Storm (Georgia Smoke #4)

• Twenty-One •

Being nasty seemed to be her talent in life.

Briar

I’d been waiting on Dovie to come home from swimming at the Kingston’s with Nailyah, but she’d texted that they were going to see a movie. So, I figured I’d get on my jeans and boots and go visit Noor. The added bonus: Storm was at the stables too. I was trying not to be a full-on clinger with him, but it was becoming harder every day. When he wasn’t with me, I missed him. I wondered what he was doing. He was on my mind the majority of the time.

As I was sliding on my second boot, my phone rang. I leaned forward to slide it out of my back pocket and saw Pepper’s number. With a smile, I pressed Answer and put it to my ear.

“Hey,” I said, happy that she had called.

There had been no texts from her since the one time, and I had been thinking of texting her just this morning.

“So, you are alive?” she replied.

“Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?” Maybe I should have texted her. I wasn’t good at this friend thing. I had a lot to learn.

“Because I’ve sent you two different texts and heard nothing back.”

I frowned and pulled my phone away from my ear to look at it. I went to my text messages, and there was nothing from her since the last time.

“I don’t have any texts from you,” I told her. “I’m looking now and nothing.”

“That’s odd. I sent you two. One last week about a summer concert thing that the bar is hosting at the beach, and I was hoping I could get you here as one of our acts. Then another yesterday, asking again about the concert and checking in on you.”

I hadn’t played onstage in weeks, and although I loved being here with Storm, I missed it. That was the only thing about my life that was missing. Storm had made it almost perfect, and what he’d done for Dovie was more than I could have ever asked for or dreamed of. I almost felt guilty about wanting something more.

“I don’t know what happened. It can’t be bad service. I get texts from Storm every day.”

“You do, huh?” she replied, and her tone went serious. “Are things good there?”

“Yes. Possibly perfect. There is so much; I can’t even begin to tell you it all. You wouldn’t have time.”

She was silent for a moment.

“You’re safe? That’s been handled?”

“Yes, all of it.”

“What about the identity you needed? Did it ever get to you?”

I smiled, leaning back in the chair. “Yes, but I no longer need it. Storm magically fixed that too. It’s part of the long story.”

“I’m gonna need to hear all about this long story. Since you’re safe, what about a trip down here? You can perform at the concert, stay with me, and we can catch up. The boys would love to see you onstage again.”

I knew I’d have to talk Storm into this, and I didn’t expect it to be easy. However, he wasn’t going to control me. We had gone over that. But I also knew he manipulated things. Working around that without him knowing would be hard.

“I would love to. But I need to make sure it’s possible first.”

“Do you have to ask Storm for permission? Because if that’s the case, I’m coming north. The Briar I know doesn’t ask a man shit.”

A heaviness sat in my chest. Was I changing? I didn’t like to think I was, but I was different with Storm. I gave him power where I had never done that before.

“No, that’s not it. Not exactly.” It was a partial lie. But there was Dovie to think about. She might not want to go on a trip, and I wasn’t going without her. I didn’t want to go without Storm either.

“All right,” she said, not sounding convinced. “Go get your phone checked. See why my texts aren’t coming through.”

“Yeah, okay,” I agreed.

“Talk soon,” she told me.

“Okay, bye.”

I ended the call and pulled my texts back up. Had I accidentally muted her texts? Could you do that? But if they were muted, they’d still come through, right? I wasn’t tech-savy enough to figure this out. I’d take it to an Apple store and have them look at it.

My phone rang again, and Storm’s name lit up the screen.

“Hey,” I replied with that giddy feeling in my stomach that only he caused.

“Hey, baby. What are you doing?” he asked.

“Well, I was going to go ride Noor, but I think I need to go get my phone checked out. Where is the closest Apple store?”

There was a pause, and then he cleared his throat. “What’s wrong with your phone?”

“I just talked to Pepper, and she called because I wasn’t answering her texts. She said she sent two, and I didn’t get either of them. It happened once before with her too. But it seems it’s only with her. Could I have pressed something on accident to make the phone block her texts?”

I heard a car door slam on his end of the line.

“I’ll check it out. No need to run off to Atlanta. Come on over here. I’m just getting back to the stables. I’ll get Noor saddled up for you. We’ll go for a ride together.”

Liking that idea much better, I smiled and stood up. “Okay, be there in a few.”

“Drive careful,” he told me.

“Always,” I replied as that warm, bubbly feeling I got when I was going to see him set in.

Once we hung up, I remembered what Pepper had said, and my smile fell. I hated questioning myself. I didn’t want to think that I was changing for Storm. I didn’t want to lose myself. But I’d also never been this happy. Was this what being in love was like?

I slid my phone back into my pocket and headed for the garage door. I’d ask him if he wanted to go with me to Miami. See how that went. There was no reason for me to overanalyze this. Things were really good with us now.

I walked through the stables, looking for Storm. Noor was ready, like he’d said she would be, but he wasn’t with her or Poseidon. I checked both tack rooms and then headed for the room where they’d had the topless party they called a race party. Stepping inside, I looked around, and when my eyes fell on Lula Mae sitting in one of the overstuffed chairs with a bottle of water in her hands, watching me, I wished I’d stayed with Noor.

“Well, hi,” she replied in her syrupy-sweet voice.

“Hello,” I replied tightly.

“Looking for Storm?” she asked.

“Yes. Have you seen him?”

She gave me a sympathetic smile, as if I were clueless and she felt sorry for me. “He just left after we had lunch together. He had an important meeting. You know, family stuff,” she informed me, then took another drink of her water.

Lunch with her? I’d just talked to him, and he was coming back from somewhere. He hadn’t mentioned Lula Mae at all. I was gonna call this a lie.

“Seeing as he just got back here, I don’t know how you’d have had a chance to have lunch with him.”

There, little bitch. Spin a lie around that.

“Oh, we did just get back. We went to Maeme’s. Storm never comes to Sunday breakfast anymore because, well, you’re at his house and he can’t bring someone who’s not family to Maeme’s Sunday lunch, she made a big spread for us today. I know he’s missed her cooking. He ate it up,” she replied.

My spine stiffened, and I got that tight knot in my chest again. She was good at doing that to me. Damn her.

“I don’t keep Storm from doing anything. He can go where he pleases.”

She scrunched her nose. “But can he though? Listen,” she said, uncrossing her legs and standing up. “I know this thing y’all have seems perfect and all, but it is temporary. You understand that, right? He’s not bringing you into the family. He’s not having you over to family gatherings. You’ve not been invited to a dinner at his parents’. To them, you are just a … well”—she puckered her brow—“a little fling. I mean, he can’t trust you. It makes sense he can’t bring you to family things.”

My throat burned with acid rising in it, and I fisted my hands at my sides. She was making this up. Being nasty seemed to be her talent in life. I was not going to let her bait me.

“Storm trusts me. But I don’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Is that so? If he trusted you, he wouldn’t have cameras all over his house, watching you when he’s not there. Your phone calls and texts wouldn’t be sent to his phone so he can screen who you’re talking to. There is not one thing you do that he doesn’t watch. It’s why everyone is okay with you and the girl lying up at his house like you are. We know he’s watching you at all times.”

A cold chill ran down my spine as a calculated smile curled her lips. I wanted to call her a liar and go find Storm. Tell him all of this and have him deal with her. And I would have done just that, except for one thing she’d said. The phone. The texts I hadn’t gotten. I thought back to the phone conversation with Storm. Could he have just bald-faced lied to me, saying he’d check it?

Lula Mae let out a small, pleased laugh. “You’re just his current whore. Nothing more. When he marries, it’ll be someone the family trusts. One of us.”

For possibly the first time in my life, I had nothing to say. No words. I turned and walked out of the room, out of the stables, and back to my G-Wagon.

I was going to the house to look for cameras. My heart hammered in my chest. What if I found them? A wave of nausea hit me, and I trembled. If she wasn’t lying, I wasn’t sure I could survive it.