Nolan: Return to Signal Bend Read online

  He stared hard at her, then reached out and pulled the stupid mistletoe headband from her hair and dropped it onto the bar. She’d forgotten all about it.

  “Let’s take a look at your truck,” was all he said, and he held out his hand for her keys.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Len had pulled Nolan from the clubhouse because they were on patrol together. There wasn’t much to being on patrol, not these days. Since Signal Bend had no police force or sheriff substation, the Horde kept order. That had been true since long before Nolan had been Horde, or had even heard of the club or the town.

  They could afford a small police force now, and about once a year or so, somebody at a town meeting floated the idea, but it never got any traction. Since the Horde had put down Julio Santaveria and gone straight, Signal Bend was a safe, quiet place. Almost no crime happened here, and that was because the Horde was the law, and when people got out of line, it wasn’t a courtroom they were in when the penalty came due. So far, most of the townspeople, even the newcomers, were content with that arrangement.

  The business owners all paid the club for protection, but the residents got it for free. There were some people among the newcomers who didn’t quite know what to make of bikers riding around town, enforcing the rules, and those were usually the ones standing up making an issue of needing the police or the county sheriff. Once they saw the numbers and understood the bargain they were getting, most of them shut up, too.

  If no one from away ever came to Signal Bend, then they’d have had themselves a little utopia. But a big part of the town getting better and stronger was attracting people from away to spend money in Signal Bend businesses. Not everyone from away was down with the rules. The Horde handled that, too.

  During the day, the Horde assigned a couple of members in four-hour shifts to be present in town—hanging out on Main Street or sitting in Marie’s Diner with a cup of coffee, whatever. Just visible. During the night, they did the same thing, but they checked every few hours on the closed shops in town, they did a circuit over all the residential streets, and then they parked their asses at Tuck’s, where shit, if there was any, almost always went down.

  Tuck’s had been the roughneck bar for decades, and it looked it. There was a level of violence that was expected, even welcomed, within its beer-soaked walls. A lot of town tension had been worked out in neighborly brawls, and the Horde had participated in most of them. It was their job to keep things neighborly: no weapons, no serious injuries, and no destruction of property. When things got going, everybody moved the furniture out of the way first, and when things calmed down, everybody put the tables back and had a drink together.

  When assholes from away got to breaking those rules, the Horde took care of it. And they were on the hook for any damage, too. That was part of their end of the protection deal: They made right what they couldn’t control.

  Nolan’s favorite club work was patrol, and since he’d taken the SAA flash, he was in charge of it. He’d been sitting at the bar waiting for Len to come out of that meeting with Badger, Isaac, and Show so they could take their shift.

  That hadn’t been the first time that Badger had sat down in his office with the old leadership of the club. Nolan had asked before why they were meeting out of the Keep like that, and Badge’s answer had been that he was just getting some advice. It made sense, Nolan supposed: Isaac, Show, and Len had a lot of years in kuttes, and they had shepherded the club through times of quiet and chaos. They were also major leaders in the town itself, in business and in the community. Badge had only had the gavel for a year and a half.

  Still, Nolan would have been happier if those ‘advice’ meetings had at least included the rest of the current officers: him; Double A, their VP; and Dom, their Intelligence Officer. He loved Isaac, Show, and Len about as much as it was possible for him to love, and he liked the thought that the Horde table was balanced by leaders on each side—the old and the new—but Badger wasn’t the sole new leader of the current club.

  As open as Badge was about sitting down with them, as much as Nolan trusted all of those guys, he didn’t like it.

  While he and Len rode their patrol on this frosty night a couple of days before Christmas, Nolan kept his mind turned toward that topic. He wasn’t working out a solution so much as trying to decide whether a solution was warranted. He decided he was going to call Badger on it again.

  He was also trying not to think about kissing Iris. He felt quite sure that Len would be on him about that as soon as they dismounted at Tuck’s, so he figured he’d deal with that problem then.

  ~oOo~

  He was right; he hadn’t even gotten his helmet off before Len said, “You and Iris?”

  Nolan ignored him and locked his helmet down. As he walked around the bikes, Len put his tattooed hand on Nolan’s arm. “You know you can’t play around there.”

  Nolan stopped and faced his brother. “Fuck you. You think I’m a moron? Or just an asshole?”

  Len smirked, his eyes alight with good humor. “I think you had your tongue in Show’s little girl’s mouth, and I think you like your pretty face just like it is, so I’m wondering if you’re one or the other, or maybe just nuts.”

  Nolan didn’t know why he’d kissed Iris. He never had before.

  Back in the day, while he was still prospecting—and still a moron—he and Rose had made out a few times. They were almost exactly the same age, and she was pretty, and he’d thought, for a minute and a half, that he’d have liked to be with her. But the more he got to know Rose, the less interested he got. She was nice enough, but her interests were nothing like his. He’d found her boring. Luckily, the feeling had been mutual, and they’d easily fallen back to club-kid affection for each other. He liked Rose better as a sister or cousin or whatever.

  He’d always thought of Iris as the little sister. She was cute; it wasn’t that he didn’t find her attractive. She was short and had more curves than Rose, with a really great rack. Her weight fluctuated a little bit from visit to visit. Tonight, he’d noticed that she was pretty damn fit, and those tits had been hard to miss.

  She changed the color of her hair all the time—really changed it, not just different shades of red, the way Shannon did. In the past few years, Nolan had seen Iris’s hair in black, brown, a few different reds, and several different blondes. Tonight, as far as he could tell in the weird lighting of the Hall, she was a pale blonde.

  There was nothing at all wrong with the way she looked.

  She’d been away at college when he’d come back from SoCal. Since he’d been back, she’d actually spent more time in Signal Bend than she ever had before, spending breaks and whole summers with Show and Shannon, so he guessed he’d gotten to know her a little, but he’d never before had the urge to kiss her.

  Of course, in the years since he’d been back from SoCal, he hadn’t had that kind of urge to kiss anyone. When his body got restless, he found a club girl, but that was about calming his body down. His heart had not been paying attention for a very long time.

  Maybe that was why he’d kissed Iris. The urge had come on him when she’d said that thing about not having any dreams and plans. Memories of Analisa had swarmed up and filled his head and heart. Ani had had a whole list of dreams and plans. All the time they’d been together, she’d been trying to live them all, to live a full, complete life as fast as she could, while the bomb inside her body was ticking away its countdown. She’d done it, too. She’d crossed off all the items on her list. And he had helped her. And then she’d died.

  Thinking about Ani, he’d kissed Iris.

  And that was seriously fucked up. Maybe he was an asshole after all.

  He tried to feel bad about it, but he didn’t. Because something old and rusty had stirred inside him during that first kiss, and when he’d gone back in for a second, he’d truly been kissing Iris.

  What did that mean, though?

  Len pulled open Tuck’s door, and the jukebox blared Blake Shelton in
to the night. As Nolan moved to step in, Len grabbed his arm again. “Be smart, Nolan. For your sake and hers.”

  Being confronted with the complications of a kiss he didn’t even understand pissed him off, and he yanked his arm free. “Back off, old man.”

  Len gave him an irritated look, but kept his trap shut. They went into Tuck’s. Other than the booming juke, the place was quiet and only about half full. Looked to be a cake patrol. Nolan would have some time to think.

  He wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not.

  ~oOo~

  On Christmas Eve, the Horde and most of Signal Bend spent just about the whole day doing a gift drive for needy families throughout a wide swath of mid-Missouri. They set up a collection center in the Signal Bend Visitor and Information Center on Main Street, and several of the shops set up gift wrapping stations. The cafés offered hot chocolate, eggnog, and snacks, and they even had a country band playing on the boardwalk, keeping warm under big standing heaters.

  Nolan’s job was to keep an eye out and make sure that everything stayed calm and nobody had some bright idea about sneaking off with even one package. He had Tommy, Saxon, and Mel helping him out. He was standing near the Visitor Center door, trying to tell himself that he wasn’t freezing his ass off, when his mom and Loki came up, leading Bart’s kids: Lexi, Ian, and Declan. All the Horde women had been taking shifts helping Bart out with his kids since he’d moved them all home in October.

  Seeing his mom, he smiled, but before he could say anything, Lexi came up quickly and hugged his legs. She was Loki’s age, ten, but she was little and barely came up past his waist. He crouched down and hugged her, and then Ian and Deck were on him, too. He pulled the boys into his embrace as well.

  He’d seen them only a week or so ago, but it was always like this when he did. They’d all been born and raised in SoCal, and since he’d spent more than a year with the SoCal charter, he guessed he was the most familiar face in Signal Bend besides their father.

  “Hey, guys. You here to help with the gifts?”

  “Yeah we’re helping SANTA,” four-year-old Declan answered.

  “That’s great, buddy.”

  Nolan kissed Lexi’s head and stood up. It always made him hurt a little to be around these kids; his affection for them was woven with threads of his memories of Analisa. One of her dreams had been to be a mother. Since there had been no chance at all that she’d ever realize that in reality, he’d found a way to give her the experience, and they had ‘borrowed’ Bart and Riley’s kids for a weekend. That memory was one of his best—and most painful.

  Bart and Riley were deeper parts of his memories of Analisa for other reasons, too. Riley had been friends with Ani’s father. She had introduced them. Without Riley, he would have never known her, loved her, or lost her.

  And now Bart had lost Riley. He’d moved their kids home, back to Signal Bend, because Riley had been killed in club violence—violence that David Vega was largely responsible for. That loss was still fresh, and it filled Bart’s eyes no matter what he was doing or whom he was with. Nolan could see it in Lexi and Ian’s eyes, too. An empty place where their mother belonged.

  Yeah, Nolan’s feelings about Bart and his kids were deep and sharp.

  Bart came up on the boardwalk, and his kids went to him. Lexi, who’d been hurt in the same violence, still limped noticeably.

  Nolan’s mom was carrying a cardboard box full of new toys for the drive. He took it from her and carried it into the Visitor’s Center, where Lilli, Isaac’s old lady, and Shannon were logging in all the donations, and Tasha, Len’s old lady, and Candy, Double A’s, were sorting everything into groups to send out for wrapping.

  He set the box down at Lilli’s side. When he turned, he met Candy’s eyes and smiled. She had been a club girl, once upon a time, and Nolan had had quite the crush.

  He wasn’t sure he would have been man enough to fall in love with a club girl, living with the knowledge that the woman he loved had been with so many of his brothers. He thought that might make him crazy. But Double A was in deep, and it didn’t seem to bother him. They had a baby girl together now, and they seemed happy as could be.

  As Nolan came back out onto the sidewalk, Ian stood just outside the door. He was staring down the way, scowling, and Nolan followed his look. He saw his mom and Bart talking, just out of hearing range. It seemed normal to Nolan, though they stood pretty close together.

  He got down to Ian’s level. “What’s up, Ian?”

  The boy shrugged, bringing a reluctant shoulder up and then dropping it. “I don’t like my dad talking to her.”

  Ian was only eight, but Nolan still felt defensive for his mom. “They’re just talking.”

  “Everybody wants to be my mom. I just want my mom.”

  Nolan knew that feeling intensely well. After Havoc had been killed, it seemed like every single one of the remaining Horde men had decided to step into his place. Len had been the most obnoxious about it. That guy had seemed always to be around exactly at the moment that Nolan most needed to be alone, when he’d thought he was closest to just losing his shit completely. It had pissed him off so much. But it had probably kept him alive.

  Even to this day, ten years later, the older Horde slipped into Dad Mode with him—Len had done it just the other night, warning him off of Iris.

  “They’re helping your dad, dude. And you. Not trying to be your mom. I promise.”

  Ian scowled, and Nolan stood up and ruffled the boy’s blond head. He also knew that sometimes a kid just needed to be left alone to feel angry and hurt.

  When Bart put his arms around Nolan’s mom and gave her a quick but sincere hug, Ian made a strangled kind of noise and stalked off to sit alone on a bench at the end of the boardwalk.

  Feeling kicked by emotion himself and needing to get out of that scene, Nolan stepped off the boardwalk and decided to go check on the loading area, where the club van and three loaners were being filled with the packages wrapped and ready for delivery. They were rolling packages from the wrapping stations back in mail carts that Cox had borrowed from his uncle who worked at the main post office in Springfield.

  Iris was back there with Badger, Isaac, and Gia, Isaac and Lilli’s daughter. Fuck. He hadn’t seen Iris since the other night. With an audience, he couldn’t exactly get into a big discussion about what had happened, however, so he went up to Badge and said, “Just checking in. Everything good back here?”

  “Yeah, brother,” Badger answered, jumping down from inside the van. “Everything good up front?”

  “Yeah. Donations are still coming in pretty steady. Everybody’s cool and in the Christmas spirit.”

  “Hi, Nolan,” Gia said.

  “Hey, G.”

  He shifted his eyes to Iris and smiled, trying to say something just for her with that smile. He didn’t know what he was trying to tell her, though. Not to feel weird about the other night? That he wasn’t sorry that they’d kissed? Or was he trying to apologize to her for kissing her?

  The cart was empty, and Isaac came around from the far side of the van. “Time for another load.”

  “I’ll go for it,” Iris offered.

  Isaac cocked an eyebrow at her. “You sure? Gets pretty heavy.”

  “I’ll help her,” Nolan offered before he’d thought it through. “Everything’s rolling smooth up front. I can take a few minutes and grab a load.”

  Isaac gave him a smirk and pushed the empty cart at Nolan. That smirk said that Len had a big fucking mouth. Jesus, he hoped nobody had said anything to Show.

  Nolan turned and pushed the cart toward the street. Iris trotted to keep up with him. When he realized that he was walking faster than she could normally, he slowed down.

  At a relatively private point, along the side of the building and sheltered by a parked pickup, Iris pulled on his coat and stopped. He stopped, too, and turned to her.

  “I just want to say that nothing needs to get weird about the other night. Don’
t worry that I’m being all girly or anything and waiting for you to do it again or thinking it meant anything. It was nice, but wasn’t a big deal.”

  He should have been relieved, and he guessed part of him was, but another part of him was a little hurt. Maybe it was just all that shit that being around Bart’s kids had dredged up. But honestly, these days, shit seemed always to be dredged up in his head.

  “It wasn’t?”

  Her eyes—they were pretty, a soft, sky blue, and she always wore a lot of dark liner around them, so they seemed to glow a little—narrowed at his question. “Was it a big deal to you?”

  The obvious right answer was ‘no.’ Everything was simpler if that kiss had meant nothing. And it probably had. If it had meant anything, it had been too much about Ani to make him anything other than a complete shit. Iris was not Ani. She was nothing like Ani, and it was hardly fair to her for him to be thinking of his dead girlfriend while he was with her. If he was trying to fill an unfillable space because for some bizarre reason she had made him think of Ani, then he was both nuts and an asshole.