“I sense you’re nice women, so I hope you’ll do as you said you wanted to do and help me by leaving immediately and taking that with you.” She pointed to the floor. “And I hope with all my fucking heart I never see it again.”
Oh yes.
She hoped that.
And oh yes.
She needed our help.
Just not that kind.
She kept talking.
“I also hope you take no offense when I say I’m walking out of my house and going back to work and I never want to see any of you again either.” She looked to Elvira. “Gayle Niedermeier is an excellent wedding planner. If I’m maxed with clients, I refer to her. If you do, indeed, need assistance, I’d contact Gayle. Mention my name. She’ll take care of you.” Her gaze swung to all of us. “Have a nice day.”
She then stepped over the avalanche of photos carpeting her kitchen floor, walked by us and out of the house.
I stared at the door.
Lanie stared at the door.
Elvira squatted down to the floor.
“Shit,” she mumbled.
I looked to her to see she’d picked up a photo and was studying it.
I looked at the photo she was studying.
Dream man.
Dream woman.
Happy.
Whoever took it wasn’t a good photographer because half of High was not in shot.
But in it they were in each other’s arms, Millie with her back to the camera. Her head was tipped and twisted to smile over her shoulder at the lens. She was doing this so big it wasn’t hard to read she was laughing, her long, long hair hanging down over High’s arms that were wrapped tight around her.
High was looking down at her, grinning, his face carefree and happy like I’d never seen it before.
Not once.
Not even when he was with his kids.
Not for the ten years I’d known him. I tore my eyes off High and looked at Millie.
She belonged in those arms and she knew it.
So what had happened?
I lost sight of the photo when Elvira straightened from her squat.
“This situation just went from code blue to code freakin’ red,” she declared.
Lanie reached and pulled the photo from Elvira’s fingers, whispering, “Truth.” She looked from the photo to me. “Have you ever seen him like that?”
I shook my head.
She looked back to the picture, murmuring, “God, High happy. Crazy.”
“Crazy beautiful,” Elvira stated. “We were on an assignment. Now we’re on a mission. Regroup for tactical strategy meeting, tonight, cosmos and boards, my house,” Elvira declared, then lifted a hand and wagged a long-rounded-gray-painted fingernail at us. “And don’t tell me no shit about no kids. Saddle those biker boys of yours up with diapers and Tasers and get your ass to my house. Seven sharp. No excuses accepted.”
Since Lanie’s Nash was hardly a year old, when Elvira mentioned Tasers, she was talking about my Rider and Cutter.
My boys were hellions. I knew it. I figured they’d work it out or become bikers and it’d work out for them.
This was Tack’s second round of kids, so he had more experience and more patience.
But my boys were who they were, so I wasn’t going to give my husband any ideas about Tasers.
“I’m in,” Lanie said.
“Me too,” I added.
“You thinkin’ Tabby on this or you thinkin’ she knew Millie?” Elvira asked me about Tack’s daughter, my stepdaughter. She was the Chaos princess and also an old lady since she was married to Tack’s lieutenant, Shy Cage, and now pregnant with his baby.
“That’s why she’s not here. I’m thinking she knew her,” I shared.
Elvira looked at Lanie. “Then, Lanie, softly-softly, but you get what you can outta Tabby and see where she’s at with bein’ pulled in on this. But we got our work cut out for us, and I can herd commandoes in my sleep, but whatever that bitch in that studio,” she jabbed her finger toward the door, “is dealin’ with, it’s all hands on deck.”
I nodded.
Lanie nodded.
And all three of us squatted down to right the crate and gather photos.
Not one of us suggested we should leave well enough alone.
But even if it had crossed any of our minds, sifting through those photos to put them back into that crate, it would have been banished.
Whatever ended Logan “High” Judd’s and Millie Cross’s love affair was not a play or a betrayal.
It was a tragedy.
And if a sister had the power to right a wrong, it was her sworn duty to do it.
We were sisters.
So we were doing it.
Millie
Twenty-three years earlier, outside the Chaos Compound...
“I’m Tabby,” the little girl declared.
She had a mass of thick, dark hair deep blue eyes and she was wearing jeans and a pink T-shirt that had a glittery decal on the front that declared her princess.
I sat on top of the picnic table outside Logan’s biker club headquarters, looking down at the little girl who had to be no more than four or five while replying, “Hey there, Tabby. I’m Millie.”
“Do you belong to Low?” she asked.
Belong.
She was certainly a princess.
A biker princess.
I grinned down out at her.
“Yep,” I answered, knowing this to be true even if this was only our sixth date.
But since our sixth date was coming to a cookout with his soon-to-be brothers, a date he had planned from the very beginning, a date that all the other dates led up to, regardless of how few there were, I figured I was right.
I was Low’s.
And that made me happy.
“I like Low,” little Tabby told me.
“I’m glad you do,” I replied. “I do too.”
“That’s good,” she said, her eyes going beyond me.
I felt him before I turned my head and saw him just as Logan settled in beside me, arm coming around my shoulders, leaning into the picnic table...?and me.
But his eyes were on Tabby.
“Yo, Tab,” he greeted.
“Your girlfriend’s pretty,” she declared.
“No, she ain’t, little pea,” Logan returned. “Lots a’ things are pretty. Millie here’s loads more than that.”
Little pea.
Loads more than that.
God.
Seriously.
Even if I wasn’t his, I would make him be mine.
But I was.
Which meant he was.
Oh yes.
Happy.
I grinned again and leaned in to him.
“She ride on the back of your bike?” Tabby asked.