Buck let me hug him for a while before he spoke.

“Be happy to spend all day standin’ in the sunshine with you pressed up to me, Toots, but a fuckwit kidnapped my woman and I gotta do something about that.”

Oh dear.

I tipped my head back to look at him.

“He didn’t hurt me, just, um…tasered me and tied me up, and he scared me and, um…creeped me out. He called me ‘pretty-pretty,’ and I think he enjoyed it when I got upset about Tia. And then he told me he wanted me to be his girlfriend, but it was my choice. I walked, or kind of ran out of there and no one tried to stop me.”

After I finished, I wondered what on earth I was thinking, sharing all of that with West Hardy.

I knew better than that.

And because I did, I was holding a snake in my arms and I was going to have to learn how to be a charmer pretty danged quick.

“He tased you?”

Uh-oh.

“Um…” I mumbled.

“Fuckin’ shit,” he muttered, tensing his arms around me.

“Buck—” I started but stopped when his arms tensed again.

“Babe, I’ll share ’cause you’ll worry if I don’t. An asshole like Esposito, middle management who thinks he’s bigger than he is and his bullshit is pissin’ off the big man, I can ride in, beat the shit out of and leave unconscious. The Bosnians, no. The Bosnians require planning. I’m not gonna ride in, backed by my boys, and beat the shit outta Babić, not if I don’t want C4 blowin’ up Ace and everything around it, mine and my boys’ garroted bodies lying in the Dive before the explosives are triggered.”

I sucked in a shocked breath, and he kept talking.

“So, I plan, and we take care a’ this shit so it won’t blow back. And we will take care of this shit so it won’t blow back. But you, you got a brother at your side whenever I’m not.”

Not that again.

“Buck—” I started but stopped when his arms tensed again, this time squeezing the breath out of me.

“Clara, babe, do not even think about tryin’ to discuss this shit with me.”

“Okay,” I wheezed immediately, and he loosened his arms so I kept talking, normally this time. “But before you go, can we make another deal?”

“Depends on the deal.”

Figured.

“I want to know what you know about Tia, and I want to know it when you find out about it. But I don’t want to know the possible results of taking on the Bosnians.”

“You can’t have the first, you got the last.”

My brows rose and I asked, “Pardon?”

“You like your car, you like your job, you like my kids, you like my house and you like sharin’ my bed. I keep you in the know as nothin’ or somethin’ that makes you cry with your face planted in my chest rolls in, babe, you likin’ that shit dims and you walk around under a cloud. Let me deal with the cloud. You need to know, I’ll tell you. Until then, darlin’, my meaning in life is, you live in the sunshine.”

Oh God.

It was happening.

God!

Let me deal with the cloud.

I stared up at him, knowing it was happening.

My meaning in life…

You live in the sunshine.

I was falling in love with West Hardy.

And I knew what this feeling was, and it wasn’t what Rogan led me to believe was real and then walked all over.

This actually was real.

This was the real thing.

This was it.

This was love.

I was in love with a biker.

I was now, truly, officially a biker babe.

Oh God!

How did I go from not knowing if I wanted this life to falling in love with the president of an MC?

He gave me another squeeze.

“Do we have a deal?” he prompted, clearly not having any clue about the turmoil of my thoughts.

I couldn’t speak, so I nodded.

“Good, then lay another one on me, babe, I got shit to do.”

“Buck.”

“What?”

I stared at him, warmth and sweetness rushing through me, and accompanying it was fear.

I was falling in love with him.

But right then, after being kidnapped, after finding out things were very not good with Tia, I couldn’t hack it if he wasn’t doing the same with me.

That being falling in love.

He’d said I took care of his house, his office, his kids, his sexual needs and his towels.

He did not say I held a place in his heart.

So to his question, I only had one reply.

“Nothing,” I whispered, got on my toes and laid another one on him.

25

A Man with Vision

My head jerked around when I heard the crash and Buck’s hand slid down to cup the cheek of my behind.

“It’s okay, baby,” he murmured. “They’re just gettin’ rowdy.”

I looked down and relaxed into him.

More aptly, he meant rowdier, but I didn’t have it in me to correct him.

We’d just had sex, good sex, amazing sex in his room in the Dive.

It was good being there with him, even though the room was no less filthy.

It felt nostalgic in a happy way because this was where it all began.

This room.

This bed.

This was where I started to fall in love with him.

It had been three weeks since I realized I was taking the fall, the day I’d learned about Tia.

And in those three weeks, I’d fought it, feared it.

But I fell.

It was done.

A fait accompli.

I was in love with West Hardy.

Nothing had happened in those three weeks except life. I did not get kidnapped. No one attacked one of his children. No angry fathers showed up on the doorstep.

Although Buck had filed custody proceedings and Kristy took her anger about this out on Tatiana, and, I was suspecting (even though he didn’t say anything, keeping a stiff upper lip for his sister and his dad, and me too), Gear, she, nor Knuckles roared up the drive itching for a fight.

Tatiana and Gear were coping at home.

Tatiana because, for the first time ever, outside of her brother, she had a listening ear, and in the life stakes for Tatie, I was a double threat. I had the heretofore unknown capacity to talk sense into a sixteen-year-old girl and I had all the time she needed to listen.

But Debbie, Minnie, Lorie, and Pinky were also checking in, texting her, sending her funny gifs or hilarious TikToks.

All of this just letting her know she wasn’t alone. She might be far away, but at home, she was missed and loved.

And lastly, there had been no news (that I knew) about Tia.

However, I had started my period and finished it. Lefty had told me the delay was likely due to stress. And now I was on the pill.

But that was all that had happened. The big news in life, a custody feud and the end of a pregnancy scare.

The rest was just work…food…family…friends…sex…Buck…life.

And outside of the nagging worry I tried not to feel (and failed) about Tia, life was good.

Now it was a Thursday, and for some reason the members decided to throw one of their big parties.

This was, I’d learned from the girls, something they did often.