Chapter 4 #2
I don’t want Liam involved with that club, but part of me is thankful that they’re taking a potential threat seriously. They hardly even know Liam, but they obviously care about his safety. And by extension, mine.
I’m sure that it’s just trauma and shock that makes me feel grateful, but is it so wrong to be thankful for anyone who cares about and protects my son?
Being Hart born and raised, I do know something about Satan’s Angels, and they’re far from the worst of the bunch.
They don’t go around murdering, harming women, or creating violence and bloodshed.
They’ve cleaned that up in Hart, or so I’ve heard.
If they’re criminals, they keep that shit to themselves.
They even have community cookouts a couple times a year, and quite a few ordinary businesses in Hart have connections to the club.
Still.
Am I angry about Liam finding that lifestyle and a club attractive, or am I more angry and hurt that he didn’t tell me? In the short run, I can answer that by being aggravated at the thunderous steps above my head.
Steps that are followed by another massive crash and booted feet thundering down the back stairs. There’s a loud curse from Liam, and then both men appear in my periphery.
Mrs. Jenkins leaps up, far sprier at nearly ninety than most people are in their twenties.
She rushes over on small steps to peek over the counter.
I brace myself for a lecture about all the cursing and noise today, but her wrinkled face breaks into a massive smile, her gaze tracking over my shoulder.
“Liam! I thought you were in Seattle.”
I’m pretty sure that I mentioned something about Liam being back in Hart months ago, but Mrs. Jenkins probably hasn’t been at the café since he got back and likely doesn’t remember.
I turn and give Liam the my customers are interrupted and that was the one stipulation I set out, so please come and play nice stare down.
He pastes on a huge, goofy grin. He’s never appreciated Mrs. Jenkins the way I do. Her fussiness always annoyed him, but Liam’s nice to everyone.
“I am back, Mrs. Jenkins.” Liam walks up and slips an arm around my waist. “How are you?”
“Oh, still alive and kicking,” she grunts.
His eyes swing past her, to the very obvious shirtless hunk on the cover of her book, laid out on the coffee table near her untouched tea. “How’s your blood pressure?” he asks innocently.
I jam an elbow into his side.
“Sorry about the noise,” Liam tells me, trying to swallow his smirk about the spicy book. “We’re going to have to go to the clubhouse and get some new security stuff from Wizard. Cruz thinks that it’s really lacking here and he’d like to have everything set up before the end of tonight.”
Clubhouse, security, and Wizard all perk Mrs. Jenkins’ ears right up, but it’s nothing compared to the way her eyes widen when Cruz lets himself out through the staff door and walks through the shop.
“Oh my lordy, is this beefcake your new security guy?” Mrs. Jenkins fans herself so hard she nearly knocks her tortoiseshell glasses off her face.
She races to Cruz, stops directly in front of him so that she’s blocking his path.
She sizes him up, then reaches up and pinches his cheek.
“Where do you work? I think my house might need some security this and that as well. Do you have a business card? I only have a land line. No confounded cell phones, and I can barely work the computer my kids got me years ago, so I can’t look you up on the online. ”
Liam isn’t as tactful about his laughter as I tried to be earlier.
He doesn’t even attempt to keep it in. The teenagers in the back lift their heads and all four of them ogle my son and then Cruz.
One lifts a phone, but before she can start recording, I open the little door behind the counter and shove Liam through.
“Alright. Have fun. Use your keys to get in since we’ll be closed by the time you’re back.”
Liam looks a little mystified, but Cruz is all business. He looks like the sooner he can get to the truck, the sooner he can get back here and get on with his job. Which is now… me. Sort of. No. It’s safety. That’s all. It’s not personal.
Not even when the overhead lighting catches on Cruz’s cheekbones.
He’s not a classically handsome man. At least not in the manner that most people think of as handsome, he’s too rugged for that.
But there’s something magnetic about him, his silent aura and the way he seems to be cataloging everything.
I find myself wanting to know what he’s thinking, what lies beneath that intense facade.
It’s not that he’s big, brooding, and intimidating—though that’s a given—but every so often I’ll see a flash of something cross his face then his expression returns to practiced neutrality.
Like he’s keeping all this vibrancy inside.
Okay… I’m spending way too much time surreptitiously observing Cruz when I should probably be worrying about gang retaliation. Maybe I’m losing my mind due to shock and trauma? And that’s the reason my pulse is thrumming madly in my throat…
Now that the entertainment is over, the teenagers clear out with smiles and waves to me.
I wave back. The girls aren’t regulars. I don’t even know their names.
They seem nice, though. Liam made no sign that he knew them, so they probably go to the high school across Hart, not the one Liam attended not so far from here.
I have a weird location. It’s not downtown, but there are plenty of office buildings around, thanks to the cheaper real estate buy up that boomed a few decades ago as more and more people left Seattle to look for smaller, cheaper places to settle.
The previous owners transformed it from an old mom and pop restaurant into what it is today.
I got very lucky that they were looking for a tenant when I was looking for a place to rent.
Carrie and James were incredible, and gave me a reduced price because I worked for them.
And because they were some of the best people I’ve ever known.
After they sold to me, they moved down to California, since both of their kids went to college and settled there.
“Does that beefcake work for you?” Mrs. Jenkins asks, eyeing me up after Liam and Cruz pull away in the green truck that I suspected earlier was his.
So much for hoping that she’d let this go. I should know better. “He doesn’t,” I sigh. “He’s just doing security, as they said. If you leave your number with me, I can make sure he calls you. I’m not sure if he does residential, but I’ll get him to let you know.”
I’m not an evil person, I swear, but the thought of Cruz having to sit down and endure an hour phone call with Mrs. Jenkins sends a wave of amusement bubbling up in me.
I have to tell myself sternly that none of this is Cruz’s fault.
I’m sure he’s not actually as violent as he looks, and he had nothing to do with Liam getting involved with Satan’s Angels.
I shouldn’t take any of this out on him.
I should be thankful for him and the club, ensuring that we’ll be okay.
Fuck. Instead of using up Cruz’s with phone calls from old ladies, I should be talking to him about maybe closing down the café for a few days. Double fuck on a double duck.
And thinking about what my next steps are after that.
Whatever I said in the heat of the moment, I can’t imagine selling this place and leaving Hart.
Mrs. Jenkins digs in a purse the size of a suitcase and scrawls something onto the back of an ancient looking piece of paper.
She gathers up her book, waves goodbye to me, and ambles off.
I watch her get into her boat of a car. It’s from the seventies, but it still looks immaculate as the day it was made.
Liam likes watching these barn finds shows, and I feel like this could be one of them.
It probably has five thousand original miles on it.
I don’t look down at the paper she handed me until she’s already gone. There, like she’s a smitten teenager herself, is her number with a heart drawn around it.
Since the shop is empty, I don’t even bother holding in my laughter.
Or my tears. What a strange day. If tomorrow isn’t better, I’m going to start questioning my whole philosophy about how the universe works.
Not that I really have a good working one, but whatever I have will need to be scrapped entirely.