Page 35 of Being Lost

She’s putting herself down. I frown, glad Dart hadn’t heard her. She’d learned to dance to put a spark into her non-existent love life with her now, thanks to us, dead ex. But whatever she could have done wouldn’t have worked—he’d only married her for money and never wanted her for herself. His abuse had worsened, and she’d taken off, running literally for her life. To support her and her sick kid, she’d applied for work at the Satan’s Devils strip club in Tucson. While on the surface she hadn’t appeared to be stripper material, and certainly didn’t want to take off all her clothes, they’d made concessions once they saw how good a dancer she was on that pole. She had customers lined up around the block.

One comment from her ex was all it had taken to make her doubt herself. Now she dances for her own enjoyment, and for Dart’s. It’s why he’s so adamant no other fucker should watch her, but I doubt there’s a man here who hasn’t sneaked in to watch.

No one could doubt how happy Alex and Dart are together. But it had been touch and go at one point. While Dart was kidding himself his feelings for her didn’t run deep, her ex had kidnapped her, tortured her and left her for dead. It was then he realised how much he really felt for her, and luckily, we were there to save her in time.

It’s strange how things turn out. That allowance that her parents were paying her ex to stay married to her? Well it stopped when we made sure he wasn’t going to bother her anymore or couldn’t as he was dead. They weren’t going to pay a cent when Alex committed the transgression of marrying a white man. Interracial marriages in their eyes was the ultimate sin.

The reminder that Dart had almost lost the woman he loved by being an ass gives me pause for thought. Am I risking doing the same thing? Should I be thinking of how I might be able to make this work, instead of trying to push my embryonic feelings for Patsy away? I can take things slow, see where it, if there even is a chance of being an it, leads. No need to rush into things.

“I’ll never be able to move like Alex.” Patsy’s grinning as she wipes her chalky hands on a rag seeming to be over her embarrassment. “I’m too old for a start. But it looks fun.”

“I’m trying to get back into shape,” Alex tells her. “I’m usually here in the mornings. Eva, or Cindy watch Isla—she’s my one-year-old daughter—for me, and I have some time to myself. They wear her out so she naps in the afternoons and it allows me to get on with some work.”

“Work? What do you do?” Patsy asks with interest.

“She’s the club’s lawyer,” I answer for her. “A fuckin’ good one at that.”

Patsy’s eyebrows rise as she takes in the information, but doesn’t comment on it. But I suspect the VP’s woman has gone up in her estimation. Instead, she asks a different question.

“Eva? Cindy? Are they old ladies as well?”

Alex giggles at the thought, which makes me grin. “Ah, no. I’m the only one of those. They’re club girls, but they’re mostly okay. Eva’s a nurse which can be handy.”

Alex could have been a bitch to the sweet butts, but apart from a rough start with Eva for which Dart takes all the blame, the two have become friends. Alex has never lorded it over them, saying each to their own. Dart’s mentioned she got very friendly with the strippers back in Tucson, so understands a girl’s got to do whatever she needs to get by. As long as they keep well away from Dart, she appears to have no problem with the girls and what they get up to with the brothers.

Now my dick has decided it’s going to behave, I remember why I approached her. “Patsy, I need to talk to you and Dan now. Where is he?”

“Upstairs, listening to music, I think. I’ll go and get him.”

“Prospect?” I yell, getting Wrangler’s attention. “Get Dan to come down here.”

I turn back to find Patsy grinning. “Useful.” She nods to where Wrangler’s taking the stairs two at a time.

A motorcycle engine starts, the sound bouncing off the windows, soon joined by more. Gradually the clubroom is emptying as some members return to whatever they were doing before I’d summoned them for church. Dusty and Scribe have obviously decided to call it a day, as they’re already propping up the bar, and Smoker walks past tossing his lighter in his hands as he goes outside to have a cigarette. I notice him glance toward Alex with a slight narrowing of his eyes.

Dan appears quickly, even preceding the prospect down the stairs. I nod at Dart and jerk my head, then the four of us retreat to my office.

“Has anything happened?” Patsy asks anxiously once she sits down.

I stare at her for a moment, regretting that I’m going to demolish the smile that dancing with Alex had put on her face. Taking a breath, I tell her straight, “Alder’s looking for you, Patsy.”

As far as she’s concerned, I’ve told her nothing new. “I know that. He thinks he’ll find Dan if he finds me.”

After glancing sideways at Dart, I shake my head and spell it out. “He’s not looking for Dan. He’s only searching for you. We’ve found nothing to suggest he thinks Dan is alive.”

Dan’s brow creases and he sits bolt upright. “Why? That doesn’t make sense. What would he want with Mom?” To his credit, he looks dismayed as if the news Alder’s searching for his mom is worse than his being the target himself. I find myself liking the kid even more.

Patsy’s looking equally confused. “I know nothing about him or his activities. I’ve avoided Phil as best I could since we divorced over eighteen years ago. As I had sole custody and he didn’t want to joint parent, we didn’t even meet to discuss the kids. I knew Alder only while I was married, but I always detested the man and even then, had very little to do with him.”

“You said Alder came to the funeral, Mom.”

“He did.” She nods at her son. The pained look crossing her face tells me while the funeral had been a sham, it had still been painful. “It was the first time I’d seen him since before the divorce. He said nothing except not to expect anything from Phil’s will, that everything that was Phil’s would go to him now. It was amusing as it was only land. Phil’s house had by that time burned to the ground.”

Dart’s hands are steepled under his chin, and his elbows resting on his knees. He leans forward. “He left you nothing, Patsy?”

“Not a thing. I didn’t expect it. We’d been apart more years than we were married, and there was no love lost between us.”

The room goes quiet as we’re all lost in thought.

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