Nolan: Return to Signal Bend (10 page)

Iris’s idea of ‘one or two minutes’ turned out to be more like twenty. By the time Nolan heard her coming down the stairs, he’d gotten himself ensconced in the living room with Gia and Bo and the twins. They were watching an episode of
Adventure Time
.

Nolan scooted Millie over and got up off the sofa. He met Iris at the foot of the stairs. She’d changed into a different, newer pair of jeans and had a pair of brown suede boots over them and a long sweater with a scarf. She’d done her makeup, and her eyes were rimmed with black. Her hair was loose over her shoulders. And she smelled different. Like flowers and spice.

“Sorry. I went as fast as I could.”

“You’re beautiful.” He kissed her cheek. “You ready? You want the Chop House?” It was the nicest restaurant in Signal Bend.

She made a face, her nose wrinkling. “That’s so fussy. How about Raider Moe’s?”

Raider Moe’s was a newish place out in Millview, about fifteen miles away. It was a pool hall with food. Nolan had only been there a couple of times, mostly to check it out. It had aspirations of being a biker bar, but the Horde, the only MC for hundreds of miles, had Tuck’s, so mostly Moe’s drew wannabes and weekend riders—and those assholes could get out of hand more than anybody sporting colors would normally get, out of their own zone. In Nolan’s mind, there was little worse than Joe Schmo on a Harley, who thought the engine between his legs made him tough. Put a few shots of Jack in a few of those guys, and you had trouble.

“Not sure that’s a great idea.”

“I heard it was cool.”

“From who?” He couldn’t imagine any of the Horde talking Moe’s up. Even the name was a warning sign. A takeoff on some hipster market in the city.

She blushed and shrugged, and Nolan figured it was one of the girls around town talking the place up. He didn’t like that, either, but with most of the Horde married or paired up, and the club girl roster well established, there wasn’t much for local girls to do if they wanted to ride on the wild side. They’d started trawling at Moe’s. One of his trips out there had been to rescue Mindy Jasper and a couple of her equally airheaded friends from a band of drunk asswipes.

Another of his jobs as SAA: designated white knight. When a town girl got herself into trouble, she called the Horde if she could, and it was Nolan who called for backup and rode in. If she couldn’t call, then she told them after, and Nolan called for backup and rode in to teach a lesson. That was how law worked in Signal Bend.

He took Iris’s hand. “You want to just hit Marie’s?” He tipped his head toward the dining room. “Not like we’re a secret or anything.”

“Are we a we?”

Following that need which wasn’t a plan, Nolan pulled on her hand, drawing her closer. In full view of the dining room—and the living room for that matter, though the kids were likely a lot less interested—Nolan slid his fingers into Iris’s hair, bent down, and kissed her.

The rumble of chitchat that had been coming from the dining room stopped.

When he lifted away, Iris kept her eyes closed a few seconds longer.

“I hope we’re a we,” he said.

That felt true. The stirring in his empty heart told him it was true. The quiet in his head told him it was true.

~oOo~

Marie herself was sitting at the counter, drinking a cup of coffee and nibbling on a slice of pumpkin pie. She turned when Nolan and Iris came in, and her face lit up with grandmotherly, gossipy glee. Anyone who hadn’t yet heard would have by lunchtime tomorrow—no, even earlier. Tomorrow was Sunday. They’d all know before the nine o’clock service at St. John’s Methodist.

“Well, hello, you two! Don’t you look like the sweetest pair! Happy New Year!” She got up from her stool and walked in her halting way toward them. A lifetime on her feet in this diner had racked most of her body with ‘the ‘thritis,’ as she called it. Nolan stepped ahead of Iris and met Marie halfway.

“Happy New Year, Marie.” He bent to accept her hug. She smelled the way all old ladies seemed to smell to him. Perfumey, in a familiar but slightly off way.

Before he could stand straight again, she patted his sore cheeks. “You need to cover your face when you ride, young man! You about frostbit yourself!” She turned toward the counter. “Orv! There any of Dave’s Bag Balm left back there?”

Dave was Marie’s husband. He’d been the cook when they’d owned the diner, but he’d died a couple years back. If there was any of Dave’s Bag Balm left in the kitchen, it was years old. Nolan patted Marie’s shoulder. “I’m okay, Marie. Just a little chapped.”

Orville, Saxon’s father, had leaned out to see what the fuss was; Nolan shook his head. “Hey, Orv. I’m good.” Orv tipped his head and went back to his work.

Marie had moved on to Iris and was fussing over her. Nolan scanned the diner. He’d picked up the habit in the past couple of years of memorizing the situation of any public space he entered. He almost never needed to use the information, but it helped, when there was trouble, to know where and when the change started.

The diner was nearly full on this aging New Year’s night. One open booth and three empty stools at the counter, not including the one Nolan hoped Marie would be returning to soon.

His sights on the booth, he caught Iris’s hand and extricated her from Marie. When the old lady who was the closest thing Signal Bend had to a grande dame hitched her way back to the counter, Nolan led Iris to the booth and sat.

“I guess we’re a couple now, whether we want to be or not,” Iris laughed.

“I guess we are.”

The gossip train in this town was formidable. One meal in public and they’d be linked for months, even if this meal had been entirely platonic.

It wasn’t platonic at all. That need Nolan felt made it difficult for him to sit across from her. His hands wanted to be on her. He didn’t know where he could take her, but he wanted to feel her skin on his tonight. God, he hoped she wanted that, too.

Remembering the wet heat of her on his thigh the night before, he thought she did.

Kari came over with a pot of coffee. “How you doin’? What’ll ya have tonight?” She turned their cups over and filled them.

Nolan waited for Iris to order and was glad that she got something fairly normal: chicken strips and fries. He ordered a bacon chili cheeseburger—and held the onions.

When Kari left the table, Iris laughed. “Now I know how you could eat that whole piece of Frankenpizza last night. You have no taste buds.”

“What? The bacon chili cheeseburger is a classic.” He laughed. “That pizza should never happen again.”

“It was so awesome of you to eat it, though. The kids loved that.”

“It’s low on the list of stupid shit I’ve done to make Loke happy.”

In the middle of making her coffee to her liking—lots of cream and sugar, Nolan noted—Iris went still. Her eyes came up and held on his. “You’re a good person, Nolan.”

Nolan looked down into his own cup. “I don’t know if that’s true.”

“I do. You seem sad a lot, but you try to hide it from the people you love. And you focus on making them happy.”

He wasn’t sure how he felt about Iris digging inside him like that. It wasn’t like they knew each other all
that
well. As long as he’d lived in Signal Bend, she’d never been in town more than a couple of months at a time. It seemed intrusive of her to make assumptions on limited evidence about who he was, even if maybe she was right. But there was no anger with his resistance. Just a need to change the topic.

“I’m not sad when I’m with you.”

“Is that why we’re doing…this?”

“Would that be a good enough answer?”

She didn’t respond immediately, and Nolan could tell she was considering the question.

“Yeah, it is.”

~oOo~

After supper, Nolan and Iris said goodbye to everybody they knew in the diner—which was most of the people there—and he held the door and ushered her out. Right away, he sensed the difference in the air, and he looked up. The sky was a dense dark, nearly black. Shifting his eyes to the sodium arc lamp at the corner of Marie’s lot, he saw what he hoped he’d see—the first swirls of white.

“It’s snowing.”

At his side, he sensed Iris’s movement as she looked up, too. “Oh, yeah. Like it started as we walked out. Did you know it was supposed to snow?”

He shook his head. “I slept the whole day.”

They were standing only six feet or so from the door to the diner, and the door and the whole front of the building was glass, but Nolan didn’t care. He pulled Iris sharply into his arms and kissed her.

As always, she went with him, molding her body to his. Her arms came around his neck, and he felt her fingers in the hair at his nape. Without pulling away, with his lips still on hers, he said, “I don’t want to take you home. I want…I need…”

He didn’t know how to say it and not sound like an asshole. He needed to be naked with her. He needed to be as close to her as he could get. He needed to feel as good as he knew how to feel. He needed to fuck her.

But he didn’t need to finish his sentence. Because she said, “I do, too.”

“I don’t know where we can go.”

“It’s cold, Nolan. Can we talk about it in the truck?”

“Fuck. Yeah, sorry.” He took her hand and led her to the truck.

When they were inside, with Nolan’s kutte hanging on a hook against the back window, he started the engine and got the heater going. If the damn cab had had a bench seat, he might well have suggested that they go park somewhere. But it didn’t. Besides, it was a work truck and needed a cleaning. It smelled like sweat, dirt, cigars, and sawdust.

“Can’t we just go to the clubhouse? You have a room in the dorm, right?”

Nolan shook his head. “I don’t want you having to do the walk in the morning. Not you, Iris.”

“The walk of shame? Isn’t that only after a one-night stand? That’s not what this would be, is it? I don’t have those. I told you I didn’t want to just hook up.”

The little dots of snow began to form into discernible flakes. Nolan watched them settle on the windshield; the cab wasn’t warm enough yet for the glass to melt them, and he could see the lacy pattern each one made.

He shifted in his seat so he could face her straight on. “No. Not a one-night stand.”

She smiled. “Then it’s not a problem. I’ve walked through the clubhouse hundreds of times. Plus, you drove, so you have to take me home.”

Iris was sweet and giving—and naïve. If she walked out of the dorm in the morning, especially with him, it would be much more than a regular walk through the clubhouse. It would mean something. Maybe only he could know how much.

He closed his eyes and dug around in his heart and mind. Show would not tolerate anything less than a real commitment between them if they went that far. Last night, Nolan had been terrified—truly distraught—when he’d felt the fade in his connection to Analisa. Was he ready to go as deep with Iris as he’d need to go to keep her father from killing him?

He didn’t know. But he wanted her, wanted what she brought him. He needed her.

“Okay. Clubhouse it is.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

They didn’t talk on the short ride to the clubhouse, but Nolan reached across the console and laced his fingers with hers. She loved his hands—they managed to be both graceful and rough at the same time. His fingers were long, with blunt, flat nails, and his palms were broad. His skin was callused from work and riding.

Most of the men Iris knew had hard, rough hands. Her father’s were starting to look like they’d been through a wood chipper. She liked hands like that. They showed a man’s character, she thought. In college, she’d dated a few guys who had never worked much with their hands, and their skin was as soft as hers—sometimes even softer. That had felt strange to her.

Her stepfather, Ray, was an office guy—an executive with a power company. Ray had soft hands. He even had regular manicures at ‘the club.’ And Ray was a jerk who was too free with those soft hands.

Iris preferred men who belonged to a different kind of club. And had a different kind of hands.

Even her sister’s taste in men was rougher than average, though she wasn’t into guys like their dad. Rose’s boyfriend, Christian, played guitar in a death metal band. For his actual, real job.

Their father hated him. Manifestly. Actually, all their parents hated him, even Shannon. It was the one thing they all agreed on: Rose had terrible taste in men. Christian was, at Iris’s estimate, something like the ninth rock jerk Rose had been with, but this one seemed to be sticking to the golden princess.

Iris thought he was okay. In the pantheon of weird guys Rose had liked, he was pretty decent. He was pretentious as hell, and his band had this gross shtick at their gigs where they stripped nearly naked and smeared fake blood all over themselves and each other, and any dope in the audience who got too close, but he was also a vegan fitness junkie who put no ‘poisons’ in his body, and for that he was a major upgrade from some of the other winners. Iris had been sworn to an uncomfortable secrecy about a couple of Rose’s exes—secrets their father would kill over if he knew. Literally.

She and Rose were sworn to a similar kind of secrecy about Ray.

Iris’s boyfriends had never elicited strong reaction from her parents. Her father had been suspicious and vaguely hostile, of course—that seemed to be the most pleasant way he knew how to be around men who liked his daughters—but otherwise, no one had seemed to have much of an opinion about the men she’d brought home.

She hadn’t always had much of an opinion about them, either, frankly. After a couple of heartbreaks, and another time or two where a past she’d pushed behind her had been dragged painfully forward, Iris had focused her interest on safe men. Gentle and kind. She’d thought she wanted that. Safety. Security. And she did—but not only that.

Maybe that was her draw to Nolan. He wasn’t safe. But he needed it.

When Nolan parked the truck near the clubhouse door—the lot was almost empty—he turned off the ignition, reaching around the wheel with his left hand, but he didn’t move to get out. He wore a heavy silver ring on his middle finger, and she traced her thumb over its surface. All the Horde men wore big rings. This one had a funky letter ‘H’ carved into it. Iris assumed it stood for Havoc, Nolan’s stepdad. Or dad, she guessed. Nolan had his last name.

She didn’t really remember much about Havoc. Except his laugh. She guessed he used to laugh a lot, because that was about the only memory she could call up for him.

Nolan squeezed her hand. “Are you sure about this, Iris?”

She lifted his hand and kissed it. “I am.”

“Can I ask you something?”

Looking over, she saw that he was almost frowning. The cab had already cooled off so that their breath plumed between them, and the inside of the windows had begun to fog. “Sure.”

“You asked me why I wanted this. Why do you?”

There was no answer she could think of that she wanted to share. She knew better than to tell him that she wanted to save him—and, anyway, that wasn’t the right, or at least the whole, answer. She didn’t want to make one up, either.

So she found something true to say. “I told you. You’re a good person. And I feel good when I’m with you, too.”

For a long time, maybe as long as a minute, he simply stared at her, and she wondered what he could see in the near-dark. Then he leaned over the console, pulled her close, and kissed her.

“Let’s go in.”

~oOo~

The clubhouse was empty, as far as she could tell. Iris wasn’t sure whether she’d ever been here when it was empty. And clean, too. It felt almost like an antiseptic wasteland. She’d read a short story in one of her English classes in high school. By Ray Bradbury, she thought. The title had always stayed with her, just as the story had, because it was so oddly sad: ‘There Will Come Soft Rains.’ It was set in the future, and it was about an automated house, after some kind of nuclear apocalypse. All of the people were dead, but the house kept on doing its thing, making the breakfast, announcing the time, dusting, vacuuming—keeping house for a family whose only presence was their silhouettes burned into the wall.

With the silence and strong smell of clean in a clubhouse Iris had never known to be either, that story sprang into her head in Technicolor and made her shiver.

Nolan, with his hand on the small of her back, stopped. “You okay? Cold?”

“No, sorry. It’s just…kind of spooky, all quiet like this.”

He chuckled. “Yeah…I was alone when I woke up before, and I’m man enough to admit that it creeped me out more than a little.”

“Where is everybody? It’s Saturday night.”

“I don’t know. It’s New Year’s. I guess people are recovering from last night. Or they’re at Tuck’s. Darwin and Thumper have patrol. They might be in later.”

Remembering how things had been that afternoon, Iris laughed. “Oh, man. Dad and Shannon looked rough when they got home. Dad kept groaning about being ‘too old for this shit,’ and Shannon drank about a gallon of coffee. I guess the party was great.”

“Ours was better.” He slid his hand under her sweater and hooked a finger or his thumb through one of her belt loops. “You want a drink or something before we go back?”

“Can we bring something back with us?”

“Sure. You want a beer?”

“What are the odds that there’s any Captain Morgan around here?”

“Microscopic.”

Iris laughed. She hadn’t expected anything else, but women drank here, too, and it wasn’t like spiced rum was as girly as a champagne cocktail or anything like that. “Okay. Beer is good.”

Nolan went around the corner and pulled four beers from the cooler. Then he grabbed a big canister of salted peanuts, and she followed him and his armful of snacks down the corridor to his room.

At his door, he turned. “My keys are in my pocket. Can you get them and unlock the door?”

Although they were going in there to have sex, Iris felt shy when she slid her hand into his pocket. She could feel him; he was hard, and growing harder. Unable to resist despite her shyness, she ran a finger along the firm ridge of his erection as she found and gripped his keys. She looked up and saw him staring down at her.

“It’d be okay if you hurried,” he mumbled.

She hurried.

Once in his room, Nolan set the beer and peanuts on a chest of drawers and turned the deadbolt on his door. He shrugged out of his coat and kutte.

Iris took that couple of seconds and looked around his room as she shed her coat, letting her eyes go where they wanted. She’d had a dim, unacknowledged fear that it would be like some of the guys’ dorm rooms she’d been in at college, or maybe even worse, but it wasn’t. It was almost tidy, in fact. He had a bed that looked about as big as the full-size she had at home. Not exactly spacious for two people, but big enough. It was made in the guy way, the comforter pulled straight over the pillows. The chest of drawers he’d set the snacks on was dinged up, but the top wasn’t cluttered with crap. Just a charging station and a big glass mug full of coins. Black curtains covered the window. An ancient club chair, its upholstery frayed and showing tufts of stuffing, sat against the wall by the bathroom door and held a couple of days’ worth of dirty clothes—his flannel from the night before rested on top of the stack.

She took in the Harley posters that must have been required in the club bylaws or something—then, just as he came up behind her and started to enclose her in his arms, she saw a framed drawing hanging on the wall near the door. She stepped away from him to study it.

It was an elaborate pencil sketch of a dragon. On the stony ground at its feet were the remains of the knights it had killed: skulls and bones, swords and shields. In the bottom right-hand corner, the letters
NH
were penciled, a bit darker than the background.

“This is wonderful. Who’s NH?”

“Me. It was me, anyway. My last name used to be Hawes.” He took hold of her hand and tried to pull her away. She let him.

She’d known that he hadn’t always been Mariano, and she knew—or assumed—why he’d changed it, but she’d never known what his last name had been. “You drew that? You’re talented.”

Looking uncomfortable, he shrugged. “I was okay. I don’t draw anymore.”

“Why not?” It made her sad to think that he’d stopped doing something he was so good at. If he’d framed that drawing, it must have been important to him.

“I guess I don’t want to anymore. I don’t want to talk about it.” Now he looked more than uncomfortable, and Iris understood that she’d touched a nerve.

“Okay. I’m sorry.”

“S’okay.” He pulled on her scarf, undoing its loop. “There is something I definitely want to do.” Once the scarf was draped loosely over her neck, he tugged on one end and drew it off. “This is pretty.”

“Thanks. It’s Shannon’s. She has about a hundred scarves.”

Nolan dropped that one to the floor. He slid his hands around her neck, into her hair; Iris felt the tug as his fingers curled and tangled into strands behind her ears. Then he leaned down and laid his lips on hers.

Just that at first: the brush of his lips back and forth over hers, tender and careful. It was Iris who made it change. She insinuated her arms between his and clutched at the front of his shirt, and she opened her mouth under his kiss. When her tongue touched his lips, it was like it activated something between them. Suddenly, they were ravenous. Or he was, and Iris was happy to go along for the ride.

His arms moved around her shoulders, and his hands swept down her back, pulling on her hair as his still-tangled fingers found the ends. She’d chosen a tunic-length sweater that skimmed nicely over her chest and ass but wasn’t likely to give her father a heart attack, and Nolan’s hands skimmed over her ass now and found the hem.

He didn’t move to yank her sweater off right away; rather, he pushed his hands under it and found the bare skin of her waist. When the light scrape of his coarse palms made her moan, he echoed the sound, and his hand moved up her back and found the hooks of her bra. With one hand, he managed all three hooks.

She loved it when a guy could do that one-handed.

Iris was so hot for him she ached. Her hips and her belly, her shoulders, her arms, her breasts, her pussy, everything in her clamored to be closer, to take him in, to feel good and make him feel good.

She fussed with the buttons on his flannel. When it was more work than she could easily manage, she realized that she was shaking.

He realized it, too, and stepped back. With his hands over hers, he stopped her flailing attempt. Then he reached back over his shoulders and pulled the buttoned shirt over his head, bringing his thermal with it. He tossed the bundle away with a hungry gleam in his eyes.

And oh shit, look at him. Had she ever seen him before without a shirt? She didn’t think she had. God, he was gorgeous.