Page 34 of Lockout

Isla paused, eyes narrowing on Daryl as if she was trying to figure out if he was guessing or knew for sure. Which meant they probably had…

“Oh my God,” I said, shaking my head. “No, no, no, I need brain bleach now.”

She pointed her finger at me. “You need to get your cute little butt moving.” She snapped at me. “Chop, chop lawyer girl.” With that she walked upstairs.

“Lawyer girl,” I said with a laugh. “She’s fun.”

“She’s a delight,” Daryl said. He stood up as well, picking up his coffee and his newspaper. “She’s also right.” He stared at me, giving me a sympathetic look. “All you have to do is show you’re interested and Lock will take it from there. Trust me.”

“I kissed him the other day,” I admitted. “And…nothing. I mean I thought maybe once we got back to the clubhouse…” If anything it seemed like he was avoiding me. Not a huge confidence booster.

“Listen to me, Darlin’,” Daryl said, “he’s been spending so much time denying himself the things he wants, it’s like second nature. You’re going to have to be completely upfront and honestwith him. Tell him what you want.Thenkiss him. It’ll work,” he reassured me, then walked off whistling a jaunty little tune.

That was easy for those two to say. It wasn’t up to them to seduce Lockout. Sighing, I settled in with my now cold coffee to overanalyze everything that had happened the other day with Lockout.

CHAPTER 15

Lockout

Tonight was the party and afterward everyone was going into lockdown. The women could still go to work as long as their men were with them, but otherwise I needed everyone here. Thankfully the kids were going into their Christmas break from school. If this took too long we’d have to come up with a reason to keep them all home. That school of ours was coming along, thanks to the construction crew Idaho put in place, but it would be so much easier once all the kids were going there. Then we wouldn’t need to come up with explanations when this shit happened.

I paused at the bottom of the stairs, my brows shooting up as Toxic came through the door of the clubhouse with his old lady slung over his shoulder. She was screaming like a banshee. Everyone else seemed to be off doing other things, so I was the only one witnessing this.

“Toxic! You jerk! I can’t just leave my ranch for anunknownamount of time! I have animals to feed!”

Grinning, I leaned against the railing and watched the show. She was kicking and hitting him as hard as she could, trying to get down. He scowled my way.

“I told you, we’re under lockdown,” he told her, tightening his grip on his feisty woman.

“I don’t even know what that means!” she shouted. “And I don’t care!”

He sighed, looking up at the ceiling as though praying for patience. “I’ve arranged to have someone watch over Cholla Summit, Billie. I wouldn’t leave the animals alone. Plus, Eris will be there watching over them, too.”

“I don’t want anyone watching over it.Iwant to be there!”

“Not happening.” He nodded at me, not mentioning what a dick I was for watching and chuckling at his predicament. Especially since I was the one who’d ordered the lockdown and put him in this mess to begin with.

I wasn’t about to let anyone continue business as usual with the LoS after Keely. It made everyone a target. And I’d fucking take a pickaxe to the brain before I allowed my family to be hurt. I’d given them enough time to get their shit in order. We were going to party tonight, then get serious about what we needed to do.

This wasn’t all on Keely. It’d been coming anyway. I couldn’t let these fuckers continue to operate in my state. Or at all. Hangman was too dangerous. And at some point he was going to figure out that we were responsible for his missing drugs.

I walked into my office, shutting the door behind me, and sat at my desk. Sighing, I tipped my head back and closed my eyes. There was a satisfaction at having Keely here, under my roof once more, but it was harder now. When she was in D.C. she was all I could think of, but there was no way to touch her.

With her here, I was having to utilize mass amounts of self-control to keep from storming her apartment door and releasing all my frustrations and stress on her gorgeous body. I wasn’t exactly on top of my game in the self-control department these days. Months of her being gone and worrying over her safety had me strung tight as fuck. All I wanted to do was burst through the walls just to hold her.

My brothers had been trying to convince me to go get my woman, by fighting me in our ring every damn day. I had bruises everywhere. But I wondered if they realized that my fights with them were also the only thing keeping me sane right now.

My office door opened, no knock, and I opened my eyes and stared at my twin. He was holding a six pack of beers, well, five as the sixth was already in his hand.

He took a long pull from the bottle, then came over, sat down, and thunked the pack on my desk. “Figured we could talk.”

My lips twitched. “Haven’t done this in a while.”

He grinned and put his boots up on my desk. I scowled at him, but he ignored me. He’d gone from CEO to biker faster than I thought he would. A domestic dog gone feral. Not that he wasn’t still running his own empire, but he’d handed over a lot of the work to his assistant and only dealt with it when needed. “Too damn long,” he said, giving me a probing look.

He wasn’t wrong. I’d held my grudge against him for too many years. Him not being there when our mother died had seemed like the most important thing for too fucking long. Even after Daph, our sister, died, I’d refused to drop my pride and go speak to him. Little had I known, all that time, that Mom had been the reason that Levi had been absent at her death. She’d asked him to do her a favor. To help our worthless father out of the trouble he’d found himself in.

Idaho had tracked him down, but he was already dead. That was no loss. The only reason my brother had gone was for my mother. He’d made it home the day after her funeral and when he refused to tell me where he was, I’d cut him out.

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