Page 13 of Soulless Saint

I winced. Not the best first impression. But I could fix that.

“So, she’s here then?”

He heaved an annoyed sigh.

Okay, obviously she was here. I didn’t pretend to be the smartest motherfucker, but give me a break, there was a bottle’s worth of Aberfeldy still filtering its way through my abused kidneys.

Where, was what I meant to ask.

“What about the motel?” I thumbed back through the messages in the group chat as I continued to burn my tongue on the steaming coffee.

Hardin wiped a palm over his face and turned back to face me. “There are over fifty motels in Santa Clarita, Kale, the girl could be at any one of them.”

“Shouldn’t be hard to narrow down.”

“We have our own shit to deal with before we can take a goddamn babysitting shift.”

I cocked my head at him, taking note of the firm knot between his brows. The way his dark eyes shifted over the floor. He really didn’t want jack shit to do with this girl.

His loss.

My fucking gain.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll make some calls.”

No problem, big bro, I’d handle it, make sure we kept our word to our cousins. Hell, I might even enjoy it. I scrolled back up to the photo of the girl from earlier in the group chat.

“What’s that?” Hardin asked, stopping just shy of shutting himself into his room, which really would’ve been the best thing to happen all morning.

My brows pinched as I followed his sharp gaze to the front of the house, hearing what he heard. The echo of footfalls against the flagstone path leading to the front door.

Hardin drew his weapon, and I set my coffee down on the coffee table, my shaky fingers upturning the whole damn thing on the floor, scalding my bare feet.

The front door crashed open, and I whirled around, my towel falling into the coffee on the floor.

“Fuck, Ma!” I grumbled as Hardin put his gun away, opening his mouth to speak before he saw who was following our mother into the house. Gillian fucking DeLuca.

She made no secret of her obvious approval as her beady brown eyes zeroed in on my member. Ma on the other hand.

“Ugh, Kaleb,” she cried, rolling her eyes as she hefted three Costco bags into the house. “Put some clothes on.”

“Then I wouldn’t be the heathen you raised.”

She scoffed in disgust, and I didn’t move to lift the coffee soaked towel, wondering if Gillian was going to move from the door any time this week or if she truly planned to stand there gawking like a mutt before a feast of bones.

Hardin tossed me a pair of dirty gym shorts from the hamper, and I grudgingly put them on if only to stop Gill from soaking the welcome mat with drool.

“Better,” Ma said with an approving smirk as she made her way into the living room to draw me into a hug, her long graying black hair brushing over my shoulder. She pulled away, getting a better look at me. “You look like shit.”

“You know you can pick up the phone and call before you just show up? That way you might not get a show you didn’t want a ticket to.”

Her eyes crinkled and she gripped my chin, giving it a shake. “I like to keep you on your toes.”

I jerked my chin out of her grasp. “The fuck is all that?”

Hardin was already in the kitchen, studiously ignoring Gill as he went rifling through all the bags. She regarded him with a wary eye, keeping a constant minimum of three feet between them at all times. If only I commanded the same fear, maybe she’d leave me alone, too.

As it was, Gillian DeLuca was what my father liked to affectionately call a Saint’s Sinner. One in a chain of many women who venerated us not with prayers or tribute, but with hands and tits and lips of both varieties. All in the pursuit of becoming a permanent fixture. The wife of a Saint.

---