“Like Rebel isn’t the same way with you.” Rebel walked up with a smirk on his face and kissed Madisen. I watched as one by one, my brothers came over, kissed their wives and their babies. It warmed my heart to see them happy. I wanted all my brothers to get this chance at happiness.
Bull sat down and took Corinne from Jocelyn. He was nuzzling her and then leaning over to do the same to Caeden. The love on his face was wonderful to see. I never knew Harlow’s mom, but I knew he’d loved her and never claimed another woman in the years she’d been gone. That was until Jocelyn came into his life. Here he was in his fifties, starting over. It was keeping him young, he said.
“Cut that out, old man, you’re embarrassing me,” I joked. He gave me the finger.
“I have to show you young bucks how it’s done. Isn’t that right, Duchess?” he asked Jocelyn.
She smiled and kissed him. “That’s right, lover. Can’t let them think the young ones know everything.”
I burst out laughing. “Young ones? Jocelyn, you’re the same age as me. I can’t help it if my ‘dad’ went cradle robbing. I should be damaged by that, I think,” I teased. Bull had been like a dad to me for years.
“Cradle robbing my ass. She’s just the perfect age for me. I’m young at heart,” Bull joked as he squeezed her. She was laughing and caressing his face. Our razzing was interrupted by Zara’s return. The next half hour was a rush to get the kids settled, and the ladies loaded in the vehicle. We were taking the Expedition. The others were riding in the car due to their men not going. Zara wanted to ride on the back of my bike. I’d almost told her no, then relented. She needed to have some freedom.
The ride into Nashville was a good one. The temp wasn’t too outrageously hot, and the humidity was in the sixties. I felt her relax into me almost as soon as we started the ride. We pulled into a dress shop in downtown Nashville. One the others swore was the best.
The guys and I checked it out and then let them go inside to do their thing. I knew it would take them a few hours from past experience, so we hung out and kept watch. Suffice to say, we got a lot of looks. Seeing five big bikers outside a bridal shop wasn’t something people saw every day. I wanted to laugh at the expressions.
We’d been there for an hour and a half when Jessica came outside. She had a frown on her face. I sat up on my bike where I’d been leaning. “What’s wrong, Jess?”
“Zara isn’t acting like herself. I don’t know what’s wrong, but something is. I think you need to go talk to her.” She’d barely gotten the words out before I was racing for the door. Inside, I found her in the back, staring at a rack of dresses. The others had moved off out of earshot. They must have known Jess was going to get me. I walked up and wrapped my arms around her. She jumped and looked over her shoulder.
“Baby, what’s wrong? You’re not acting like yourself. Talk to me.” She sighed and sagged against me.
“I don’t know, Luca. I was excited to get out and look for my dress. I even found one, I think. But I’m just feeling off. It’s just this blah feeling. I hate to cut our day short, because I know the ladies were looking forward to the time out too, but I want to go back. Maybe lie down.”
Concern shot through me. Was she sick? “Are you sick? Maybe you should go see a doctor. I know you are one, but to be on the safe side.”
“I don’t think I’m sick, just out of sorts. This waiting is getting me down. I want it to be over.”
“I know, so do I. Speaking of that, I was going to wait until we got home, but we had a couple of questions about Nathan that came up in church this morning. Did he know about Anderson being your uncle or what he did for a living?”
She shook her head no, almost immediately. “No, he didn’t. I knew that Tommy worked for the government, not exactly what he did, but that it was important and something we never talked about. Even though I was going to marry Nathan, I never once thought about telling him about Tommy. I knew they’d eventually meet, but it would be up to my uncle to tell him what he wanted him to know.”
“Okay, that answers one question. The other one was, did he ever talk about having other aspirations? Anything other than wanting to be a doctor? Something that having someone like your uncle would be a boon for him.”
This had her forehead wrinkling in concentration. She eventually shook her head. “Not that he ever told me. He did say that he’d thought about doing other things, but his family was insistent he become a doctor. It was something of a family honor and prestige thing. He never said what it was he’d have liked to do instead. I’m sorry, I wish I could tell you more.”
“That helped. Why don’t we round up the troops and get out of here? Do you need to talk to the sales lady about anything or come back another day?”
“Let me just talk to her for a minute. I want her to see if she can order the dress I liked.” I gave her a kiss and let her go over to chat with the saleswoman. The old ladies came over to me.
“Is she okay?” Jocelyn asked.
“She’s not feeling into this for some reason. Hate to cut things short, but we’re going to go back.”
“Not a problem. If she’s not feeling up to it, we understand. She lucked out on finding a dress almost immediately anyway. She just tried on others to be sure,” Jessica said. She’d joined the group. I left them to wrap up and went to tell the guys we were going.
“Everything okay in there, Demon?” Slash asked.
“Yeah. Zara just isn’t feeling up to this after all. We’re going to go back home. They’ll be out in a couple of minutes.”
I’d barely answered him when a car slowly creeping by caught my attention. It was a dark sedan with blacked-out windows that made it impossible to see who was inside. My alarms started to go off.
I casually said out of the corner of my mouth, “Don’t turn around. There’s a dark sedan crawling by. I don’t like it. I’m going to go back inside. Jake, get in the SUV and bring it to the back door. We’ll load the ladies there. Zara will be riding back with you. The rest of you, wait for me to get back then we’ll head to the back to escort them.”
They all nodded and kept chatting like nothing was wrong. I casually wandered back into the store. As soon as I was clear of the windows, I rushed over to Zara and the other ladies. I latched onto her arm at the elbow. She gave me a startled look.
“We need to go, right now. I want you all to follow me. We’re going out the back door. Zara, baby, you’re going to ride in the Expedition.”