Page 52 of Roses Are Dead
“You want fast? You don’t get this.” He pointed a finger at Roishin. “If you want cheap? You definitely won’t get this.” He held the paper in the air and shook it.
I gritted my teeth, waiting for Roishin’s decision.
Roishin spoke. “I can wait. It’s more than I could hope for. Most custom smiths take months.” Under her breath she muttered to me, “Hopefully I’ll be working soon to pay you back.”
Fin’s eyebrow rose. “And how would you know how long it takes?”
She swallowed. “I commissioned an athame once. It took four months.”
And Carl took that from her. My fingers longed to wrap around his throat and squeeze the life out of him.
“Four months, that’s amateur hour. In four months, I can get half a suit of armor done.”
“Not without your arthritis acting up, you wouldn’t,” Betty Jo muttered. “Don’t listen to him. He’s just got a bad case of ego is all. We’ll have it ready for you when it’s ready.” She picked up the saddle bags and passed them to me. “Your girl? Worth every damn penny. Don’t forget it.”
That was a warning, not commentary or a sales pitch.
Maybe Roishin had worked a miracle on Betty Jo? She didn’t normally glom onto women that quickly. Unless… I glanced at Roishin’s arm. Of course. Betty Jo was firmly in her corner because she had to have seen that bruise and asked questions about it.
Which meant, Betty Jo knew more about Roishin than I did. That was a scary thought. One that bothered me all the ride home.
I pulled up to the gates of the compound at a quarter to six.
“Where are we?” Roishin asked over the rumble of my bike.
“A junkyard.”
“You’re not buying anything here, are you?”
I leaned away so I could twist around to see her face. The scowl on it was funny. I laughed. “Only a whiskey. You want one?”
“They sell whiskey at a junkyard?”
The clatter of the gates drowned out any chance for a reply I had. But I hadn’t intended on answering her, just showing her.
I pulled up to the club’s building and shut down the bike. She wasn’t as stiff or cold now and hopped off more gracefully than back at Fin’s. I held her hand to steady her anyway.
And didn’t let it go.
Why should I? This was the one place I needed to be the most convincing. Rumors would fly around about the new woman Bear was with. Hopefully, they’d get Carl angry. Even if they didn’t, a plan formed in my head that I was going to win Roishin from him. No matter what hold he had over her, I was going to break it. And that plan started somewhere between seeing her pretty legs that first night and seeing her rounded tits a few hours ago.
And it was the perfect time for it. We had company tonight. A crew of wannabes from Allentown parked their bikes in the second row of machines surrounding the door. We’d met them several times before, and rode with them occasionally. Wolf and Jackson were eyeing them up because their presence filled the space on our club’s border with the Demons. If they took the heat off us, we didn’t have to work as hard to keep the peace.
But other clubs were wooing them, too.
And that made them dangerous, and valuable.
If we could insure they didn’t swing to our biggest rival, the Wicked Legion, then our lives would be a lot simpler.
“Fair warning, you’re not ready for this. But it’s showtime. Follow my lead.” I pushed open the door and a wall of noise blasted out. The night was kicking into high gear. A stripper stood on the bar, half-naked already. The place was packed with hangers and brothers. I searched for any sign of old ladies, and saw none. Not even Tits.
But Wolf was here. I beelined for him, weaving through the crowd with an occasional shove to get some idiot drunk out of the way so no one would molest Roishin. I stopped in front of him. He’d propped up his leg on a barrel and leaned back in the fancy barstool we’d gifted to him last year. His pose was relaxed, but his gaze wasn’t.
“Is this Rose?”
“Roishin,” I corrected.
Wolf’s eyes glittered as he studied her. “You’ve been to Betty Jo’s.”
