“What I think is you gotta know what you’re dealin’ with here and you got your man’s strong words. She’s got her man’s strong words.” Elvira jerked a thumb at Lanie. “And those two boys are far from dumb. Loyal, perhaps to a fault, but not dumb. So I think you gotta proceed with caution.”
Elvira wasn’t wrong. Lanie had gently probed Hop about his knowledge of the history of High and Millie.
Hop’s response had been, “Heard she showed her face. I’ll say what Tack said to Cherry. Bitch is not welcome anywhere near Chaos. So do not stick your nose in that, woman. You do, you won’t be prepared for the extreme.”
Lanie being married to a biker and the mother of one of his sons, getting this warning and sitting in the back of my Mustang with crazy Elvira on a mission was one of the many reasons she was my bestest bestie.
I still didn’t have a good feeling about this.
“I hear you,” I told Elvira. “But I think you should call her, reschedule, and we should talk this out further before—”
Her phone beeped before I finished. She held the screen out to me.
I saw the appointment alarm on the display just as she said, “Go time,” turned to the door, tossed it open, threw out her Valentino pump, and hauled herself out.
The door was slammed and she was gone.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“Shit is right,” Lanie agreed, and I looked to the backseat. “I can’t help but feeling, one way or another, this is going to go south for us.”
I had that feeling too.
I was worried Tack and Hop, who both knew Millie and had been around when whatever went down went down, were right.
I worried more seeing Millie Cross’s neat, trim, pretty old house that obviously was lovingly restored and taken care of.
It did not say biker babe.
Nor did her clothes say it at Wild Bill’s.
Then again, before I met Tack, mine didn’t either and in many cases, at least with my clothes, they still didn’t.
Lanie’s didn’t either. You took one look at her, you thought, Retired Supermodel and Current Muse to Couture Designer. You did not think, Biker Bitch.
So Millie’s look and her house meant nothing.
Millie’s expression that night meant everything.
And I was hanging a lot on that because the boys did not like meddling in their affairs and Tack was not wrong. If one of the guys got a hangnail, the rest of them would rally around staring balefully at the unfortunate who wielded the cuticle clippers until it was successfully clipped out.
Okay, so that was a slight exaggeration.
But there was a lot expected of earning the Chaos cut.
Loyalty was at the top of that list.
If High was done with this Millie woman, he was done.
The thing was, no man was in a foul mood for three days after he saw an ex unless he wasn’t over that ex, if she was an ex for twenty minutes, but especially for twenty years.
Since it had been twenty years, something was going down.
And I intended to get to the bottom of it for High, who I might not be tight with but I liked him. I respected him. And he was the only Chaos brother I knew who wasn’t happy.
He lived. He loved his brothers. He loved his kids. He put up with his recent ex-wife.
But down deep, the man was existing.
Joy came from his two girls.
That was it.
And I wanted more for him.
So did Lanie.
So did Elvira.
So we were here.
Elvira wasn’t dumb but—as hard as it was to believe, it was true—she was even more loyal to the sisterhood than Chaos was to the brotherhood. If there was a sister in need, she was there, one hundred percent, and she didn’t even need to know them to be there.
I knew this from experience.
So did Lanie.
And I worried in her zeal she was going to fuck it all up.
“I think we should go in, introduce ourselves, and come clean,” I told Lanie, even though I was worried that Millie would recognize me from Wild Bill’s.
“I don’t know about that but I do know we should go in and stop Elvira from starting to plan a wedding before Malik proposes,” Lanie replied, shaking her head, her tone turning dire. “That’s bad juju and every girl knows it.”
This was also true.
“Elvira?” We heard through the speaker Elvira had requisitioned from Hawk’s equipment room that was right then in my car, connected to the mic that Elvira was wearing.
“Damn straight,” Elvira answered. “Millie?”
I could actually hear her smile through the speaker as she replied, “That’s me. Please come in. Do you want some coffee? Tea?”
“Let’s go,” Lanie said over Elvira’s response on the speaker.
I nodded, turned off the speaker, threw open my door, and got out, lifting the seat so Lanie could curl herself out of the back.
Then, both of us coming from work to do this, thus both of us in high heels, tight skirts, and fabulous blouses, we hurried up the concrete strips to Millie Cross’s studio.
To get there, we hit a large back courtyard that was covered in attractive pavers, part of it overhung with a pergola that radiated out diagonally from an L in the house. The pergola was also covered in dormant wisteria. There was a shiny red Mazda SUV back there and enough room to park two more vehicles. There were also enormous, eye-catching pots dotted around that had been planted for autumn in purple-pink, lavender, and white cushion mums.
And beyond the courtyard, between the house and the studio, an area you got to under an arch, there was terraced garden, the grade going down. I couldn’t see much of it, but I could see a gazebo.