Page 32 of Bear (Rebel Saints MC 6)

Chapter Eleven: The Boys Are Coming To Town

Bear

I was standing outside of Wheelz three weeks later with Keys ? the orchestrator of the reunion tour ? on the other end of my phone line.

“You ready for us? We got all six. We’re going to have a ball,” Keys challenged in an excited voice.

“I’ve got this badass route around the back half of Holbeck and we’re going to hit up the casino. I hope you can cover the losses.” I was starting the ribbing early.

“You think? No, there won’t be any losses, only wins.” Keys chuckled. “Trigger, Ranger, Wildcat, Roller, and Tank are all in. I can’t wait to see you, man.”

“I’m pumped too. We should have a good run. Look forward to seeing you bullshit your way out of losing at the casino.”

“You keep talking about this casino, but you gotta remember the last time that I cleaned you up back in Vegas. You don’t want me to skip down memory lane.” Keys was recalling a night when I was worse for wear and on the wrong side of drunk.

“That’s not a fair night. I was hitting the bottle pretty hard, and to be fair I was winning for the first half of the night.”

“You were winning? You have a hazy memory, you won two games—”

“Alright, alright, get over it. You’ll get your turn at a rematch.”

“Good one, brother. Seeing anybody?” Keys asked craftily, changing the subject.

I felt the saliva forming in my mouth as my heart muscle thumped a little. I vowed to keep our fragile start a secret for now, but given the amount of time we’d been spending together, I knew Delphia and I wouldn’t be able to keep our hands off one another or stop from being found out. I would protect our privacy as long as I could for her sake. “Nah, nothing serious.” I aimed to change the conversation as soon as I could. I didn’t want to take the chance for anything to slip.

“What? You’re not getting it in?”

I chuckled at Key’s crassness. “I wouldn’t tell you if I was. Get off my line, Keys.” He could be a little on the arrogant side sometimes, and he was a ladies’ man through and through. I wondered when he was going to settle down. Most of my other buddies were either hitched or had long-term girlfriends, except me. Serious dating wasn’t heavy on my mind up until Delphia. Grief covered my life for so long it was refreshing to even feel again for another woman. “Where are you gonna be staying anyway?”

“We’re going to stay at the apartment hotel near the wharf. Is that place good?”

“Yep. It’s good, I heard it was nice, Chalk’s girlfriend used to stay there when she was new here.”

“Ahhhh. Cool. You think you got that bid covered? Rebel Saints gonna win it?”

“I think we can. I’m about to go in right now and see about it with the president. He’s been pretty preoccupied with it. I thought we would have won it by now.”

“Well, good luck with it and I’ll see you soon. I will touch base with you later in the week.”

“Good deal.” I got off the call with Keys and walked inside to an empty Wheelz. I could hear the echo from Bones and Numbers upstairs.

“That can’t be right? We got another bidder? How can they come in so late? I thought we closed it yesterday!” Bones sounded pissed.

I raised my brows at this. I was worried about how much time Bones was spending at the club. It was becoming his second home, and from his lack of shaving, I figured he was going through it on the home front too.

I jogged up the stairs.

Bones looked red in the face and he was pacing back and forth.

Numbers stared at him. “We can still win this. Don’t worry about the third bid.”

“Hey guys. Things getting tight?” I asked, trying to break the obvious tension in the room.

Bones stopped pacing and tapped his knuckles all the way along the table. “More than tight, and I got trouble with Ryan. That’s way worse if I’m being honest. I almost had to bail him out last night.” He heaved out a long sigh.

Bone’s had a teen aged son and it seemed he was in trouble a lot lately. “You had to bail him out from where? From jail?”

Bones nodded his head. “Yup. That’s why I’m here burying my head in paperwork. It’s nuts.”

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