Page 2 of Georgie (Sons of Hell MC #10)

Georgie

Three weeks before the BIG wedding...

“WHAT THE FUCK?!”

Shooting up out of my bed, I quickly scanned my room to find Granny holding an empty bucket in her hands as fire and brimstone shot out of her eyes like I imagined the flames of hell did many times.

I loved my granny. The woman was the salt of the earth, but God help anyone who got on her bad side, and at this very moment I was pretty damn sure my ass was in the doghouse.

Problem was, I didn’t do shit!

However, I wasn’t willing to challenge my suspected alleged crimes because the furious look on her face told me I was toast either way. Plus, she just doused me in ice cold fucking water.

Talk about a rude awakening.

“Don’t you curse me, boy! I can still put you over my knee.”

Yeah, she probably could too.

“And put some damn clothes on,” she grumbled. “It’s wintertime. Shrinkage is not a good look on a man.”

“GRANNY!” I shouted, quickly cupping my junk as I searched my room for something to cover up with. God, it’s like I was a fucking teenager again, only this time I had no fucking clue what I did wrong. Finding the towel I used last night after my shower, I grabbed it and wrapped it around my waist.

“There,” I snarked. “I’m covered. Now would you please let me in on what burr has crawled up your butt so I can remove it, ’cause I just got off a forty-eight-hour shift at the hospital and I’m tired.”

“What’s this I hear about Josephine being mad at you?”

Groaning, I rolled my eyes and plopped my ass down on my bed. Rubbing my hands down my face, I muttered, “Granny, please tell me that’s not why you woke me up?”

“Well nailing your ass down is like nailing Jell-O to a tree. It was either this or walk in while you’re in surgery. And stop evading the question and answer me. What happened between you and that cutie patootie sweet angel, who by the way is too damn good for you?”

“For the last time, Granny. Josie and I are just friends. There was a minor misunderstanding that I’m sure will be rectified soon.”

“Misunderstanding my ass,” Granny huffed. “I heard she caught you with one of your trollops!”

“Granny, Josie and I are just friends. We are not dating.”

Huffing again, Granny narrowed her keen eyes at me and snarled. “You fix this shit with that girl before I take matters into my own hands, young man. I ain’t getting any younger and I need me some more grandbabies!”

With that, my five-foot nothing grandmother marched her ass out of my room, leaving me wide awake and speechless.

This wasn’t the first time Granny marched her cantankerous ass into my room, and it wouldn’t be the last.

I loved my granny. I really did, but there was no gray in Gran’s life. Everything was black and white. She firmly believed that her grandsons were destined for greater things and made damn sure we had every advantage growing up.

What she meant by that was she wanted us settled, in a suitable career, with a wife and two-point-two kids and possibly a fucking dog.

My parents were professors at the University of Nebraska.

Dad was a professor in archeology who was always looking for some place new to dig.

And well, Mom went with him because she firmly believed that if by chance Dad ever found some ancient civilization, he would need Mom to decipher the dialect.

Yeah, my mom was good at languages. One of the leading professors in ancient dialects, to be exact.

Because they were the best in their fields, that left little time to raise me or Frank.

Well, that’s where Granny came in.

After our parents died in a car accident on the way home from giving a lecture at NYU, my brother Frankie and I went to live with Gran, our only living relative.

As a professor in her own right, Granny was whip smart with a wicked tongue.

I generally loved spending time with my gran.

When I was a child. But like most children, I grew up and preferred spending time with my friends more than my grandmother.

I had just turned thirteen when my parents died, and Gran simply told me and Frankie that we were going to live with her forever.

She didn’t mince words and firmly believed that the truth was best, no matter how hard it was to hear.

Frankie was happy.

Me, not so much.

In fact, I fucking hated it.

I only stayed long enough to graduate from high school before I took off to Georgetown University. I never liked Nebraska. The second I was able, I left and never returned.

Of course, I stupidly thought going away to school would give me the freedom I so desperately craved but I was wrong. My granny had no fucking problem calling or popping in unannounced just to remind me that I had a little brother at home who needed me.

I may have run away from Nebraska, but there was no way in hell I could escape Granny.

The woman was a veritable force of nature.

It didn’t matter where I ran off to. The stubborn woman always tracked me down and never let me forget that I still had family in this world.

Which I thought funny, ’cause my brother and I hardly ever got along.

Frankie was just different. Unlike me, who had too many friends to count, a girlfriend whenever I wanted, and played on every sports team I could find.

Frankie, well Frankie was a nerd. Always quiet, shy, barely said two fucking words and preferred his imaginary world of make-believe to the cold hard fact that we were orphans.

Of course, to look at my little brother today, you’d probably call me a liar, but it’s true.

My little brother Frankie was once a skinny, wheezing nerd who preferred to play cops and robbers with his dog Bark, than live in the real world.

Now, Frank was bigger than me and a brother in the Sons of Hell Motorcycle Club with a beautiful wife and three kids still in diapers.

Groaning, I rubbed my hands down my face.

“You know she only wants the best for you, right?”

Turning, I smiled. “I know.”

“She really likes Josephine.”

“What about you?”

Fiona shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what I think. It’s you that will have to live with the decision for the rest of your life.”

Fiona Mitchell came to our family a little over a year ago when Frankie and his woman Lidi were fighting for custody of their son Charlie.

Now, here was where it got interesting. Charlie’s birth mother was Fiona.

The young girl grew up in the foster care system after her parents died.

Bouncing from foster family to foster family, Fiona found herself pregnant by a boy who supposedly told her he loved her.

Shocker. The fucker lied.

To make things more interesting, the bio-dad was nineteen to Fiona’s fifteen.

Anyhoo, Fiona ran away and found herself here in Rosewood, where she gave birth to Charlie on the streets.

Now, Fiona did everything she could for Charlie but knew she couldn’t raise him, so she hand-picked the best mother she could find, Dr. Claudia James and the sister to Eugene James, also known as Enigma.

Now, Claudia being the good-natured sweetheart she was, flat out refused to let Fiona return to the foster care system, even going as far as to offer to take the girl in herself. Only that never happened, because that’s where Granny stepped in.

I honestly didn’t know what to call Fiona. Was she my aunt, my sister, niece? In the end it didn’t matter ’cause whenever I looked at her all I saw was my little sister who I loved dearly. There wasn’t a damn thing on the planet I wouldn’t do for Fiona, nor Frank, for that matter.

“You know I care what you think, Fi. Just tell me.”

She looked down at her hands and whispered, “I think you better fix things with Josephine before someone else shows up and takes what you’ve unknowingly had all along.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Fiona smirked. “You’re smart, Georgie. Figure it out.”

I had just closed a file when Jessica barged into my office.

“George!”

Smiling up at the beautiful, feisty woman, I leaned back in my chair and asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be on maternity leave?”

Jess huffed as she plopped her ass into a chair. For a woman who had recently given birth to a bouncing baby girl, Jess looked remarkably well. Not that I would ever say anything about the ten extra pounds of baby weight that still lingered around her hips and midsection.

Nope, it wasn’t my place.

However, I was pretty damn sure Savage would know best how to work off that extra baby weight. Which reminded me, I needed to schedule her for a pregnancy test when she came in for her last postpartum checkup.

I was pretty damn sure Savage was trying for a full rugby team.

“I am on maternity leave. You try raising a grown ass man-child, his identical mini-me with a mouth to boot and three young boys who happily take after their father, while trying to snap the last nerve I have left. Besides, I get more sleep here than I do at home.”

I chuckled at that because she was probably fucking right.

“You forgot Helena?”

Jess grinned. “Oh, that little girl is all me. She knows not to test my patience.”

Nodding, I leaned forward, reaching for another file.

“So, what brings you in here?”

“Got a call from Donna as she stormed out of the Rosewood Ski Resort. One guess what she told me.”

Jumping up from my chair, I slammed my hands down on my desk and roared, “God damn it, Jack!”

“She’s the fifth nurse this year, George.”

Turning, I walked over to the filing cabinet I had in my office and grabbed my medical to-go bag, which I kept at the ready in case I needed it.

The funny thing... I only needed this damn bag because of Jack.

Marching out of my office, I ignored Jessica’s laughter.

“Remember your oath, Dr. Steiner!”

“Fuck my oath,” I snarled. “I’m gonna kill him!”

Storming out of the clinic, I headed straight for my truck and jumped in, throwing the damn bag in the passenger seat. Ignoring the blaring horns, loud screams, and deathly stares from the residents of Rosewood, I peeled out of the parking spot, stepped on the gas, and sped out of town.

From the moment I bought into the Rosewood Clinic, Claudia wasted no fucking time pawning off Jack Orlean on me.

The man was a pain in the ass and an ornery old cuss who should have been sent to pasture eons ago.

Never in my life had I ever met a more obstinate, cantankerous, stubborn old man.

To make matters worse, he was the father of my supposed best friend, Josephine.

Josie just got me.

I met Josie shortly after she moved to Rosewood. Like me, she came home with her tail between her legs after a disastrous break-up. Well, in her defense, her soon-to-be ex idiot couldn’t keep it in his pants and apparently up and married two other women.

Well, that’s what the authorities believed.

My hunch was there was more.

Anyway, like I was saying, Josie showed up about three days after I did when we bumped into each other at the Irish Rose Tavern and before either of us knew it, we ended up drinking our problems away.

What neither of us expected was to wake up the next morning snuggled up on the couch together fully clothed.

That was a first for me.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the beginning of our beautiful friendship.

Until I fucked it up somehow.

There was just something about being around Josie that made everything better.

Hell, she even made me feel better, and I hadn’t felt shit in years.

But with Josie, she just got me, accepted me, flaws, warts and all.

There wasn’t anything she didn’t know about me, or I her, for that matter.

Neither one of us was ready for any kind of relationship when we moved to Rosewood, so we decided to just remain friends, and it was the best decision we ever made.

I never had a girlfriend that I didn’t eventually sink my dick into, so it was refreshing to know that there was one woman on the planet I could just be myself with, vent my shit, complain to, and not get my ass chewed out for it.

That was until a few months ago when Josie stopped by my place unannounced and used her key to let herself in, to find me butt-ass naked and dick deep in Scribe’s cousin, Ares.

Damn, that woman was wild.

Anyway, after said coitus interruptus, Josie skedaddled and had been ghosting me ever since.

Every time I tried to reach out to her, she got snarky, called me all kinds of names, then hung up on me.

If it weren’t for her father and my weekly birdwatching adventures with her son Jasper, I’d never see the woman.

Though our schedules were always busy, with me being a local doctor and on call most nights at Rosewood Memorial Hospital and her with her father’s Ski Resort.

It being tourist season, I knew her schedule damn near resembled mine.

But now with this wedding nonsense, and Jack’s antics, I worried that my best friend was running herself ragged.

Nope. Not on my watch.

What I needed to do was nail her ass down and sort this shit out.

Whatever the hell shit this was?

Right after I had her father committed into an insane asylum.

Pulling into the reserved parking spot in front of the Rosewood Ski Resort, I grabbed my medical bag and marched my ass into the over-priced building.

From what Josie told me, her dad spared no expense when he built this monstrosity that catered to the uber rich and famous. The second the first snowflake fell, overindulged and pampered pissants would flock to the quaint town of Rosewood in droves, looking to escape their busy, humdrum lives.

Fuckers wouldn’t know busy if it bit them in the ass!

Walking into the opulent Ski Resort, I didn’t have to look hard to find Josie as she narrowed her eyes before rushing over to me.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Donna quit.”

And just like that, her bravado evaporated as her shoulders slumped. “You’ve got to be kidding me?”

“Called the office and talked with Jess.”

“Damn it,” she cursed.

“I need to check on him, Josie.”

Slowly turning to look up at me, she snarled, “You don’t get to call me that anymore.”

Frowning, I huffed. “You wanna let me in on what I did, ’cause I’m at a loss here? One minute we were fine, the next you fucking hate my guts.”

“I’m not talking about it here,” she muttered. “Let’s go see my dad.”

“Fine,” I growled.

“Fine,” she snipped hurriedly, walking toward the elevators.

God save me from stubborn women and snarky friends.