Chapter Nineteen
“She wants to put it to a fucking vote,” Hammer said to Ashes before scrubbing both hands over his face.
“I can see where she’s coming from.” Ashes leaned back in his chair and crossed one ankle over the opposite knee before reaching forward and picking up his coffee mug. “I’m not saying she’s right, just that I understand the instinct.” He took a sip from the mug.
“Not helping,” Hammer growled.
“Oh! You wanted my help? I thought you were just here to whine while I drank my morning coffee.”
“Speaking of ... how does Miranda handle Goliath?”
“What do you mean?”
Hammer rolled his eyes as he filled Ashes in on what had happened, on all three encounters.
“She’s this odd mix of innocent and vixen that I’m just getting my head around, and his popping up and harassing her is going to cause problems.”
“Fucking Goliath,” Ashes said.
“Who now?” Bulldog asked, bringing his own coffee with him as he joined them.
“Who what?” Hammer asked, looking to Ashes to see if he knew what the prez meant. A shake of Ashes’s head told Hammer the man was just as confused.
“Who’s fucking Goliath?” Bulldog clarified.
“As far as I know, mainly Velvet,” Ashes said, a frown creasing his brow.
Hammer replayed the last thirty seconds in his head, then closed his eyes before clarifying.
“We weren’t talking about who he’s doing. We were talking about him and the way he’s bothering Camila.”
“Has she told him no? Is he pushing her anyway?” Bulldog scowled at Hammer. “Why is this the first I’m hearing of it?”
“It’s not like that. He’s not hitting on her or even propositioning her. He’s just making comments, small things, but she’s not used to the blatant sexual teasing.”
“So tell him to knock it off.” Bulldog shrugged. “You might have to be a little aggressive in telling him, but he’ll figure it out. Just a warning, though,”
“What?” Hammer asked.
“You step in like that and the club will see it. The club will assume you’re claiming her.”
“That was the general idea.” Hammer shrugged then filled his president in on Camila’s plan to let everyone vote on if she could stay.
“You worried one of your brothers will vote to make her leave?” The president pinned him with a serious look.
“Not the brothers, but I’m not as sure where the women stand.”
“Miranda loves her. From what I’m hearing, Winter feels the same. I don’t think you’ll have a problem there.”
Hammer glanced at Ashes but didn’t say anything as he returned his gaze to the president, hoping he wouldn’t have to say what was on his mind.
He was afraid Camila meant everyone and he didn’t think any of the club ass would vote to keep her around, especially if it meant one more of the brothers off the market, so to speak.
Bulldog held his gaze for several seconds before he shook his head.
“Club ass doesn’t vote. Ever. They’re here for the club but not part of the club.
They come and go as they please. They don’t like a brother or an old lady, they’re free never to return.
I don’t think letting the club vote on it will be a problem.
I see where she’s coming from and if nothing else, it shows she’ll consider the club like family.
She won’t betray us because she knows what betrayal feels like.
Figure out when and I’ll call everyone together. Want to do it tonight?”
“How about tomorrow? That will give me a little time to gather everything. Can we run the ass off for the evening? Call everyone who can to come in? I’ll lay it all out, let Camila say her piece, then we can hold the vote.”
“Vote?” Mayhem asked, as he joined them.
“Can do.” Bulldog turned to the VP. “I’ll fill you in later, I’ll need your help reaching out to everyone.” He turned back to Hammer. “Can you send out a mass text? Tell everyone, ‘meeting here tomorrow, 8:00 PM.’ If they can’t make it, reach out to me or Mayhem.”
Hammer nodded. That was nothing. He already had a system in place. All it would take was a couple of minutes to make sure the newest members were in the system, then he could type up and send the message in less than a minute.
Bulldog looked around the table. “Anything else I should know about?”
Hammer filled the president and vice president in on what he’d found about Camila’s father and his operation. He had a new lead on another woman it appeared he’d purchased, but he didn’t have much more than rumors for evidence.
“Get me what you have. I want to stay on top of this,” Mayhem said when Hammer had finished his report. Talk turned to what was on the agenda for the day, each of them getting up as needed to refill their cups.
“Make sure you talk to Zipper. Soon,” Bulldog said before he got up to refill his cup.
Zipper? Hammer blinked, then it hit him. A property cut for Camila. As club quartermaster, Zipper was in charge of all the supplies. He was in Scratch’s chain of command—as the treasurer, Scratch made sure they had the money for whatever Zipper said they needed.
By the time Camila came down the stairs the group had broken up.
Bulldog and Mayhem had retreated to Bulldog’s office and Ashes had gone to find Miranda.
Hammer had waited for Camila, watching the clock.
She wanted to be independent, and he was doing his damnedest to let her.
That didn’t mean he would let her oversleep, not if it meant she would be late for the job she seemed to want so badly.
When he spotted her coming down the stairs, he had to smile to himself. She’d made it down more than half an hour before the time he’d set to go get her up. He found himself smiling as he watched her shuffle in his direction, one hand scrubbing over her face.
“You got up early.”
“I did. You feeling all right?”
She frowned for a moment, then seemed to realize what he meant. Her face cleared as she nodded. “I could use some coffee, maybe some food too.” She looked around, and from the way her eyes scanned near the ceiling, he assumed she was looking for a clock.
“It’s 7:30, so you’ve got some time. The shop doesn’t open until 9:00 and you’ve got a three-minute commute.
What do you want to eat?” He pushed himself to his feet and went to the coffee pot, where he filled a mug and took it back to her along with the sugar dispenser and odd insulated thing with cream in it that Winter had insisted they needed.
“Thank you.” She flipped the sugar dispenser over her cup and held it for several seconds. Hammer would be surprised but he’d seen how much sugar some of his brothers used and, damn, they ran on the sugar, not the caffeine. “I don’t want to be a bother, but what’s in the kitchen?”
“Pretty much anything, within reason. Loki decided not to cook today but I can make you some eggs if you’d like or there are about a dozen kinds of cereal in there.”
“Oatmeal?” She looked up, a light in her eyes he’d never seen for such a plain food.
“Probably. Winter made cookies last week. She probably didn’t use it all. Want me to go look?”
Camila shook her head. “I can, just let me get a little coffee down first, then I’ll be able to think a little better.”
“What’s your plan for today?” he asked after sitting back down.
“Don’t really have one, other than to go to the shop and see if I can keep from screwing things up too bad.”
“You’ll let me know if something happens or if your plans change?”
Camila’s cup paused mid-air as she frowned at him. “Do you not trust me?” She looked hurt. “I guess I can’t really blame you. It seems like a lot longer, but we’ve only known each other a couple of days.”
“It’s not that.” Hammer shook his head. “I want to make sure nothing happens to you. We don’t know if your father even knows you’re gone yet, much less what he’s doing.
My connections still have him in Juarez, but since I knew nothing about you, clearly my contacts don’t have as much information as I thought they did.
I don’t want to leave anything to chance.
” He pinned her with a serious look. “And I don’t want you walking back and forth to the shop alone, especially in the dark. ”
Camila gave him an unhappy look but didn’t argue.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s the rest of the world I don’t trust. You, I want to protect as much as I can.”
She didn’t say anything but resumed drinking her coffee.
Hammer wondered at what was going through her head but got the idea she wasn’t a morning person.
He could give her some time. Like she’d said, they’d only known each other for a few days.
They had a lifetime to know all the details about each other.
But first he had to make sure revealing the threat of her father and his associates didn’t turn the club against her.