raine?” Crow was handing me a helmet.

I looked at him, feeling melancholy.

He saw it.

“Put on your helmet, honey. And let’s go get some Thai food. You in?”

I was in.

We sat down over Thai food and beer.

“You want to tell me what’s making those beautiful blue eyes so sad, honey?”

What I wanted to say was why did you stop wanting me?

But what I said was, “I guess I’m just feeling a little lost. I walked away from my life, Crow. Even if it wasn’t a great life. It was mine and I had a plan. I feel kind of like a failure and I feel alone.” There it was.

Crow looked at me. “I know something about walking away, Raine. Sometimes it feels right, but it never feels good. And the bitch of it is the unfinished part is always waiting. Before you move forward you have to clear that shit up. But you’re not alone, honey.”

“I’m afraid of what’s waiting, Crow. I’m tired. Really I’m alone in all the ways that matter.” I slumped.

Crow reached across the table and put his hand on mine. “Then rest, baby. Rest up, take the calm, take a breath, and take a minute to figure it out. I don’t know about all of what you have been through, Raine, but I can see some of it. And it looks bad. Prosper is keeping your shit close and Diego, well, he wants in. Up to you if you let him. But in the meantime, baby, you take the time.”

“Me and Diego. That Ellie thing . . .” I waved the thought away.

“She didn’t mean jack to him. He’s my brother so I got his back. But he should have cleaned that shit up before he went there with you.”

“Yeah.” I was starting to get uncomfortable talking about Diego with Crow.

“It’s not just about Diego, Crow. You and me and then . . .” I was totally humiliated to have to ask this but I had to know.

“Babe.” Crow was looking at me.

I was peeling the label off the bottle of my beer. The heat rising on my face. He covered my hand with his.

“Raine, you think I wasn’t paying attention to how good my mouth felt on yours? You think I don’t get hard every time, every single fucking time I look at you and think about how you felt when I held you?”

“Then why . . . ?” I had to know. My wounded pride needed to know. My heart needed to know.

“I got some shit of my own that’s preventing me from starting this with you right now. Baby, it’s just not a good idea.”

I pulled my hand away and he let me.

“Crow. Please. You don’t have to explain. Actually, I think we should probably get going.” I grabbed my purse.

“Raine.” He had moved from his side of the booth to mine and was barring my escape. I really just wanted to leave.

“Raine, baby, you got to believe me when I say you don’t want to go there with me right now. Won’t be good for you till I clear some shit up. I got a woman. Shit, babe, I got a wife. I know that most of the brothers don’t give two fucks about juggling shit like that, but that just ain’t me. And more than that, that just ain’t you.” He was very close but wasn’t touching me.

There it was. His opening farewell.

He was watching me, and I nodded. “The life you had?”

“The life we both walked away from.”

“How long ago?” I asked softly.

“Little over a year.”

That wasn’t long enough. Not long enough by a long shot.

“That’s not a long time, Crow. You can still turn it around.” I didn’t know what else to say.

He pulled his hands through his hair.

“Thirteen months, Raine. I’ve not tapped into any of the pussy at the club. Haven’t even looked at that until you walked in that door.” Then he laughed mirthlessly and rubbed the back of his neck.

“I want you to know that. If I was clear of her, there would be nothing stopping me from starting us. I would even have that fucking talk with D. But I’m still not sure where that’s going. She asked me to wait, and I’m giving her that time. We’re talking.”

“Okay.” I reached for my purse.

“Okay?” He seemed surprised. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.” I made an attempt to move out of the booth.

“Raine, it’s important to me that you understand.” He wasn’t moving.

I honestly couldn’t have cared less what was important to him at that moment.

“I understand, Crow, I do. Not a good time for you right now.”

My eyes were bright and I hated myself for that.

“You’re married, and you’re talking with your wife about working it out. Knowing that, you held me and kissed me and have spent almost every waking moment with me for the past week. I thought maybe it was the start of something nice. At the very least, I believed I had a friend. I needed that most of all. But friends don’t mess with your feelings like that.”

It all just felt like a lie now. It hurt in the place that was still raw from the Ellie train wreck. I needed to get as far from these beautiful bad men as I could.

“Is that really all you just heard?” His mouth was tight.

“It’s all I heard that matters, Crow.”

He moved out of my way and took me home.