Chapter 25
The last week has been an absolute nightmare and a complete blur.
And standing here in the cold, nail gun in my frozen hand, as I build a goddamn chicken coop with Jax, isn’t making my weekend that much better.
My car getting vandalized had set off a series of events that went from bad to worse, culminating in an absolute shit storm. I spent the entire week putting out fires, and I still don’t feel any better about where things stand. With anything.
When Riley called me that night, with so much fear in her voice, I thought I had hit a new low in life. Nothing had ever provoked me as much as that call did–the way it gripped my chest and set fire to my blood. I didn”t know what the threat was, but I knew my job was to eliminate it.
Turns out that call was just the beginning of the entire shit storm. Riley thought the vandalism was intentional, and I tend to agree. The fact that she also sensed someone was out there, watching her when she discovered the car, made me extremely uneasy.
The question was, who was it? The not knowing was almost worse than hearing Riley’s fearful voice on the phone. Because I could do nothing to protect her if I couldn’t see the threat.
I question whether Riley was the intended target, though. It was my car, which Riley had been driving for weeks now, but had been parked at Tracy’s house for days. Realistically, any one of us could have been the target. But my gut said that it was me. Because who the fuck would want to hurt Riley or Tracy? Riley is a goddamn angel, and Tracy, though on my shit list right now, wouldn’t harm anyone. At least not to the extent that warranted that kind of retaliation.
I have a list of enemies a mile long, so the only thing I could wrap my head around was that this was a message meant for me. And it absolutely gutted me that Riley was getting pulled into my bullshit. My job was to shield her from this, from anything that might hurt her.
My best guess was that this had something to do with my business in New York. I’d been ruthless up there, associated with a fucking crime family, for Christ’s sake. One that typically never let anyone walk away from them like Jax and I had. Which led into my next fire of the week.
After bringing Riley back to my place, I had been so certain this was connected to shit in New York that I’d called Gio at one in the goddamn morning to interrogate him about it. Needless to say, he wasn’t happy to receive my call. Especially when I suggested that he might be the one responsible, all in an attempt to persuade me to return to work for him.
It made sense in my head–remind me I wasn’t untouchable, that he still had power over me, and then use it to manipulate me into moving back if I didn’t want anyone I cared about getting hurt. I’d seen him do it to countless others to keep them under his control. But he assured me that he had nothing to do with it, and ultimately, I believed him, though I got the ass chewing of the century in the process.
While my fears about Gio’s involvement were put to rest, and he promised to keep an ear out for anyone else’s involvement, it still didn’t make me feel any better. Even Riley finally agreeing to come work for me had barely managed to take the edge off. So the next day, I took her to the gun range to blow off some steam and teach her how to safely handle a firearm.
She’d done really well, picked up on everything I taught her quickly, and her shot wasn’t half bad. When we got back to my place, she even asked me to show her how to break down several of the guns we’d used. How to clean and maintain them, having me explain how they worked along the way in great detail. She claimed it made her feel more comfortable handling the guns if she understood how they worked and all the different inner components. I was impressed with her attitude about it all, to say the least, and when she finally left my place Sunday evening to go home, I sent her with a Glock of her own.
I still hated that she insisted on going back to her place, but I at least felt better knowing she was armed. And after our agreement from the other night, I wasn’t about to break her trust again and force her to stay at my place. So arming her was the next best option.
Which had led to fire number three of the week.
I’d met Riley at her office Tuesday morning to finalize the deal with Adam. Everything had gone smoothly. Papers were all signed, until Riley decided it was only appropriate to stay on long enough to train her replacement.
That hadn’t been part of the deal. Adam didn’t get to keep her indefinitely until he got around to hiring someone new. And with the holidays, I expected it to be a slow process. I was halfway to dragging her out of that office when Riley had finally put her foot down, saying, ‘If you want anywhere near my pussy again, you’ll respect my decision not to leave Adam high and dry’. And Christ, if I hadn’t wanted to pull her into the break room and fuck her right there. Her new resolve and confidence around me was sexy as hell. Infuriating as fuck, too, but it got my dick hard.
Inevitably, she won. Loss of access to her pussy was a very powerful threat indeed.
Adam and she both agreed they would try to expedite the hiring process, so I finally left their office satisfied that everything was good. Plus, it gave Jax and me a little more time to square away the new office location we had found, and get it set up for Riley to work out of.
But then I got to the brokerage and had to deal with fire number four.
Blake was furious at me for having told Tracy about the shell company being under her name. Apparently, after Riley and I left Tracy’s that night, he and Tracy had spent the rest of the night fighting about it. Ultimately, she had kicked him out in the early hours of the morning with the threat of deactivating her real estate license and reporting him for fraud. He hadn’t heard from her since, and he was angry as hell about it.
I knew he wouldn’t understand my attempt to justify my decision to threaten Tracy with that information, so I’d kept my mouth shut. After he’d given me my second ass chewing of the century, he kicked me out of his office with the promise that ‘this isn’t over’.
I really fucking hated losing my newly found camaraderie with Blake. I liked having him on my side, and the guy was actually nice to be around once we’d put our initial threats and dick measuring behind us. It’d been a long time since both Jax and I had let someone else into our friendship–hell, into our business–so it pained me that I may have blown that all up.
But I’d do the same thing all over again if I had to. Having Riley was more important than Blake’s friendship. Having Riley was more important than anything.
Riley and I had gone car shopping that next day, since she’d been driving a rental while the Audi was out of commission. It hadn’t taken her long to decide on a new one. It was another Subaru, much to my dismay, but she elected to go for the WRX this time. Why she wanted that car, I have no idea, but I kept to my word and bought the damn thing for her.
We had gotten lunch afterwards, and it wasn’t until she asked what I was doing for Thanksgiving that I even remembered the holiday. Riley said she and Tracy were spending the holiday in West Virginia with Tracy’s family. She invited me along, but I quickly turned her down. Tracy was still pissed at me, and I knew I wouldn’t be welcome.
So Jax and I had spent Thanksgiving together, continuing our yearly ritual of cheap takeout and drinking all day.
And now here I am, freezing my ass off, as Jax looks over the build prints again for the chicken coop we told Riley we’d build for her. It’s the cherry on top of the shit sundae that is this week.
“Something’s not right,” Jax says, his brow furrowed in concentration as he looks between his build prints and the crooked coop in front of us. The whole damn thing is leaning slightly to the left.
“What’s wrong, Noah?” I ask him, my lips tipped up in a grin. “I thought you said this would be easy?” His exact words when I questioned whether this was a good idea had been ‘a chicken coop will be a piece of fucking cake’.
He brings his attention to me just long enough to shoot me a glare and flip me off. Laughing, I put my nail gun down and grab a tape measure.
I start measuring different components of the coop, thinking we must have messed up on our measurements somewhere. The first thing we did was make sure the ground was level, as well as the legs the coop is built on, so the issue must be somewhere else.
“Maybe we should have waited until the coop was built to have the chickens dropped off,” Riley says from behind me. I turn to find her standing by our mock workbench, chicken in her arms as she strokes its back.
She looks cute as hell, bundled in her puffy jacket and bright-yellow knit hat with a little fuzzy ball on the top. She’s long since lost her gloves, opting instead to let her fingers freeze so she can pet the chickens.
The farmer Jeremy had hooked her up with brought the chickens over early this morning, along with some feed and supplies to get Riley started. She’s spent every minute since with those birds, and they’ve taken to her like ducks to water: following her around the yard, nesting at her feet, watching her curiously whenever she stopped fawning over them long enough to help Jax and me.
“It’ll be finished today,” Jax says, not looking up from the prints in his hands.
I snap the tape measure closed, having just found the culprit. “It’s these three pieces. They’re half an inch shorter than the others.”
Thank God we noticed the crooked slant of the coop before we moved onto roofing and putting up the siding. The pieces of wood weren’t noticeably shorter when we’d been framing, but once we had it all together, that half inch became obvious from a distance.
“There’s no way,” Jax says, setting down the prints and stomping over. “I measured three times before marking all the cuts.”
“The numbers don’t lie.” I toss the tape measure at him with a smirk. He promptly re-measures what I just checked.
Riley laughs, patting the chicken in her arms as she says to it, “Don’t you worry, you’ll have a house in no time now.” The bird clucks at her.
“You’re getting way too attached to those things already,” I tell her. Then more gently add, “The farmer said it’s not uncommon to lose birds to predators, baby. You shouldn’t treat them like pets.” She’ll be devastated if something happens to them.
She walks toward us, her face serious. “Then you guys better make sure that coop is predator proof.”
Jax chuckles behind me, saying, “It will be. We’ll make sure to bury twelve inches of chicken wire too, so nothing can dig into the run.”
“Good.” She flashes me a smile before turning her attention back to the bird in her arms. “You hear that Marge? You’ll be snug as a bug in there.”
“Marge?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. “You named them already?”
Christ, this woman.
“Of course I did,” she says, like it’s the obvious thing to do when one gets chickens. “This one’s Mrs. Cluckfire.” She points to a fat little red one perched by her feet. “That’s Henace the Menace.” She points at the white one with the bulging eyes that’s currently running around her yard like a damn maniac. “And this,” she pets the fluffy black and white one in her arms, “is Marge.”
Marge cocks her head at me. I don’t like this little fucker. The feathers around her head are so goddamn poofy that they completely obscure her eyes. How the hell is she supposed to find bugs when she can’t even see?
She cocks her head at me again, like she can tell what I’m thinking. Yeah, definitely don’t trust this one.
Not to mention, since the chickens arrived this morning, the fluffy little shit has barely left Riley’s arms. When Riley does set her down, she doesn’t leave her side, prompting Riley to just pick her back up.
I’m not saying I”m jealous of a chicken, but Riley has barely even acknowledged me since that fluffy bastard showed up. Other than to bring us lunch and half heartedly try to help, she’s been too distracted by the chickens. Specifically, Marge.
Jax steps up beside me and reaches out to give Marge a little pat on the head. “No need to worry, Marge. Daddy Emmett and Uncle Jax got you.” He bends down, picking up Mrs. Cluckfire and turning to me. “Isn’t that right, Daddy?”
Riley’s eyes bulge and I fight the urge to reach out and throttle Jax. He’s not helping with the whole attachment thing. Nor is he making things comfortable with the emphasis he’s putting on the word ‘daddy’.
Though I can’t deny the way my stomach flips at the idea of it.
I’ve spent approximately three minutes of my entire adult life thinking about kids, and that was to decide that I wanted nothing to do with having them. But looking at Riley right now, my heart pounds in my chest at the image of her belly swollen with my child.
My dick stirs to life at the thought of pumping her full of cum over and over again until she gets pregnant. Fuck, it’d be glorious.
I shift, subtly trying to readjust myself, only to be met with Jax’s bellowing laugh. I shoot him a glare that I hope conveys a big fuck you.
When I look back at Riley, she quickly darts her eyes away, but there’s a soft pink blush on her cheeks, and it’s not from the cold.
“Put Mrs. Cluckfire down so we can get this thing finished,” I tell Jax. Jesus, even I’m using their names now. “We need to re-cut three new pieces. We should be able to get the roof and siding done today, at least.” To Riley I say, “Might have to wait until tomorrow to do trim and details. We won’t be able to paint until we get some warmer weather, either.”
“That’s fine,” she says, finally setting Marge down. “I’ll help, so it goes faster. I just want to make sure these guys have a safe place tonight that isn’t my utility room.”
Jax leaves to grab some of the extra wood we have and takes it over to the sawhorses. Mrs. Cluckfire goes to follow, but quickly runs away when Jax drops a piece of wood, making a loud bang.
Riley slides up next to me, sticking an arm through mine and leaning her head against me. “Will you stay tonight?”
I turn, pulling her into my arms and planting a kiss on her lips. They’re cold, so I linger, my mouth moving over hers and my tongue gently slipping through, exploring her mouth.
Pulling away, I plant a kiss on her forehead before saying, “Of course, baby.” I drop my hands to her ass, giving it a quick squeeze. “Daddy Emmett needs to make sure his newfound feathery children make it through the night.”
Riley giggles, wrapping her arms around my neck and reaching up to press a quick peck to the corner of my mouth. “Anything else Daddy Emmett will be doing tonight?”
The flirtatious grin on her face is enough to melt my very soul. Leaning forward, I whisper into her ear, “That depends. Are you going to be a good girl for me?”
Her breath catches, but she gives me a small nod. “Then Daddy Emmett will take good care of you tonight.” I lean down to steal one more kiss, then give her ass a quick smack before parting to get back to work on the coop.
I start measuring out cuts for the siding, but I can’t help it as my eyes drift to Riley as she sorts through roofing materials. When the afternoon grows late, she uses the scrap wood to build a small fire by our workbench, then starts measuring out cuts for the trim pieces for tomorrow.
The entire time I watch her, taking in every detail of the way she moves, the way she breathes, the way she just exists. And I can’t help but feel, for the first time in my entire life, that I’m a lucky man.