Page 77 of Welker

She walked forward and stuck out her hand.

“The name’s Margaret,” she stated. “Margaret Lattery. I’m Henry’s wife, and your current largest shareholder.”

Moira stifled a laugh, but Welker let his loose.

Tom Bliss had just been checkmated.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Three weeks had passed, and Moira was antsy as hell. She was not one to enjoy down-time even when she was one-hundred percent, but laying around when she couldn’t alleviate the boredom by exercising or reaping the high of an op, sucked exponentially.

Dammit. She couldn’t even work on Welker’s stable of old cars, or dance to the 70’s tunes she insisted on blasting to mitigate the dead-quiet in the house while Welker was at work.

And yes, he was at work. After taking the first week of her recovery period off, he’d been driving her crazy with his over-the-top attentiveness, so she’d forced him to get back to the BPD, threatening to leave and stay at her father’s house if he didn’t.

Right. And there also was that. What the hell was going on with her old man? Was he growing a heart after all these years, or had it been something Bette had said?

At the hospital, after Margaret had shamed Tom into leaving the room, Bette had walked him out, and had remained absent for an interestingly long time. When she’d finally come back, she’d looked smug, but had subsequently executed one of those lip-zip gestures when they’d asked her what was up.

Now, her father was not only calling every day to inquire after her health, but he’d offered to let her recuperate at his home. That proposition, however, had come with an interesting side-bar. Apparently, it was Sheriff Gladstone who had contacted Tom, and insisted Moira needed to be under her father’s roof to receive adequate care in order to get back to work sooner.

The whole thing had seemed odd at the time, made stranger by what Hayden had heard from the sheriff one day earlier when her superior had been on the phone, and she’d lurked in the hallway.

Gladstone’s conversation had included telling the people on the other end that he didn’t care if the security was as tight as his asshole, they needed to grow some balls and take care of “the problem”, so that business as usual could recommence. Then he’d snarled and said he’d make a call to try to take care of it in a different way, but that didn’t mean they could drop things on their end, and to make sure when they did “fix things” that the incident looked like an accident.

A situation in “fucked-up-flux” is what Gladstone had called it before smashing his desk phone down on the hook.

Of course, that interaction, in and of itself, didn’t implicate the sheriff in anything, but if one read between the lines—especially after Moira’s father had mentioned his strange call with Gladstone—it sure sounded like the sheriff was telling the latest MC-LT, Mick, that if Moira couldn’t be compromised at Welker’s, Gladstone would attempt to get her moved to a less secure site, i.e. her father’s house.

Welker—not to mention Mason and the other squad leaders who’d been apprised of the development—had certainly taken the conversation as a direct threat, and Hayden had gone on high alert for any additional intel that Gladstone was pulling MC strings.

Tex, the genius-behind-the-computer whom Hayden had enlisted, had been in touch several times, since. Once updated, he revealed that he’d run across a few interesting tidbits in his digging, and might be close to finding info that would be incriminating so they could shut the whole thing Gladstone had going, down.

That had been two days ago, and they were all on pins and needles, waiting.

Moira mixed batter until the ingredients were just wet, then tested the waffle iron to see if it was hot enough. She’d found the ancient appliance in one of her forays into cabinet-cleaning; a task Welker had approved of and agreed she could perform if she promised not to pick up anything that weighed more than two pounds. She’d readily complied, because one could only sit on the back deck, reading and watching the birds for just so long.

Now, she was attempting to make her first meal since her injury. Not because she’d had any doubts that she could have been doing it a week ago, but because Welker had cajoled her into waiting. As much as she loved him, she was done with that.

Moira hummed and tapped her foot as she toiled, wondering when her man would arise. Welker was sleeping in on this rainy Saturday morning, but Moira had been up with the overcast dawn, because…it seemed she’d had enough sleep in the past three weeks to last her for the next ten years.

Moira checked the bacon, which she was cooking on an electric griddle long and slowly so that it wouldn’t toughen up. She glanced at the coffee pot which had finally dripped to a satisfying stop. How long would Welk be able to ignore the aroma of bacon and coffee that wafted throughout the house, and get his lovely tushy out of bed?

Moira sighed.

Uh, huh. Lovely it was. Along with the rest of him. Indeed, in the nearly two months she’d been in residence, there hadn’t been much about Welker that she didn’t adore, and that included him leaving his dirty clothes on the bathroom floor, and using up all the hot water—in his supposedly bottomless system—every time he took a shower. Because other than those small flaws—which made him human—the man was pretty near perfect, and Moira was still pinching herself that he’d chosen her over all the woman he’d romanced during his adult years.

Of course, Welker had never used the term “romanced”. He’d said “bedded”, but Moira had Welk’s number now, and knew he was, down deep, a man who wanted a family, so he’d been trying for the former, and ending up with the latter. He’d simply gone through a lot of women to try and find the right one…which had, most of the time, included fucking. Moira didn’t hold his overly-active penis against him. As a matter of fact, his vast experience buoyed her up. Welker had sampled a large swath of the female sex, and picked her.

Score.

“Are you making bacon?”

Welker yawned, shuffling into the kitchen wearing only a pair of sweats which left his gloriously ripped chest and abs on display. Not to mention it also let Moira ogle the blond love-trail that disappeared tantalizingly beneath his low-riding waistband.

“Yup. And waffles,” Moira told him as he came up behind her, swept her hair to the side and proceeded to kiss the hell out of the back of her neck.

“Welker,” Moira groaned, tipping her head sideways to give him more access. Damn. He could do that forever, and she’d be ecstatic, but… “Unless you want me to go rogue on the doctor’s orders, you’d better stop,” she said after a long minute.

---