Page 76 of Allegiance
“Speak up, slut,” Hammer snapped.
Molly shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“You didn’t see who Cougar was fighting with?”
“No. I was at the bar,” she mumbled.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s just a brother fighting another over shit. That’s the way it is,” Ice said.
“Yeah. You’ve had plenty of fights, so what’s the big deal?” Grid asked.
Hammer nodded. “You’re right. This isn’t my business.” Turning, he walked away.
Molly hovered over Cougar, who started to stir. She laid her head on his chest. “Baby, I was so worried.”
Tank turned to Ice and Maniac. “I’m outta here. We’ll meet up later this week.”
Maniac gave him a questioning look. “Have you talked to him?”
“Yeah. He agrees with the interim president. He’s coming back from L.A. sometime this week,” Tank replied.
Ice asked in a low voice, “The treatments?”
“Yeah.” Tank pulled the keys to his bike out of his pocket. “I’ll be in touch.” Bumping fists with his two buddies, he walked out of the clubhouse.
After stopping by his apartment to change his bloodied T-shirt and jeans, Tank pulled up in front of Sterling Rose Florist.
The sweet scent of flowers filled the shop. Tank hadn’t been in the store since his mother’s birthday the year before. She loved any kind of flowers, so when he’d started working in high school, he’d made it a point to save some money to buy an arrangement for her on her birthday. The gift had made her cry—in a good way. And ever since then, he’d bought her flowers for every year for her birthday. He’d never bought them for any of the women he’d known, not even Trish, but she’d never been the flower type of girl. When they went to their senior prom, she’d told him not to buy her a wrist corsage, but to buy her a box of fancy chocolates at See’s Candies instead.
“May I help you?” the woman behind the counter asked.
“Yeah. I’m here to buy my… uh… a friend some flowers.”
The woman beamed. “That’s so nice of you. Women love flowers. Even when they say they don’t, they do.”
The image of Trish tossing the wildflowers he’d picked for her into the trashcan flashed through his mind. It was during a weekend biking trip to the Santa Ynez Mountains in the early part of their marriage.
“Yeah, right.”
“What’s the occasion?”
“Nothing, really.”
“Maybe athinking of youoccasion?”
Tank had no idea he’d have to answer fifty question just to get a damn bouquet.
“Or ajust because?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s anI screwed the fuck upoccasion.”
The bright smile on the woman’s face morphed into a frown. “So you had an argument, and you want to say you’re sorry, right?”
“You got it, lady.”
She pursed her lips and opened a three-ring notebook filled with photographs of floral arrangements. “Roses are your best bet,” she said sourly.
“I want something with them. Let me see the book.”
