Page 175 of Fearless

Maggie snorted. “The only thing wrong with her back is that it spends too much time against too many different mattresses. She turned you away because of the Dogs.”

“What?”

Maggie recounted her trip to the florist shop, and Ramona’s strange reception of her and Jackie. Ava chimed in with her morning’s account of Cook’s Coffee, the suited man who’d been harassing Leah’s father.

“Dios mio,” Bonita said.

“Someone’s going around to each and every shop owner leasing storefront space, and threatening them somehow. Turn the Dogs away, or else,” Maggie said.

Bonita rolled her eyes. “Crazy, that’s what it is. Who in this town believes the Dogs are bad? No one. We get respect.” She lifted her nose, purposefully haughty. “All my time here, I go into a shop, and it is ‘What can I get you, Mrs. James?’ ‘How can I help you?’ ‘How is your husband?’ And now?” She leveled a look on Maggie that no one would have suspected her capable of, given her usual bright laughter and warm obliviousness. “What is happening, Maggie? Why is this happeningnow, when my James steps down?”

The old queen questioning the ruling power of the new royal family.

Maggie managed to keep her frown graceful. “It’s not about James versus Ghost as president. Any change in leadership is seen as a transitional period, a weak place. The Carpathians wanted to strike while things were disorganized.”

“And are we disorganized?” Bonita wanted to know, tone innocent, gaze anything but.

Ava shrank back in her chair a fraction.

“No,” Maggie said, firmly. Ava knew what her mother was thinking: that if anything, James had been the lax president, reactionary rather than proactive, worried about parties instead of predatory rivals. “Ghost has it under control.”

“I hope so. I can’t go weeks and weeks without my salon trip,” Bonita said, giving her heavy mane a shake to demonstrate.

Maggie offered a tight smile. “The boys will get it sorted. Knoxville works better with the Dogs around; they just need to be reminded of that.”

“Reminded of what?” a deep, masculine voice asked from the door. A shadow swelled, blocking the incoming sunlight, and Ava felt her stomach leap the same moment Maggie smiled.

“Reminded that you Dogs are all up to date on your rabies shots,” Maggie said.

Mercy folded his arms across his chest and leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb. He wore a black and blue flannel shirt with the sleeves folded back under his cut. The breeze rushed in around him and Ava thought she smelled lavender. “Got my tag and everything,” he told Maggie, returning her grin; then he swiveled his head and lost all humor as his eyes came to land on Ava. “You didn’t call.”

Oh, so they were going to play that game. In front of her mother, and Bonita, for Godsakes, he was going to get her with the oldmy old lady shoulda checked inroutine. Well, news flash to him: one “I love you” in the middle of a Scotch-soaked night in bed together didn’t mean she was his anything.

“I forgot,” she said, shrugging, because what with feeling like shit and dealing with her truck, she truly had.

Mercy’s black brows pulled low over his eyes. “Someoneslashed your tires, and you didn’t call me.”

She opened her mouth to respond, and then held her breath a second. This wasn’t just a game, she realized, but something more subtle and significant than that. He was doing this in front of her mother and Bonita – two MC queens – on purpose. Things were different, he’d told her, and apparently he’d meant it, because he was asserting himself as her man, openly, stepping up in the true one-percenter sense, taking her into his care and asking for her recognition, her cooperation.

He was going to have to be more official than that, though, because in the eyes of these two queens, she had her own one-percenter standards to meet. And she wanted to meet them, didn’t she? Didn’t she want to be his old lady, part of this sacred circle of women, one of the beloved few?

Yes. God yes.

She said, “Obviously, you talked to Dublin. So you know I had all the help and protection I needed.”

His expression became a scowl, one she found hilarious and adorable. “You should have called me,” he insisted.

“Mmkay. I’ll think about it next time.” And she turned away from him deliberately, not missing her mom’s small, pleased smile.

She felt Mercy’s stare a long moment. He said something in French that sounded like both a grudging compliment and a curse, and left the office with a sharp rap of his knuckles against the doorframe.

Their tension forgotten for the moment, Maggie and Bonita exchanged a look.

Bonita laughed. “Littlebambina, all grown up.”

“And giving ‘em hell,” Maggie said, grinning broadly.

Ava slipped deeper into her chair, blushing.

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