The Possibility of Trey (3 page)

"How much, for how long and for what?"

"Five G's over six months and it's to get my little brother into one of those teenaged behavior modification ranches." I tried to keep my reply as succinct as he'd kept his question remembering I only had fifteen minutes to plead my case.

I heard a drawer open and saw him take out a pad and pen. He was gonna take notes? Shit. I added 'anal retentive asshole' to the 'dick' side of my internal scorecard.

"Need more info." Damn, could a man's voice get any deeper? It was more than off-putting and I felt the sharp pinch of sweat start beneath my arms.

"How much and in what?" I shot back. I tended to get a bit mouthy when uncomfortable. Not that my question was out of line. Except for its phrasing and maybe my challenging tone.

Without raising his face, his eyes again hit mine. Dear god, those were some seriously hot eyes. Long, long-assed lashes combined with a red-brown, the most perfect color of brown, made me weak-kneed. "Your brother to start."

Okay. At least I had a place to begin.

"Drake is seventeen and since he was fifteen, he's been in trouble. Running with the wrong crowd, getting into stuff he shouldn't and basically just causing youthful trouble. But, its escalated. Now he and his 'boys' as he calls them are into tagging. You know, spray painting on shi…ah, I mean, stuff they shouldn't. And they're so stupid about it always getting caught in the act." I turned my face away to try and hide the blush I knew had spread over my cheeks. No one in our family had ever had a problem with the law before but Drake just seemed to make up for all of us. "This is his third offense."

"Which means what? I'm not up on legal proceedings for delinquents."

Damn. I hated hearing my little brother being assigned that label but that was exactly what he was turning into.

"The hall or house arrest." I had to force the words out of a tight throat.

I saw him write for a bit as I chewed my lower lip. I couldn't read his scrawl from where I was sitting but I knew it wasn't good.

"Parents?" came the next bark.

"Uhm. Dad was a pipe-fitter in the Navy but lost his sight and an arm due to one of the explosions on the USS Cole in the Gulf. Mom had a massive heart attack six years ago and can't do much." I hated to admit my family's failings,
my
failings in keeping all of us on the right track, financially secure and together. But I'd done pretty good until Drake had hit fifteen.

"You're the sole breadwinner?"

"Outside of dad's pension."

"Shit, pretty girl. That's a lot of weight on your shoulders." I heard a note of respect in the deepness of his voice and that's what I clung to. I chose to ignore the other words which would've set the women's movement back fifty years.

"I'm handling it, si…uhm, Mr. Jackson."

He shot me another sharp glance before his eyes again went to his pad of paper. "Where's he now?"

"Drake?"

"If that's your brother's name then yeah."

"In the reception area with Rita." I didn't know where he was going with this and the lack of knowledge caused another round of sweat.

"Let's get him in here, shall we?" he said with a lethal grin. Not the Friday night kind of grin where a girl's panties were in trouble, but the kind that made me fear for Drake's very existence. He punched a couple of buttons on the phone and told Rita to send Drake to his office.

And wouldn't you know my brother swaggered into my boss's, boss's,
boss's
office with all the arrogance of some kind of Grammy-winning rapper. I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole.

"S'up," my ass-hat of a brother offered, lifting his chin.

"Sitch your hard ass down and shut da fuck up," Trey barked with a truly bad-ass glare.

Luckily, my sibling wasn't completely stupid because I watched his bony shoulders creep up towards his ears as a flush moved over his face while he plopped into the chair next to mine. I caught my brother's gray eyes, filled with a questioning bordering on suspicious light before Mr. Jackson spoke again.

"Eyes to me, punk." There was no way in hell a person could refuse to do as he instructed. Not without severe repercussions that went unspoken. "You know your sister has asked to go into hock to save your scrawny ass, right?"

I turned my eyes to my brother and watched as his fingers held a white knuckled grip on his baggy pant legs. But there was no response.

"Asked you a question, wanna be. You gonna answer or am I gonna have to get physical?" The words were said slowly, menacingly and I couldn't help how I'd opened my mouth to run interference. But I caught Mr. Jackson's quick glance and shut my mouth with an audible click. "Don't look at her. I'm the one talking here."

"You-you can't t-touch me, dude. I'm a mi-minor." Such a thin pathetic excuse from a skinny wisp of a boy.

"You know where you are, little dick? On Hellion property. And on this property,
I'm
king. I can do
what
I want to
whom
I want and no one will be the
wiser
. You get me?"

I shifted back in my chair in order to glance at my brother without having to turn my head. He obviously hadn't heard the same stories I'd heard or my sibling would just shut the freak up and nod or something. Tales I'd always put in the realm of Santa or in the case of bikers, the boogeyman. Things spoken of in whispers and telling of unwarranted smack-downs, of wicked knives and illegal guns. And of sexual stuff that left a girl stupefied in its retold depravity.

"So. I'll ask you again. Do you know that your sister has asked to get a loan to save your worthless ass?"

"No, sir."

"Better but still with the attitude." I saw Mr. Jackson shake his head, causing the long layers of his multi-colored long brown hair to move. "She wants to send you to one of those ranch places to get you to toe the line."

My brother's eyes shot to me and there was no missing the accusation in them.

Mr. Jackson's palm slap to his desktop sounded like a shot in the quiet of the room. "Said, eyes to me!"

They stared at each other for a time and the ripe smell of adolescent sweat filled the room. I don't think my brother had ever been that close, much less talked to, by a man who was a true hard-ass before. I was almost afraid my brother was gonna wet himself.

Mr. Jackson glanced back down at the pad in front of him, hitting it with the end of his pen. "Okay, here's how it's gonna go down. I'm gonna deny your sister's request."

I closed my eyes and felt all my insides loosen at his words. This was the worst of the worst and I didn't know how to redeem it.

"But, I've got an in with the judge who handles the juvenile cases. So, for the next six months you're gonna be a Hellion bitch. You're gonna live here, go to school here and work here. It won't be easy and it won't be fun but you
will
turn your life around or you
will
be answering to me."

I couldn't even blink. What. The. Hell?

Mr. Jackson pressed some buttons on the phone before asking somebody named Dare to come to his office. There was complete silence in the room until another big good-looking biker leaned against the doorframe.

"You called?"

"Yeah. We have a new bitch that thinks he's the shit. We're gonna disavow him of that notion over the next six months. Install him in six, grab him a laptop. His sister will be bringing by his clothes. No cell. No games and no visitors outside of family."

"Got it, boss. C'mon, sweet thing. Uncle Dare's gonna make you feel
real
welcome." I watched in horror as the man in the doorway grabbed the back of my brother's neck and maneuvered him up from his chair and out of the room. I turned back to Mr. Jackson, trying and failing to find the words to prevent what was happening.

But I saw him hold a hand up to stop me even before I could begin.

"This is the best place for him, Ms. Sheridan. He thinks because he and his friends are creating havoc that he is his own law. We can stop that. He'll be safe, he'll be doing schoolwork online and we'll work him until he's too tired to get into trouble. And we'll do it for free."

"But," I started, my mind whirling. "You're bikers!"

I saw a small grin appear as he looked at me. "Yeah. And?"

My temper flared. I'd been given no say in Drake's future and for this man to run railroad over me pissed me off. Almost as much as his grin. "I don't think my brother needs an education in how to get fucked up, fight or fornicate!"

"Is that what you think we do here, Ms. Sheridan?" Mr. Jackson asked with a head tilt. "That that's
all
we do?"

Shutting my mouth to prevent another outburst, I tried to pick one of the more logical threads of concern I had in order to speak it.

"Listen. A lot of our guys used to cause trouble in the streets when they were Drake's age. They grew up and seem to enjoy getting others out and away from that. I'm betting we'll see a huge difference in your brother in three months, but he's still gonna have to stay the full six."

"What am I supposed to tell my parents?" My voice was starting to sound a bit ragged and reedy with all that was bubbling inside me. I was feeling out of control and his explanations weren't helping a bit. And I was confused. A motorcycle club who, in my mind, were simply marauding Vikings on wheels, actually tried to help people? To help me and my family?

There had to be a catch to it, I just needed to figure out what it was.

"What would've you told them if you'd sent him to one of those ranches?"

He had a point.

And I hated it.

"Plus, you can visit him every evening if you want although we do ask that you don't for the first two weeks. In the first of it, they still have idea that they're a big fucking deal because of all the goddamn sunshine their buddies blow up their ass. Or that their family will bail their fucking butts out just like they've done before. We're gonna work with him on all of it. Believe me, you'll find a different kid when you see him come through the other side." He seemed so confident in his and the club's ability to turn Drake around. Even more so than the behavioral psychologist I'd taken my brother to but who had lasted only four sessions before I received the verdict of 'incorrigible'. "Besides, Miss Sheridan, what other option do you have?"

And at that, Mr. Jackson slid completely into the 'bastard' portion of my scorecard.

He was a Hellion, after all, and to be avoided.

Although, Trey Jackson was the hottest man I'd ever been around.

So the meeting had taken a half-hour instead of the scheduled fifteen minutes. Trey still counted it as a win even though he was stuck in the office until five-thirty before he could find his way to the bar in the compound for his after-work bourbon.

It had been worth it on more than one level.

First was getting another no-account, stupid punk off the Missoula streets. Yeah, he'd recognized the attitude as soon as the bag of bones had hit his office door. Recognized it because he'd
been
it albeit from a different direction.

Where Drake had come from a lack of a home life, Trey's had been the result of too much home life. At fifteen, he'd felt like he'd had most of his family up his ass in one way or another. Telling him what to do, what to wear, how to think. So, he'd fucking rebelled. And gotten caught each and every time, just like Sheridan's brother.

Oh to be that age with what he knew now. God, he'd rule the fucking world!

Trey dipped his head back to his glass, lost in memories of a youth misspent and people long since gone. People who guided him still.

"Yo' Prez," he heard and glanced to the bar stool next to him.

"Bishop."

"Heard we have a turk on lock down in six." News traveled fast within the club so Trey wasn't surprised.

"Sheridan's sibling. Hey, did you know she was a girl?" Trey challenged.

"No, duh. Where've you been, bro'?" Bishop asked, signaling to Dee who was working the bar for his usual two fingers of Van Gogh vodka. "She's only been around for five years. You just cottoning on to the fact you've got pussy doing better work than most of the dicks you employ?"

Trey snorted as he finished off his drink. "Guess so."

"So, we're gonna straighten his punk ass out?" Bishop said after a long, deep drink of his poison of choice.

"Damn right. Who better? And our successes speak for themselves." But as soon as the words were out of his mouth, Trey remembered their one failure. The one link in the chain which had come apart so quick and in such a final way.

Bishop didn't speak, seemingly picking up on Trey's thoughts. The younger man signaled to Dee for refills. After she left, he hefted his glass and murmured, "to Ben."

"Ben," Bishop repeated and chugged his vodka which provided both their throats with the burn their hearts still held even after so many years.