Preacher (The Untouchables MC 5)

I got a warm, squishy feeling inside unlike anything I’d ever felt before.

Maybe . . . maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing, after all?

Chapter Twenty-Three

Preacher

“I’m a damn fool.”

“Hmm-hmm, I’ll drink to that,” the woman sitting across the parsonage table said to me. She clicked her shot glass with mine and then tossed her head back with a flourish, downing the shot. “’Nother?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Ooh, I’m a ma’am now, am I? I prefer ‘miss’, if you don’t mind.” She preened, fluffing her hair. “I’m not an old lady quite yet.”

“Yes, Miss Clarice,” I said, trying to ignore the drumbeat of dread in my gut. My mama always said, Listen to your mind, follow your heart, but trust your gut. Right now, my gut was telling me something was very, very wrong.

Extremely fucking wrong.

My woman wasn’t talking to me. Not a text. Not a phone call. She hadn’t even waved out the window when I stood in her street like a damned alley cat!

She’d stared at me with those huge golden eyes of hers and then closed the curtain.

I was fucked. Without a miracle or some seriously caveman shit, I was 100% fucked.

A big part of me was tempted to head over there and pull a Connor. Lock her ass up until she agreed to be mine and have my baby.

Though as much as I wanted that, I wouldn’t ever force her to carry my child.

I might force her to agree to marry me, however.

Not good, you old dog. She’s wised up. You can’t kidnap the girl.

But maybe I could . . .

“Damned fool,” I muttered again for good measure.

“She’ll come around.”

I perked up at that, giving the technicolored woman across from me a bleary-eyed but hopeful look.

“She will?”

“Probably. I think I helped talk her around when I was over at her place earlier.”

“You saw her? What did she say? How did she seem?”

Yes, I sounded like a teenage girl. Yes, the guys back home would laugh their asses off if they could hear me. But I didn’t give a damn. I needed to know what was going on with my woman. It was tearing me up inside not to know.

To think I’d spent the middle of the day getting my mind blown by the most perfect woman alive and now I was here worrying that she’d never speak to me again, let alone let me back into paradise . . . well, it was a damn shame. Lunch time felt like a thousand years ago.

No. It felt like a million years.

Cynthia was light fucking years away.

I want her here, damnit! In my bed for the rest of our damned lives!

“She’s pissed. Nice girl like that, you don’t see that too often.” Her grin faded. “I’m not so sure she was ready for you, Preacher. Be nice to her. That girl is as good as gold.”

“I know it. She’s too good for me. I promise I will treat her right. I swear I will.”

“But shake her up a bit too. It’s good for her. She’s too tied up in her safe little routines. She’s too young to be so rigid.”

“Yes, ma’am—I mean, Miss.”

She smiled at me and shook my hand. And just like that, an alliance was formed.

We did another shot to celebrate.

“So. What do I do?”

“Give her a little space for a couple of days.” She wagged a finger at me and I saw rhinestones sparkle on the tip of her nail. “But not too much space. Men always make that mistake. Us girls like to know we are wanted.”

“She’s more than wanted,” I said quietly. “She has my heart. Old and beat-up as it is.”

I got a bright smile.

“Not too old, Preacher. Not too old.”

Late that night, I stared at the ceiling, wondering how the hell I’d made such a mess of things. Then I wondered how the hell I’d gotten her to agree to be my woman in the first place. Hell, I’d been as shocked as she was by the undeniable sparks flying between us. It was damn near the closest thing I’d seen to a miracle in all my days.

A car drove by, making shadows fly across the ceiling. I could hear the soft sounds of the city. No gunshots tonight, and we’d barely started the neighborhood rehabilitation program. A few new exterior lightbulbs here and there, badgering the city to fix broken streetlights, and helping landlords and tenants fix fences and plant some flowers.

Phase two would happen when Cain’s guys got here to add security cameras and do patrols, looking for problem areas. If nothing else, the path my woman took to and from the church would be safe.

Maybe there was hope for this place, after all.

And if there was . . . maybe there was hope for an old dog like me, too.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Cynthia

Rise and shine, Buttercup! Get out them Daisy Dukes and meet me at the church for coffee and official bidness.