Page 103 of The Clover Chapel (Jamison Valley 2)
“And I told you that wasn’t happening,” Nick snapped.
The men shifted their eyes to watch me walk down the staircase. Nick looked over his bare shoulder as I came straight to his side.
All three men were dressed entirely in black, wearing leather vests full of patches. Dash had worn a vest when he had visited weeks ago but before I could inspect it, he had stowed it away in his duffel bag. But it didn’t matter. Those vests meant these men were from a motorcycle gang.
“Is this my daughter-in-law?” the man in the center asked.
Not a motorcycle gang. Nick’s dad’s motorcycle gang. And this was Draven Slater Sr. himself.
On his head he wore a black bandana covered with white skulls. The curls poking out from under the rag were dark gray and matched the color of his beard. Nick and Dash must have inherited their hazel eyes from their mother because his dad’s eyes were solid brown.
“You don’t talk to her,” Nick growled, standing in front of me.
“C’mon, Nick,” one of the other men said. “We’re just here to talk.”
“Stay the fuck out of it, Stone,” Nick said.
Stone was the oldest of the three. His head was bald but his face was covered with a long white beard braided at his chin. His cheeks were leathery and wrinkled.
“Hi. I’m Jet,” the third man said, peering around Nick’s body to give me a small wave.
Jet was an attractive Native-American man, probably close to my age. His athletic build was similar to Nick’s and he had a wide white smile on his face. He was either oblivious to the tension in the room or he just didn’t care.
“Hello, I’m Emmeline.”
Jet strode right between Draven and Nick and plopped down on the couch. “Emmeline. Sweet name,” he said. “And fucking rad robe! My girl would love that. Where’d you get it?”
“Thank you. I got this at a spa in Italy.”
“Nice! Do you have any coffee?” he asked. “I’m wiped. The drive here took for-ev-ver.”
I had no idea what to say so I just stared at him until he winked at me. I looked to Nick, who shrugged, my cue to get out the coffee. “Sure.”
But before I could move to the kitchen, Draven thrust his hand out toward me. “Draven Slater.”
“I’m Emmeline Austin,” I said, then shook Stone’s hand as well as my manners took over. “Nice to meet you both. Coffee?”
“Yeah,” Draven said. “We’re going to stick around for a bit.” His last sentence was for Nick.
“Fuck, you are stubborn, old man. Let me put a shirt on,” Nick said and jogged upstairs.
I busied myself with coffee until Nick came back down and we all sat in the living room.
“Would you like to explain why you drove three hours to talk to me when I told you on the phone it wasn’t going to happen?” Nick asked. He was sitting next to me on the arm of the chair with his arms crossed over his chest.
“I wanted to meet your wife,” Draven said.
“Now you’ve met. Bye, Dad.”
“There’s something else.”
“Figured,” Nick muttered.
“Emmeline. This isn’t a conversation for you. How about you make yourself scarce?”
“No,” Nick said, placing his hand on my knee so I wouldn’t rise. “If you have something to discuss with me that you don’t want my wife to hear, then you should have picked a better time to visit. I think I was pretty fucking clear on the phone.”
The room went silent. Draven’s eyes narrowed at Nick before they came to me. I steeled my spine and held his gaze with equal intensity. Determination cou
