Page 13 of Jagger
Me:No, I damn well don’t understand. What’s wrong? Talk to me, please.
Angel:Lose my number.
Her response was immediate and final. When I tried to call her a few minutes later, an automated voice came on the line telling me the caller was unavailable, then disconnected. I tried to text her, but it didn’t show as delivered. She’d blocked me.She had fucking blocked me.
I was stunned, and read back through our text thread, which I had kept since Saturday. There was no hint of anything wrong, and less than six hours ago, she’d told me she couldn’t wait until tonight. So, what the fuck had happened between now and then to cause her to shut me out?
I had the host cancel our table, and stormed out of the restaurant, pacing around the parking lot to calm the fuck down before I got on my bike and rode straight to the clubhouse. I wanted to get a drink and either punch someone or fuck someone, and I could get all of that there.
Two hours later, I’d had more than a few drinks, but that was as far as I’d gotten with my plans. I’d turned away the club bunnies, including Paisley who I’d fucked more often than the others. My dick just wasn’t interested, and I tried to tell myself it was because of the whiskey I was downing. I’d tried to talk Bull or Joker into sparring with me in the gym we had downstairs, but they both already had their sights set on a couple of the other bunnies for the night. My dad and Rome were having a conversation at the other end of the bar, but all I heard was something about a run-in with some uptight bitch who apparently had something against bikers. Shit, it must be going around.
That was the only thing I could come up with. I remembered Angel’s questions about the club, which I had taken for a genuine interest in learning about it. Now, I had a sinking feeling that she was either fender fluff - a groupie who wanted to brag about being with a biker – or that learning a little about our lifestyle had freaked her the fuck out. Dammit, I couldn’t believe I’d been so wrong about her. That’s what I get for thinking I could have an actual fucking relationship with a decent woman. I slammed my fist on top of the bar, catching the attention of the guys around me.
“You OK, Jag?” my dad asked, looking at me with a frown. Rome was staring at me in surprise. I didn’t usually lose my cool like that.
“Yeah, Prez, I’m fine, just in a mood. I’m heading up to my room to crash,” I grumbled, grabbing my glass, and throwing back the last of the whiskey. I slid off the bar stool and headed a little unsteadily toward the hallway leading to the bedrooms when Rome stopped me.
“What the fuck’s up with you tonight, bro? You’re hitting the bottle even harder than I do.” I looked into his face, identical to mine in almost every way, and wondered – not for the first time – how he’d gotten lucky enough to find his woman when we were still kids. I also wondered if he knew just how close he was to fucking it all up if he didn’t cut back on his drinking. I knew Abby was just about at the end of her patience with it.
She’d been on him about it for the last year or so, but he was convinced that it wasn’t a big deal. He didn’t drink all the time - maybe two or three times a month - but when he did, he didn’t stop until he passed out. She was worried about him. Hell, we all were, but he didn’t see his binge drinking as an issue. He never, ever drove after drinking. He would either crash here, or one of us would drag his sorry ass home and put him to bed. I’d noticed he was choosing to stay here more often, and I knew it was because Abby was so upset with him every time she saw him that way. It had really hit her hard when their son had found Rome passed out in the bathroom at their house. Luckily, he was too young to know any better, and had thought it was funny that his daddy was ‘sleeping’ on the bathroom floor. Her pregnancy had been tough this time around. She’d had such terrible morning sickness - more like all-day sickness – that she had been put on bed rest for a few weeks early on until the danger passed. Now, they were keeping a close eye on her, and she’d cut down to working part-time hours for the club, helping my dad with administrative shit. She didn’t need the added stress of dealing with Rome’s drunken ass.
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” I mumbled as I tried to brush past him. He grabbed my arm, forcing me to stop and look at him in frustration. “I’m just…fuck, man, I don’t know what I am. Pissed off, confused as hell, take your pick.” I didn’t add disappointed and a little hurt to the list. I wasn’t about to act like a goddamned pussy in the middle of the clubhouse, especially over a woman who wasn’t what I thought she was.
“Fine, if you don’t want to tell me what bug crawled up your ass, then don’t,” he groused. “I’ve dealt with enough pissy little bitches for today. I’m heading home to my woman. I still need to talk her into letting me go down to the school tomorrow to confront E’s teacher.”
That got my attention. “He’s having trouble in school?” I asked in surprise. My nephew was a great kid, and as far as I knew, had loved his first month or so of kindergarten.
“Not E, man. He loves it. His teacher is the problem, or at least she is now. The bitch apparently has a thing against bikers because she was all sweetness and light with Abs like normal, until she caught sight of me waiting by the car this afternoon. Abby said she looked like she was about to pass out when she got a look at my cut, and then hightailed her prissy ass back inside the school without a word. Abby was so upset on the way home. She’s afraid Miss Walsh will hold it against Ethan, and the kid thinks his teacher is great.”
My thoughts had wandered as soon as he mentioned bitches with a thing about bikers, because it reminded me of Angel. I’d wished him luck with whatever the hell it was and shuffled off toward my room for the night.
I woke the next morning with a helluva headache, and a niggling thought in the back of my mind that I was missing something important here. I forced myself to get out of bed and stumbled into the attached bathroom, thanking the fucking universe once again that the club had voted to add private bathrooms when they’d remodeled a few years ago. After I’d showered and dried off, I checked the closet and pulled on a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt, then slipped on my cut. I always kept a few changes of clothes here, and that habit came in handy on mornings like this.
I headed down into the common room and strode right on through it to the kitchen, knowing that someone would have a pot of coffee brewing. I spotted Bull, our club secretary and all-around IT/computer guru leaning against the counter, munching on a bowl of cereal. Bull was one of the guys who lived here full-time and had ever since he and his Old Lady had split up a few years back. I briefly considered giving him Angel’s phone number and asking him to track down her identity for me. I knew he could do it – he did the background checks for the new employees we hired, as well as for anyone wanting to prospect or do business with us. I was struck again by the feeling that I was overlooking something, but before I could open my mouth to ask him, my dad, King, walked in.
“Morning, Prez,” I greeted him as I poured a cup of coffee for myself. I grabbed another mug and poured one for him, sliding it to him on the counter. Bull nodded to him and waved his spoon in his general direction while crunching away on his cornflakes.
“Thanks,” my dad muttered, taking a sip of his coffee before looking me over. “Feeling better this morning?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, I’m fine. Need to get to work soon. Irish and I have a meeting with the accountant this afternoon to work on the quarterly reports.” Irish was the club’s treasurer and handled that shit for all the businesses.
King nodded and took another sip of his coffee before glancing at Bull, then back to me. “Get some breakfast. You look like shit. Come see me in my office before you head out.”
“Will do,” I said, wondering how I could get out of the little father-son chat I could feel coming on. That was the last fucking thing I needed this morning.
He refilled his coffee mug, then turned, and walked out of the kitchen. Bull nudged the box of cereal my way, but I looked at it with distaste. I could not face milk this morning, not on top of the whiskey I was sure was still swirling around in my gut.
I looked in the pantry and found some granola bars and grabbed a couple. I ate them while I finished my coffee, then poured another one and headed off to find King.
His office door was open, and I knocked on the door frame as I popped my head in. He was sitting behind his desk, and I smothered my smile at the sight of the reading glasses he was wearing as he glared at his computer screen. He was forty-five, and hated the reminder that he was getting older.
“Come on in and close the door, Jag,” he instructed as he pulled off the glasses and tossed them on top of the papers on his desk, rubbing at the bridge of his nose before giving me a serious look.
I took a seat and set the mug on the corner of the desk, in the only clear spot available on it. The papers spread everywhere made it glaringly obvious that King and the other officers needed Abby’s organizational touch to keep things from going to hell.
“We’ve got an issue going on that I need you to look out for. We caught a couple of street rats trying to deal over at Fallen Angels.” I raised my eyebrows in surprise. Most of the local gangs knew better than to try to deal drugs in our territory – we were too well-established – and actually doing it at our strip club was pretty damned ballsy of them.
“Were any of the strippers involved?” I asked, and King nodded grimly.
