Page 212 of American Hellhound
“What about you?” he asked with a nasty smile. “Youworking?”
She didn’t like that look on himat all. “Yes,” she said, hearing the tightness in her voice. He wasstaringat her. Her skin prickled and she wanted to go to her dorm, wrap herself in her blanket and think fluffy thoughts. “You can see that I am.”
“Yeah, I bet you are. Which one’ll it be tonight? Huh? The British asshole? Little prince? Or the big man himself, maybe? His old lady’s knocked up, he’s gotta want a nice thin slice.”
Kris felt her hands curl into fists at her sides, her disquiet supplanted by a sudden anger. She thought about Walsh, Aidan, Ghost, none of whom had ever looked at her the way Roman was now, leering and angry and lascivious. Like she was a piece of meat. A whore and a slave, like she’d always been.
“They’re married,” she said. “And Idon’twork likethat.”
“Yeah right.”
She slapped the bar and he jumped, surprised. “Idon’t. Those are married,niceguys, and it’s not like that around here.”
“I know how the club works, sweetheart. Girls like you earn their keep on their backs.”
“You’ve been gone for twenty years,” she shot back, alarmed by her boldness. She couldn’t bear to listen to him accuse these people of treating her like that, though. Not after they’d taken her in and been nothing but generous with her. “You don’t have any idea what it’s like around here.”
A stare-down ensued, this one nothing like all the staring matches they’d had in the past.
Roman moved first, sliding off the stool, jaw set.
“Roman,” she tried, but he pushed through the crowd and toward the door.
It wasn’t until he was disappearing down the front hall that she realized he’d nicked an entire bottle of Jack from beneath her nose and was taking it with him.
~*~
“Hi, baby,” Ghost greeted when she slid her arm through his.
Maggie leaned her head against his solid shoulder and inhaled the scents of clean cotton and deodorant, just detectable over the tantalizing aroma of smoked meat.
He tipped his head down toward her, breath rustling through her hair, so she could hear him above the low strains of the music, and the much-louder tangle of conversation around them. “How’d it go with your folks?”
Maggie didn’t think she would ever be able to keep from sighing when she talked about her parents; she sighed now. But it wasn’t as heavy and crushing as it sometimes was. “It went okay. Dad was sweet – he looks good, by the way, totally bounced back from his procedure. And Mom was…sad. But not hateful. She’s disappointed and I don’t guess that’ll ever change.”
Ghost snorted. “Poor thing – her kid grew up to be a total badass. How embarrassing.”
She goosed him in the ribs, but smiled. “What about you and Aidan. How’dthatgo?”
“It was good.” Was that…a note ofprideshe detected in his voice?
She glanced up at him, the contented hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth, the party lights reflected in his eyes.
She was hit with the sudden, overwhelming sense that it was going to be okay: the club, the new baby, all three of their kids, and them. If she pressed in a little harder, she thought they might just fuse together into one creature, something with fangs, and claws, and blood on its hands, and a tender heart. All this painful love for the family they’d made together: a family made of their children, and of the lost souls they’d invited into the club together. Her eyes searched them out in the crowd: Walsh, Michael, Tango, Mercy. All the young ones Ghost had brought up in the new tradition. When she’d met her man, the club had been a den of angry, snarling heathens…but it had become a sanctuary for the misplaced and unloved, somewhere where they could finally find what had always been missing in their lives.
They’d done that.Ghosthad done that. Taken a crippled club and turned into a multinational powerhouse, the strongest and most infamous MC in the world.
Such pleasant thoughts were interrupted by Roman, as he charged through the crowd, earning nasty looks and disgruntled protests. He had murder in his eyes…and whiskey. A whole lot of whiskey. Maggie could see the liquid courage sloshing around inside his head, the stripped-down fury he usually kept tightly in check.
Ghost muttered, “What the hell?”
“Ghost,” Roman said, shouting, too loud, drawing eyes. “You’re a real asshole, you know that?”
Ghost propped his hands on his hips and looked unimpressed. “Yeah, I know. Why’s it got your panties in a twist right now?”
Maggie felt like she shouldn’t – a fight was never agoodthing – but she couldn’t help but smile a little, trying to disguise it as a concerned frown.
Roman leaned in to Ghost, got right in his face, and jabbed him in the chest with his finger. Straight out of a soap opera. “Where the fuck do you get off doing that to Kris?”
