Chapter 7
Since bringing Cambria to our compound, the past week and a half has been a lesson in patience for me.
After the conversation with Wrath, Rage, Smoke, and Ryder, they’d agreed to stay out of my business and let me handle how and when I clued Cambria in on my deeper feelings for her.
I wanted to see if she would even show she liked me as a friend, let alone anything more.
And if she did, I wanted to take it at a pace that wouldn’t scare her away.
Plus, she was in a vulnerable place at the moment.
Overwhelming her was the last thing I wanted to do, even if waiting and holding back might kill me.
I spent as much time as possible with her.
I hated the hours I had to spend away from her at the scrapyard.
A couple of times, to get her away from the compound because she was going stir-crazy, I brought her to work with me.
The likelihood that anyone who was part of the online fanatics would see her was almost nil.
And if someone did, she would be with Crusher and me.
The first time there, she had drawn a lot of looks because she was there, period. First to show astonishment was April Ann. Her surprise that a woman came to work with us was one thing, but the larger shock was when April Ann realized Cambria was there with me.
Cambria spent the bulk of her time in my office, or, if I was out in the yard, following along and asking me questions.
Cambria seemed to enjoy herself and was fascinated to watch Raeshon crush and compact up a multitude of things.
Raeshon grinned as he showed off his skills and invited her to run the crushing machine with him.
However, he was careful not to touch her overly much under my watchful eye.
Our employees kept their curiosity in check on the first day until the following day, when she stayed at home.
She had work of her own to do. I’d been straight with them.
I told both that I was interested in Cambria.
She was a guest of the club, and I was taking my time, wanting nothing to scare her off.
They’d wished me luck, saying they liked her.
On days I stayed at the compound, Cambria would come to my house, and we’d work in my home office.
I had more than enough room for her to set up her laptop.
We’d bounce ideas off each other about how she was discovered and have moments of idle talk, but the rest was a comfortable silence as we did our work.
Today wasn’t like those times. For one thing, it was the weekend, meaning no work for me, and she had nothing she had to work on due to a looming deadline.
The second thing was that we were attending an informal party at the clubhouse this evening.
But there was an ulterior motive behind it, beyond simple fun.
The club had voted a few weeks back, and what we were waiting on had arrived.
Keno had been a prospect for just a couple of weeks over the two-year mark.
We typically required our prospects to complete two years of service.
It allowed us to vet them and get to know them thoroughly.
Sometimes, you thought a year was enough, and then found out later things you had wished you’d known.
Several years back, a prospect, Uriah, was doing well, we thought, only to end up going off the deep end.
He went after Joli, Chaos’s cousin. Uriah had been sent to meet his maker, and Joli became the old lady of Dare in our Cherokee Chapter.
Keno had no clue tonight was the night. He’d been more tense this past month, no doubt wondering why he hadn’t been patched in or kicked to the curb.
Dylan’s two years were up in two months.
That would leave us without any prospects, so it was time to shake the trees and see if we found any potential new ones.
Regardless of who they were, everyone had to have a current member sponsor them.
The brother who did was to be a mentor and prevent them from messing up badly enough to get kicked out or killed.
Cambria and I spent the day at my home. Some of it was catching up on chores, such as cleaning the house and doing laundry.
Yes, I could’ve hired someone to do it for me, even a bunny, but I didn’t trust many people in my house.
When I tried to have Cambria chill out while I handled it, she rolled her eyes, turned on her heel, and marched off.
The next thing I knew, she had a load of laundry in the washer and was scrubbing down my bathroom.
When I told her to stop and attempted to take away the brush she was using, she slapped my hands and went back to it.
I gave up and got to work on the other bathroom instead.
It took us barely over an hour to do the house.
Since I used only so much of it, the rest was easy to clean.
The laundry took two hours, including drying and folding time.
After that, we curled up on my couch and watched a movie together.
Cambria was seated, practically touching me from hip to knee.
I paid more attention to her than to the movie.
The smell of her hair wafted up and made me want to bury my face in all her locks and breathe deeply while running my fingers through them.
I knew from the appearance that it was silky.
It was shiny, and in the sunlight, the red glistened.
And don’t get me started on her mouth. She’d nibbled on it whenever there was a tense or scary scene in the movie. That made her lips plumper and more like ripe peaches. I was obsessed at times over whether they tasted like peaches.
Cambria had confessed she liked to watch scary movies, but not alone.
She’d jump, squeal, grab onto me, and lean closer during those frightening scenes.
I loved to have her pressed against my body.
I wished the whole thing were nothing more than one horror scene after another.
After it was over, we stayed on the couch and chatted about general likes and dislikes.
The movie got us started down that path.
When it was late afternoon, Cambria insisted on cooking us dinner before going to the clubhouse.
We’d eat, then get ready to go. She made dinner at my house rather than at the guesthouse.
She made lasagna from scratch along with garlic bread.
She bemoaned the fact that she hadn’t thought of it yesterday, so that she could’ve made homemade bread and had time to cook the sauce she put together longer.
The house was filled with the tantalizing scent of garlic, tomato, cheese, and herbs.
I helped her—or, I should say, she taught me her lasagna recipe and how to make it.
I was a mixer, spreader, and layer. When it was finished baking, it was all she could do to keep me from cutting into it immediately, rather than letting it sit for ten minutes to cool slightly and set.
I insisted on serving her before myself. The slice I took was significantly larger than hers. Taking that first bite, I moaned out how good it tasted. Then, I bit into my garlic toast. It was buttery and garlicky. Cambria smirked at me.
“Are those moans of satisfaction?” she asked.
“No, they’re of utter disgust. Can’t you tell?” I joke.
Her laugh made me chuckle before I gave her an honest answer.
“It’s incredible, Cambria. I never saw anyone use cottage cheese or eggs.”
“Thank you. I saw someone on a cooking show do it this way, mixing equal parts of ricotta and cottage cheese. Then, the rest of the cheese must be a mix of mozzarella and parmesan. The egg acts as a binder, and it sets as it bakes, so it isn’t a runny mess when you cut it.
I use ground sausage and beef because I think it gives it a more authentic taste.
But I make a vegetable one that’s pretty good, I think,” she chatted.
“I’ve never tried an all-veggie one, but if it’s even half as good as this one, I’ll be more than happy to try it.”
Her cheeks grew pink at the praise. We ate in relative silence, enjoying the food.
When we were done, and I was stuffed and happy, we put away the leftovers and cleaned up the small mess.
Right afterward, Cambria excused herself to go to the guesthouse to get ready.
I would swing by to get her at seven o’clock.
It wouldn’t take me long to get ready, so I killed some time by trying to find out where I’d exposed Cambria on the internet.
Despite being at it with help from Crusher, Wire in Cherokee, and Micro in the Horsemen, none of us had found out how it happened.
Even Cambria had worked on it in her spare time, and nada.
I was about to bring in the rest of the IT sleuths in the other clubs. Smoke and Everly were dark and unavailable due to a government assignment they were working on. No one knew for sure how long that would last.
It was worrying the hell out of me. Although still contained on the dark web, the rumors about her continued to grow.
Since we hadn’t found the source, we began removing the sites to try to stem the flow.
Some popped back up the next day under a new name, but we had to do something.
Monitoring the regular internet to ensure it hadn’t jumped over meant we all had to pull double duty.
I was beyond frustrated with the lack of resolution. I’d apologized so much to Cambria that she forbade me from doing it anymore. All of us were baffled by where the mess-up occurred.