Page 45 of The Devil's Pair

“I know you would, Cee,” Briley said quietly. “I’d have loved that.”

“Well.” Cheryl put down her barely-sipped glass of birthday wine, in solidarity with her temporarily teetotal best girlfriend. “Let’s get you a ticket for tomorrow as early as possible, and then we’ll pack you a light carry-on bag. We can go to the airport together tomorrow morning and get on our respective flights to our new lives. OK?”

“Yes.” Briley felt her spirits rise as a plan started to take shape with her friend; she realized that she needed to move forward now, todosomething. Sitting here paralyzed with justnot knowingwas what she was actually tetchy about. “OK. Let’s do it.”

Chapter Twelve

Denver, Colorado

Satan’s Bar

The next evening

Frank ‘Cole’ Porter poured out another shot of whiskey, scanned the bar quickly to see how the vibe was going. Nothing was unusual or alarming, so he flashed Vixen a grin as she picked up the tray of drinks for the bachelor party over in the corner.

“Everything OK, sweetheart?” he asked her. “Those boys behaving themselves?”

She rolled her amazing dark eyes – a beautiful inky almost-black, a color that Cole had never seen on anyone except Vixen – and smiled. The woman was drop-dead gorgeous, with a lithe little body that just never quit… and even though Cole had spent almost four years working with Vixen and appreciating her abundant charms, he’d never even once been tempted to take her to one of the back fuck rooms.

In Satan’s, Vixen was known as the MC’s favorite ride – and she was rumored to have been with every one of the guys, and multiple times, though Cole knewthatto not be true, at all. Whatwastrue was that she had been the ultimate pass-around, the quintessential biker’s whore… and she owned that moniker, without shame. The woman was smokily and sexily hot, aboutthatthere was no doubt, and she had the brazen, aggressive, unpolished beauty of a wild creature. There was nothing demure or elegant or wallflower about Vixen as she carried out her waitressing duties. She was, to her core, an MC bar back room toy, and she was proud of it.

Cole had noticed, though, that she had slowed down on her visits to the crash rooms with the guys, and for a while – for the past several months, at least – she’donlyspent time back there with Ice. He doubted this would endear her to the female customers at Satan’s, and Cole would never get involved in one of his MC brother’s sex lives, but he truly suspected that Ice and Vixen had a little something going, even iftheyhad no idea that it was happening.

“Yeah, those guys are OK,” she told Cole in that husky-sexy voice. “They just spent an hour or so propositioning me non-stop.”

“You want one of us to have a word with ‘em?”

“No need.” Vixen tossed her blonde hair over a slim shoulder, and once again, Cole admired how beautifully the woman moved, naturally and without even thinking about it. “I said no way, and the groom-to-be backed me up pretty firmly. It’s fine, Cole. Really. Thanks anyway.”

“You got it,” he said. “Now back to work, sweetheart. Those tips aren’t going to earn themselves.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

He watched her walk away, appreciating those shapely long legs some more, then switched his attention to Dux and Drake at the other end of the bar. Cole cocked his dark head as he saw that the brothers were chatting with a woman named Laurie. She was leaning forward, giving the twins a generous glimpse of healthy cleavage, and from the look on her face, she was doing some propositioning of her own. Cole knew that she one of the twins’ regular bed-mates – one of about seven or eight women who patronized the biker bar – and although Dux and Drake never kissed and told, the women sure as hell did. From what Cole could gather, satisfaction with the twins was guaranteed, and more than once.

Well, Cole mentally amended as he watched his brothers turn away in disinterest, Lauriehadbeen one of their regular bed-mates. Until recently.

Ever since the boys had returned from setting Briley Cross up in her new life in Pennsylvania, there had beenzerotime spent with any of their usual lucky ladies. Oh, sure, the women flirted and the twins talked to them, but there was no follow-up. In fact, the boys couldn’t seem to escape the conversations fast enough: they looked bored, and on-edge, and maybe even a bit downcast. In other words, they were not themselves.

Cole was a damn good bartender, and not only because he could serve up drinks blindfolded, with an arm tied behind his back, while nursing a bullet wound. He was great at his job because he could read people, and a room, and a situation: he saw things coming long before anyone else did, and Wolf had bowed to his weird intuitive ability on more than one occasion.

What that intuition was telling him now was, that Dux and Drake were turning down their hordes of women because they were hung up on Briley. Much like Cole suspected that Ice and Vixen had no clue that they were, actually, really into each other, Colealsothought that Dux and Drake were unaware of why they felt so uneasy about taking up with one of their former lovers – despite the fact that Briley wasn’t anything official in their lives, and quite probably never would be.

And if there was one thing that Cole loved (besides his ex-wife, who he still missed like he’d miss air and water and cigarettes), it was teasing his brothers about having fallen for a woman.Especiallywhen they didn’tknowthat they’d fallen for her.

“Hey, boys,” he greeted them now as they sidled up to him. “What’s wrong with Laurie?”

“Nothing, I don’t think,” Drake said, looking a bit taken aback. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, it’s just that the woman was practically throwing herself at the two of you, and you didn’t so much as look down at her… uhhh… impressive assets.” Cole grinned. “And they’re pretty damn hard to miss, huh?”

“Yeah, well.” Dux shrugged. “We’re not really feeling it tonight.”

“Tonight?”

The teasing voice came from behind Cole, and he turned, delighted to have an ally in smart-assedness. Troy ‘Rebel’ Armstrong was as merciless a tormentor as Cole himself, and when the men were working at Satan’s at the same time, it was nothing but fun.

Well. Fun for Cole and Rebel. Maybe not so much everyone else, to be fair.

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