“How can we just leave?” her sister fumed.
“If you don’t leave, I’ll throw you out right now,” I stated in a low voice.
She glared at me with venom in her eyes.
Her partner was eventually able to pull her out of the house and soon the door shut in complete silence.
“I’ll be on my way too,” I said to both the girls.
Della’s eyes filled with tears and I knew what she wanted to say, but that the words didn’t seem sufficient. With my thumb, I caught a tear as it rolled down her face. “You seem tough but in the end you’re just a crybaby, aren’t you?” I teased.
She lightly pounded her fist on my chest, and it made me smile despite the mess around us.
I turned around to leave but Della-Ray grabbed my arm, lifted herself up to the tip of her toes, and pressed a kiss to my cheek. She hurried off then and I was left staring after her. She was so cute I couldn’t breathe. Shaking my head, I turned and saw Nichole watching us. She saw me to the door.
“I misjudged you,” she said quietly.
I had a few words for her too. “You’re a good friend to Della. She’s mad right now though.”
“She’s all bark and no bite,” she said with a laugh.
I smiled in agreement. Then she closed the door. I got on my Harley and rode into the night, much, much lighter than I could have dreamed I would feel, given the day I’d had.
Della Ray
“I’m making you breakfast as an apology,” Nichole said to me as I walked into the kitchen the next morning.
I rubbed my eyes. “Why aren’t you at work?”
“Remember I told you I’m going to help you. Well, I told my boss, I have to get a part-time job and he said, he could spare me two days a week. So, I’m going out to find a job today. Who knows I might end up working with you at the diner,” she said with a smile.
I stopped on my way to the refrigerator and stared at her in shock. “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely. We’re going to make a plan of how we are going to care for Jess. Then we are going to call Denise, invite her over, and charm her into letting us have Jess. At the end of the day, she doesn’t want Jess, she just got mad because she had thrown Jess away as worthless and you had turned her into something special and she was jealous of that. When she knows it’s going to be both of us at the helm, she’ll slink away. I know women like that. They don’t have staying power.”
I smiled slowly at her. “You know, I was thinking exactly the same last night. Denise has always been a bit of a dog in the manger. She wouldn’t want a toy until I wanted it, but after a while, she would lose interest anyway. A month is a long time.”
“Exactly. So … have you called him?”
“Who?” I asked.
“You aren’t fooling anyone with the way you’re blushing.”
“No,” I said, and continued on my journey towards the refrigerator. I opened the door and searched through the contents. My cheeks were hot, just as they had been the moment I opened my eyes this morning and remembered the way he had stepped in and handled it all so effectively and impressively on my behalf. A sweet warmth had flooded my chest. I made sure to cool my face down before I pulled my head away and shut the refrigerator.
Nichole stabbed a sausage and put it on a plate as I remembered I had come in for a glass of orange juice. I picked up a glass, reopened the refrigerator and filled it with juice from the carton.
As I drank, she kept speaking, “You know, I think I may have judged him too quickly. He seemed so mature and … umm … hunky. The way he resolved the issue yesterday. Very mature. And that whole black t-shirt, black jacket, and black jeans vibe he had going on … Woah!” She scraped scrambled eggs onto three plates. “I thought you said it was just a one-time thing, but the way he rushed over because of you … that shows he cares.”
I shrugged, not willing to participate in this.
She turned to look at me with curious eyes. “And what’s the deal between him and the cops? How could they just leave that way unless they knew him? But how? They must trust his character, but how? And why? He’s a freaking outlaw biker. He even made the news yesterday.”
“They could be dirty cops,” I suggested.
She considered the idea. “Oh, my God! Yes, that would explain everything. I saw a program on TV sometime back and they were saying how all these small police departments were all under the thumb of the Mafia or the Biker clubs. That’s how they get their drugs into the state.”