Duke (The Henchmen MC 5)

So off to Jersey I went.

By the time I got everything all lined up, my grandmother was out of surgery and already moved into the care center and reaming me out for uprooting my life for her, telling me I was being an alarmist and that she wouldn't have me helicoptering over her like an overprotective parent. She was still my elder, after all.

That was Patty Weber for you.

I liked to think that I maybe got one-tenth of her grit. Though, to be honest, if I said I got a grain of it, that was probably being generous. Not that I was a pushover, but I was just never great at being confrontational and take-no-prisoners.

That explained my somewhat boring life, I guess.

I never took chances so nothing ever happened.

I was hoping that maybe moving back to Jersey would help that. My grandmother's care center, Blue Horizons (lame, I know), was located a town over from where I set down roots in a place called Navesink Bank, seeing as there were no actual apartment buildings in her town, just strip malls and gas stations and convenience stores. Not that I planned on getting wild and crazy. I already had interviews in all the local hiring salons and I was sure I would eventually fall into old patterns, except that the nights I used to spend with coworkers, I would likely end up spending with my grandmother in her center.

But, who knew. I figured maybe I would make some real friends at work. And possibly, though unlikely, I might find a decent guy in my apartment building or visiting a family member at the center.

You never knew.

Anything was possible.

Yeah, anything was possible took on a whole new meaning my second day in Navesink Bank.

And who I met wasn't exactly the run of the mill definition of a decent guy.

But my life stopped being so boring, I guess.

And that underwear thing, yeah, that was some sage advice, let me tell ya'.ONEDukeIf there was one task that got pretty fuckin' old after almost seven years, it was walking the damn perimeter. It was an essential, necessary task that we generally left to the probates. But we found ourselves wholly out of such members suddenly. So the task fell back on all of us. Renny took the nights still, letting me finally get back on a more normal schedule, leaving me to pull the afternoons. Shredder and some of the old-timers filled in the blanks.

"Satan's fucking armpit," Shredder said as he walked up to where I was standing at the gates, holding out a beer to me.

Shredder was a constant at the compound, never settling down, never moving to work at one of the newly legit businesses The Henchmen branched out into to distract the overly interested new lawmen in the area. Gone were the good old days when the criminal enterprises could get away with damn near anything they wished.

Shred was tall and so lean that he was almost gaunt, with a face all cheekbone hollows and strong brows over his almost see-through gray eyes. He kept his brown hair long and usually down whereas I kept my long blond hair in a bun at the crown of my head. He, like just about all of the bikers, was obsessed with tattoos, having them over just about every inch of his body.

"Only gonna get hotter," I said with a shrug. It wasn't that bad. Summer in Jersey was hot and humid, but not overly oppressive. He wanted to feel heat, he should have visited some of the places I had lived.

"Yeah, but... oh now wait a minute," he stopped mid-sentence, face breaking into a wicked smile.

I followed his line of vision and saw what he saw.

Who.

I saw who he saw.

And, yeah, she was worth a break in conversation.

She was on the short side, no way anything over five-four with a healthy body that wasn't exactly short on hips or ass, though maybe a little lacking in the rack department. Not flat, but not obnoxiously large either. Her long blonde hair was tied into a braid down her shoulder, the ends caught underneath the material of her pink tank top, like she had forgotten to pull it out when she had gotten dressed. She had on a white skirt of some filmy material that danced around her legs and fell to about knee-length. Her feet were in flat white and pink sandals. Her head was ducked for a long minute, her light brows drawn together like something wasn't making sense. Then she looked up and, damn. She had one of those soft faces, all cheekbones and pouty lips and big light-blue eyes. She had a little pink lipstick on those pouty lips of hers and I had a sudden urge to smear it all over her pretty face. Her lashes were darkened from what had to be a natural blonde to a black, making her light eyes pop. But that was it. Simple. Almost natural.