Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

Saint

Shit. Fuck. Sin.

Sin.

I rub a hand over my face, everything in my guts churning.

Not because of Sin and how I nearly kissed pretty Red, but because it felt like opportunity slipped through my fingers.

It doesn’t matter if that opportunity was good, bad, or something gray.

She’d have kissed me back.

Belle likes me, it’s why she blushes.

Her thoughts take her to places she can’t stop going, places I want to take her to. The down and dirty and X-rated ones. She blushes because she doesn’t know what to do with it. That’s in her green eyes. A hopeful light wrapped with newness and confusion, like something’s blooming, and she doesn’t know what.

The woman’s expressive, and I want to fucking taste her.

I stare out at the city spread below me, twinkling like fucking lights on a Christmas tree, and lean back against the old, abandoned shack near the road in the Sweetwood Hills that surround it.

Shacks like this were probably once part of a homestead or whatever. I really don’t know. I’m not a city guy, but the country life isn’t for me.

Mine’s the one that the road offers. All the what-ifs and adventures that ring with possibilities I haven’t found.

No woman, no club, has ever given me that. Never will. Not a pretty redhead with green eyes and a buttoned-down sexiness, and not the pure sex on legs that’s Sin, either.

When we rode together, now that was good. It occasionally bordered on perfection. But I honestly couldn’t say if it was because of her, or sex on tap and the open road.

Not that I didn’t love her, but . . .

That was then, and this is now.

We want different things, and the moment she told me she wanted to be my official old lady and to stay with the club we were with for a few months, I can finally admit that my ending it for the road and my own company came with something like relief.

I loved her. But that was not enough.

My phone lights up, and it’s times like this I wish I smoked. I could do with a drag on something or could do with the thrill of riding drunk. The latter isn’t something I’ve done since misspent teen years. Why I sat with the one beer tonight.

“Shit.”

The phone lights up a second time. Second time I’ve seen it, I amended. There are five texts and six missed calls. A record for her.

The thing is, the expression on Belle’s face when I dropped her and the fucking cat off still kills. Rips down into the meat. That’s in the way.

Just like how when she put her arms around me to hold on, she kept her body that half inch from mine. I shouldn’t ever have noticed. I did.

I zipped Nomad up in my jacket, his furry head poking out as we hit the road, and I swear to fucking whoever the cat god is, that he liked it. Not that Nomad showed it when we got back. He dug claws in, deep enough that I know he drew blood, to get down. Not out of fear, not because he needed to, but because he was taking her side.

Not that there are fucking sides.

I rub a hand over my face and breathe in the cold air.

Nomad leaped down after maiming me to sit at her feet.

Belle’s face had been a careful mask of nothing. His . . . judgment, blame.

“Fuck you, Nicholas,” I mutter. “You’re anthropomorphizing a damn cat. It just looked at you.”

Yeah, like I hurt her.

When the phone lights up again, I press answer.

“Jesus, Nick,” Sin snaps, “too busy with your librarian?”

I don’t bother hiding my sigh as I straighten up. “Spying isn’t a good look, Candi.”

The ire almost melts my phone. “Do not call me that.”

“Don’t call me Nick.”

I don’t give a fuck if she calls me Nick, though I prefer Nicholas if we’re gonna go with birth names, and she’s been saddled with Candi or Candice, both of which she hates. What I do care about is Sin knowing about Belle.

She’s not vindictive—okay, Sin can give the Greek gods a run for their money in her ability to be jealous and vindictive—but Belle’s . . .

Mine.

No, Belle’s not part of this, and I like being me around Belle without baggage, without anything else other than me on the table along with her. We click in that weird way people do. She gets my humor. I get hers. And she can play fast and loose with my shit.

Best? Belle doesn’t judge.

I swallow.

Yet.

Because she doesn’t know the real reason I’m there.

“I heard you were looking for me. I have a phone.”

“One you don’t answer,” she says. “How’s the city?”

“It’s a city, and I’m here for work.”

“Mechanic work or . . .”

“I’m breaking heads and kneecaps.”

She makes a sound that’s borderline huffy. “No need to fucking get all pissed off. I called around looking for you, and then you didn’t call me back.”

“Sin . . .”

“What? I like a man to chase me.”

“I’m not.”

“I know.”

“Shit.” I start laughing. It’s one thing about her, that brutal edge of honesty she can spin with an edge. “Never change.”

“Are you going to stay?”

“No.” The little thread in her voice, the core of hurt that I rejected her for something better, which I didn’t. It just ran its course. I’m betting she’s fucked other guys since we split, just as I’ve fucked other women, but we did have something, so I get it. If she’d taken off, I might feel that little flicker of hurt too. “I’ve got a job, like I said.”

Or maybe not.

I don’t know. It’s not something I think about. When things are done, they’re done.

“A job.” She snorts. I know she wants something, but I’m fucking content to let it play out. “You said work.”

Which is something I’m not willing to explore, not the reason that lies beneath it.

I zip up my jacket a little higher as an iced wind starts.

“Work is usually translated into job.”

“For the grunts.” Her chip’s peeking over her shoulder.

“Money’s good.”

“How long will you be there?”

“Long enough.” I pause. “Not settling at the club?”

“Fuck, Nicholas, it’s not the same,” she whispers.

“We’re not a thing.”

“Anymore. And . . . I dunno, I thought it’d be good. There’s some prime dick, not to mention pussy, but . . .” Sin trails off.

“If you’re trying to get me jealous, it’s not working. I know you. I know me. We work to a point.”

“Yeah. Whatever, I’m not fucking begging you back, dickwad. Just let me know if you move on.”

And she hangs up.

I go to my bike, laughing, as I run a hand over the saddle and chrome. For a moment, I wonder what they’d all think if I turned up at clubs with a real vintage bike, maybe from the swinging sixties, with a sidecar.

A special one.

And in it, a black cat in a leather coat and goggles. Maybe a cat-shaped helmet.

They’d lock me the fuck up.

Besides, Nomad wouldn’t ever go for it.

With that idiotic thought in my head, I get on my bike, gun the engine, and take off back to the latest place I call home.

Green eyes, pointed ears, and a black furry face greet me in the a.m.

“Fucking cat.”

Nomad jumps off the bed and pads out to the hall, meowing loudly.

The thing with this place is it’s going to be ice in winter, when it’s snowing, and temperatures turn breath to puffs of white.

Last night, I put down my purchases in the living room and fucked about with the radiator.

I personally don’t need it yet, but there are kids here. A few old people. And I don’t know if it’s going to be one of the places that blasts heat from set times so people need to open windows to breathe and then spend the rest of the time shivering and wrapped in blankets, or if it’s going to push out a weak amount of heat so people have to gather tight around it.

Both annoying.

I make a mental note to check out the basement and the boiler.

I put water on to make coffee, a DIY drip system because I’m not buying anything like a machine or one of the silver stove-top coffee makers.

Then, because I just knew the fucking cat would be back, I put some cat food in a dish and set it down with a bowl of water.

Hungry, desperate eyes follow my every move.

He pounces on the dish and starts eating noisily.

“Are you sure you’re a cat?” I ask, toeing him and earning a swished tail. “Because I’ve met dogs with more grace.”

He growls but doesn’t lift his face from the bowl.

The damn thing has a litter box now, but only because I’m not having him go in the apartment.

There’s a number I wrote down from a sign I passed when going into the hardware store. But it’s something I’ll look at later. Because as I make the coffee and drink it, I have an appointment, and I still need to shower.

The morning’s beyond busy. The thing with the biker community is word gets around. Not only clubhouse members turn up with things they want fixed and to talk about upgrades, but weekend hobbyists and just people who like the convenience of a bike.

“Yeah,” I say to the guy who’s discussing the noise his engine makes, “I’ll take a look, but it sounds like we might need to order a part.”

“Whatever you think, Saint,” he says. “Gravel and Frederick Jones say there’s no one like you.”

“Hope not. Otherwise, we’ll know they’ve got cloning abilities.”

He nods, and in the back of my head, I hear the bubbling laughter of Belle. I imagine her snarky comebacks that are so full of goodwill that even when she stumbles over herself, she can’t offend.

It’s not in her.

The morning passes into lunch and afternoon, all with fucking Nomad surveying all from his perch on my bike.

A huge biker with face tattoos carries an old lady’s groceries in, and when he comes back, he pays me for the job, and says, “See ya Wednesday.”

“We’re done, Wheeler.”

“No, I’m helpin’ Mrs. Gentry. She can’t be hauling all this fucking shit by herself. She’s eighty.”

He starts whistling, gets on his bike, and roars off.

“Mr. Santiago.”

I turn and wipe my hands on the rag in my back pocket. Glancing around, I make sure I’m not taking up more space than I need. I’ve got a tarp down so I don’t stain the courtyard’s broken and neglected stonework.

More for myself. I don’t like messes in public places. Besides, I wouldn’t put it past a worm like this man to tack on an expense come payday.

“Hastings.” I keep my tone neutral.

He eyes my bike disdainfully, an act that, by rights, should have him laid out on the ground after a beating. But I let it slide.

“There’ve been some complaints about the mess. The noise. The people.”

Lance keeps his voice low, like he’s gloating over a secret, and I really want to beat his fucking ass.

“Keep up the good work.”

“Like I said, this is temporary. I’m renting a space to set up shop.”

He nods and pushes his hands into what looks like a cashmere coat. “You might find this easier. I’m raising the rent. Immediately. You should know.”

“Not mine,” I mutter. Because it’s true, we’ve got a contract. One that’s been gone over by a lawyer I know. One I made sure was both iron-clad and boilerplate. In short, no hidden nasties, no wiggle room, and I know he knows that. It annoys the living fuck out of him.

But he needs me way more than I need him.

I can pay the full fucking rent. I’ve got the money.

But he can’t intimidate or make sure people move if they don’t pay. I’ll do the latter and not the former.

If someone wants to be intimidated by my size, beard, tats, and bike, they can. That isn’t my problem.

The thing is, if he hires someone else, he’s going down a road he probably doesn’t want to go down. Not with this, and that interests me. Mildly.

He’s got skin in the game here, beyond wanting the property empty. Because I’m pretty fucking sure if he wanted to hire from Thug Central Casting, he’d do it. No fucking questions asked.

“Not you. But I do expect it to be enforced. There are a few mid-month rents, for some reason, she allowed the fifteenth and the twenty-fifth. Who knows why?”

I start to collect my tools as he talks. “By how much?”

“A hundred a month.”

There are things I could say, bring into question legalities, the fact there’s been nothing in writing, but again, it isn’t my place, so I just nod.

“Even those due mid-month?”

“Even those. Rent’s up.”

“What the F, Lance?” Belle demands.

I lower my face to hide my grin. Her annoyance is music.

“Don’t make a scene, Belle,” he says.

“A scene? You want a scene? Because that wasn’t a scene and neither is this. Just because I own ovaries doesn’t make me hysterical or prone to scene-throwing.” She stops and breathes in. “Putting up the rent violates the rental agreements and the laws surrounding rent control, and you know it.”

His shoes are polished perfectly, and I’ll bet they’re Italian leather. He seems like an Italian leather kind of fuckwit.

“Heya, Belle. Good day at school? Teach them how to murder yet?” I ask, standing.

Her face lights up a moment, her anger slipping free. “They were born knowing. We have after-school classes for me. I’ve learned some pretty nifty skills today with paper and a crayon.”

“Not the death by paper cut and crayon up the nose move?”

“Do you know my class?” she asks.

Lance makes a sound that reminds me of Nomad’s petulant growl, and her laughter fades as the anger slams back into place. “Can you stop that?”

“Stop talking to my friend and neighbor?”

He opens his mouth, then casts me a filthy look, before slamming it shut once more.

“And explain this rent rise.” She pauses. “The illegal one.”

“It’s for repairs and maintenance. For Mr. Santiago here.” He offers her a tight smile. “I find it easier calling it a rent rise over breaking it all down. But I will.”

“It has to be in writing, Lance,” she says.

“You didn’t get the letters? I thought everyone was ignoring them. I’ll send another copy tomorrow. By courier.” Then he moves in, taking her arm and trying to lead her away, presumable so I’m not towering over him. “Dinner?”

I wince. In the scheme of fucking dumb moves, that’s up there.

“No. I’ll see you around, Lance.”

And with that, she stomps off inside, Nomad hot on her sensible heels.

Oh, fuck is she sweet.