Irritated, I roll it down an inch.
He leans down until his eyes are almost level with mine. “Don’t forget your files,” he says.
He steps to the back of the car and takes the paper ream box off the trunk lid. From the driver’s seat, I pop it open, and he puts the box inside and slams the trunk shut.
Ignoring that I should probably thank him, I put the car in reverse and back out of the parking space. Striker stands there watching me, arms crossed in front of his chest, and I feel my face flame. It’s not until I’m out on the main road that I exhale a little, my muscles finally relaxing.
“Good lord,” I mutter to myself. “That was ridiculous.”
A few seconds later, the roar of an engine behind me draws my eyes to the rear-view mirror. Unbelievably, a black, low-slung motorcycle is following close behind me.
“Dammit!” I yell in the empty car. “I told you I don’t want a damn bodyguard!”
Reflexively, I speed up, even though I already know it’s silly to think I can outrun him. This car is hardly a match for Striker’s Harley. Besides, I am a very conscientious driver who never goes more than a couple of miles above the speed limit.
So instead, I’m reduced to stewing silently all the way home.
When I finally pull into the driveway of my house, I almost throw the car into park and storm out to give Striker a piece of my mind, but right now I can’t handle another defeat. So I do the only other thing I can think of. I push the remote for my attached garage, drive inside the open door, and go straight inside the house.
To hide.
4
Striker
It gave me a perverse pleasure to see the chick lawyer so pissed off when she finally understood what I was doing outside her office. And that I wasn’t about to back down.
Following behind her car on my bike now, I chuckle to myself as I watch her wave her arms around and bob her head. No doubt she’s giving me a piece of her mind in there. Like I was in there with her to hear what she’s saying.
She’s got some sass underneath that ice queen exterior, I’ll give her that. December’s a fitting name fm or her, all cool and professional in that tailored suit she’s wearing. It doesn’t take a genius to see she chooses her outfits to play down the sexy, and play up the professional. Skirt cut right at the knee, giving you a glimpse of calf and a hint of her curves. Sensible black pumps, with just enough of a heel to be interesting but not overly provocative. High heels that draw your eyes right to her ass, though I’m not sure she knows it.
She’s probably good at using that shit to her advantage. I bet the way she looks doesn’t hurt when she’s in the courtroom. I can see the male judges and attorneys practically falling at her feet with their tongues hanging out at the sight of her, just waiting for a glimpse of a little something more. She seems like the type who’s used to getting her way. Hell, I thought she was gonna blow her stack when I told her I didn’t care she didn’t want a bodyguard.
I can see why Tank warned me she’s off-limits, though. Stuck up or not, she’s exactly the sort of chick I go for, looks-wise. Wide-set brown eyes, deep enough you could drown in them. Not too much makeup, except the splash of coral lipstick that makes it hard not to stare at her heart-shaped mouth. Bangs just long enough for her to hide behind if she needs to get some distance from you. A mess of light brown hair, tamed and pulled up into a neat bun that just happens to give a nice view of that long neck of hers before it disappears into that cream blouse.
If I gotta spend my time watching over some tight-ass lawyer chick to make sure she doesn’t get offed, she might as well be easy on the eyes. And December Wells is definitely that. It might even make up for the fact that she’s probably gonna be a giant pain in my ass and fight me on this all the way.
I don’t give a shit, though. I ain’t here to do her bidding. I’m doing this for Tank. She can bitch all she wants.
Not that I think Tank is necessarily doing the right thing here. If I was him, I’d stay the hell away from lawyers, and the courts, and all that bullshit, and I’ve told him so. Shit, he’s already got Wren. He’s got Cady. Wren’s mom is out of the picture, and she ain’t likely to show her face anywhere near Tanner Springs or our club anytime soon. No piece of paper’s gonna make any of that more true.
Trying to make all this shit official in the eyes of the law? That’s just gonna fuck it all up. In my experience, anyway.
But Tank doesn’t want my advice on this one. He’s got this feeling that if he doesn’t get all this locked up — Wren legally his, Cady officially divorced so she can marry him and Wren can have a mom, too —it’ll all fade away. Go up in smoke, like a dream that was too good to come true.
I tried to tell him that in my experience, it’s just the fuckin’ opposite. You trust the law with the things that are most precious to you, and well, that’s when the law fucks you over and takes it all away.
Family law, they call it. What a crock of shit. It ain’t got nothin’ to do with keeping families together. More like using the law to destroy families that don’t measure up. Papers don’t make a family. Law doesn’t make a family. The law’s what blows that shit apart. Sky high. And when the system’s done chewing you up and spitting you out, ain’t nothin’ left.
I wanted to tell Tank to fire the lawyer bitch. To run far the hell away from this whole goddamn thing. He’s got Wren. The two of them and Cady are a family now. The best thing they could do is fly under the radar and keep their lives out of sight until Wren’s eighteen. Because the law doesn’t give a shit about people like us. The law protects the rich and the powerful. Not the people who need protection the most.
But since Tank’s gonna go through with this stupid shit, at least I can keep an eye on the lawyer while he’s doin’ it. Get a bead on the kind of person she is, see if she seems like she’s gonna take his money and screw him over. Sure enough, when she came out of that office just now, her hoity-toity attitude was exactly what I fuckin’ expected. The way she looked at me — distaste written all over her face when she registered my Lords of Carnage cut, and saw my shiner and my busted lip — she thinks I’m a thug. Which means she thinks Tank’s a thug.
She tried to dismiss me with a wave of her hand. “I don’t need protection,” she said. Like she couldn’t possibly imagine a world where she wasn’t safe, wrapped up in her money and her country club life.
Well, who gives a shit what a rich bitch thinks of me. For the foreseeable future — until Tank tells me to stand down — I’m on her ass like glue. I’ll protect her, like Tank wants. But I’ll be watching her, too.
Ahead of me, I watch through the rear window as Ember Wells punches her steering wheel at a red light. I laugh again.
After a few minutes of driving, we start to head toward the chichi part of town. We wind through a residential neighborhood, the houses getting bigger and bigger as we go. Eventually, she signals and turns into the driveway of one of those colonial type places, a front porch in the center with columns on either side, and a brick stoop. White with green shutters. Flowering shrubs all around the place. The kind of place that belongs on the cover of a fancy house magazine.