Chapter 12 #2
Less than an hour later, a van sporting the “Guardian Angels Security” logo on the side pulled into my driveway.
I quickly scooped Elvis up off my lap, then shut him in my bedroom.
He hissed and howled at the indignity of being trapped behind a closed door, but I didn’t want to take a chance that he would try to escape while the men were working.
As I opened my front door, the rumble of a motorcycle caught my attention, followed by Uncle Bill roaring into the drive.
Moments later, the prospect mounted his bike and left, his tour of duty apparently done for the day.
Uncle Bill carefully eased off his bike, limping a little as he stomped up the walkway while the two men in the van unloaded tools and various boxes.
His normal grumpy face was fixed with a fierce scowl and a hardness to his features that I normally didn’t see.
He was wearing his standard uniform of faded blue jeans, black T-shirt, and his time-worn leather cut, with both his long gray hair and his beard contained in their usual braids.
I remembered being fascinated as a little girl by the sight of those braids, thinking they were so exotic and different from anything I’d seen on any other grown-up man, especially my boringly clean-cut grandfather.
I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but I’d been rather disappointed by his practical explanation that it kept the hair from tangling too badly while he rode.
He greeted me with a quick hug, then stood aside as his club brothers who worked at the security company filed in through the door.
“This,” he pointed to an absolute mountain of a man, “is Brick. He runs the security company, and he’ll take good care of you.”
“And this asshole is Joker,” he said, thumbing over his shoulder toward the other man.
“He’s gonna help with the cameras and had damned well better keep his hands off everything else unless he wants me to rip off his fuckin’ head and shit down his neck!
” He glared a warning at the man, who flashed a grin my way, completely unperturbed by Uncle Bill’s threat.
Both men greeted me, then got right to work, while Uncle Bill joined me in the kitchen for a cup of coffee. I asked about his back, but he waved off my concern.
“It’ll be fine in a day or two,” he muttered, scowl firmly in place again as he absently stirred a spoonful of sugar into his cup. “You know, I’ll feel better once they put in a better alarm system, but maybe we need to get you a guard dog.
“I have Elvis,” I reminded him, which only made him scowl even more.
“That demon cat of yours is a pain in the ass, but he ain’t exactly gonna scare off an intruder.”
One time. Elvis had scratched his hand one time – when they first met – but clearly my uncle held a grudge.
“I meant that I can’t get a dog because I already have Elvis. I don’t think he would like having a dog around.”
Uncle Bill grumbled about that but thankfully let the subject drop.
It took several hours for Brick and Joker to get everything installed.
They probably would have finished a little sooner, if not for Joker taking time to flirt outrageously as soon as Uncle Bill had left to oversee a repair job at the club’s garage.
Brick had finally lost patience with him, threatening to kick his ass if he didn’t shut his mouth and get to work.
“I have to take my oldest daughter to her piano lesson this afternoon,” he explained, “and Theresa will have my balls if I’m late.”
I laughed as he told me about his wife, who was apparently a tiny little dynamo capable of putting the fear of God into men twice her size.
“She’s a sweetheart,” Joker added, “until you piss her off. Then, she turns into a fire-breathing dragon lady.” He faked a fearful shudder, making Brick smirk before telling him to get back to work.
Once they finished, Brick gave me a detailed lesson in accessing the cameras and using the upgraded system, which had a direct connection to the monitors at their office.
“If the alarm goes off, it will alert our office, and one of us will call you right away. If we can’t reach you, or if we see anything suspicious on the cameras, at least two of us will be immediately dispatched to you.”
“You don’t just alert the police department?”
Brick shook his head at my question. “For our regular clients, yes. For anyone connected to the club, no. We handle those threats in-house.”
His answer was matter of fact, but his tone didn’t invite any questions, so I didn’t ask anything else.
The other prospect, Tony, showed up right before Brick and Joker left. He was driving a van that I knew belonged to the club, rather than his motorcycle. The reason for that became apparent when he started unloading bag after bag bearing the logo of the nearby supermarket.
“What’s all this,” I asked warily.
He gave me a polite smile as he began carrying the bags into the house.
“Trick placed a grocery order and told me to pick it up on my way here.”
I was too dumbfounded to formulate a reply. By the time Tony finished hauling everything in from the van, the entire kitchen island and half of the countertops were covered in bags.
“Trick told me to tell you that the salmon needs to go in the refrigerator, not the freezer. He’s planning to make that for dinner.”
He offered to help me put everything away, but I declined. I wasn’t even sure where I’d be able to put it all. There was enough food to feed a family of four for weeks.
“How damned long is Trick planning on staying?” I muttered incredulously once Tony had gone back outside to do a “perimeter check”.
I began putting the groceries away, and by the time I finished, my refrigerator was full of more fresh ingredients than I’d ever seen outside of the produce aisle.
I’d had to throw out the take-out containers to make room for it all, which wasn’t a huge loss since a couple of them were a day or two past their prime anyway.
My pantry contained things like brown rice, lentils, whole wheat pasta, flax seeds, and more nuts than any man had need of unless he had a pet squirrel.
I had to do some creative rearranging in the freezer to fit all of the meat he’d bought alongside the stuff I already had in there. I refused to throw away a single frozen dinner or breakfast burrito, simply on principle.
I looked around my kitchen, wondering how my life had come to this…quinoa in my pantry and a temporary roommate who was slowly driving me out of my mind.
“You have questionable judgement in men, Lauren Marie, that’s how it happened. Fucking Beau,” I muttered to myself.