Unattainable (Undeniable, #3)(51)

“First off,” Deuce yelled, pointing at Bucket. “Watch your f*ckin’ mouth. Been knowin’ Ellie her whole damn life. She’s Danny’s friend and no one’s givin’ her to Mooresville if I can help it!”

Then Deuce turned back to him. “Second,” he yelled. “You keep whatever bullshit you got goin’ on inside that bald f*ckin’ head of yours REELED THE FUCK IN! We’re discussin’ business, you dumb motherf*cker. You wanna knock heads, you do it after the f*ckin’ meetin’. You f*ckin’ feel me?”

He nodded.

Deuce leaned in. “You got somethin’ you need to tell me? Somethin’ like why the f*ck you ain’t got no hair and don’t smell like my f*ckin’ toilet after Cage comes to visit?”

Dirty didn’t respond and the moment Deuce figured out he wasn’t going to, the man nodded once and released him.

“Everyone sit the f*ck down!” he shouted and everyone sat right the f*ck down.

Glaring at everyone in the room, Deuce shook his head in disgust. “Don’t see how,” he muttered. “I’m always the voice of f*ckin’ reason in this circus.”

? ? ?

“Ellie?” Danny asked, pausing in rummaging through her clubroom closet. “I didn’t want to ask in front of everyone, but how did you get those bruises? Are you the reason we’re on lockdown?”

Ellie nodded, but was unsure of what she should or shouldn’t tell Danny. She didn’t know the ins and outs of the MC, and honestly did not want to make any more waves than she already had.

Danny pursed her lips together. “Okay,” she said softly. “I get it. I’ll get the scoop from Ripper, but I’m here if you need to talk, okay?”

Ellie stared at her old friend who, unfairly enough, didn’t look a day over twenty-two. If there wasn’t an adorable little blonde girl sitting on the bed right next to her, who looked like yet another drop-dead gorgeous direct descendant of Deuce, Ellie would have never guessed Danny had been pregnant.

“You look great,” Ellie said. “And your daughter is beautiful.”

Danny’s eyes found her daughter and her lips split into a smile. “Thank you,” she said.

Ellie suddenly felt very uncomfortable, like she was intruding on a private moment, one she couldn’t even relate to. She had experienced moments like this with her own parents, catching her mother or father watching her, a small smile on their face, lost in thought.

But she’d never witnessed it as an outsider, a third party, watching a mother gaze at her daughter, the look in Danny’s eyes telling Ellie that this little girl was Danny’s whole world.

She felt inexplicably lonely too. She missed her parents, yes, but watching this, it felt like more than that. Thirty wasn’t right around the corner but it was close enough, and what did she have to show for it? No husband, no child, not even a boyfriend. She had a career that wasn’t going anywhere and a crazy chief of police after her, and now she was locked up inside a criminal motorcycle gang’s clubhouse for God only knew how long.

And this was her life?

Shame enveloped her for ridiculing Danny when she’d heard of her marriage to Ripper, of her pregnancy, of never leaving Miles City, for settling.

But Danny hadn’t settled at all. Danny was happy and whereas she’d thought she’d been, Ellie now knew that she was not.

“Speaking of beautiful,” Danny murmured, looking away from Harley. “Dirty is…just…oh my God.”

Ellie nodded. “I know,” she said. “I never knew he was so…” She trailed off, looking for the right word.

“Beautiful?” Danny suggested, raising an eyebrow.

Yes. Beautiful just about covered it. Dirty was, for lack of a better description, symmetrically flawless. Not only that, he was the very definition of masculine beauty. His forehead was broad, his cheekbones defined, his brow and chin both prominent, and his jaw chiseled to perfection.

Yet, at the same time there was this…almost innocent aspect to him. Something that seemed untouchable despite his age. The combination of the two, the masculine beauty and that innocence, were what made the man breathtaking.

The shower and shave hadn’t hurt either.

The sound of screaming had Ellie jumping off the bed in a panic. “What’s happening?” she cried, looking toward the closed door.

Danny let out a long-suffering sigh and shook her head.

“That’s Tegen!” Harley exclaimed from her seat on the bed. “She yells alllllll the time!”

Ellie glanced over at Danny, who shrugged in response. “She’s right. Tegen yells all the time and right now she’s extremely mad at my father and my brother…whatever…they are all crazy.”

Danny turned back to the closet, then suddenly spun back around. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “I almost forgot! Apparently ZZ and Tegen have been living together in San Francisco! We’re like one big happy family!”

It took Ellie a minute to figure out Danny wasn’t actually happy or excited about this information but instead was overdoing it on the sarcasm.

“Are you actually upset about it?” Ellie asked. “Because you chose Ripper, right?”

Sighing, Danny sat down on the bed and dropped her hands into her lap. “This is going to sound weird, but it’s not that I’m upset. I mean, I was worried about him for a long time and all this time my dad knew where he was and with Tegen? Ugh. Seriously, it’s just gross. I mean, I slept with Ripper, then ZZ, and Cage slept with Tegen and then Tegen slept with ZZ, and it’s sort of like we all slept together.” Danny wrinkled up her nose and shuddered. “It’s just skeezy, you know?”