Chapter One #2
The beer in Saint’s gut immediately soured.
Growing up in a compound where wrong answers got you locked in a shed overnight had honed his ability to sniff out trouble.
He couldn’t help it. His older sister, Makenna, and he spent their entire childhoods looking out for the younger ones, even if he didn’t pull it off with as much grace as Mak.
The club was his extended family and just as important as his blood, and he wouldn’t stand for anyone fucking with them.
Shell climbed out of the car and strode toward them with her bottom lip tucked between her teeth.
She wore short denim shorts and a body-hugging tank top.
Copper had hit the jackpot with his ol’ lady, and every man in the club knew it.
She was as sweet and loving as she was gorgeous, but she took no shit and would kick any man who crossed her square in the balls.
Only a formidable woman could bring a man like Copper to his knees, and Shell had been running circles around their president for a decade and a half.
“Hey, baby,” Copper said as she strode up to the table.
His whole face softened in a way Saint had only ever seen when the prez looked at Shell or Beth, their daughter.
He slid an arm around her waist and kissed her as though he’d been at sea for a year rather than having met her for lunch three hours ago.
Gator let out a low whistle. “Get a room, Boomers,” he muttered under his breath, but the fondness in his tone matched Saint’s feelings about the first couple of the HHMC.
Saint didn’t bother to look away. Overt displays of affection were part of everyday life around the club, especially with the OG members who were all wifed up and disgustingly happy. If they didn’t want him to stare, they’d do it behind a closed door.
When Copper finally allowed his wife to breathe, her cheeks were flushed and her eyes glossy, but still sad.
“What’s wrong?” Copper asked immediately. No teasing, no delay, just straight to it.
Shell sat on the small free space on the bench next to her ol’ man and directly across from Saint.
As soon as her ass hit the seat, Copper tucked her close with a possessive arm around her shoulders, his fingers absently rubbing circles on her upper arm like he could soothe her before she even spoke.
“Beth missed our call…again.” Shell leaned heavily on her ol’ man as she spoke.
As the words left her mouth, Copper’s face darkened, worry morphing into anger with a force Saint could practically feel radiating across the table. “Fuck. Third week in a row, right?”
Shell nodded.
Saint wanted details. The urge to pry rode him hard. Beth might not be his blood, but she was club family—princess of the whole damn kingdom—and every man at that table knew what that meant. As he debated the wisdom of opening his mouth, Gator, the nosy fucker, took the decision out of his hands.
“What’s up, Prez? Need me to talk some sense into Beth’s independent ass?”
Copper’s expression turned so thunderous that Saint had to work to keep from shuddering. The man whacked the back of Gator’s head.
“You get within a hundred feet of my daughter’s ass, and I’ll peel your skin like a fucking grape.”
“Ow!” Gator’s eyes bugged, but he still grinned. “Hey now, I meant like a brother. A very respectful, not-trying-to-die kind of brother.”
“But you said ass and Beth in the same sentence. Foolish, my man,” Thunder said, snickering.
“My bad.” Gator lifted his arms in surrender, but his smirk did nothing to make the submission believable.
Saint shot him a look that, with any luck, said, Keep your trap shut, but the way Gator continued to smirk didn’t give him hope.
“Everything okay?” Thunder asked Copper as he threw his bottle cap at Gator, who tried to smack it away but failed. It bounced off his forehead and onto the table with a clink.
Shell sighed. “I have a standing weekly phone call with Beth. This is the third week in a row she’s missed it.
The first two times, she texted with a flimsy excuse, but this time, she’s ignoring my texts too.
She never ignores my texts.” Her voice wobbled on the last word.
She lifted her chin and stared up at her ol’ man.
“Something’s wrong, Cop. I can feel it.”
Copper’s arm tightened around her shoulders. His jaw flexed hard enough to crack a tooth, but his hand stayed gentle, fingers still stroking her shoulder.
Saint frowned right along with him. He didn’t know Beth well.
When Makenna and Thunder had gotten together, he’d been a damaged teenager not interested in hanging around the clubhouse.
By the time he’d gotten his shit together and decided to prospect in his late twenties, Beth had been off with her friends more than at the clubhouse, and at some point, she’d moved out of state.
She was a good deal younger than him, so their paths rarely crossed.
But he did know the entire club loved her to pieces, and it was common knowledge that Copper would murder any member who glanced his daughter’s way with anything more than brotherly affection.
The last time Saint ran into her was Christmas, when she’d come to visit for the holiday.
He’d walked into the clubhouse kitchen for coffee and found Beth laughing at something Screw said with her head thrown back and that strawberry blonde hair catching the light.
She’d turned and smiled at him, a friendly smile, nothing more, and his whole chest had gone tight.
He’d made himself scarce after that. Because damn, the woman was gorgeous and exactly his type. Short, cute, sweet, and sexy as hell. The sass she’d come by honestly sealed the deal.
God, he loved a woman with reddish blonde hair.
His dick liked it, too, which was why he’d stayed away rather than pop a boner in her father’s presence.
Copper would have sniffed out his lust, ripped off his dick, and fed it to Screw’s new pittie puppy.
Better to avoid the temptation and potential trauma altogether.
Copper didn’t respond right away. He stroked his ginger-colored beard with one hand while toying with the ends of Shell’s blonde hair with the other.
When thinking, he often fell silent, a trait Saint had learned Copper hadn’t always possessed.
Rumor had it, once upon a time, Copper’s temper had rivaled the most volatile of bikers, but he’d gotten smarter and more controlled as the years passed.
Plus, the ladies in his life had mellowed him, or so the stories went.
“Maybe her boyfriend is causing shit,” Gator said before tipping his beer back for a chain of swallows.
Copper stiffened as rigid as a statue. A very angry, very large, very deadly biker statue carved from marble and icy to the touch. “The fuck did you just say?”
Holy shit. That tone alone could freeze a man to death.
Gator’s eyes widened. “Um…” He lowered the bottle, then swallowed once more as his gaze darted between the rest of them.
“Sorry, brother, you stepped on a landmine.” Thunder raised his hands in surrender. “Nothing I can do for you.”
“That dude. The fucking poser guy. I don’t remember his name,” Gator muttered.
“Speak fucking English, Gator,” Copper said in a low rumble that made the hair on Saint’s neck rise to attention.
Gator scoffed. “Come on, you guys know who I’m talking about. We met the fucker on that trip to Arizona last year when we stayed the night near Beth on the way. Back me up, Saint. You remember him, right?”
Saint shrugged. “Sorry, brother. I wasn’t on that trip.” Now he wished he had been, but Zach had needed his help back home with some businessman who owed the club a large chunk of money. Gambling debts came calling every time.
“Douchebag, wannabe biker guy? Rode something that looked like a goddamn kiddie bike.” Gator rolled his eyes. “Come on, you two ain’t old enough to have memory loss.”
“Him?” Copper’s eyes bugged as he turned to Shell. “She’s still seeing that shit stain?”
“I…” Shell shook her head, frowning. “She hasn’t mentioned him in ages. I thought they broke up. He was… a bit of a jackass.”
Saint chuckled under his breath. Shell was the best, always ready to call a man a jackass and then make him dinner if he looked hungry. Though from the sound of it, this guy wouldn’t be invited to sit at their table any time soon.
“Nah, pretty sure they’re still a thing,” Gator said.
“Wait…” Copper’s gaze swung back to him. “How the fuck do you know?”
Gator paused with his beer halfway to his mouth. His face lost all its color, and his mouth opened and closed without a sound, like one of the fish he spent much of his free time catching.
Saint couldn’t hold back his laugh. It came out strangled as he failed to hide it behind a cough. Thankfully, Thunder laughed out loud, covering his blunder. Poor Gator would be lucky to come out of this alive and with all his organs intact.
“We’re, uh, friends,” Gator said. “Me and Beth.”
“Friends?”
Oh shit. Gator was seconds from losing another chunk of his body, and Copper’s bite would be a hundred times worse than an alligator’s. Saint bit his lip to hold back another laugh as he imagined Copper chasing Gator around the clubhouse while snapping at the idiot’s heels.
Once again, Thunder didn’t bother to hold back his laughter.
“Uh…” Gator squirmed beneath Copper’s glare.
“Copper, leave the poor guy alone. You put the fear of God into your men. No one will ever look at Beth as more than a friend.” Shell narrowed her eyes at her ol’ man, but the smile gave her away. “Poor girl,” she muttered.
“Excuse me?”
Saint swore Copper’s jaw hit the table as he stared down at Shell.
“You want your daughter with one of these fuckups?”
She shrugged without shame. “What? There are some very nice perks to being with one of you guys.”
“Michelle Gallagher, I am going to pretend you didn’t say that. We’re talking about our innocent child here.”