Chapter Seven
Orion was gone early the next morning. I touched myself gingerly as I slid out of the bed. Deep inside I was sore as hell and the rest of me felt rather stiff.
As I stumbled into the bathroom, I noted the ringing silence throughout the house. As I stood under the hot water I kept thinking about that decisive moment when Orion entered me. A warm feeling curled in my belly and traveled between my legs. I wished he was there.
I’d gotten over the strange sensation of wanting him the moment he’d kissed me. Orion Jackson wasn’t one to pour out the contents of his mind and heart but as I remembered the way his arms curled around me it was enough to make me feel somewhat tender about him.
The house was still strangely empty when I emerged from the shower. The kitchen clock told me it was only 7am. There was no note anywhere. I frowned, pouring a bowl of Rice Crispies. At some point Orion or someone else had cleaned up the mess from the macaroni and cheese. I peered out the kitchen window and noted that the bikes which were usually lined up outside Riverbottom were missing. So whatever it was which pulled Orion away involved the rest of the club. I started to feel uneasy.
Rachel had only mentioned that she lived in one of the trailers on the outskirts of the property. She didn’t say which one. The closest dwelling was an old Airstream which appeared to be nicely kept. A row of clay pots containing aloe plants were lined up in the dirt to the left of the door.
“Good morning, Sunshine.” Rachel swung the door open, winking. “You looking for your man? They all took off before the sun came up. Didn’t you hear all those bikes peeling out of here?”
I shook my head. “I’ve been told I sleep like a rock. Besides I’ve been hearing bikes since the cradle. I guess the noise doesn’t make a dent anymore. Where did they go?”
She shrugged. “Casper doesn’t run his plans by me. Club shit, I guess. Says they’ll be back tomorrow.”
Club shit. The words made me cold. I remembered where I’d heard them before. From Crest as he grimaced under the weight of an unknown burden. Only hours before he was murdered.
I swallowed. “You think it had something to do with me?”
Rachel cocked her head. “I doubt it, hon. You worried about the SF’s? Cops netted a bunch of them and every NoCal club is pretty pissed off over the Warlocks.”
I wanted to know about the man who killed my father. “And Ruger?”
A look of doubt flitted across her face. “I don’t know,” she admitted. She pulled at my arm. “Come in. I’ll make you some coffee and you can tell me about your night.”
I followed Rachel into the tidy interior of the trailer. She motioned to a small table and I sat down, watching her fill the coffee carafe with water. She wore only a bra and a pair of cutoff shorts. I stared at her body with envy, knowing I would never be anywhere near as voluptuous.
“So,” she said, grinning at me mischievously.
“What?”
Rachel snorted and slid into the seat across from me. “Must have been some rendezvous. Orion ordering the boys out of the house all damn night? Un-freaking-heard of.”
“Oh,” I said in a small voice, toying with a terrycloth dishtowel. “It was…good.”
“’Good’?” she mocked me. “Why you holding out? Orion Jackson is hotter than a motherf*cker and he’s more than ‘good’.”
“Well,” I said slowly. “I don’t exactly have anything to compare him to.”
Rachel’s mouth fell open. “Shit,” she said softly, and nodded to herself. “That’s why.”
Something she’d said raised a question. I squirmed. “You and Orion…”I started to say.
She answered quickly. “A few times. When I first came here.” She shrugged. “It was nothing. I’m with Casper.”
I tried to digest that information. “You love Casper?”
The coffee finished burbling and Rachel rose to pour a few cups. “Aw, you know better. Don’t go throwing that word around, sweetie.”
I did know better. “My dad only ever loved my mom and after she left him flat he never kept a woman more than a few months.”
“See? And these guys? They call themselves Defiant for a reason. And it’s not a warm and fuzzy one.”
I took a sip of the strong, black coffee. “Rachel? You ever hear any talk over what happened between Orion and my dad?”
“Well,” she said slowly. “I know it was ugly but not ugly enough to be final, if you catch my meaning.”
“I do.”
She looked at me with sympathy. “Does it matter at this point?”
I lowered my head into my hands. “I guess not.”
We sipped our coffees for a few minutes and listened to the quiet noise of the desert. Rachel glanced at the clock over the sink. “Still got to get the bar open, hon. You can hang out here if you want.”
“Hey, I don’t suppose you need any help over there. I don’t think I can just sit around all the livelong day and watch the shadows pass.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Sure, we could always use some help. But did you run it past Orion? He might not like you mixing in with the boys.”
I gave a short laugh. “Does everything need to be run past Orion?”
Rachel nodded soberly. “Yes,” she answered.
In the end Rachel decided there was no harm in letting me polish some shot glasses and wipe down the tables at Riverbottom. I got the idea the patrons weren’t the sort who kept regular hours but Monday morning likely wasn’t a popular drinking occasion no matter where you were.
Rachel was her usual chatty self and I listened carefully as she told me about the men. She had definite opinions about all of them and she spoke freely. Teague was an a*shole. Maddox played too hard. Brandon was still wet behind the ears despite being a former Marine. She rattled them off one by one as if recounting the traits of her brothers.
“And Casper?” I smiled, rolling pretzel crumbs into a pile.
“Hard ass with a wicked humor who gets me hotter than the desert sand in July.”
I had one more question. “Orion?”
That one she hesitated to answer. “Yeah, he’s tough. Don’t think you can lie and get away with it. I swear there’s a supernatural sense in those wild blue eyes. But you should make up your own mind about him.”
“Fair enough.”
The two women I had seen were a pair of sisters named Talia and Adele. Rachel said Adele was sweet but Talia was a sneaky bitch who hid it well under innocent eyes. She was on and off again with Grayson, a blustery ex con from New York who was the newest to the club.
I enjoyed Rachel’s company a great deal. Crest had never approved of my associating too freely with the women who hung around the Warlocks, though a few of them had taken an interest in a motherless girl being raised among men. Maybe my father saw them as something inferior to what he expected his daughter to be. Or maybe he figured I was something like my mother and wouldn’t be happy in their rough world.
When the door to the bar opened I was startled. We’d been idling around for a few hours and aside from the brief occasion Talia popped her head in only to be barked at by Rachel, we hadn’t seen anyone else.
There were two of them and they wore denim cuts which said ‘Mojave Marauders’. A quick glance at Rachel told me she was immediately uneasy but in one blink she buried the look. She motioned for me to retreat and turned to smile at the men.
“Been a while, Angelo. Boys aren’t around but I’ll get you whatever you’re thirsty for.”
I headed down the hallway which led to the back door, all the while feeling eyes appraising my bare legs.
One of them chuckled, addressing Rachel. “Fresh meat?”
I sharply turned a corner and flattened myself against the wall.
“New girl. Her name’s Kasey and don’t get any ideas. She’s already spoken for.”
“Who’s doing the speaking?”
“The boss.”
“Ah, enough said. Just give us a few cold ones and we’ll enjoy the atmosphere for a few minutes before leaving you to your housekeeping.”
The fact that Rachel felt it necessary to lie about my name was enough to let me know I ought to stay put until the place was clear.
Angelo and his buddy drank and casually joked with Rachel for about twenty minutes before moving on. I heard the crank of their bikes as they fired up the engines and rolled out.
I counted to fifty and returned to the bar. Rachel was folding white dish towels.
“Did Orion tell you to do that?”
“Give you an alternate identity? Not in so many words. He said anyone who would ask after you doesn’t need to know anything.”
I nodded, a growing disquiet in my gut. “So he’s worried.”
Rachel straightened the long chain of the silver cross she wore around her neck. “He’s being cautious, Kira. If he was really worried he wouldn’t have left you here alone.”
Rachel let me linger around a while longer and then decided it probably wasn’t a good idea for me to be hanging out in the bar until I talked to Orion.
I wasn’t especially pleased at the thought of returning to the silent house. But with the ache in my most tender parts I wasn’t up to walking around too much. I looked through the pile of books I’d acquired and finally settled down for a long spell with Dune. I’d always loved the intricacies of Frank Herbert’s world and my new, sparse surroundings were strangely reminiscent of Arrakis, the perilous desert planet. Reading had been my escape ever since I was a little girl. For a long time my most prized possession was a small case filled with Golden Books with titles like Pokey Little Puppy and Tawny Scrawny Lion.
The day passed quickly and as the darkness began to descend bringing with it the yips of nearby coyotes, I was struck by the sudden recollection of who had given me that treasured book collection. It had been a birthday gift. From Orion Jackson, my father’s best friend.