Page 30 of Snow in Texas

No offense to Jean, but she hadn’t known shit.

When Jenny opened up the bolted fireproof door in her mind and stepped into the past, there was no controlling the onslaught of remembered pain, fear, and grief. It washed over her, all of it, and suddenly she was back in that dorm room, or on the back of his bike, or in the loose dirt of the parking lot, on her knees and spitting blood.

That was why she hadn’t wanted to tell Colin about Riley. Not because of pride, not to preserve some false image of herself. She didn’t understand romance; couldn’t recognize it. She still couldn’t search through the moments of the past and figure out exactly where it had all started to go wrong. There had been no moment, no single event that had sparked the turning tide of hatred. Little by little, her teenage sweetheart had morphed into a monster.

If that was possible – if someone she’d known most of her life could grow to hate her – then how could she seek out any honesty and valor in another man? A new man. Colin. She had to at least be that honest with herself – she wasn’t talking about men in general; she was talking about the big Cajun sitting beside her on the picnic table out front, his presence entirely too arousing in her current intoxicated state.

“Where do you want me to start?” she asked, sipping at the fresh glass of wine she’d poured inside.

He lifted his own glass to his lips – a move that reminded her of their kiss earlier – the ice cubes clinking together. “The beginning’s always good.”

“Right. The abridged beginning, then. And then you’re gonna have to return the favor.”

“You’ll show me yours if I’ll show you mine?” he asked with a low chuckle. The sound moved through her, left her warm and chilled all at once.

“Something like that.” Another fortifying sip, and she decided not to look at him, however shrouded by the dark he was, as she spoke. “I’d known Jud Riley for a long time. We’d flirted. And then he really started putting the effort in…”

She’d intended to keep things very brief and to the point. She fell in love, she got married, it turned to shit eventually. But as she spoke, the words seemed to become slippery in her mouth, falling out one after the next in a great rush that she couldn’t control. And with them, the snapshot images of her life: The simple gown she’d worn to her backyard wedding; the hearty bark of Riley’s laugh as he slid an arm around her waist; the whiskey taste of his kiss and the demanding way he pressed for entry between her thighs. She remembered standing on the porch and waving as Candy rode off for New York.

“It was after that that Riley started spending time away from the clubhouse. Outside interests,” she explained.

Just here and there at first, but then more often, late night rendezvous with men who weren’t his club brothers.

“He wanted the club to start up its own porn business. Rented a studio and everything. The girls started coming around.”

The first night he’d struck her in the face had been in front of his new studio friends, and two of the silicone-enhanced bimbos had laughed.

“It got bad,” she said, beginning to rush, not willing to go into too much detail. She felt unbelievably exposed suddenly, stripped down in a way that had nothing to do with clothing or physical nakedness. “I was stupid, and weak. I should have left, but I…”

“You don’t expect the people you love to turn on you like that,” Colin said, tone low and soothing.

She forced a humorless laugh. “Love isn’t supposed to be an excuse, though, is it? Haven’t you learned anything from pop-culture novels? The damsel in distress is so passé.”

“I read approximately zero books a year, so I wouldn’t know. But if you’re letting chick books make you feel bad about yourself, that’s a real problem.”

“Don’t need a book for that.”

He sighed. “Now you’re getting all dramatic.”

She turned to him, his stern shape taking up more than his share of space on the table. He’d moved closer as she was talking, she realized. Their arms were touching. “Colin, I let my husband put me in the hospital. I let him do worse stuff than that.” A shudder rattled her, hard, as she thought about Dad. About that tear-choked, desperate phone call to Candy. “There’s no excuse for that.”

God, she was maudlin. Must be the wine.

In a serious, stern voice, he said, “How bad were things when Candy got back? He said something about patch-stripping.”

She hesitated. “With the exception of Crockett…not one of the original members is still around. Every man you’ve met here is someone Candy brought on board after he cleaned house.”

And all of the patches he’d stripped? Every one of those disgraced members was buried in a deep hole out beyond the back porch of the clubhouse. All save Riley, and that was only because of his ATF agent brother. She could still recall her brother’s handsome face, streaked with dirt, as he glanced up into her flashlight beam and asked her to bring him a bottle of water…and two fingers of Scotch. The digging was thirsty work, he’d told her.

Colin’s hand startled her, as it closed over her own. A large, warm hand, like her brother…only so different, because its touch set her heart to beating a wild tattoo against her ribs. “Jen,” he said, “I know I’m a prospect, and probably a pretty bad one at that–”

“You’re not good at following orders,” she consented.

“–but I’ve learned a few things about motorcycle clubs. And no matter how tough she is, or mean she is, a woman can’t affect deep changes within the club. It wasn’t just your husband, baby. It was the whole damn club. And you can’t tell me they would have left you alive if you’d raised a big fuss.”

She shivered and tightened her fingers around his. “Makes you wonder why a girl would ever marry a biker, doesn’t it?”

“Because you come from a family of bikers,” Colin said. “The old ladies I’ve met are smart and scary as hell.”

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