Page 9 of Lone Star

“Impressive?” he suggested.

“A boss bitch.”

Their gazes locked.

He kept his own features carefully schooled, staring at her guarded expression.

Then her mouth tugged at the corners. Her eyes brightened.

He felt his own smile threaten.

They started laughing at the same time,together.

Leave it to Maggie Teague, Lean Dog Queen extraordinaire, to finally break the ice for them.

“Albie, oh my God.” Axelle braced her elbows on the table, and put her head in her hands, smiling rather helplessly. “I was starting to think I understood the way things work with the London Dogs – even if it is kinda fucked up – and then I come here, and it’s starting all over again, but even worse. I don’t…there’s this whole pecking order. There’srankand shit, with these old ladies, and I’m not one of them, and they look at me…” Her smile faded. “Everyone’s been perfectly polite. But. They don’t like me. I can feel it. And I don’tcare. I mean, obviously…”

Except, she did care, enough to have worried about it – quite a lot, if her tone was any indication.

Albie took a breath and parsed through what she’d said. One thing stood out to him the most, but he decided to put a pin in that one. Too big too fast, and he didn’t want to backslide anymore.

“They’d don’t dislike you,” he said, and that he felt sure of. “In case you haven’t noticed, this lot of girls are of the practical variety. You’ll fit right in.”

Her expression tightened, eyes widening – confirming his initial worry.I’m not one of them, she’d said. Did she feel excluded? Or did she notwantto be one of them?

“The thing you’ve got to understand about Maggie,” he explained, “is that – while a very sweet woman, from all I’ve seen and heard – her first worry is for her family, and that includes club family. It’s a family that does a lot of not-so-legal things, yeah? So she’s not quick to trust new people, is all.” He frowned. “No one’s said anything untoward, have they?”

“No,” she said, quickly, expression softening. “No, it’s just…” She bit her lip, and glanced at a spot on the tabletop.I don’t belong, the downward sweep of her lashes said. The set of her shoulders; the downward curve of her mouth.

He had a feeling she’d never felt like she had, not anywhere.

“I’ll tell you something else,” he said, quietly, and her lashes lifted, her eyes nearly seafoam in the low light. “There’s nobody in this club who’s judging – nobody’s got any right to. Not when they’re all misfits and scoundrels and outlaws.”

She arched a single brow. “And you think I’m one of those.”

“Love, we’d never have met if you weren’t.”

After a beat, she smiled, slowly, close-lipped. Tipped her head a fraction in concession. Then she picked up her glass and tapped it gently against his with a chiming salute to the truth.

Six

They rolled away from one another and toward the nightstands nearly in unison, both overheated, and still trying to catch their breath. When they rolled back, lying side-by-side on the mattress with all the sheets kicked down, cool winter air delicious on naked skin, Eden had her phone in her hand, and Fox was taking the first drag off a cigarette.

“Ugh, don’t smoke in bed,” she complained, but her gaze was glued to her phone screen, so his only concession was to snag the ash tray off the nightstand and rest it on his chest.

Walsh had grumbled about it, because that was just his way whenever Charlie was concerned, but, since he had a big, mostly empty, rambling house, he and Emmie had put up Eden and Axelle their first few nights in Knoxville. Walsh had always liked Eden, and Axelle was too much like his own Emmie for him not to have liked her – but it had meant Fox was around, and that he hadn’t liked, and hadn’t been shy about proclaiming. Emmie had swatted him in the arm, biting back a smile, and told him to get over himself. But the situation had only been temporary. Eden didn’t like to lean too heavily on the kindness of others, and she’d wasted no time finding a house for herself, the wheels greased along by Ghost, Fox suspected, though Eden didn’t know that.

She’d been saving up, since they’d last been together in any sense – that, and money stretched farther in the American Southern suburbs than it did in the heart of London. She’d landed a lovely place, a two-story red-brick colonial with a narrow porch flanked in white columns, and blue window shutters. The inside was all done up in overwrought Victorian wallpaper and elaborate curtains that she’d vowed to take down, strip, and revitalize. So far, all she’d managed was to have the carpets pulled up on the first floor, and new hardwood laid.

Moonlight filtered through a gauzy new pair of curtains, its bluish light illuminating the floral wallpaper and lending the pale pink carpet a silver look – an improvement, Fox thought.

He’d come over at her invitation.Making pasta, she’d texted him earlier, after his fruitless conversation with Ten.Come over?

He’d turned up with a bottle of white, already noting the new pansies planted out front and planning to tell her that they really improved the overall look of the house, but she’d opened the door in a pair of leggings and a too-big sweater that wanted to fall off one shoulder, and pasta and pansies and niceties had been the last things on his mind.

Her gaze had been welcoming at first, and then narrow with concern. “What’s wrong?”

“Brother shit.”

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