Page 3 of Navy

Their joined laughter rang out over the phone line. Rubbing my hand over my beard as I waited for the two of them to stop laughing, I caught the amused eyes of the Old Ladies that were patiently sitting, waiting for me to finish on the phone, “Alan, man, it’s like you don’t even know her.”

“Hey,” Hope shouts, “I’m a delight.”

“Yes, dear,” Bas laughs at her.

“Give me back my phone, you neanderthal; just you and your cousin wait. I’ll get you both back.”

“Bye, cuz, give me a call when you can. I’ll look out for the delivery. I’m handing you back to my delightful wife before she sets me on fire with the look she’s giving me.”

“See you, Bas,” I tell him.

“Give me that, you big ape,” Hope just about growls, taking her phone back from Bas. “His biker family is going to think we’re crazy and they won’t want to meet us.”

“As for you, Alan, just you wait until you get here. You and I’ll be having words,” Hope mutters darkly.

Still laughing at her, I tell her, “Bye, shorty, love you. I’ll hand you back to the ladies to sort out dresses and shit.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hope laughs, “love you too. Now go away so Abby, me, and the girls can make plans.”

Still smiling, I leave them to it and ignore the flurry of questions being thrown at Hope. I wasn’t going to live this one down and by the looks on my brothers’ faces, I was about to get an in-depth questioning about my other family.

‘Fuck my life,’ I thought, ‘you do one nice thing and your whole world implodes.’

Holding up my hand, I say to my brothers, “I need a beer first before you start interrogating me with your questions.”

Once I had a beer in hand, I tilted my head to the back doors and the area with the fire pit, the brothers trooped out after me. As the pit was set up and ready to go, I lit it and waited while they all found seats.

“What did Hope mean by she’s going to kick your arse and why do you need me?” Hawk asks curiously.

I grin at him, “Hope and I have a friendly rivalry going; she’s a crack shot. She’s been shooting competitively since she was a kid. She was good enough to enter the Olympics, unfortunately she didn’t place as she came fourth, but she’s still a fucking good shot. You guys will love her set up. She’s built a complete range on the property. Bas can shoot, but he’s not fussed about it, so when I go visit them, Hope and I always have a little competition. She regularly beats my arse.”

“Why’d you wait so long to introduce us?” Gunny asks.

Shrugging, I mull the question over, but I don’t have an answer, “I don’t really know, Gunny, there isn’t really a reason. I’m sorry I didn’t, it’s just not something I’ve ever thought about. It’s a shame really because they’ll fit right into the MC. You heard them on the phone. They may both have been born into money, but they aren’t arseholes. I’m godfather to both their kids. You’ll meet them at the ball and then we’ll make a plan and ride down to them and spend a week there. They still live in the family monstrosity, although they have closed up some of the rooms because heating that building is a killer. But they’ll open them up again for all of us. I’ll ride down the week before and help out.”

“We can go with,” Cairo offers, with a look at Reaper, who nods. He, like most of us, has seen that our younger members from this generation are getting restless. They don’t have women to keep them grounded and tethered like Skinny has.

Reaper nods, “Sounds like a plan. The week after the ball, Blaze, Bond, and Cairo can go with Navy and help his family get the house set up for us to arrive.”

With everything settled and a plan in motion for the next few weeks, the brotherhood settled back to talk shit and bond until the women were done making plans.

CHAPTER 2

GIANNA

The door slammed behind my arsehole stepbrother. I was shaking with anger. I wish I was one of those women who could let people know exactly what I was thinking right at that minute. But unfortunately, my comebacks always came to me later after I’d had time to think about it, usually when I was still fuming and trying to sleep.

Sniffing back frustrated tears, I wondered how the hell I’d ended up here. ‘Oh, that’s right, my mother had married his arsehole father.’

When I was four, my mother met what she thought was the answer to all our prayers. Julian Wallingsworth, the First, was a self-made man.

If there was one nice thing I could say about the man, it was that he did work hard to make his money, but it seemed the more he made, the more he wanted. Family was all about appearances and what we could do for him. I was barely tolerated because I wasn’t his blood, but as my mother and I were a package deal, there wasn’t much he could do about it. I was happy to be ignored by him. His son, on the other hand, Julian Wallingsworth, the Second, hated me and tormented me for most of my childhood, even though he was eleven years older than me. I’d breathed a sigh of relief when he'd gone to university at eighteen.

There had been two brights sparks in my life once my mother re-married. The first one was when my younger brother Tristan was born when I was six. To this day, he was one of my best friends. The second one was my grandmother. She wasn’t my grandmother by blood as she was my stepfather’s mother. She was nothing like her son. She’d taken me into her heart from day one. We might not be bound by blood, but we were by the mutual hate of both her son and grandson.

How so much evil could have come from so much sweetness was a mystery to me. I’d been out of the house since I was eighteen. I’d left to take up position as a personal assistant in Birmingham and I’d thought that I was finally out from under Julian’s thumb. I’d been happily living there for the last seven years. It was far enough away that I didn’t have to come home often but close enough that it wouldn’t take me too long to get back to Somerset if I had to.

I’d been hoping that I’d never have to come back home and had my mother and stepfather not died in a car crash last year, I’d still be living and working in Birmingham.

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