Chapter 17 Bishop
BISHOP
It didn’t surprise me to see lights in the clubhouse windows when I pulled into the drive the following morning.
They’d come on late last night, sometime after Ash left with Noelle.
He’d not said a word, but I knew he’d been the one to fix the power.
If Rafe suspected, he’d kept it to himself.
I lowered the kickstand and propped my bike alongside Rafe’s.
He’d probably stayed here all night, something he did more and more of late instead of going home.
I breathed in the familiar tang of asphalt and snow and kicked my heel against the sidewalk.
A thick chunk of ice broke loose and skittered into a pile of snow.
Someone should clean up the walkway before an accident happened.
Me.
The someone was me.
I could use the physical exertion.
“Fuck a trucker.” Rafe’s harsh rasp sounded from my left.
His cursing continued in a long litany that I’d heard so many times, it failed to shock me anymore.
Turning, I froze in place.
What the hell?
Rafe stood on a ladder, his arm stretched overhead as he attempted to hook a set of Christmas lights onto the eave of the house.
The ladder wobbled, and he grabbed for the top with both hands, releasing the strand of lights.
They fell into the snow with soft plopping sounds and disappeared.
“Need some help?” I bit back a laugh at the furious expression he shot my way.
My lips twitched, but I knew better than to show any levity.
Rafe never decorated for Christmas.
Why remained a mystery, but I suspected it came from his childhood.
We all suffered from bad memories linked to our pasts.
Whatever Rafe has beneath his cold exterior, it prevented him from truly celebrating the Christmas season.
“What are you doing here?” Rafe barked the question at me.
I raised my hands and patted the air in a ‘calm down’ gesture.
“Don’t tell me you forgot the Christmas drive is coming up? I thought I’d come early and clean up the snow a bit. Don’t want anyone falling.” I pointed at the icy sidewalk to prove my intentions.
Rafe harrumphed and jabbed a finger toward the lights.
“Hand me those and mind your own damned business. What I do isn’t your problem.”
“Nope.” I coughed to cover another laugh.
Boy, Noelle had gotten to him.
Nothing else made sense for the complete one-eighty in Rafe’s decision not to decorate to stringing lights by himself.
I dug into the snow and grabbed the lights, holding them up to him. “But if we’re doing this, we need a tree.”
Rafe bared his teeth in a mockery of a smile. “I fucking know that.”
He hung the lights on the nail and climbed off the ladder. “And since you’re here, you’re going to help me get the damned thing.”
My chest shook with repressed laughter.
I couldn’t help it.
Seeing Rafe like this was the funniest thing I’d seen in years.
Our calm and collected leader was losing his shit while trying to make a good impression with Noelle.
I didn’t blame him.
Hell, I’d told Noelle my deepest, darkest secret and the subtext of feeling like I’d never measure up after knowing her less than a week.
“I’ll get the keys.” I jogged into the clubhouse and grabbed the keys to the community pickup we’d bought last year.
The hunter green monstrosity chugged oil and threatened to backfire every time it rolled to a stop, but it got the job done.
Rafe met me at the truck and climbed in without a word.
Okay, then.
The trip to town ended up being completely silent except for the truck’s groans and clanks.
The radio didn’t work, so we couldn’t even use that as a buffer.
Rafe sat with one fisted hand resting on the windowsill and the other in his lap.
I eyed him from the side a couple of times, but his expression never changed from the closed-off, don’t-fuck-with-me look he often used when confronting our rivals.
I’d hinged his change in decision on Noelle, but what if it was something else?
Colt tried for years to convince Rafe to decorate for Christmas and he always refused.
Was he going insane after years of running the club?
It had happened before.
The stop at the tree shop took less than fifteen minutes.
Rafe walked halfway down the lot, pointed at a tree, and paid the man his asking price without even trying to haggle.
The guy eyed us suspiciously but relaxed a bit when I helped him toss the tree in the back of the truck.
He even smiled and wished us merry Christmas when I handed him an extra twenty as a tip.
Another silent drive back to the clubhouse, with Rafe stewing in the passenger seat, put a damper on the Christmas spirit I’d woken up with.
I tried not to let it bother me, but the sudden shift in attitude and actions left me spiraling.
I’d always counted on Rafe to be steady and reliable.
This significant shift ripped the stability right out from under me.
No way in hell I’d complain.
Decorating for Christmas was sure to make the annual Christmas drive more festive.
The kids would love it, and their happiness mattered more than my concern over Rafe.
Rafe spoke as we pulled into the driveway. “We should decorate inside too.”
An uncomfortable beat of silence passed, then he glared at me while opening his door. “You know how to set up a tree?”
I hid my surprise at the question and nodded. “Sure.”
“Good. You do that. I’ll figure out what the fuck to do with all the lights I bought.” He jumped out and slammed the door behind him.
Bought?
He’d bought Christmas decorations?
I stepped out of the truck and landed in a pile of slush that rose to my ankles.
I hauled the tree over my shoulder and carried into the clubhouse.
Within minutes, I had it in the stand in front of the windows, right where Noelle had pointed out as a great spot for a tree.
I removed the protective netting and stepped back as the branches fell open in a cascade of cedar.
The smell filled the room, and I breathed it in like a man starved of oxygen long enough to suffocate.
My lungs expanded again and again with the thick aroma.
Rafe’s grumbling preceded his stomping steps into the living area.
He eyed the tree and grunted before dropping a box at my feet. “Is that enough?”
“For what?” Confusion deepened my voice.
Rafe’s glare intensified. “Is that enough to decorate the tree?”
I took a closer look at the box overflowing with brand-new boxes of Christmas lights, garland, and ornaments. “Yeah. That’s enough.” Even if it wasn’t, I’d figure out how to make it work, because there was absolutely no fucking way I was telling Rafe that his contributions were not enough.
He might look and act like he didn’t care, but he did.
He nodded once, then spun on his heel. “I’m almost done outside. I think. Do what you can in here.” He waved at the room, and the tree in particular, before turning and striding away with long, heavy steps.
“You should help decorate the tree.” It occurred to me that maybe he’d never had a Christmas tree before.
It would explain his reluctance and his lack of knowledge on the subject. I toed the box. “I’ll help you outside, and we’ll finish twice as fast. Then we can work in here.”
I fully expected him to lash out or flat out shut me down. Instead, he grunted and shrugged. “Yeah. Okay.”
I rushed to follow him outside before he changed his mind and dug into the box of lights he’d left sitting on the porch. “What if we put these around the windows?”
I held up the large C7 bulbs. “I always loved these as a kid.” I tamped down the giddy excitement as I imagined how it would all look when we finished.
Rafe grabbed a staple gun. “You hold them up, I’ll staple them in place.”
“Just watch out for the wires. The whole strand will go out if even a bit of the wire is compromised.” I stretched the lights over the large window that framed the tree on the other side.
Rafe reached over my head and snapped a line of staples into place without commenting on my directions.
Typical Rafe.
I refused to take offense and stretched out the next yard of lights.
We worked our way from the window to the door, running out of lights as we reached the bottom corner of the frame.
“What about the porch railing?” Rafe rubbed the back of his neck. “Took a drive around town last night, and it seems a lot of people wrap lights around the porch railings too.”
“Yeah, that would look great.” I reached into the box and pulled out a strand of lighted garland. “What about this stuff?”
It was clear Rafe was out of his element, so I tried to act like I didn’t know everything about decorating.
He liked making decisions, and I wasn’t about to be the guy who ruined it for all of us by making Rafe feel any more uncomfortable.
“I need to get something from the kitchen.” Rafe left me standing on the porch with the garland tangled around my hands.
He stopped at the door. “Go ahead and get started with that. I’ll be back.”
I did as he ordered.
Following him into the house served no purpose.
Tires crunched on the snowy gravel as Rafe closed the door behind him, but I didn’t bother looking up.
I started the garland at the bottom of the nearest post and worked my way toward the top.
“Bishop?” Noelle called out my name in that breathy voice that always made my heart kick into high gear.
I kept working but looked up to watch her approach. “Yeah?”
A brand-new light danced in her eyes.
She took in the whole clubhouse and her hands raised to her throat.
I’d never seen anyone light up the way she did.
I didn’t need a Christmas tree when she looked like that.
I’d seen beautiful women before, but none of them held a candle to Noelle.
She was hands-down the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
And damn me if I wasn’t falling hard and fast for her.
I wrapped the garland across the railing and tried not to stare at Noelle.
One look at me and she’d see the truth in my eyes.
Our conversion the other night did more than bring us closer together.
“I can’t believe it.” She bounced up the steps and stopped beside me.
One hand ran the length of the lighted garland, then up my forearm. “You’re decorating for Christmas. It looks amazing.”
“Thanks.” I finished the strand and plugged it into an extension cord that I ran to the outlet beneath the window.
Had Rafe thought to grab some timers so we didn’t have to turn the lights on and off manually every day?
Noelle bounced on her toes, her hands clasped beneath her chin. “How mad is Rafe going to be?”
“What do you mean?” I checked the box for more garland and waited for her explanation.
Sunlight glinted off the snow and reflected in her eyes.
The dark jeans and boots contrasted with the bright white sweater with a reindeer face on the front.
Her hair curled over the reindeer’s antlers, making the deer look like it wore a wig.
I didn’t comment on that.
She was too adorable in her Christmas sweaters.
“What will Rafe think when he sees that you’ve been decorating?”