Page 6

Smoke

“Nice to see you finally got out of bed.”

I rolled my eyes and sipped my coffee. “Getting blown up will make ya stay in bed for a couple of days.”

Yarder chuckled and opened the door wide to let Harley and Davidson out. The dogs bolted into the backyard and ran around like maniacs before finding a spot to do their business. Yarder grabbed a ball from their toy bucket and played fetch with Harley while Davidson found a bone to chew on in the shade.

It was Friday morning, and it had taken everything in me to get out of bed. My ride and then helping Dani with her tire had been a little too much for my first day upright. The aches and bruises from the explosion weren’t going away as quickly as I had hoped.

“Got plans for today?” Yarder asked and tossed the ball lazily across the yard.

“Whatever comes my way,” I shrugged.

Yarder glanced at me. “Dice mentioned you guys helped the wine chick with a flat tire last night.”

Leave it to Dice to open his big mouth. I wasn’t trying to hide last night from Yarder, but I wasn’t looking to run to him with every little detail either. “Yeah, we helped her.”

“You happen to ask her about who her landlord is?”

I leveled my gaze on him. “Yeah, you know that’s normal conversation when I’m on the side of the road changing her tire. ‘By the way, who is your landlord?’” I shook my head. “I can ask her when she comes over today.”

Yarder chuckled and threw the ball again to Harley. “She’s coming over today?”

I nodded. “Told her to come over so I could get her tire fixed.”

“That might be hard to do, seeing as the garage is just an empty building,” Yarder pointed out.

“I was gonna take her to Mac’s.” Mac’s was a town over and was just as good a garage as we were. They could easily get her a new tire, and she would be good as new.

“What time is she coming?” Yarder asked.

“You keeping an eye on me, Yarder?” I asked, slightly annoyed with his fifty questions.

He shook his head. “Nah. I just planned on heading over to her shop today to talk to her, and I figured if she was coming over here, I didn’t need to take all the girls with me to her shop. I’m really just looking out for myself in the hopes I don’t have to spend an hour at the wine shop with all the ol’ ladies.”

I chuckled and shook my head. “Now that I believe. And I don’t know what time she is coming over. She mentioned she had to work.”

“You really think she is going to come?”

I finished my coffee and sat back in my chair. “Not really sure. I figured if she wasn’t here by this afternoon, I would head over to her. She shouldn’t be driving around on a spare for too long.”

Yarder nodded. “You’re not wrong.” Harley dropped the ball expectantly at his feet. Yarder picked it up and tossed it the full length of the backyard. “If she’s not here by two, we can head to her.”

I nodded. “Sounds like a plan to me.” Yarder and the girls could check out the shop while I took care of her tire. I figured if she was busy with work, I could take her car to Mac’s by myself.

Harley came galloping back happily with the ball in his mouth, and his tail wagged furiously.

“You think there’s a chance we cannot have all of the girls with us?” I asked.

Yarder chuckled and shook his head. “Pretty sure that will not happen, brother. The girls are going stir-crazy with us keeping a close eye on them. They’re clinging on to going to the wine shop like it’s Christmas morning.”

I grunted and stood. I stretched my arms over my head to loosen my stiff muscles. “I guess you’re not wrong. I can’t wait until all of this Boone and Gibbs shit blows over. I miss the days of just living without having to look over our shoulders at every turn.”

“You and everyone else feel that, too, Smoke.” He grabbed the ball Harley had dropped at his feet. “We’ll get back to that soon.”

“Hear anything from Russ?”

Yarder shook his head and tossed the ball. “Not a word.”

I watched Harley chase after the ball and jump over Davidson to get it. “Maybe they’ll forget about us.”

Yarder side-eyed me. “Yeah, that would be great, but I don’t see that happening.”

“They’re gonna eventually mess up. They can’t keep coming after us like this and not expect that someone is going to catch on.” They were making huge moves against us—explosions, involving innocent people. They were bound to screw up.

“We’ll get them. Until then, we keep moving forward. The garage will be done in a month, and today we can talk to Dani about who the landlord of the strip mall is to get the bakery going.”

I nodded. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

Dani had until two this afternoon to come to the clubhouse. If she didn’t, I was going to find her.