Page 7 of Lawless in Leather

“The hot-as-hell redhead type?” Sara said. “Don’t most men?”

“Why are we talking about this? She’s not going to be here for long.”

Sara frowned. “I thought Alex had hired the Fallen Angels for the season?”

Mal fought the urge to roll his eyes when she said the name. He still couldn’t believe Alex wanted to use cheerleaders at their home games. Cheerleaders weren’t a baseball thing. But Alex thought they’d be good publicity, and he’d managed to convince Maggie to take his side; then the two of them had managed to convince Lucas as well. So Mal had been outvoted.

“I doubt we’ll use them that long,” Mal said.

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

“Oh, we’ll pay them anyway,” Mal said. He wasn’t going to rip them off when Alex came to his senses and changed his mind.

“Alex seems pretty set on the idea,” Sara said.

“I’m sure he is,” Mal said. “But if it doesn’t go down well with the fans, then he’ll see sense.”

“If they all look like Raina, then I think they’ll be popular with the fans,” Sara said.

“We’ll see.”

“Lucas said she owns a burlesque club. That’s pretty cool. Maggie and I thought we might check it out. Have you ever seen it? You live in Brooklyn, right?”

“Yes. Not much time for burlesque clubs, though.” Not much time for any nightlife recently, in fact. He wasn’t entirely sure what burlesque was exactly. He had mental images of girls in corsets and fishnets and hairdos like old movie stars, but Alex had stressed that it had nothing to do with stripping.

Not that it was any business of his what Raina Easton did with her life. Any more than it was his business imagining what she might look like in a corset.

“You should come with us, when we go,” Sara said.

He shook his head. “That sounds like a girls’ night out. Take Hana. Or Shelly.” Hell, anyone who was female and not him.

“Chicken. I bet Alex would come with us.”

“Then ask him.” If Alex had any sense he’d leave girls’ night alone too. Then again Alex was the one who thought the cheerleaders were a good idea in the first place, so apparently he had given up on sense for a while.

It was after ten when Mal finally left Deacon. At least working late meant there was no traffic to get in his way as he aimed the bike toward home. He liked riding at night, out on the road with fewer idiot drivers to get in his way. The only problem was keeping the Harley at the speed limit instead of opening it right up and indulging his taste for fast bikes. But he wasn’t out to kill himself or anybody else, and the last thing the Saints needed was the press having a field day because he’d been stupid enough to get a ticket. So he held it down and let the roar of the bike and the rumble of the road beneath him clear his head.

By the time he reached the streets of Brooklyn he was more relaxed but also more awake than he’d been when he’d left Staten Island. The thought of going back to his apartment and crawling into bed had lost its appeal. He steered the bike through the streets, not sure what exactly he wanted to do. Once upon a time, this itchy feeling would have been easily solved with a bar and a drink and a willing woman to take his mind off things. But his taste for wild lost nights died three years ago.

And lost nights weren’t a habit he wanted to reacquire. He’d worked through the grief now. Come to terms with the fact that Ally was never going to walk through his door again. He was never going to see bright-blue eyes and wild blond hair sauntering in on long, long legs, laughing at him as she outlined her latest plot for adventure. It hadn’t been easy but he’d done it. So no, no more need for lost nights with too much bourbon and the nearest woman to ease the pain.

And no more wild girls. Ally had been wild, at her deepest core. Wild and it had killed her. That was the infuriating senseless part. She’d survived the army, survived three tours, and then she’d come home and whether she’d always been that way or whether she was chasing the adrenaline high she couldn’t get in civilian life, she’d started doing crazy things. And it had been one of those—her impulsive decision to take up paragliding—that had killed her.

Stupid. All because she had an itch under her skin that couldn’t be scratched. A need to fly or a need for escape. He’d never figured out what exactly had driven her into the sky with nothing but flimsy fabric to hold her up. Where a simple change of weather had stolen her from him. At least that’s what the accident investigation had determined.

He’d never entirely believed it. Part of him wondered if she’d just let the wildness carry her all the way down into the dark to try to drive out whatever had been eating at her soul.

He’d never know now.

So no. No more wild girls.

No one who made his skin itch.

The next woman in his life had to be calm and easy and looking for a good solid life. Not that he’d ever told anyone those were his criteria. Definitely not Alex and Lucas. They’d either laugh at him or, more likely, decide that he needed some more therapy.

Which he didn’t.

All he needed was a life that wasn’t crazy.

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