Chapter 1 #2
“Send me the model number.” His hand closed around the back of my neck, but he waited until I pulled him down.
The kiss tasted faintly of butter and the coffee he had taken outside before I woke.
He kissed like he did most things, with absolute attention once he had chosen it, and the week of strange absences made me greedy enough to curl both hands into his shirt and keep him there.
The kitchen door opened before I chose whether the locked bedroom was too far away.
Leah walked in carrying a stack of folded tablecloths against one hip, took in Ryder’s hand under my shirt, and backed toward the door with her face doing nothing at all.
“I can come back after Road Captain has completed his inspection.”
“Please don’t call it that,” I said, trying to get my shirt down while Ryder stayed where he was and made no effort to look ashamed. Leah had known him too long to embarrass him and known me too long not to try anyway. “What happened to knocking?”
“You gave me a key after Gage’s accident, and your front door was open.
” She set the tablecloths on the end of the counter.
“June wants to know if we’re moving the auction into the clubhouse.
Tessa wants permission to threaten anyone who complains.
I came to ask the only adult who might answer without making this worse. ”
“Move the tables inside. Keep the east hallway clear.” Ryder reached past me for his phone, and the husband who had been trying to put me on the counter disappeared behind the Road Captain everybody else knew.
“Nobody parks outside the inner fence. If Bear canceled something, it stays canceled. Don’t work around him. ”
Leah’s attention went from Ryder to me, and concern pulled her brows together before she hid it by unfolding a tablecloth that didn’t need checking. “Is Eden going to be here tomorrow?”
“Eden is standing right here,” I said, and she gave me a look that made me regret the bite in my answer.
Leah had spent too much of the previous year watching people discuss her life while she stood in the room.
She wasn’t trying to do that to me. “Sorry. Yes, I’ll be here.
Ryder says Silas is testing routes, not that there’s a direct threat to the compound. ”
Ryder’s attention moved to me at the word direct. He gave nothing away, and I read it as annoyance. “The fundraiser stays inside. Families stay behind the fence. That’s the plan unless Bear changes it.”
Leah accepted the instruction without accepting the reassurance.
“Gage said the same thing, which is how I know neither of you is telling us everything.” She folded the cloth into a smaller, angrier square and pointed it at Ryder.
“If you turn tomorrow into a room full of armed men pretending to enjoy cupcakes, I’m making you explain it to Maya. ”
“Maya likes me.” Ryder put the phone in his pocket, looking far too confident for a man whose greatest ally was four.
“Maya likes the dog that steals her socks. Her judgment isn’t binding.” Leah left the cloth where she had found it, came around the counter, and squeezed my arm. “Call me if Gladys dies. Gage has tools, and bothering him improves my mood.”
When she left, Ryder watched the door close and checked his phone again. A message appeared long enough for me to see Jax’s name before he turned the screen against his thigh. “I’ve got to go to the table.”
“You just came from there.” I watched the strain return around his eyes and wanted him to sit down long enough to tell me why.
“Routes changed.” He kissed my forehead, grabbed a piece of dough from beneath the towel I had forgotten to move, and was halfway through the door before I could swear at him. “Send the model number. I’ll order the gear.”
I threw the towel after him. It hit the closed door and slid to the floor while I listened to his boots cross the porch.
The mixer sat open on the counter, the fundraiser list covered half the refrigerator, and his coffee mug waited beside the sink.
Ryder had promised to tell me if the trouble making him check exits could reach me.
I picked up the towel and went back to the dough.
By early afternoon the compound had the strained cheer of a family gathering arranged by men carrying rifles.
June worked the middle of the clubhouse with a clipboard against her chest, redirecting vendors and smiling in the way that made refusal look unreasonable.
Leah walled the children’s supplies off from the bar with folding chairs.
Tessa had turned the raffle display into a black-and-red monument to extortion, and she was taping a handwritten sign above the prize baskets when I carried in the first trays.
“The sign can’t say GIVE US YOUR MONEY OR GAGE brEAKS YOUR LEGS,” I told her as she climbed down from the chair. “We’re raising funds for the county burn unit.”
“Gage has a bad leg. Everybody knows it’s an empty threat.” Tessa pressed the tape flat and read her own work with satisfaction. “That’s what makes it welcoming.”
June took the sign down and went on talking to the caterer. “Bear asked us not to create evidence before noon.”
I set the trays on the prep table, and all three of them looked at me while pretending the question was about pastry.
I could have told them he had been gone before dawn, that his hand had tightened at my waist when I asked whether there was more.
I told them the part I trusted. “He said Silas is testing routes. He also said he’ll tell me if anything changes. ”
June put down the clipboard and studied me rather than the food. “And you believe him?”
“Yes.” The answer came easily. Ryder had lied to me about birthday gifts, a broken lamp, and whether he had threatened the contractor who overcharged me for the kitchen sink.
He had never lied about danger, my health, our money, or our marriage.
There were things I trusted before I checked them every morning: the floor under my feet, the medication beside the bed, Ryder coming home, and his word when it mattered.
“If I didn’t, I’d make him say it again in front of Bear. ”
Ryder came home after dark with road dust on his boots and dried blood across one knuckle.
I was in bed with the chessboard between my knees, studying the position he had abandoned the previous night, and I knew from the first glance that he wanted the room to contain something other than the club.
He stripped off his shirt near the dresser, set his gun in the locked drawer, then sat on the mattress and turned his right side toward me.