Rough Ride (Chaos #5)(8)

I should have known.

I should have followed my dad.

Mom and me had done it all our lives, job to job, house to house, city to city.

Why I stopped…

Damn.

I knew why I’d stopped.

I’d wanted Shy, Shy, who reminded me of Dad.

And when I couldn’t have him, I’d gone looking.

I’d wanted what my mom had.

I’d wanted that sweetness. That love.

That devotion.

I’d wanted the stability that just seeped down deep into your bones from all that no matter the job changing, the scenery changing, the amount of times you boxed up a house.

Stability had nothing to do with income and locale.

Stability was all in the heart.

“Rosalie, honeypot, you okay?” Mom called.

“Yeah,” I called back. “Out in a sec.”

“There are some…uh, people here for you,” she told me.

I focused on my battered face in the mirror.

People?

“Who?” I asked.

“Well, uh…”

I didn’t like that she didn’t answer immediately.

I went to the door and opened it.

And there I was, standing before me, just a little older.

Dark hair, but she was letting the thick silver settle in. It looked gorgeous on her.

Hazel eyes that could change to more green or more light brown depending on what color she (or I) wore.

Tallish. We were both five six. We seemed taller because our length was in our legs and we were slender.

We also tanned easily. Laughed easily. But were mostly quiet, sometimes shy but not withdrawn, just not loud and feisty.

“Christ, God loves me,” my dad had said. “Gave me the perfect woman and then gave me her carbon copy so I get double the goodness.”

I remembered him saying that. We were living outside San Francisco then in a little two-bedroom house where we could smell the sea and Mom had a big garden. I remembered how happy he was.

Always happy.

Always right where he wanted to be.

With his girls, his bike close, the world at his feet…or in Dad’s case, his wheels.

I remembered those words he’d said nearly every time I looked at my mom.

And I hoped I never forgot.

“Who’s here?” I asked.

“Kane Allen and his old lady,” she said softly.

Damn.

“And also, um, his lieutenant and his old lady,” she went on.

Damn!

Shy was his lieutenant.

I’d run into Shy and Tabby in a mall not long after he’d dumped me. I was now over him and not just because I had no choice since he was not only married to Tab, they also had a baby, but because I just was.

And now I was even more because I’d figured out I wasn’t over Shy because I’d had Beck.

But because I’d wanted Snapper.

“I don’t want to see them,” I told my mom.

“It’s Hopper Kincaid, not the other one,” she replied quickly.

Well, at least Shy and Tabby didn’t march their way to my mother’s house to do whatever Kane “Tack” Allen and Hop Kincaid were there to do, this after the guy who came next when Shy was done with me got done with me.

“I still don’t want to see them,” I said.

“Honey, they…” She looked down the hall then back to me. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to refuse an audience with Kane Allen.”

She was right.

The Chaos Club had left their outlaw ways behind and was now clean, but that didn’t mean the brothers were men you trifled with. And of all of them, you didn’t trifle with Kane Allen.

It wasn’t just in the physical (though he was physically intimidating). It was that the man was known to be killer smart. If he perceived a slight and wanted to act on it, that could come in so many different ways, none of them pleasant, it wasn’t funny.

“Right,” I muttered to Mom, then, being careful with my body because other parts might be healing, but my ribs still hurt like hell, I rounded her and walked stiffly down the hall, feeling her at my heels.

And there they were. Two fabulously handsome brothers of Chaos—Tack Allen and Hop Kincaid. They were older, sure, but they were still crazy-hot.

They were also, right then, the instant their eyes touched on me, crazy-freaky-scary.

It was not unknown in the Denver biker world that Chaos took the mistreatment of women seriously, as in, they seriously one hundred percent did not like it (one of the reasons why I used to hang at their Compound a lot, where I’d met Shy).

Now I was getting a dose of that in my mom’s living room.

As the keeper of a vagina, I had to admit, it was cool.

That didn’t make it less crazy-freaky-scary.

To avoid the crazy-freaky-scary, I looked to the women with them.

Tack had had Tyra when I was with Shy. She was gorgeous, curvy, and had deep-red, beautiful hair.

The tall, slim, beautiful brunette with Hop was familiar, but for Hop, as far as I knew, she was new.

“Hey,” I greeted.

“How you doin’, darlin’?” Tack asked.

“Healing. Good. Thanks for checking but it wasn’t necessary. Every day it gets better and soon I’ll be back to new,” I answered.