Wild Fire (Chaos #6.5)(73)

Hound grunted.

Keely turned a page.





Meanwhile



Meanwhile…

Two weeks later, in a heat snap that was not unknown during Denver winters, the first time Dutch could take his Georgie on his bike…



Georgiana was surprised, when Dutch went for his wallet to pay, the big, frightening-looking barista said, “That’s on me, brother.”

They exchanged a look.

More surprising, Dutch didn’t fight it and took his hand from his pocket.

Five minutes later, she took a sip of the best coffee she’d ever tasted.

Apparently, it was true what everyone said: the coffee at Fortnum’s Used Books was the best in Denver.

Dutch got his and took her hand to walk her back into the stacks, but he exchanged another glance with the biker-looking guy who was behind the book desk.

She didn’t ask.

If Dutch wanted her to know, he’d tell her.

Though, from what she could read, it seemed the thing that was being communicated was that something was all good.

Georgiana and Dutch spent the next two hours in the stacks, twenty minutes of it making their selections, the rest of it curled up together in a big chair in the way back, sipping coffee and reading.

They walked out to buy their books when Dutch heard Georgie’s stomach growling.

He took her out to dinner and then he took her home and right to bed.




It would be the next day, Sunday, when Georgie won a round and talked Dutch into letting her be the one to get up and get them coffee.

And while it was brewing, she went and grabbed the books from the mudroom and stowed them on one of Dutch’s many shelves.

By the picture of his dad.

She reached out a finger and touched the miniscule Chaos patch on the man’s jacket.

Then she whispered, “Thank you.”

After that, she poured herself and her man some coffee.

And went back to bed.




The End





Also from 1001 Dark Nights and Kristen Ashley, discover Wild Wind, Dream Bites, Quiet Man, Rough Ride, and Rock Chick Reawakening





The Stories of the Black Brothers of Chaos will continue with Jagger…



Wild Wind

A Chaos Novella

Coming March 9, 2021

Click here to purchase



When he was sixteen years old, Jagger Black laid eyes on the girl who was his. At a cemetery. During her mother’s funeral.



For years, their lives cross, they feel the pull of their connection, but then they go their separate ways.



But when Jagger sees that girl chasing someone down the street, he doesn’t think twice before he wades right in. And when he gets a full-on dose of the woman she’s become, he knows he finally has to decide if he’s all in or if it’s time to cut her loose.



She’s ready to be cut loose.



But Jagger is all in.





Prologue


Fuckin’ A



Jagger



The first time Jagger saw her, it was eleven years ago.

On his sixteenth birthday.

His brother Dutch had let Jagger use his truck and Jag drove by himself for the first time.

Where’d he go?

He went to his father’s grave.

That was another first.

The first time he’d been there by himself.

And it was the only time Jag could remember that he and his dad had been alone together.

Well, kinda alone.

She was there.

Not with him and his dad.

She was at a funeral that was happening across the way.

When he first clapped eyes on her, she was in one of those chairs they set up, right at the front, staring at the casket.

Jag sat, and he was supposed to be sharing part of his sixteenth birthday with his dad, but he couldn’t help himself.

He kept glancing over at her, mostly because she was pretty.

But he looked her way so often, he knew, eventually when he did it, she’d be looking at him.

And eventually, she was.

She was so pretty, he didn’t think about what she was doing there, he just thought about how pretty she was.

But when they caught eyes over those thirty yards dotted with headstones, he felt the look on her face in the back of his throat.

Only then did he take in her surroundings.

There was a man sitting beside her, a guy maybe Jagger’s age sitting on the other side of the man.

But there was no woman.

So…

Yeah.

He wasn’t surprised.

He knew that look on her face.

He felt it.

Still.

Fuck.

Even though it was his birthday, he was finally legal to drive, and there were a million other things he wanted to do, he didn’t do any of them.

He hung there until the service was over.

He didn’t get why. Maybe it had to do with the fact that, once she saw him there, she kept glancing at him. Maybe she knew what he knew, and they both just got it. So, if she was looking his way, he needed to be there for her.

Or maybe it was that she was just that pretty.

Jag had guessed it before, but he figured it out for sure when the service was over. The way people were with her, the guy who looked like her brother, and the man who was probably her dad.