Reaper's Fall (Reapers MC, #5)(122)

Did he have a girlfriend?

Right, like it even mattered. He’d been sweet to me, but he was probably sweet to little old ladies, too. Guys like that didn’t go for girls like me.

Girls who were nothing.

The thought hurt, but eventually I drifted off. When I woke it was nearly five. Wandering downstairs, I found Loni and Reese sitting in the living room, her perched on his lap as they talked quietly.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you,” I said, feeling like an intruder.

“Don’t worry about it,” Reese replied, sounding resigned. Loni pushed off him, then came over to study me carefully. She was shorter than I was, and I felt awkward and gawky next to her.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, her eyes sharp.

“Good, my head hardly hurts at all,” I said, and this time it was the truth. “Although I’m starving.”

Then I snapped my mouth shut, because it sounded like I was begging for food, which I guess I was. I mean, I was sort of trapped here, out in the country at a strange house owned by a man I didn’t even know, and whose only tie to me was that he was sleeping with my best friend’s aunt.

That’s pretty damned tenuous.

Loni smiled. “If you’re hungry, that means you’re healthy. I picked up some new clothes for you earlier. They’re in the bag.”

She pointed to a Target bag sitting on the floor next to the stairwell. I’d just leaned over to grab it when Painter walked into the room from the back of the house.

“How you doin’?” he asked.

“Better,” I managed to reply, feeling shy.

“Get changed and we’ll go out to dinner,” Reese announced. “It’s been a long day.”

“Okay,” I said gratefully, then ran upstairs to put on my new clothes. Hopefully Loni had gotten me something cute.

? ? ?

Painter invited himself along with us, which pissed Loni off for reasons I couldn’t quite understand. I knew she was protective, but it wasn’t like he was doing anything.

Sure, he’d insisted that I ride with him to the restaurant (which kicked ass, I might add). And he was sitting next to me in the booth, his thick, male thigh pressed up against the side of mine, which gave me little flutters and chills. A couple times he leaned over to ask if my food was all right, and when we finished he draped his arm across the back of the booth, right behind my head.

I’d sat there, wanting him so bad it took everything I had not to shiver. I’d have given anything to kiss him. At one point he even reached down and gave my knee another of those little squeezes, nearly giving me a heart attack.

Loni glared at him throughout.

Reese rolled his eyes and ordered another beer.

Afterward, Painter gave me a ride back to Reese’s house, and I swear if he’d asked me, I would’ve done anything for him. To him. But he didn’t . . . Nope, he just dropped me off.

But as I got off his bike, he tucked a strand of my hair back behind my ear and skimmed his fingers across my cheekbone. I really did shiver then, because how could I not?

? ? ?

Two days later I was bored out of my mind.

I’d found myself in a weird limbo out at the Hayes house, because I had no transportation or way to get to work. There wasn’t anyone to talk to, either—Reese and Loni were gone most of the time, her working and him doing club stuff. There had been some big party the night before, but yours truly wasn’t invited.

Instead I just sat around, waiting for something to happen. Reese still made me nervous, but I trusted London and it wasn’t like I had any other options. Even the money I’d managed to hide from my dad was gone, burned up in the explosion. Now all I had were the clothes Loni had given me.

Two pairs of panties. One bra. A pair of shorts and a pair of jeans, two tank tops and a sweatshirt.

That was it—the sum total of all my worldly possessions.

I needed to take action, figure things out . . . But when I tried to talk to Loni and Reese about the next step, neither of them had time for me. Loni had work stuff, Reese had club stuff, and they both just kept telling me to rest up and let my head heal.

A girl can only rest so much, though.

That’s why I was just sitting on the porch Saturday afternoon, trying to read when I heard the bikes coming. Now, if I’d learned anything over the past two days, I’d learned that there were always bikes coming and going from Reese Hayes’s house, so I didn’t think too much of it when I saw the motorcycles turn into the driveway. Then I recognized one of the riders as Painter, and my heart clenched. (Okay, so it wasn’t my heart that clenched, it was something centered a lot lower in my body, but don’t judge me. Painter was the kind of hot that no sane woman can resist. It never occurred to me to try.)

“Hi,” I managed to say as he swaggered toward the porch—and yeah, he had the swagger down cold, trust me.

“Hey,” he replied, giving me that same slow grin that’d first melted me at the hospital. (And the house. And the restaurant . . .) “This is Puck. Me and him are gonna hang out here tonight.”

I shot a look at his friend, who was a tall, solidly built guy with darkish skin, darker hair, and a nasty scar across his face. He didn’t look much older than me, but the flatness of his eyes sort of freaked me out.

“Reese didn’t say anything about someone coming over,” I replied, torn. I wanted Painter around, but his friend? Not so much. “I should probably check with Loni.”