Tastes Like Candy (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 2) (22 page)

              He gave her a hard, sure squeeze and pulled back. “About a half hour ago.”

              “Have we been down here that long?” It hadn’t felt like it.

              “Clucking away like chickens,” he affirmed.

              Jenny gave him an arch look.

              “Beautiful chickens, I might add.”

              “How–” Michelle started to ask, feeling guilty now, since she’d been away so long.

              “Asking for you,” Fox said. “He’s getting tired, wants his girl.”

              There came that pesky lump in her throat again. She nodded. “Right. I’ll see you in a bit.” She stood.

              “I’ll head home,” Jenny said, though it looked like it took effort to do so. “You’ll keep me updated?”

              “Of course.”

              The twins were waiting just outside the door, intending to escort her, obviously. They fell in behind her, moving in sync, creeping her out a little. But creepy protection was better than none, she supposed.

              Jinx was standing sentry outside the door. Things might be better, but she knew they weren’t right. That would take time. She squared up her shoulders and said, “Fox said he wanted to see me.”

              Jinx nodded, looking down at her with less hostility than before. “Doc said he needs to get some rest. You missed the cops coming by and questioning him about the GSW.”

              She grimaced.

              “We told ‘em it was a drive-by thing. Didn’t get a look at the guys.”

              “All you can say, I guess.” Then, because she felt it was the right way to start mending fences, she said, “You know him best. How is he? How is he really?”

              His brows jumped, and his expression softened. “He’s Candy, so he’s tough, and he only complains about stupid shit, like the food. But he’s hurting. He feels like shit. He’s pissed and scared that he couldn’t take on eight guys all by himself. And he’s worried you’re afraid and won’t want to stay.”

              The lump doubled, made it hard to swallow. “What a sweet, stupid idiot.”

              “Yeah. He really is. And I really want to think you believe that.”

              A snarky comeback formed and died in her mind. This wasn’t the place for that. Jinx wasn’t challenging her as a woman. He was challenging her feelings for Candy. The man was his leader and best friend, and he had a right to be suspicious of newcomers.

              She nodded. “I do.”

              He nodded back, and opened the door for her.

              The room was now full of flowers. Three
Get Well Soon
Mylar balloons bobbed in the draft of the air conditioning. The manufactured cheer made Candy look worse. His bruises had darkened some more, and his bed had been reclined a fraction, which made him look helpless.

              Michelle forced a smile and crossed to the bed, settling down beside him with a too-upbeat exclamation of, “For a crew of filthy outlaws, they pick out lovely flowers.”

              He wasn’t just tired, but completely worn down; she could see it in every battered line of his face, in the careful way he rolled his head toward her on the pillow. “They’re all a buncha saps.”

              “Very much so. They’re worried about you.”

              “I’ll be fine.”

              “I’m sure you will.”

              “I’m sorry, baby doll.”

              “For what?” She reached to put her hand on his arm, mindful of the bandages.

              “For…for not being able to…” He released a deep breath and glanced away from her. “I shoulda had all of them on the ground. I–”

              “There were eight of them, Candy. No one could have–”

              “I could have. Back in the day.” His lips pressed together, a rueful non-smile. “Shit, eight used to be nothing. Eight was afternoon exercise. I…” He shook his head.

              “Derek Snow,” she said, sternly, to hide the tears clogging her voice, “I don’t believe for one second that you could ever take on eight men by yourself.”

              He didn’t take the bait. “You shoulda seen me when I was younger. You woulda really liked me then.”

              “I really like you right now.”

              “No, but, I mean, you wouldn’t have been able to keep your hands off me.”

              “I can’t now,” she insisted.

              He looked at her again. “Look at you. Being sweet to an old man.”

              “You’re not old.”

              “Older than I was,” he said, softly.

              “Well, you don’t have to get maudlin about it.”

              His good eye narrowed, shining with humor. He twitched a bit of a real smile. “Where have you been all my life?”

              “A twinkle in my father’s eye.”

              He burst out laughing. He grabbed at his chest, teeth gritted against what had to be an awful stab of pain but he couldn’t stop the laughter.

              “Oh, shit,” Michelle said, pressing back on his shoulder, trying to keep him still. “Sorry.”

              “No,” he said, when he could, catching his breath. “I needed that.” He settled back on the pillow with a sigh and a final chuckle.

              Michelle pushed his hair back, raking it into unruly spikes. “What you need is rest.”

              “Resting is for the dead.”

              “Which you almost were. So…”

              “Right.” He reached up and caught her hand, squeezed it. “I’m sure Jinx can see you back home safe.”

              “I’m not going anywhere.”

              Surprise flashed across his wounded face; he colored with something warmer, more hopeful. “You’ll have a crick in your neck if you sleep in that chair.”

              “So I’ll have one. I’m staying.”

              Again, he looked away from her. “You don’t have to.”

              But, silly fool that he was, he didn’t realize it would have been unbearably painful to leave this hospital tonight. It wasn’t even a choice, and that knowledge told her everything she needed to know about herself, and about his place in her life. “Yes,” she said, firmly, “I do. So no more arguing.”

Twenty

Candy

“Where’s my Scotch?”

              Silence.

              So, louder, calling over his shoulder: “Michelle, where’s my Scotch?”

              He turned around, searching for her. She was moving through the sanctuary’s living room, laundry basket on her hip, heading for the private washer they used back here in the back. She didn’t look his way. “It’s gone.”

              “Gone?”

              “Yes, gone.”

              “What does gone mean?” Irritation prickled into something akin to panic in his chest. The pain killers the hospital had discharged him with only took the edge off the terrible throbbing in his face, and temple, and chest. He wanted to finish it off the old fashioned way.

              She set the basket down, opened the washer one-handed, and started feeding clothes into, still not looking at him. “I got rid of it.”

              He gasped in one-hundred-percent, authentic horror, which made her look at him like he was stupid. “You didn’t pour it out, did you?”

              “No. I did not. But it’s gone all the same.”

              Okay, now he was starting to get angry. “I want my damn Scotch.”

              “I’m so sorry,” she said, like she wasn’t sorry at all, adding detergent.

              “You’re really gonna do this?”

              “You drink too much already, and you definitely shouldn’t drink while you’re on those pills, and while you’re recovering. Yes, I’m ‘really gonna do this,’” she said in a horrible mockery of his accent.

              “Fine.” He slammed the glass he’d been holding down onto the sideboard. “I’ll just go get a bottle at the bar.”

              He was striding for the door when she said, “I took the ones at the bar, too.”

              This was un-fucking-believable. And he told her so.

              Finally done with her goddamn
laundry
, she propped a hip against the machine, and sent him a look like his mother used to. “You take very poor care of yourself. So someone has to make the hard decisions for you.”

              “And you’re just nominating yourself for that position?”

              “Yes.” She was starting to look amused, and that didn’t help his temper.

              “You know what? Whatever. I can drink Jack instead.”

              “Derek,” she said, when he turned for the door, and he pulled up short, her voice as effective as a leash around his throat.

              He turned to her, scowling, and tried not to look at her wrist brace and start feeling guilty and terrible. This right here was about his Scotch.

              “You don’t need Scotch,” she said, quietly, but firmly. “You need to rest, and recover. Take your medicine, drink lots of water, and no alcohol.” She sighed. “I know you don’t like being taken care of, but I’m determined to do just that. So you need to get over it.”

              The thing, though? He did like being taken of. He liked it a lot. He liked it too much, in fact.

              This was his third day home from the hospital. The first day, Jenny had driven him and Michelle home in one of the club trucks, and his teeth had been clenched together by the time they reached the clubhouse, each rattle of the chassis and dip of a pothole sending fresh agony through his throbbing bullet wound, and his pounding head. His girls had taken one look at him, and known he was hurting, the two of them sharing a silent, swift communication through glances.

              “I’m fine,” he’d bitten out.

              “Right,” they said together.

              “You aren’t gonna be best friends or some shit, are you?” he’d grumbled.

              “No, of course not,” Michelle had said, patting his good shoulder.

              That had been a bad night. He’d taken two pain pills and fallen into bed without showering. Fuck it.

              Once he was on his back, he realized the change. His single bed had been replaced with a double one. He had plenty of room to stretch and be comfy, in his current sweatpants-and-beard-scruff state.

              Michelle stood beside the bed, watching him, and he lifted his brows in inquiry.

              “It’s new,” she had explained. “I had Pup buy one and set it up. I knew you needed something more than what you had, and I also knew you wouldn’t want to drag one of those beat-up dorm beds in here.”

              He’d wanted to be offended by her interference. Instead, he’d patted the sheets beside him and said, “Come sleep with me.”

              He’d awakened the next morning with a pill hangover, and a distinctly unhappy body. But Michelle had been snuggled up to his good side, and that had been better than any narcotic pain reliever. At least, up until he sat up.

              He glanced over at her, saw the dark fans of her lashes against her cheeks, felt a stirring in his chest like warm water rushing up over his feet at the beach, and thought that he wouldn’t wake her. She was tired and sore from sleeping in a hospital chair; he would ease her away, and sit up carefully, and go take a shower without disturbing her rest.

              One minute he was thinking this, the next he was doing it…and then suddenly he had his head in his hands, about to fall off the side of the bed, room spinning, skull full of needles, the pain grabbing in his bad shoulder. Surely there must be some giant bird with its talons sunk in his flesh, because how could it hurt this badly? Did he get knifed in his sleep? Did he…

              He glanced down, vision swimming, and saw that the stitches had popped, and that dark red pearls of blood were running down his chest.

              “Shit,” he muttered, and had to grip the edge of the mattress before he could reach to touch the soaked bandage. It was a new mattress, he remembered, because it didn’t scrunch up in his hand like the old one would have; it was hard to hold onto, plush and resistant.

              The sheets rustled behind him. “Shit,” he said again.

              “Candy?” Michelle’s voice was thick with sleep. “What are you – oh no!” More rustling, and the sound of her small bare feet hitting the rug. She rushed around the end of the bed and was in front of him in the time it took him to finally get upright.

              “My God,” she whispered, hand flitting against his chest. “Your stitches…”

              “They’re fine.”

              “You’re bleeding! Here, lie down.”

              If he’d been himself, he would have brushed her away like the butterfly she was. But in his current state, she was able to push him back onto the pillows and bend over him, clucking disapproval.

              The morning progressed in a depressing fashion. Michelle was joined by Jenny, and they fussed over him, and cleaned up the blood, and disinfected the area. Fox – who for reasons unknown had field-medic experience – came in and fixed the popped stitch. The sight of the small, blue-eyed Englishman hovering above him with needle and thread was faintly nauseating. The rest of the day was more pills, forced rest, and watching Netflix on Michelle’s laptop where she’d propped it up on several pillows beside him. Thirteen hours of
Daredevil
left him ready to bash heads and feeling as helpless as ever.

              Yesterday he’d been “allowed” out of bed, and had held an informal church meeting in the common room, checking in with all his guys.

              Today, he was going out of his mind with this being-an-invalid shit.

              But again, there was the whole being taken care of thing.

              It was luxurious.

              Jenny had always tried to look after him, but she was his little sister, and when he rebuked her help, she went off and sulked, like any little sister would.

              But when Michelle came to him bearing a tray of food, or a glass of water, pressing the flat of her hand to his forehead to check for fever, he couldn’t find it in him to chastise her.

              She was still Michelle, still practical to a fault, but she was warm and cuddly beside him, and her gold brows knitted together with worry when she scrutinized him. The light touch of her small fingers against his bare skin was heavenly. She dabbed ointment onto the scrapes on his face, replaced the butterfly bandages from the hospital with “plasters.” Even left-handed as she was now, she was adept as any nurse.

              “How are you feeling? Any pain? Fever? Do you need anything?” she asked each time she saw him.

              And what he really wanted, more than anything, was for her to just sit with him, and talk about stupid shit, and watch Matt Murdock beat people up with him.

              Today, though, he was out of bed. And if he had to keep being out of bed, he wanted his goddamn Scotch.

              “You’re not my mother,” he said now, staring her down.

              “No. She’s watching you from the other side, God rest her soul, wondering why you abuse yourself the way you do. So I’m stepping in for her. Do you think she’ll mind?”

              He clenched his teeth and growled in response.

              “Someday, when I’m back in London, you’ll think you had it good when I was tending your wounds, and you’ll wish you’d been more thankful,” she promised.

             
When I’m back in London
. The words sent a hard, involuntary shudder down his spine. If he kept pushing her, would she threaten to leave right now? He wondered, but he didn’t want to find out.

              “Whatever,” he grumbled, and turned away from her. He heard her sigh, and didn’t know the exact meaning it carried – women sighed for so many reasons and he was still learning them. But there was no point in continuing about the Scotch. Besides, he needed to call Ghost.

~*~

The Tennessee president picked up on the third ring. “Heard you got shot up,” he said by way of greeting. There came the distant, familiar clang of garage noise; he was at Dartmoor.

              “Yeah.” Candy eased a hip onto the tailgate of the club truck and tried not to think about the way every movement pulled at his stitches and brought on fresh waves of pain. He was thoroughly disgusted by how much of a pussy he was being about this. “Just the once, though. The worst is my face; I look almost as bad as you right now.”

              Ghost chuckled. “And the groupies are weeping, I bet.”

              He didn’t feel like joking anymore. “It was those new friends you made us.”

              “The Chupacabras. Yeah, I heard. Jinx and I talked about it yesterday.”

              Ah yes, when he was still being a total pussy, rather than an upright one. “He tell you what Ruiz said?”

              “Yeah. You didn’t actually get their guy picked up, did you?”

              He was insulted. Maybe it was the lack of Scotch, but he was insulted in a way he’d never felt before. Ghost Teague questioned people because he was the boss of all bosses, and because he was an asshole, but Candy was fuming, suddenly.

              “You told me a year ago that we were gonna start dealing with the cartel. Do you really think I’d sell them out, what, just for shits and giggles?”

              Message received. Ghost took a breath and said, “No. But I have to ask.” Firm. Presidential.
You know how it is
.

              “Fair enough,” Candy said, tightly, and wished like hell for a cigarette. He’d left his Marlboros on the nightstand inside. “But no, I didn’t. Everything’s been standard op and above board there. But the guy did get picked up. And Riley’s back in town with a whole fed crew behind him.”

              “Shit.”

              He gave Ghost the rundown, and then sighed, hearing it put together in summary like that. “They’ve got eyes on us somewhere, somehow. Somebody saw me either meet with Armando, or make the gun drop.”

              “Has to be an agent,” Ghost said. “All your boys are clean.”

              “Yeah, that’s what I figure.” Now came the part that made his throat close up. “Ruiz didn’t want to talk, Ghost. His boys were either gonna beat me to death, or real close to it. And I had Michelle with me. They woulda…” He couldn’t make himself say it.

              “Michelle?” Ghost asked, confusion in his voice.

              “Calloway.”

              A beat passed. Then, “Shit. Phillip’s Michelle.”

              “Yeah.”

              “And when you say
with you
…”

              “It’s as bad as you think.”

              Ghost muttered something. Then said, “What is wrong with all you sickos who can’t leave the damn kids alone?”

              “One: that ‘kid’ would eat someone her own age for breakfast. Two: hello pot, I’m the kettle.”

              “Oh, fuck you…”