Page 112 of Beyond the Badge: Nox

“Do you think it would’ve been better for you if she had stayed with your father?”

“I can’t say. But what I can is, she shouldn’t have lied to the authorities and also to us about him. Once I found out the truth, it took me a long time to forgive her.” And to this day, she still occasionally had to beat back the bitterness.

“But eventually you gave her a second chance.”

Liyah held it against her mother for a long time. In truth, it was both Magnum and his wife Cait who convinced her to forgive her mother. She forgave her but didn’t forget. And never would.

What her mother did hurt her and her brother’s relationship with their father. It also critically wounded Magnum.

“She’s different now. If she wasn’t, the boys wouldn’t be there for the weekend.”

He nodded and when he began to pull his T-shirt free from his jeans, she yelled, “Wait!”

He froze and his brow furrowed. “What? Too soon?”

“Definitely not too soon… But go slower.”

The creases deepened along his forehead. “Why?”

Liyah wiggled her eyebrows.

Did the man actually roll his eyes?

She grinned. “Do a girl a solid and goslooooow.”

“So you can ogle me?” he teased.

Oh yes, his true personality was beginning to re-emerge. Those little glimpses gave her hope that he would soon shed that heavy blanket of grief.

Of course, he’d still have moments of sadness when he remembered Jackie. She experienced those herself. Especially when she saw Mark in Devyn. In his features. In a look. In the way he smiled or laughed.

Her fifteen-year-old might never had met his father, but he sure took after him in many ways.

And sometimes that caught her off guard.

But it wasn’t Mark peeling off his T-shirt and exposing a body that was drool-worthy.

It was Bradley Lennox.

Her eyes weren’t drawn to his hairless chest. Instead, she focused on his club colors tattooed on his left pec above his heart.

She rose from where she was perched on the edge of the bed and approached him. “Is that your only tattoo?”

“It is.”

If the man was going to have tattoos, she expected him to have one of his wife’s name or one in memory of her. “Most MC members have their club colors inked onto their backs.” She stopped only inches from him and slowly traced the lines of the top and bottom rocker, as well as the center patch lightly with her fingernail.

“Were not an average MC.”

“That’s true. Do most of you have a BAMC tat?” She dragged her fingernails over his warm skin. First across his chest and one nipple before heading south.

“I don’t know. I don’t inspect my brothers’ bodies.”

She grinned. “Well, if you need a volunteer…”

“They all have wives or girlfriends.”

She thought of Cross and Nash. “Or husbands.”

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