Guardian Angel (Angel's Halo MC #3) by Terri Anne Browning
When I met the other woman’s eyes she was smiling and I relaxed, thankful that she wasn’t going to take this moment away from me by getting upset.
Kissing Lexa’s cheek, I cupped her face. “I love you so much, Lexa,” I murmured. “You know that right?” She nodded her head as tears poured down her cheeks. “How much do I love you?”
“To the moon and back,” she whispered, repeating the words I told her every night as I tucked her into bed.
“I promise I’m only going to be gone a little while.” Her chin started to tremble again and I rushed on, hoping to keep her from breaking down again. “And at six, your Aunt Willa is going to bring you to me. Then, you and me, we’re going to welcome Uncle Jet home with the biggest hug the world has ever seen.” I kissed her cheek then pulled her tightly against me. “And then we’re going to get tummy aches from eating too much pizza and ice cream.”
She was still sniffling when I stood, but thankfully her tears had stopped. “Maybe you can make Uncle Jet a friendship bracelet as a surprise. He will like that. His favorite colors are blue and red.”
Blue eyes brightened ever so slightly. “O-okay.”
I kissed her again then rushed out the door, terrified that she would start crying again if I lingered. By the time I got to the bar, Willa had already texted me twice to let me know that Lexa was settling down and they were already making the bracelets. I blew out a relieved sigh and got to work.
Decorating wasn’t such a hard job, if you had help. Of course, I didn’t. All the guys had ridden down to meet Jet, and Gracie was working. I hadn’t wanted Lexa running around the bar while Willa helped me and there was no way in hell I was asking one of the sheep to help me. I knew they had their own plans for later that night, and I didn’t want them tainting what was a special day for me.
It took me several hours to get the place decorated the way I wanted it, and by the time I was done there was still an hour to go before Jet and the guys arrived. Tired, I cleaned up in the bathroom and then headed back into the bar. Maybe I should go home and cuddle with Lexa for a little while…
The thought had barely crossed my mind when I jerked to a stop in the middle of the bar. There was a man I didn’t recognize standing behind the bar, a bottle of Jameson in one hand and what looked like a camping lighter in the other. What the hell did he need something like that for? “Who the fuck are you?” I demanded.
The man gave me a cocky grin, showing me his even white teeth. He wasn’t hard on the eyes; he was actually pretty good looking—in a preppy athletic way that screamed ‘I’m a rich boy’. It was obvious to me simply from the way the guy held himself that he was the type that was used to having everything handed to him. The way his eyes raked over me made me want to scratch his face up with my nails, but I just stood there. There was something about him, something almost sinister that creeped me out in a way I’d never experienced before.
For the first time in my life I was scared of a man, and that pissed me off, but I wasn’t stupid enough to start raging at this guy.
This had to be Kevin Samson. There wasn’t any other explanation.
“Hello to you too, beautiful Raven.” His voice was low, kind of husky and full of something vile.
I wanted to run—that was my first thought. To run as fast and as far as I possibly could. My second thought was to kick this guy’s ass when he opened the bottle of Jameson and poured the contents across the bar top. No way. No fucking way. I wasn’t going to let this guy destroy my family’s bar.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I screamed when he lit the camp lighter and sat the whiskey on fire.
“I’m here to get redemption. Your MC took my frat house, the first real place I had ever called home. It’s only fair that I take something just as special away from them.” His smile was full of amusement and a vileness that made me want to bathe in holy water. Shit, this guy was a lunatic. Crazy to a whole new degree of insane.
Still smiling at me, he reached behind him for another bottle of whisky. Instead of opening it, he let it drop to the floor. When he began knocking more and more bottles off the shelves, I started walking backwards toward the door. I had to get out, call the cops and the fire department. If I didn’t, then he was going to burn the place down.
My heart twisted at the thought of him destroying Hannigans’. This place belonged to my family, to my MC. It was my dad’s legacy. If I lost it then it would be like losing him all over again. I backed up faster and faster, while Samson just grinned like the maniac he was and played with the lighter in his hands.
The smell of my family’s bar burning was so distracting that I didn’t hear anything or anyone else until cool hands touched my shoulders. I let out a small yelp of surprise as I turned to face the newcomer. When I came face to face with Bubbles, I didn’t know whether to be relieved or worried. She wasn’t smiling and I was pretty sure she was higher than a kite from the manic look in her eyes.
I thought she was trying to kick her habit, but when one of the MC’s jobs was to run protection for certain drug cartel members then that shit was always easy to get. Angel’s Halo had a strict rule against using, but it didn’t necessarily roll over to the club’s sheep.
“Bubbles?” What the fuck is she doing here?
“I was hoping you would still be here.” Her voice was full of venom, her smile a twisted kind of evil that I’d only seen in raging junkies. “Makes all of this worth it, actually.”
Clarity hit fast and with the force of a speeding bullet between my eyes. She was with Samson. Fuck, I was going to kick her skinny little ass as soon as I had this baby. She was so dead.
If you’d asked me which of the sheep were the most loyal to the club I would have told you Bubbles was in the top five, but I’d been seeing a difference in her in the last few weeks. Especially since Spider and Willa had announced they were getting married. Bubbles might fuck anything with an Angel’s Halo cut on, but I’d always suspected that she was a little in love with Spider.
Had she sold out to fucking Kevin Samson because the enforcer was going to get married to the chick that owned his heart?
I knew she didn’t have any love for me. I’d kicked her ass more than once in the past for crossing a few lines and running her mouth. The last time had been right after Bash had left and she’d gotten in my face, rubbing the fact that she’d been one of the first to fuck my man before he’d even patched into the club.
Long fingernails came out and tangled in my hair. I didn’t struggle right away. After fighting with her I knew that she liked to play dirty and I wasn’t going to give her a reason to start kicking me in the stomach. Bubbles knew that I was pregnant but I didn’t think she cared at that moment.
“This is going to be fun,” Bubbles murmured and her lips lifted as she glanced over my shoulder at the mad man trying to burn my bar down. “Can I?”
“She’s all yours, babe.”
At the sound of Samson’s voice, instinct took over. Whether this bitch kicked me or worse I had to get away from her and the psycho having a field day burning down my bar. The heat of the flames was getting higher, and the scent of burning wood, plastic, and liquor was starting to turn my stomach even as the growing smoke made my eyes start to water and burned my throat. The urge to cough was starting to become more of an necessity to expel the fumes invading my lungs.
Bubbles’s hands tightened in my hair but I refused to give her the satisfaction of crying out. I reached for her hair and held on just as tight as she was holding onto mine. When she tried to jerk me closer, her knee coming up to connect with my abdomen, I twisted to the left and took a handful of her dried-out blond hair with me. But she didn’t release her hold on me as I’d hoped.
She shook my head, hard. I felt hairs give way and bit the inside of my cheek to keep from screaming out in pain. Her smile turned just as vile as Samson’s had and I mentally cringed.
Fuck, this wasn’t going to end pretty.
Chapter 15
&nbs
If you had told me I might actually like working with Jenkins, I might not have believed you. The first day I’d walked into his office and explained to his secretary why I was there I was still skeptical about the entire thing. Five minutes later, I was laughing with the middle-aged woman that ran the lawyer’s day-to-day business life.
Samantha was a nice woman, petite, and she had the most beautiful caramel-colored skin that I’d ever seen in my life. I quickly realized that she was also Jenkins’ girlfriend. Apparently they had been together for more than fifteen years, pretty much since Samantha had started working for him. I was surprised by that, because Samantha didn’t look like she would be one to settle for a long-term relationship with someone and not be his wife by then. But I’d also quickly learned that it was by Samantha’s choice that they hadn’t married or even so much as gotten engaged.
Jenkins obviously loved and adored Samantha, but she was quite possibly the only person in the world that he did love. After two days of working for him I realized that the man was an exceptional lawyer, obviously enjoyed his job, but didn’t seem to care about anything else other than it and getting Samantha home as fast as possible at the end of each day.
Besides Samantha, Jenkins and Jenkins Attorneys At Law—there wasn’t a second Jenkins, but when he’d named his practice he’d said it sounded better to have a second name on the building and had simply went with putting his name on the front door twice—there were also five other staff members. Two of which were paralegals that I had to work with closely as well as three personal assistants that handled certain aspects of Jenkins’ day to day. One of the assistant’s jobs was simply to set up appointments, which I’d learned sometimes had to be scheduled weeks in advance due to Jenkins’ caseload.
I realized that the man really was in desperate need of another lawyer to help take off some of the stress from his shoulders and dived in to help out as much as possible considering I was neither a paralegal nor a lawyer. From day one, however, I began learning more and more things that I knew I would never have come across in a law class.
Everything from personal injury cases to speeding tickets and custody battles came through the office on a daily basis, and I found that I was really looking forward to eventually taking over for the man that was quickly becoming my mentor. My work was not particularly fun at times, but I honestly enjoyed every minute of it. Even when it got particularly frustrating, I still enjoyed it.
“Gracie, you told me to remind you when it was a quarter to five,” Samantha said as she stepped into the smaller office Jenkins had given me right beside his own.
My eyes lifted from the police statements I’d been reviewing from a recent personal injury claim from a hit and run and glanced at the little clock icon on my desktop computer. It was four forty-six and I needed to get going if I was going pick up the huge cake that Raven had ordered for her brother’s homecoming party tonight. I needed to get going so that I could pick it up and then help her set the monstrosity up before the MC got home by six.
Shutting down my computer, I pushed all my files back into the leather backed folder and locked them in my desk. Shooting Samantha a smile I stood, picking up my purse, keys, and phone as I did. “Thanks, Sam. Guess I had better hurry. Raven is going to be freaking if I’m just a few minutes later than I promised I would be. She’s so excited about Jet coming home that she’s been dancing and singing to herself for days now.”
The skin around Samantha’s rich dark eyes crinkled as she grinned. “Wow, she really must be excited. That girl would do anything for her brothers, but Jet—he’s her rock. When Max died, Jet had already been acting as second father to her.” The grin dimmed. “It must have been pretty hard on her to have been away from him for so long.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. Even though I only knew just a little about Raven, I’d realized from the start that Jet was the one that meant the most to her of her four brothers. “I’m happy for her and the rest of the Hannigans.”
I was also nervous as hell about meeting the man who was what I guessed was the patriarch of the Hannigan clan. I knew why he’d gone to prison, and honestly I was a little proud of the man I’d yet to meet for taking care of his family the way he had. Sure, he’d killed a man and had gotten convicted of manslaughter, but he’d been protecting his… well, I wasn’t all that sure what Felicity Bolton had been to him, but he’d still been protecting her.
I walked with Samantha out to the front of the office and waved goodbye as I left and climbed into the Chevelle that I was still continuing to drive. Hawk’d had the driver’s side window replaced and the interior cleaned up since I’d dripped blood all over the steering wheel and seat when Harley had attacked me. I didn’t know how much longer I was going to drive this car, though. It was a little too powerful for me, and now that I was making some seriously crazy money working for Jenkins I was going to be able to put a good bit of money down on a smaller car. I hadn’t mentioned it to Hawk yet, but I would soon.
I just didn’t want to start an argument with him when things had been going so smoothly over the last few weeks. My cheeks heated in reaction as flashes of our nights tangled in each other’s arms played through my mind like a slide show. I had to admit that our passion seemed to grow more intense every day. Our lovemaking was becoming more and more daring with each passing night that we slept in each other’s arms. I loved every moment of it and was beginning to lose the inner battle I continually had with myself over telling him I loved him when he was deep inside of me, driving me toward an orgasm that left me oblivious to the world at large.
The only thing that was stopping me was that he hadn’t even hinted that he loved me as much as I loved him. Sure, I suspected that his feelings were strong, but I was terrified of finding out that it was just the incredible sex we were having and not that he loved me as much as I loved him.
I pushed the thoughts of my biker out of my head as I drove across town to pick up the huge cake that Raven had spent over an hour discussing with the baker, specifying how she wanted it designed. I only knew it was supposed to have a motorcycle on it and something along the lines of “Welcome Home Brother” on it. Other than that, I was clueless on what the cake looked like.
I definitely wasn’t expecting it to take two people to carry it out to the car and securing it in the trunk—the only fudging place big enough to hold it without the fear of it slipping around. I drove ten miles under the speed limit to the bar and was still so worried about any sudden jarring disrupting the cake that I slowly slid into the parking lot and came to a gentle stop beside Raven’s Challenger.
I jumped out of the car, ready to run in and have her come help me carry the cake in because there was no way I was going to chance taking that thing on my own. The sudden bitter smell of smoke in the air forced me to stop and glance around. The scent was so strong that I instinctively knew that something was very, very wrong.
Glancing around, I tried to pinpoint where the smell was coming from. I caught the distinct smell of burning wood and melting paint, and it was so strong that I knew it was coming from somewhere close. The only problem was that there wasn’t anything other than the bar close enough to produce a smell that powerful. My eyes lifted skyward and my heart stopped when I saw the smoke lifting into the air, coming from the far side of the bar.
I didn’t see any flames and realized that the fire had to be coming from inside the bar. Fudging hell. No, I thought as I pulled my phone from my pocket and punched in 911. There was no other vehicle in the parking lot but I’d seen a car sitting on the side of the road less than half a mile down the road. What if someone was inside?
Oh God! I glanced back at Raven’s car and prayed that she’d left it there and was home with Willa and Lexa. Please, God. Please don’t let her be inside.
“Nine-one-one,” a calm male dispatcher’s voice filled my ear. “What is your emergency?”
“I’m at Hannigans’ Bar.” Wait. Was that the name of the place? Fea
“Okay, ma’am. We have firefighters dispatched to your location. They should be there within the next three minutes. Stay on the line with me and don’t go inside the building.” His tone was still calm and it helped to calm down my raging anxiety, but the longer I stood there the fear that Raven might be inside began to raise with the increase of the scent of smoke in the air.
I had every intention of staying on the phone with the man. From the growing smoke in the air and the heat that I was starting to feel emitting from the building I knew that there was possibly an inferno in there. It wasn’t safe in there. I needed to stay outside…
The blood chilling scream that rended the air made me freeze and all thoughts of listening to the man on the other end of my phone evaporated. Someone was hurt and I couldn’t take the chance that it was Raven, or anyone else in there that might be hurt or worse.
I dropped the phone and ran to the front door. The feel of the doorknob was warm, but not unbearably hot, telling me that the fire hadn’t reached that side of the bar yet. I pushed inside, my eyes searching the smoke-filled room and I stopped in my tracks when I took in the scene before me.
Behind the bar stood Kevin Samson, the man from some of my nightmares. This man, this crazy sociopathic lunatic had tried to rape me with the help of my old roommate and her boyfriend. The side of the bar he was on was engulfed in flames and he just kept tossing more and more liquor bottles into the fire, but he either didn’t care or didn’t realize that he had trapped himself in the fire he was making. There were three walls of flames surrounding him and behind the bar top.