“Excellent,” I muttered.
Bonus, I didn’t have to spend my quarters to do my laundry.
Har
FROM HIS ROOM, HE HEARD her loading the washing machine. For the tenth time that day, he wondered what he was thinking.
He didn’t need her here. She would be distracting, but he had learned to control himself a long time ago. This would be no different. Control his urges and ignore her.
Church hadn’t gone the way he’d planned. Hell, nothing in the last seventy-two hours had gone the way he’d planned. Seemed the undercover vibe Wreck had picked up was courtesy of him sampling the club’s product. To his bones, Har knew it was time get out of the drug trade. They weren’t going to peddle hardcore drugs, and with more states allowing for recreational as well as medical marijuana, the writing was on the wall. Not that his brothers would hear of it. They wanted to stick with the pot, for its known income. Yet, none of them had answers for distribution issues and when he mentioned getting out of it altogether, everyone complained rather than offer possible solutions or replacement ventures.
The squeak of the louvered door as it slid shut told him Stephanie was done in the laundry area. He got off his bed and peeked his head out the door. She was nowhere in sight. Good.
On his cell, he pulled up Volt’s contact info and called the president of the Jacksonville chapter.
“Yo.” Volt answered on the first ring.
“Yo, man. Got a minute?”
He heard the distant sound of a little girl’s voice before Volt said, “Yeah. Gimme a sec.”
After a moment, he heard a door closing. “What’s up, Har?”
“How’d you convince your brothers to get out of the drug trade?”
He chuckled. “Persistence.”
“Fuck,” he hissed.
“Yeah. Though you should have plenty of ground to stand on, man.”
“You’re right, but they like what they know.”
“Well, I had plenty of allies when I pushed for the change. Cal was down with no more drug trade, as was Roll and others. It’s like any other change, brother. Figure out who’s with you and win the others over.”
“Know all that, but I can’t even get these guys to consider alternative ways to generate income.”
“Laziness.”
“Exactly. Fighting that almost makes me want to give up the President position.”
Volt was quiet for a while. “Seriously?”
“Yes. No, not really.”
He chuckled. “Keep at it, man. You want us to ride out there? It’s been a while.”
Har grinned. “You feel like an eight-hour ride, have at it, man. We’d never turn you away. Later.”
His stomach growled, and he saw it was closing in on six o’clock. He went to the kitchen but stopped short at the sight of Stephie’s round ass in the air. She had her head craned almost inside a cabinet under the island.
“What the fuck are you doin’?” he asked.
She yelped, banged her head, making her mutter a curse, and then she fell onto her ass holding her head.
She glowered over her shoulder. “Jesus! You scared the fuck out of me, man!”
He swallowed his chuckle. “Sorry, but what were you doing?”
She opened her mouth and her eyes got big, but then she closed her mouth, not saying anything. He wanted to laugh at that too, but didn’t.
“You can tell me, Combes.”
“I just don’t get it. You have this beautiful, ginormous island, and only two cabinets. I mean, I get that the other side has the cut out so you can pull up a stool, but why so much wasted cabinet space?”
He offered her his hand. “Get up, babe.”
She arched a brow, but put her hand in his. Her soft hand sent a strange feeling up his arm. When she stood in front of him, he let go of her hand to knock on the counter with his knuckle. “That’s not veneer, Steph. It’s a solid slab of marble. And it’s fucking heavy, so I’m lucky I got the two cabinets beneath it.”
Her head cocked as her eyes narrowed. “But why do you have a marble countertop?”
He grinned. “The original owners put it in. She was an aspiring caterer or some shit. They had to move due to the husband’s job. I bought the house because the price was right and that back yard has enough room for me to put in a pool, if I’m so inclined.”
Her eyes lit up. “Are you so inclined?”
His brows pulled together. “Come again?”
“To put in a pool?”
He chuckled. “Not yet. That shit’s expensive even before you get the first jacked up electric bill from the pool pump.”
She nodded. “True that.”
“So, what were you looking for in the cabinet? Or are you just as nosy as you were as a kid?”
Her lips pursed. “I forget how much you might remember about me. No, I wasn’t being nosy. I was hunting for a baking dish. In the freezer, I found —”
He lifted a hand in the air. “Stop. I’m ordering pizza. You got a preference?”
She whirled to the fridge, opened the door, then turned back to him as she let the door close. “You have no beer. It’s not right to have pizza without beer.”
His brow arched reflexively. “Not everyone believes that, Combes.”
“Sure they do!”
“Snoopy.”
“What?”
“Charles Schultz? You know, Snoopy. When he’s fighting the Red Baron, he’s having pizza in France.”
She pointed a finger at his chest. “Exactly! And he’s drinking root beer. See, even Snoopy knows the drill.”
He shook his head. “All right, well, my intention is to go get the pizza so, I can pick up beer along the way.”
“On your bike?” she demanded.
Now he was opening his mouth and closing it, debating what to say.
“That beat-up pick-up truck in the street belongs to me, hon.”
“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t—”
“Yeah. And it isn’t my business, but I gotta tell you. Not sure why you’re on a bike, but you need to look into a cage for when the weather’s bad around here. Sucks riding in the rain. Winter’s comin’ and the
