ROMANCE: Lion Protector (Paranormal Shifter BBW Military Romance) (Shapeshifter Alpha Male Short Stories Book 2) (33 page)

Chapter 5: Kelly

“We’ve got a single at table 12,” Annie told me as she came into the kitchen. I had been paired up with Annie for my first shift at Le Paris. Annie had been taking the lead on the larger parties and I had been shadowing her. On the parties of two or less, we had reversed roles so that I would start getting the hang of it. “You want to try this one by yourself?”

“I don’t know,” I said with a laugh. I’d pretty much breezed through my last couple of tables and was feeling confident. I put my fingers to my lips and widened my eyes in a sarcastic gesture. “Are you sure I’m ready?”

“Oh God, you’re too much,” Annie laughed. She pulled me to the side and whispered. “The guy kind of scares me.”

“Scares you?” I wrinkled my brow. “What do you mean?”

“You’ll see,” Annie smiled, dancing away from me.

“Thanks,” I called after her. I had no idea what type of customer in Le Paris could possibly be scary. Curious to discover what sort of man creature scared Annie, I started out of the kitchen and looked toward my area, my eyes moving in the direction of table 12. I froze when I saw the broad shoulders covered in leather. Had he found me? Here?

“Dude,” Annie said, moving up behind me and poking me in the back. “Come on. You can’t be scared. He’s probably harmless.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Sure you can. You knocked it out of the park on the last two tables. This one will be a piece of cake.”

“But, I don’t know…”

“Jesus, Kelly, how scary can he really be? He’s sitting at a table in a high-end French restaurant. Now go.”

The time that I spent talking to Annie gave me additional time to study the insignia on the back of the leather jacket of the customer. It didn’t belong to any of the guys who typically hung around with the Lost Disciples. In fact, it took me several seconds to run through the encyclopedia in my brain and come up with what it was.
Silent Brotherhood. Jesus, those guys are badass,
I thought.

Feeling a little bit more relaxed, because there was no way in hell that a member of the Silent Brotherhood was ever going to speak to a Lost Disciple, I felt a little bit safer about approaching the table and doing my job. I took a deep breath and walked purposefully to the table.

“Welcome to Le Paris,” I said as I moved around in front of the table to face the man sitting there. When he looked up at me, I saw his penetrating dark eyes, sculpted face and a scar on his chin. I stumbled over the rest of my greeting. “Um, yeah, um, my name is Kelly and I will be serving you… I mean, will be your server.”

“Serving me, huh?” the biker responded. A smile broke across his face and he started to laugh. “My name is Anthony and I’ll let you serve me however you like.”

Jesus, Kelly, get your mind in the game.
I plunged ahead, trying to stay focused in spite of the fact that the guy sitting in front of me had made my stomach start doing loops. “Would you like to start off with a cocktail or a bottle of wine? We have a fabulous Chablis that is our special this evening.”

“Do I look like a guy who drinks wine, Kelly?” he chuckled.

“What would you like instead?”

“That’s a loaded question. What all is on the menu?”

The way that he looked at me told me that he was already including me as one of the items on his menu. I blushed slightly and then forced myself to concentrate. “We also have champagne, a selection of whiskeys, mixed drinks and beer on tap. Could I bring you one of those?”

“How about a Scotch, neat?” he grinned. He was obviously enjoying watching me squirm.

“Any preference?” I knew from experience that not all Scotches were created equal, though I wasn’t sure what was present in the bar.

“Single malt. Best you got.”

“Very well, I’ll be back with that in a moment and then I’ll take your order.”

“I hope so,” he winked.

I was glad to escape, and walked in the direction of the bar quickly. In spite of trying to stay focused, I couldn’t help looking back at him before turning the corner. He had watched me walk away and smiled when he saw me look back. I hurried around the corner, suddenly very conscious of how short the skirt on my French maid uniform was. I leaned against the bar, waiting in line behind other servers as they placed their drink orders with the bartender.

The broad shoulders, muscular frame, short-cropped hair, sharp features of his face, the scar and his penetrating eyes were frozen like a snapshot in her mind. My heart had been thundering in my chest the entire time that I’d been speaking to him, and I noticed that my mouth was dry. “The badder the better,” a phrase I’d use often, skipped through my mind.
Shit, no, Kelly. Stop thinking like that.

“Your order?” The bartender had finished taking the orders of the other girls and had come to me.

“Huh?” I said, looking up at him.

“Do you have a drink order?” He frowned at me and broke down the statement in one syllable parts.

“Sorry, um, yes.”
What the hell did he order?

“It is?”

“Scotch, neat, single malt,” I finally blurted out as my memory kicked in.

“Brand?”

“Best stuff we have?”

“We have lots of good single malts,” he replied. “Maybe you ought to go ask him?”

Oh shit, don’t make me go back and ask him.
I scrambled through my brain to try to remember a brand of single malt, and then finally glanced up at the row of whiskeys and picked one out. I saw an Aberlour with a large number 18 on it. An eighteen-year-old single malt should be good. “Aberlour,” I said quickly.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” I replied. I hoped that I was sure. I damned sure wasn’t going to go ask him. I took several deep breaths and tried to regain my focus.

“So, how scary is he?” Annie asked, coming up to the bar to place an order for another table that she’d gone to tend to.

“Not too bad,” I replied. I was lying. He scared the hell out of me, but not in a way that Annie would understand.

Annie placed her order and then turned back to me, holding a whiskey tumbler with amber liquid in it and sitting on a serving tray. “Here’s your drink.”

“I wish it was my drink,” I said dryly. I hoped that my attempt at humor would help settle my nerves.

“Don’t we all,” Annie replied.

Taking a deep breath, I went back around the corner with the drink. He watched me with that crooked, devilish grin on his face, all of the way to his table. From that point forward, waiting on him didn’t become any easier. He was bold and very sure of himself, but he wasn’t overly rude. The entire combination had me in a state of turmoil inside, until that great moment of grace when he was finally finished, had paid his check and was ready to leave.

I had to endure one more moment with him, however, when he sought me out before going to the exit. “Hey, thanks,” he said as he pressed a hundred dollar bill into my hand. “Come by the Panhead and hang out some time.”

“Yeah, sure,” I smiled, looking down at the bill in my hand.

He turned and strolled out, sort of like a gunfighter leaving a saloon. I was finally able to breathe again and I’d already made enough money to pay more than half of my tuition.

Chapter 6: Sabre

The problem, and likely reason why Clap had been found with his throat cut was because there were several rival clubs all trying to do business in a small area. Though areas of influence were, for the most part, pretty well known, there were grey areas where they overlapped. In those areas, things were sort of like the Wild West: Whoever could take control and keep it had influence over it. It was as simple as that.

My problem was trying to figure out which of the grey areas that I was operating in was being contested. Because I had a tendency to be a little bit reckless when it came to respecting the boundaries to begin with, there were plenty of possibilities to sort through.

There were two major operators that divided the city in half: the Silent Brotherhood and the Lost Disciples. Roughly, their territories were split along a natural border, an interstate highway that extended, generally, from north to south. However, there were places where it made wide curves cutting into either SB or LD territory. Those curves created the grey areas between those two rivals, but also opened up an avenue for two more clubs known as the KOTR, or Knights of the Road, and an older, fading branch of the Highwaymen.

Ally clubs were granted permission to operate inside the territories of the bigger clubs and skimmed a little something off of their profits as a means of remaining allies instead of being eliminated. The smaller clubs tended to do more bickering among themselves than the two larger ones, who knew that for them to square off would touch off an all-out war. Thus, the two larger clubs tended to manipulate the smaller ones into working the grey areas or cutting into the profits of other small clubs that were allied with the rival larger club.

Though I couldn’t prove it, Clap’s murder smacked of a Silent Brotherhood operation. It was ballsy and professionally done, suggesting that someone had paid a great deal of money for it to happen. The fact that it wasn’t the first hit that had taken place, as Gentry had said, made me wonder, however, if it hadn’t been called out by an enforcer. If that was the case, then the Lost Disciples were being sent a message by someone higher up concerning how reckless I was regarding boundaries. The other possibility was that the thorn in my side, the KOTR, was beginning to make a move on my territory.

Since the KOTR had started to grow in the area, moving in from the coast, where they had a significant amount of influence, I had been feeling something of a pinch in all three areas of business. Prostitution had been pretty well under my control, given the fact that my part of the city lent itself more favorably to that sort of thing, though the Silent Brotherhood did control some high-end escort services. Drugs were equally favored by both rich and poor; the only difference was that the rich bought higher quality stuff at a higher price and the poor bought cheap stuff at a lower price, but in a higher volume. The third sector of my business was in black market automotive and motorcycle parts. That was the enterprise that took the LDs into the grey areas most often.

When Gentry left, I took a six-pack of beer from the refrigerator and headed out to the front porch. I was going to need some time to sort through what had just happened to Clap and try to figure out who was responsible and why.

“Who did this shit?” Gonzo fumed as he took a long drag on a Winston and then blew the smoke out through his nostrils.

I shrugged, sat down, popped the top off of a cold bottle, and then sighed and placed it in Gonzo’s outstretched hand before reaching for another.

“Pro?” Gonzo asked.

“That’s what I’m thinking?”

“What’s the ace of spades mean?”

“The SEALS in ‘Nam used to do that whenever they tapped some gook out of the game.”

“Enforcer?”

“Gotta assume that until we know something different.”

“If it’s an enforcer, then what?”

Even I wasn’t stupid enough to go against an enforcer. An enforcer could call down hellfire and brimstone from all over the country on the Lost Disciples and essentially eliminate them completely. “We have to stay inbounds for a while.”

“What if it’s KOTR or SB?” Gonzo ventured.

“If I find that out,” I growled through clenched teeth, “then we’ll hit those motherfuckers and hit them hard.”

There was a long silence while Gonzo finished his cigarette, chugged the remaining half of his beer and leaned over to take another out of the six-pack between us. He popped the top and extended it toward me.

“No, I’m good.” I hadn’t drunk half of the contents of the first bottle in my hand.

“Why Clap?” Gonzo asked. “Why not you or me?”

“Hard to say,” I sighed. “That’s sort of the reason I think it’s an enforcer. Plus that cut was too damned neat for some KOTR or SB hack.”

“I think the SBs have got some pretty good cutters with them. Special forces fucks, you know, SEALS, Rangers and Recon. I think they even have some of those Air Force special ops weenies. What do they call them?”

“Who really gives a shit?” I growled. I leaned on Gonzo for a lot of things and having him sit next to me when I was working on a crisis was only natural, but Gonzo had a tendency to idolize the special forces guys, though he tried to sound like he didn’t. I was suddenly tired of talking about what had happened to Clap and why. “You gonna put those new taillights on your ride today?”

Gonzo had bought a new taillight bar and shield set for his bike earlier that week and had planned on mounting them over the weekend. “Jesus, I forgot about that.” His face suddenly turned ashen. “Clap was going to help me with that.”

So much for trying to change the conversation.
I decided to just remain silent. I tossed back the remainder of the half-warm beer in my bottle, made a face and reached for another one. No matter how hard I tried to push the image of Clap’s body lying in a pool of its own blood out of my mind, it kept coming back, as did the words of Gentry, who was pretty sure that he was dealing with an enforcer. Why was I being disciplined by the Godfather? I hadn’t been running that loose lately, had I? Another thought struck me, and it was the one that I decided to run with as far as an explanation for what happened. Clap had a tendency to be something of a loose cannon at times. Maybe he did something on his own and paid the ultimate price for it. Still, he didn’t deserve what he got.

“How about those two bitches you had last night, huh?” Gonzo nudged me in the bicep and then howled. “Just the image of those two in your shower this morning will stick with me for a lifetime.”

The subject was officially changed, even in my mind.