My dick twitches unhelpfully. I need to deal with the guys, not argue with Landry or sport a hard cock.
“I don’t want you going to that house,” I explain as Beckett smiles at me.
“I need the kids’ paperwork. Our birth certificates. That kind of thing.”
“Like I said, list what you want and where it’s located.”
Gnawing at her swollen lip, she insists, “I should help.”
“Mama’s supposed to be on bed rest,” Blair says while playing with the phone.
“What?” I bark.
Beckett flinches and hides his face. Blair shrinks away from me. Brooklyn crawls toward me, wanting to see the crazy man up close. Beau acts like nothing happened. And Landry, well, she flinches before staring at me blankly.
“Why are you standing up?” I demand.
“Is that a real question?” she asks, refusing to back down. “Are you asking me why I don’t sit on my ass all day and put up my feet? Is that a genuine question you’re struggling with right now?”
I love the steel still alive in this battered woman’s spine. She knows I’m flipping out. She understands I’m dangerous. She also gets how I won’t hit her, not even if Beckett wasn’t trembling in her arms.
“That was your old way of thinking,” I say and tap her forehead. “You’re here now, in my house with my people to help. You need to sit your sweet ass on the couch, put your feet up, and relax.”
“He’s right,” Rosemary says from the kitchen entrance. “I’m here to help.”
“We can hire a babysitter to come around, too,” I add as I step toward the front door. “I need to talk to my guys now. Write up a list of your stuff. I’ll handle moving you out of that house.”
“What about Succotash?” Blair asks, seeming scared now.
“Do you have one of those cat carriers?”
“It’s in the garage on a shelf,” Landry says and sits between Blair and Beau. “I’ll write it down.”
With Landry on the same page and finally off her feet, I walk outside to find my vice president climbing off his hog. I hadn’t wanted any big dogs—aka the founding members—to show up.
Half of the Steel Berserkers Motorcycle Club are puppies, pissing puddles on the floor whenever they see me in a bad mood. They’ll obey with no questions asked.
No way will Wade “Armor” Palmer fear me. My president and vice president didn’t gain power through brains alone. Back in the day, we painted McMurdo Valley in blood. Killing wasn’t enough. We butchered our enemies, leaving them in fun little piles for their friends and families to find. The kind of people I built the Steel Berserkers Motorcycle Club with won’t piss a puddle in reaction to my temper.
Walking toward me, Wade sneers his disapproval just in case I suspect this might be a social call. His wavy hair is cut short. Kids used to call him a ginger in school. That’s how he learned to punch so hard. By junior high, no one who wasn’t in our group so much as glanced in the scary fuck’s direction.
His hair isn’t really red anyway. It’s more like brownish red. I still think he looks like a ginger, but not as much as his sister and fellow member of the Steel Berserkers, Lisa “Goose” Palmer.
“What the fuck is this?” he asks and frowns at Dice and Smokey.
The two younger guys—both in their early thirties—revere the founding members. That word is just code for fear, which is why they currently pretend to be thinking very hard about life. Armor notices their compliant reactions and turns his irritation in my direction.
Crossing my arms, I don’t flinch under his always seething rage. “I told you how I needed help moving my woman.”
“No, you texted to say you were using one of our trucks and a few guys to move your woman.”
“Same thing.”
Armor’s hard face twists into a snarl again. “Ruin claimed you weren’t doing your crazy murder-kidnap plot until this chick had her kid.”
I want to lose my temper and go berserk on his hostility. Except this isn’t just any fucking guy. Armor was one of my first friends. He liked me when nearly no one did. This is the guy who got stuck walking laps for recess for a month after he hit a kid who was mocking me. Armor’s always had my back.
So rather than lash out, I try to make him understand. “The asshole broke a nine-year-old’s arm. I wasn’t willing to wait another few months to see what he did next.”