Page 18 of Rodeo (Marked Skulls MC 2)
“You’re going to be fine,” he said softly and I fell into his arms.
I could have died today! The realization hit me like a rock, and I clung to him like he was the only one who could make all this go away.
We were standing in the middle of my bathroom, and Rodeo was holding me tight, stroking my back and my hair softly.
“You need to get some sleep, woman,” he said, and before I knew what he was going to do, he had lifted me up in his arms. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and allowed him to carry me out of the bathroom and back into my bedroom.
He laid me down on the bed gently and was beginning to tuck me in.
“Rodeo,” I said, gripping his wrist tightly. He stopped and looked into my eyes.
“When will I see you again? I asked him. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to my forward. He was smiling, his blue eyes were glittering.
“Go to sleep, Jordan. You’ll see me in the morning. I’m not going anywhere,” he said.
Those words were like music to my ears. I felt my breath catch in my throat as I tried to control the excitement. I couldn’t believe that he had suggested this, all on his own! He was going to spend the night with me again. He was going to sleep in my bed!
I watched as he walked around the bed to the other side and got in under the covers beside me.
“Goodnight, Jordan,” he said in the dark, and I slid over closer to him. He was cradling me in his arms and I breathed in his scent.
“Goodnight, Rodeo,” I replied softly.
Chapter 15
Rodeo
This morning when I woke up in Jordan’s bed, I didn’t panic the way I had the previous morning. I turned to look at her and saw her beautiful face deep in sleep. I reached out and stroked her cheek softly and her eyelids fluttered in her sleep.
I got out of bed and went to the kitchen to make us both two mugs of coffee. I wanted to make her breakfast, but I’d never cooked anything a day in my life. So, I had no other choice but to throw open all the cupboard doors till I found the box of cereal. I poured it into two bowls, poured some milk into a jug and I arranged all of it on a tray.
In the bedroom, Jordan was just about waking up when I walked in.
“What’s all this?” she asked groggily, and she had a smile on her face.
I placed the tray on the bed between us, and got in beside her again.
“Just wanted to apologize for my rudeness yesterday,” I told her and she leaned over towards me and we kissed.
I didn’t want to fight it anymore. It satisfied me way more to please her, to spend time with Jordan and keep her safe—than it made me angry while resisting this new change in my life.
Jordan sat up in bed and sipped her coffee. She couldn’t stop grinning, and I couldn’t stop staring at her.
“I am in shock!” she said with a laugh, while she poured milk into the bowl of cereal. I was already eating mine. I couldn’t remember the last time I had breakfast with someone I’d slept with the previous night. That had probably never happened; and yet this felt natural. It felt like the most comfortable thing to do.
“So am I!” I replied and we smiled at each other. When I looked into Jordan’s dark glittering eyes, she shied away from me and bit down on her lip.
“I’m guessing you’re going to be busy today again?” she asked and I breathed in deeply.
“I need to sort this out before it gets out of hand, and after what happened last night—I want to make sure that you’re safe,” I told her. Jordan nodded her head and kept her eyes averted from me. I’d reminded her of what happened last night, I’d made her worried and sad again even though that wasn’t my intention.
“But I don’t want you to spend the day by yourself,” I said and she snapped her head up to look at me.
“Can I go with you?” she asked, and I saw the eagerness in her eyes. She was like an excited child and I couldn’t help but smile.
“It might be a little too dangerous, I’m not sure where I’m going to go and what I might have to do. You’ll be safer here,” I said and she seemed disappointed by my answer, but nodded her head anyway.
“Yeah, I’m sure you’re right,” she said.
“But I’m going to ask Lila and Girth to come over and spend the day with you,” I added and she was looking at me again.
“Really? I like Lila,” she said and now she was smiling again. It was crazy how happy it made me to see Jordan smile.
“And Girth is the best man for the job. I trust him, and he’s a good bodyguard,” I said and she was nodding her head.
“Thank you Rodeo, that makes me feel much safer,” she told me and I reached for her face to stroke her soft luscious cheeks. I couldn’t believe how lucky I felt to wake up beside her, for her to give herself to me. I was glad that I’d kicked down her door. That Hugh had told me about his uncooperative witness.
“You don’t have to thank me, Jordan. I want to do this for you. I want to make sure you’re being looked after,” I said and she leaned towards me so that we could kiss again.
***
I parked my bike outside Fred’s apartment building. The last time I was here was ten days ago. After a night of drinking, we had both stumbled up the stairs and into his apartment. I’d taken the pull-out couch in his living room and Fred had passed out on the floor with a bottle of beer in his hand.
I pushed my hands into the pockets of my jacket now, as I stared up at the window of his apartment. I hadn’t been able to make myself go to his place before this. I didn’t want to be flooded with memories of laughing and chilling with the man I most looked up to. I had to clench my jaws so that I wouldn’t growl out in anger.
I needed to do this. I needed to go into Fred’s apartment and look around. Girth might have been right—if there was a personal connection between him and the Hell’s Drifters, this was the only place I could find it. I had been mad at Girth for suggesting it at first, but now I had my doubts.
Did I really know Fred as well as I thought I did? As well as he knew me? He had a life before we met, he was at least three decades older than me—I realized I was being naive in assuming that there were no secrets between us.
Reality was sinking in right now, as I took the stairs slowly up to his apartment. Fred was dead, and it was my responsibility now to avenge his death. That was what he would have done for me.
I waited outside his apartment door, wondering what I might find inside. What had he left behind for me to find? Did I even want to know?
***
The apartment was deathly quiet as I should have expected it to be, but it was also cold and dark. The first thing I did when I walked into Fred’s home, was pull open all the curtains on the windows.
Everything seemed to be in its place, Fred hadn’t left in a hurry. But what was he doing in that neighborhood at five in the morning?
I walked through the rooms, and I couldn’t stop picturing Fred there with me. He made a mean chocolate-chip pancake, I thought and grinned.
I didn’t know where to begin looking. I ran my fingers over his collection of DVDs and picked up his electric guitar from the floor. Why had the Hell’s Drifters picked him as a target? How did they know where to find him at five in the morning? Were they following him?
I walked into his bedroom and looked around some more. In his closet his small collection of clothes lay hanging neatly. He wasn’t packing to go anywhere.
Then I remembered something that Jordan had told me. She said that when Fred heard the biker approaching, he began to run. Why would he have run if he wasn’t expecting someone to hurt him?
I could feel my adrenaline pumping in my veins. Did Fred make a run for it because he knew that they were coming for him? Was he expecting to get shot? Girth’s theory that there might have been a personal connection between Fred and Hell’s Drifters; was beginning to sound more likely by the minute.
There was a desk in the corner of his bedroom, underneath a bolted window. I pulled open the drawers
and flipped through the stacks of papers and notebooks in there.
As I rummaged, I found one stack of what looked like letters, tied together with a string. I was curious. This was an unlikely thing for Fred to do. He had neatly tied a string around some old looking letters and he just never struck me as the kind of man to do a thing like that. I never knew him as the sentimental type.
I picked up the bunch of pages and sat down on Fred’s bed. These were handwritten letters, but I didn’t recognize the handwriting. I flipped over one of the letters and saw his name at the bottom of it. Fred had written a letter? Another unlikely thing for him to do. How many other things didn’t I know about him?
Fred wouldn’t have wanted me to read these letters—they were personal, but I was curious and I needed to know the truth. He had written this letter to a woman called Sarah. I didn’t know any Sarah, and I racked my brain to think if Fred had ever mentioned a Sarah to me.
Dear Sarah,
