Out of the Ashes (Sons of Templar MC #3)(16)

Lucky grinned, right in the face of the laser beam death stare. “Okay, brother,” he said knowingly and winked at me. “Get Bull to drop you here after the movie. Your loaner will be all gassed up and ready to roll,” he said easily, as if he had not just almost been pummeled by a raging bull. Pun intended.

I smiled back at him weakly. “Thanks, Lucky.”

The others, namely Brock and Cade, were not grinning but staring between Zane and I with blank faces. I didn’t know what to make of them.

Cade threw some keys that Zane caught in his fist. “Take my cage, bro, I don’t need it,” he told him, his voice not as easy as before and he inspected me with a slightly furrowed brow.

Zane didn’t reply, merely nodded tightly. His gaze moved to me. “You wanna make your movie, get your shit,” he said roughly.

I jolted, shocked at the fact he was addressing me directly and more than a little pissed off he was swearing at me. In front of my daughter, no less. I wasn’t against swearing. Back in the day I swore like a sailor. Partly because parents who didn’t censor themselves surrounded me. Also because I was a confused, angry teenager who did a lot of crap, and swearing came part and parcel with said crap.

But when I had Lexie I vowed I would be nothing like my parents. I would not do things like lock her in the bedroom when I had drug dealer friends over, I would not forget to feed her for a day, and I would not swear in front of her. Hence my slightly eccentric words I used in lieu of curse words.

At this moment, I couldn’t really voice my distaste for the words he was using or the manner in which he was addressing me, especially since Lexie’s face had lit up when he uttered them. I pursed my lips and nodded, going to the car to get my bag. Lexie did the same, except she practically skipped to the car.

“How cool is this?” she asked me across the front seat, gathering her stuff, including her brick of a book. “Zane’s actually coming with us!”

“I doubt he’s coming with us to the actual movie, Dollybird. More like he’s dropping us off outside. We’ll be lucky if he even stops the car,” I told her seriously, muttering the last bit of my sentence.

She gave me a perplexed look and shook her head. “He’s totally coming with us. Now hurry up. You’re going to be the reason we get lumped with unsatisfying snacks,” she ordered.





So that’s how I found myself in a SUV with Zane and my daughter on the way to the movies. Not a scenario I had ever imagined myself in. It was even worse when I tried to get into the back seat, farther away from getting incinerated from the death stare. Lexie had insisted I sit in the front seat. Zane’s jaw had hardened exponentially when I had jostled in, and his face kept straight ahead as he maneuvered out of the lot. I had waved at the men, who gave me chin lifts and head shakes. I didn’t get the head shakes, and didn’t exactly have time to ask.

Luckily, bless her heart, Lexie hadn’t clocked the downright hostile atmosphere that emanated from Zane and had chattered the entirety of the journey from the garage to the movie theatre. For his part, he answered all of Lexie’s questions, limited his profanities and was actually polite in his ultra badass, I kill puppies in my spare time kind of way. He didn’t spare a glance at me, and when Lexie tried to involve me in the conversation, I barely squeaked an answer. I’m not a squeaker. I had my time when a man battered me down to a shell of myself and I would shrink into a corner. But I recovered. Fought back. Found myself.

I’m loud. Opinionated. And quite funny, if I did say so myself. But for this car ride I retreated back into that little shell. It didn’t help that I was also immensely attracted to the person who was radiating hostility. I breathed a sigh of relief when we pulled up at the theatre. It must have been audible because Zane gave me a hard, sideways glance.

I ignored it and clutched the door handle, restraining the urge to throw myself out of the vehicle.

“Thanks for the--” I started to say, but Lexie jumped in.

“You have to come in now, Zane, we’re right outside. It would be a crime for you to miss cinematic gold when you’re so close,” she stated firmly.

Zane didn’t turn, but he caught her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Told you, I don’t do movies. Sorry, kid.” His rough and oh so sexy voice didn’t sound very sorry to me.

Lexie widened her eyes into a look I was all too familiar with. It was the wounded puppy look that had gotten her out of multiple situations and gotten her into specific ones. Like ones at movie theaters such as this, where after such a look I found myself sitting in documentaries about global warming.

“Okay, but if you leave us here, we’ll have to walk all the way home and the shoes Mom is wearing are not conducive with walking long distances.” She shrugged. “I’m sure she’ll be fine, though—what’s a few blisters?” She feigned nonchalance.

I gave my daughter a silent round of applause for tapping into what I guessed was the only chink in this guy’s muscled and impregnable armor. Helpless women. Not that I was helpless. In these shoes, after walking more than half a mile, maybe.

There was a pause. Zane’s jaw got very hard, then his body relaxed slightly. “Jesus f*ckin’ Christ,” he muttered, unbuckling his seatbelt.

“Right on,” Lexie exclaimed. “I promise you’ll enjoy this.”