Chapter 34
Someone laughed loudly enough for it to echo off the walls, and somebody else immediately yelled at him to shut the fuck up.
Mia’s voice came from behind the bar almost straight afterwards, as sharp as ever, and a few seconds later there was a crash that made half the room turn to look.
When nobody appeared to have died, most of them simply went back to whatever they had been doing.
Which, Charlie was beginning to understand, was pretty much how things worked around here.
She stood leaning against one corner of the bar with a faint smile on her face while Amanda and Tony argued about something that was clearly of vital importance to both of them and equally incomprehensible to everyone else.
Charlie had stopped trying to follow their reasoning several minutes ago and was content to listen to the tone instead.
It was strange how quickly she had become used to it.
Only a few days earlier, the whole place had felt like chaos.
Raised voices had made her tense and every sudden noise had caught her attention, but now she was beginning to recognise the patterns hidden inside all that sound.
She knew who was genuinely pissed off and who was only pretending, who might actually be about to hit someone and who simply needed to swear for a while before life could carry on as usual.
She had barely finished the thought when two arms closed around her from behind.
Her body reacted before her mind had time to catch up, but this time she didn’t freeze. Instead, she relaxed almost immediately and leaned back against him.
There was only one person who could make her react like that.
“Come with me,” Reeze murmured against her ear.
Charlie rested her hand on his arm. There was no anger in his voice and none of the frustration she had heard so many times throughout the day.
He simply sounded finished with people, as though the limit for how many problems, questions and voices he could deal with in a single day had been crossed hours ago.
“You usually at least pretend to be charming first.”
“Too much effort.”
She laughed and turned in his arms.
The weight was still there behind his eyes.
The meeting hadn’t solved anything. Sunkholes were still out there, the threat was still hanging over the club and the question of Dennis had grown bigger rather than smaller, but for the moment Reeze looked as though he had decided none of it was getting any more room inside his head.
Charlie wasn’t going to be the one to give it back.
She took his hand.
“All right.”
They had barely made it past the pool table before Billy spotted them. He watched them for a few seconds, his face settling into an expression that made Reeze sigh before the man had even opened his mouth.
“No.”
Reeze kept walking.
“Because—”
“No, Billy.”
It was, of course, already far too late. Several people had started listening and Billy pointed between them with a triumphant expression. “You two are going to fuck again.”
Laughter spread through the room. Jesse lost track of whatever he had been doing, Tony leaned across the bar and somebody farther away started laughing without even knowing what was funny.
Charlie hid her face against Reeze’s shoulder.
“I’m still considering strangling him,” Reeze said.
Billy looked even more delighted. “That’s exactly what foreplay sounds like when it comes from you.”
Now even Amanda was laughing and Charlie gave up trying to look offended.
“I’m starting to understand why you want to kill him.”
“Took you fucking long enough.”
“I can hear you!” Billy called after them.
“That was the intention,” Reeze replied without turning around.
Charlie laughed again and let him pull her farther across the room while life behind them was already moving on to the next thing.
Rollo had caught Mia behind the bar in the middle of a rant and interrupted her by kissing her so thoroughly that she completely lost her train of thought. When he finally released her, she stood staring at him for several seconds before the dishcloth smacked him across the chest.
“Fucking idiot.”
Rollo laughed and stole another kiss before she had the chance to hit him again.
Not far away, Billy had already lost interest in Reeze and Charlie and turned his attention to a dark-haired patchbunny who seemed to know exactly what he wanted and was perfectly happy with the arrangement.
Tony and Amanda were still arguing, although neither of them appeared to remember what the argument had originally been about, and outside in the yard some of the men had begun dragging out the grill while somebody else turned up the music.
That particular evening atmosphere Charlie was beginning to recognise slowly settled over the clubhouse. The strange thing was how natural it seemed.
Only an hour earlier, these same people had been talking about threats, rival clubs and whoever had been standing outside their gates filming them. Now they were laughing, flirting, arguing over meaningless things and planning food as though the outside world could wait for a few hours.
Maybe sometimes it had to.
Nobody could live with their jaw clenched twenty-four hours a day.
Charlie glanced at Reeze as they reached the hallway and noticed that some of the hardness had actually begun to leave him.
Not all of it. It would probably take considerably more than a few quiet minutes and Billy’s terrible sense of humour to manage that, but his steps were calmer now and he was no longer watching every door and every person they passed.
For the first time all day, the Master at Arms wasn’t walking beside her.
It was only Reeze.
He opened the door to the room and Charlie had barely crossed the threshold before he pulled her against him. The door closed behind them as one arm slid around her waist and his other hand came up to the back of her neck.
“So this was the plan?” she asked with a smile.
“I didn’t have a plan.”
“That’s almost a little worrying.”
“Babe.”
He never got the chance to say anything else before she kissed him.
Reeze responded immediately and Charlie felt his arms tighten around her, but there was something different beneath the impatience this time. The same thing she had felt earlier when she had held him outside the meeting room.
A need that didn’t really have much to do with sex at all.
When the kiss ended, he buried his face against her neck and simply stood there.
Still.
Charlie slid her hand into the hair at the back of his neck without saying anything.
Outside, the clubhouse carried on around them, muffled by the walls.
Someone yelled at Tony to hurry the fuck up with something and Mia immediately shouted back that he could do it himself if he was so bloody clever.
A whole group of them started laughing loudly enough to almost drown out the music, and seconds later there was another crash.
Then Rollo’s voice came through the wall.
“I swear to God, if that was my table, I’m killing someone.”
Charlie started laughing and felt Reeze do the same against her neck.
In some absurd way, it was all so completely normal.
People laughed, argued, flirted and did stupid things they would probably regret the next morning, while Reeze stood with his arms around her, trying to steal a few minutes of peace before somebody came looking for the Master at Arms again.
When he finally lifted his head, she could see the difference.
He was still tired and every problem they had was still waiting on the other side of the door, but for a moment he looked younger.
Not like the man expected to hold the security of an entire club together, or the father simultaneously trying to protect his daughter from a world she was far too young to understand.
Just Reeze. Charlie ran her fingertips over his cheek. “A little better?”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “A little.”
“Only a little?”
“Mm.”
“Lucky for you I’m amazing, then.”
A real laugh escaped him this time, low and warm, and he shook his head as he pulled her closer again.
“You are fucking impossible.”
“And yet you came to get me.”
“I did.”
“Voluntarily.”
“Starting to regret it.”
“Liar.”
He kissed her forehead and Charlie felt something else inside him finally begin to loosen. Not much, and certainly not enough for her to imagine that any of their problems had disappeared.
But enough for now.
And perhaps that was all they could ask for tonight.