Page 90 of Subbing For Santa

Griffin offers me a warm smile. “As far as I can tell, she is. She’s married, actually. Just had her first child.”

“What?” My brows shoot up as pain laces my heart. “My little sister has a baby?”

“Yes. A daughter.”

“Wow.” I mutter, my eyes falling to my fidgeting hands in my lap.

Griffin reaches over and takes one of my hands, linking his fingers with mine. “She called her Marie.”

My gaze darts to his as my emotions become overwhelming, and my eyes fill with tears. “Marie?”

“Yes.” He nods, offering me a sympathetic smile. “That’s your middle name, right?”

I nod as a hot tear escapes, and Griff reaches up to catch it after setting his whiskey aside.

“It probably doesn’t mean anything.” I speak quietly, trying to fight back more tears. “Marie is a popular name.”

“Maybe.” Griffin rasps. “Or maybe it means your sister named her daughter after you.”

My eyes flash up to Griffin’s again. I don’t know what to say to that, but I don’t need to. Griffin understands me more than I realise, his dark eyes softening, showing me how much he cares.

It’s not long before the plane is landing in a small airstrip in Queensland’s Glass House Mountains. As soon as we step off the plane, the familiarity of the humid air sends me back to my childhood, and despite the crap I had to deal with growing up, I sure miss the times that me and Lizzy ran free, sweat beading over our skin from the Queensland heat.

As we step off the plane, my eyes land on a couple of men waiting for us on the tarmac. They are both covered in tattoos. One has a long brown beard, and the other one has a three-day growth. I don’t know who is who, but one is named Eddy, and the other is named Freddie. Weird, I know.

Freddie, or perhaps it’s Eddy, hands Griff a set of keys after a brief greeting, and we head to a black Jeep parked nearby while the two men approach a motorbike.

Griffin ushers me into the passenger seat before rounding the car to get behind the wheel, and I watch the two gruff men in the side mirror as they squeeze onto the motorbike together.

“So, how do you know Freddie and Eddy?” I try not to giggle at their rhyming names as I click my seatbelt into place and Griffin starts up the engine.

“They are a part of the Maroochydore Southern Sadists chapter.”

“Chapter? Southern Sadists? Is that like a motorbike gang or something?”

Griffin grins as he glances over at me before turning his eyes back to the road as we leave the airfield.

“Yep, it’s an MC. They work closely with the Marx crew and the Angels.”

“The Angels? Are they another motorbike gang?” I ask, and Griffin chuckles.

“No. The Angels are two sisters that basically run the underworld in this country. They were the ones that asked us to help remove certain names from the Vixen’s Lodge Feast list.”

My brows shoot up. “Really? I had no idea. Tyler and Shane sorted it out. I didn’t ask them how they arranged it.”

“Tyler? He’s the underage girl’s secret teacher lover, isn’t he?”

I narrow my eyes at Griffin. “Hewasher teacher.”

He chuckles again. “I get it. You’re all friends and you’re protecting him and the girl. I wasn’t judging.”

I don’t say anything to that, instead I poke my tongue out at him, winning me a magnificent Griffin Marx smile with dimples.

Swoon!

“Where are we going now, little elf?” he asks, and I glance at the side mirror to see the motorbike still behind us.

“Are they staying with us?”

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