Chapter Thirteen #2
side to the store, parking in the rear.
Since Jagger was showing more often to see to Mal, Archie’d had a key cut for him. This meant, instead of
having to walk around the building, they went to the back door.
And once they were in it, Jagger had his answer as to why
Archie didn’t pick up his call.
Jag hadn’t seen Archie’s brother since Elijah was sixteen.
But there was no mistaking the tall, good-looking man who
was right then openly pissed as all fuck and fully up in his woman’s shit.
Like…
Physically.
He had six inches on her but there was less than an inch
between their faces, and Jagger couldn’t hear what he was saying, but there
wasn’t a centimeter of his body that did not share he was all kinds of furious.
Instinct guided Jagger’s next moves, which were to get
behind Archie, curl his fingers in the back of her jeans, pull her away from
her brother and step between them.
“What the—?” Elijah started angrily.
“Maintain space or I won’t, and you won’t like how I won’t,”
Jagger growled.
“Jagger, baby,” Archie murmured, and he felt her hand fall
light between his shoulder blades.
He also felt Dutch get close and watched Elijah’s eyes dart
to him.
And he noted something he didn’t when he walked in and saw
what he saw.
The storage space wasn’t only taken up by the fruits of
Archie’s day (since he knew she was hitting some flea market as well as two
auctions to bulk up stock), Joany was standing there and she was pissed as all
fuck too.
“You gonna stand down?” Jagger asked and got Elijah’s
attention again.
“So you finally made a move,” he sneered.
And he was Arby’s Guy to Elijah too.
Not a surprise.
“That isn’t an answer to my question,” Jag noted.
“This is between Arch and me, so beat it,” Elijah replied.
“And you can have a conversation with your sister. What you
can’t do is be up in her shit when you do.”
“This is none of your business,” Elijah returned.
“You’re right and you’re wrong. Whatever you’re talking
about is none of my business. But I’ll repeat, you do not get up in
your sister’s shit when you’re conversing with her. And that is
absolutely my business.”
They scowled at each other way too fucking long before
Elijah took a step back, stabbed a finger at his sister and stated, “We’re not
done but I’m not talking about this with your dog in the room. You’ll hear from
me.”
“Elij—”
Archie didn’t get her brother’s full name out.
Without looking at anyone, he stormed to the door, which had
a push bar and a sturdy hinge at the top to avoid the heavy door slamming.
Elijah still put the effort into slamming it.
Jag turned to Archie.
“Let me guess, you told him he was paying his half of the
handyman,” he deduced.
She’d looked mildly freaked, and equally mildly put out, but
when he said that she smiled that almost-smug, totally-hot smile of hers.
“And then some,” she shared.
“Okay, I need some assistance here,” Joany stated in
Archie’s direction, bellying up to them, “’Cause,
see, I got hella mindfuck going on because
simultaneously I don’t know whether to touch my contacts to see if I can order
a hit on that crazy-ass brother of yours. This along with beating back an
inappropriate orgasm with the repeat goin’ on in the
back of my brain of your boy here sharing what is absolutely his business
and how he did that. And last, tamping down my jubilation that his semi-twin
has shown up and he’s not wearing a ring.”
“He’s taken,” Jagger informed her.
“Pity,” she muttered.
“Hey, I’m Dutch, Jag’s brother,” Dutch introduced himself to
Joany with a huge smile he knew melted panties.
Jagger sighed.
“I’m single, just, you know, in case shit goes south at
home,” she replied.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Dutch promised, still smiling.
Joany’s eyes darted between the brothers before she said,
“For crap’s sake, you two have the exact same voice. This will not help me
fight my twin fantasies. You could blindfold me, and I wouldn’t know who was
doing what.”
“Dear Lord,” Archie mumbled.
“Do not tell me you haven’t thought about it,” Joany
accused.
Archie had no comment to that.
Jesus Christ.
Now Dutch was grinning so big, it had to hurt his face.
“You wanna help me put an end to
this?” Jag asked his brother.
“I don’t mind being a pretty girl’s fantasy,” Dutch
continued flirting, punctuating this with a wink at Joany.
For fuck’s sake.
“If you don’t tone it down, bruh,
I’m sharing with Georgie,” Jagger warned.
“Dude, Georgie flirts in front of my face. She knows she
owns my dick. We both know I don’t want anyone else to claim it. So it’s all
good.”
“Do real people talk like this, or am I in a movie?” Joany
asked Archie.
“You’re not in a movie,” Archie replied. “Though I will
point out you just shared you nearly had an orgasm.”
Archie was also smiling, and it was again semi-smug.
Probably because she knew she owned Jagger’s dick.
“Huh, I did do that,” Joany replied.
“Right, as cute as we’re all being, two things,” Jag began.
“One, Dutch and me checked shit out at the school today, watching the kids come
out, and they barely got a block off school grounds before the Harrises went
after Mal. Or Aaron did. He pushed him to the ground and kicked him. We rolled
in and put a stop to it, but the time is now to discuss talking to his mother.”
Archie and Joany stared at him and no one was smiling.
“Two, we need to have a convo
about your brother, because what we walked in on is not okay,” he finished.
“Is Mal hurt?” Archie asked.
“He said he was all right, but I think he still needs to be
checked out,” Jag answered.
She digested that, then said, “Jag, honey, if we go to his
mom, we’re gonna lose him.”
They probably were.
“As much as I want to, I can’t shadow him everywhere he goes
and hope the Harrises will see he has a bodyguard and find someone else to fuck
with,” Jagger told her. “And Mal’s not dealing with this. He rolled out of
school in a hurry, but he can’t escape this. They’re not gonna let him ignore
it. We have no clue what’s happening in school. We’re not his peers, we’re
adults and we have to have his best interests in mind, baby. If he was my son,
and anyone knew this was happening to him and didn’t tell me, I’d be pissed as
shit.”
She didn’t even need to process that, she nodded.
“You say there are cliques. But Dex, Martin and Colby are
cool with him here. They play videogames together. They don’t seem to dislike
him,” Jag remarked. “But they were there, and they didn’t step up for him. Four
against two is decent odds, especially when it seems only Aaron is the asshole.
I’m saying this because we also need to find a way to get those boys to look
after their friend. It’s not on, them letting him swing in the breeze like
that.”
Through a grin, she replied, “Says the MC brother.”
“It’s you teaching them what a tribe is all about, Arch,” he
retorted. “They are not looking after their tribe. They need to look out for
their tribe, and that includes Gina, Tracee and Mia.”
She didn’t take time to process that either.
Her eyes warmed and she again nodded.
“Now, Elijah,” he prompted.
“I’m hearin’ good things about
this soda fountain,” Dutch cut in. “Can you do vanilla Cokes?” he asked Joany.
“There is so much I can do, baby, it’s not funny,” Joany
drawled. “But we’ll start with a vanilla Coke.” She held out a hand to Dutch.
“Come to momma. We’ll get you sorted out.”
No hesitation, Dutch took her hand, tucked it into the crook
of his arm and started to escort her to the hall that led to the door to the
store.
As they went, Dutch asked, “So these contacts you can touch
to set up a hit…?”
Joany looked back as they walked and rolled her eyes
dramatically, also licking her lips.
So Archie was laughing softly as they walked out of sight.
Jagger was not.
“Babe,” he called, his voice firm.
She looked to him.
“Okay, so I thought about it, and before I chickened out,
decided on it and you were right. As I mentioned, it wasn’t exactly a slum, but
it wasn’t great before I sorted things out. Now it’s safe, it’s nice. I looked
up average rents in this area and we’re over three hundred below that. I’m not
saying we should jump up rents, but it’s something to think about. And we can
have a tenant meeting and talk about how a cost of living increase would affect
them, and—”
“I’m interested in what you’re saying, but this is not an
explanation about Elijah being pissed as hell and nose to nose with you when I
walked in ten minutes ago, babe,” he cut her off to note.
She dipped her head side to side, probably to buy time, but
when he put his hands on his hips, she went on.
“I called him. And I thought, maybe it’d work better if we
entered into negotiations, instead of me just telling him how it would be. And
since I want to meet in the middle, and I know Elijah, he’ll want to feel like
he won, I went for the gusto and told him not only was I deducting half the
monthly expenses from his take, I would email him a list of the cost of
improvements, and a cumulative of what I’ve spent so far on upkeep, adding to
that fifty bucks a month for cleaning bills since I began doing that chore, and
I’d be deducting an additional five hundred from his portion until he paid me
back for his half of all of that.”
That wasn’t going for the gusto, that was seriously not
fucking around.
“Jesus, baby,” Jag murmured.
“I also told him he either came once a month to clean the
common areas, or he was paying me twenty-five dollars a month from here on out
to keep them clean. It only takes an hour, but it isn’t the most fun thing to
do. I’ll do my rotation, but he’s responsible one way or another for his.”
“So you called him with this, how did it get to him being
here, in your space?”
“He hung up on me and was so angry, he left work in order
not to delay telling me face to face that shit wasn’t happening.”
Jagger drew in a very long breath and held it.