So Marco hadn’t told him I’d pepper sprayed Wyatt, and Wyatt hadn’t mentioned it himself. Once again, I was caught in a tangle of omitted information.
I was about to tell Max myself, but both of us were distracted by the sight of Bingham and Lula walking in with their baby. Four of Bingham’s men followed behind them.
Talk about lucky timing. I’d wanted to arrange a meetup, and here he was at the tavern.
“That’s a first,” Max said, his brow furrowed. “He’s dining with his family.”
Bingham had been a regular customer ever since I’d started at Max’s Tavern, but he’d never once come in with Lula, let alone the baby.
Tables were self-seating which Bingham and Lula were both well aware of, but apparently Bingham wanted his men close to their table, because he scanned the room, looking for two tables together. There were two in Ruth’s section, but he made a couple of younger men at a four-top table get up and move so there would be an empty table in front of an available booth in my section.
It was an obvious maneuver to get me to wait on them, and Max didn’t look happy about it. Neither did Wyatt, who was pulling a draft beer.
Ruth hurried over with a drink ticket and gave me a worried look. “It looks like Lula’s over whatever fake illness she had. You good with waiting on ’em?”
I’d had multiple encounters with Bingham, most of them here in the tavern. Ruth knew he was sometimes trouble for me, but I could handle him. “Yeah.”
I grabbed the refills that had brought me to the bar, and after I placed them on the table—they were for the two guys who had moved—I walked over to greet Bingham and Lula.
“Hey, Carly,” Lula said with a bright smile. She was holding her sleeping daughter in the crook of her arm.
I couldn’t help oohing over the baby. “Beatrice is getting so big already!”
“Like a weed,” Lula said, looking at her baby with so much love it took my breath away.
I wanted a baby someday. Multiple babies. I just didn’t see that happening. I couldn’t bring a baby into the mess of my life, and after everything I’d been through, I didn’t see me ever “settling down” with a man, let alone placing enough trust in him to have a baby with him.
“Oh, somebody’s gettin’ baby fever,” Lula cooed.
I snorted, shoving all my dreams back into the chest I kept them in. There was no room for children in my life. Thanks to my father. The irony was he likely needed a grandchild to carry on the legacy of the Hardshaw Group.
“Nah,” I said softly. “Just admirin’ yours. She’s so beautiful, Lula. You’ve truly been blessed.”
Lula’s gaze lifted and locked with Bingham’s. “Trust me, I know.”
I really didn’t want to stick around for their lovefest because, to my surprise, jealousy rose up in me again. Not of Bingham—I resisted a shudder—but of what Lula had. Of what I likely never would.
“Can I get you something to drink? Or I can go ahead and take your order if you know what you’d like,” I said, digging my order pad out of my apron pocket. Bingham was here enough to know what we had available, and Lula had worked here.
“Tryin’ to rush us out of here?” Bingham asked in a low growl.
I was about to respond, but Lula beat me to it. “You hush now, Todd. She means no disrespect.” She glanced up at me. “Ain’t that right, Carly?”
“Of course,” I said in shock. I wasn’t sure if I was more surprised that she’d spoken to him like that or that he’d clamped his mouth shut. “I was just thinking you might want me to get your food out quickly so you can eat in peace while Beatrice is sleeping.”
Lula beamed up at me. “You are just the sweetest.”
She proceeded to give me her order and Bingham’s. I expected him to contradict her, but he remained silent with his arms folded over his broad chest, his gaze on the baseball game on the TV in the back corner of the room.
I turned to the table of bodyguards, and Bingham told them to order their food with their drinks. They seemed taken by surprise and a couple of them had a hard time settling on what they wanted so quickly.
I ran the food orders back to Tiny, then took the drink orders to the bar. Most of the men had ordered beer, so, lucky for me, I got to take their ticket to Wyatt, whose gaze was firmly on Bingham.
“I need five beers and a coke. And don’t provoke him,” I said, glancing around my section to see if anyone needed my attention. Shockingly, everyone seemed good. Which meant I didn’t have a reason to walk away.
“It’s pretty damn obvious he came here to see you,” he said in a dark voice as he grabbed a mug and started to pull the draft. “He cleared a table of customers to sit in your section.”
“Orrr,” I said, drawing out the word, “he really wanted to sit in a booth with the baby.”
“There’s a booth open in Ruth’s section with a table in front of it.”
“Calm down,” I said, slightly exasperated. “If he picked my section, it’s probably because of Lula. She and Ruth don’t exactly see eye to eye.”
His lips pressed together, and his gaze seemed to turn more intense as he set the first beer on the counter.
“Stop that,” I said as I grabbed a tray for the drinks. “You’re gonna piss him off.”
“Good. I don’t want him thinkin’ he can mess with you.”
That stupid blood price. It was making him crazy.
A flood of anger washed through me, and I leaned closer, lowering my voice. “I can handle myself. Todd Bingham’s no threat to me. I’ve spent more time with him than you and I did when we were dating.”
Jerry caught the corner of my eye as he walked through the
