Tastes Like Candy (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 2) (32 page)

              There was no reason for her blood to boil. None. No reason to turn away what might be a competent employee based on the fact that her boyfriend had more than likely slept with this woman.

              Not slept, she corrected. No way had there been one second of
sleeping
, not with this sex goddess Hooters girl.

              Michelle hated herself a little for such thoughts. She hadn’t thought she was capable of this kind of bitter, ultra-feminine emotion.

              Then again, she’d never been in love.

              It really sucked most of the time.

              Jenny kicked her foot beneath the table and she forced her eyes open. “Hi,” she said, too brightly, and saw that Trina was watching her with undue attention. “Resume?”

              Trina leaned forward and slid it toward them. “Um…you look familiar. Have we met?”

              “No,” Michelle said. She slid the resume over to Jen, not wanting to look at the thing for fear it would say
Fucked Lean Dogs VP Senseless
somewhere. “How did you hear about us?” she asked. “For research purposes,” she tacked on, because she knew her tone was frosty.

              “Everybody in town knows the Lean Dogs are opening up a bar,” Trina said with a throaty laugh and a toss of her hair. Ugh. The kind of woman who couldn’t turn off the flirt, no matter the company.

              “Why would you say that?” Michelle asked. “This hasn’t been advertised as being Lean Dogs owned.”

              The woman’s smile faltered. “Uh…”

              “It says here,” Jenny broke in, consulting the resume, “that you’re currently working at the Armadillo?”

              “Uh…yeah. I am.”

              “Are you unhappy there?” Jenny pressed.

              Trina shrugged. “It’s okay. I mean, they’re not, like, bad to me or anything. But–”

              “But you’re afraid if the Dogs open up a bar of their own, they won’t grace you with their presence anymore?” Michelle said. She sounded like a bitch, like a petty, jealous bitch, and she hated it. But she couldn’t catch hold of her anger, the way it kept slipping across her tongue.

              Trina blushed. “Not really. I just…”

              Michelle felt a touch on her arm: Jenny, urging her to be calm, to take a deep breath, fingers curling soothingly around her wrist.

              Michelle took a deep breath, and then another. She couldn’t believe she was acting this way.

              In her periphery, she saw Tommy slide into place, his frown questioning:
You okay?
She nodded.

              “Katrina,” Jenny said, fake smile pinned in place. “Why don’t we talk about your potential responsibilities here, and you can answer a few questions for us, okay?”

              Trina looked relieved, though she darted a cautious glance Michelle’s way. “Okay.”

              Michelle tuned out the interview. Retreated back through the snarled logic lines of her jealousy to a place in her head where she could marvel at her own behavior.
Seriously?
she asked herself.
You’re going there?

              She felt very young and very stupid suddenly, sentiments that had never before crossed her mind. She’d been the woman of the household since she was a child, and she’d felt the weight of responsibility – for her depressed father, for the uncle who was her brother – across her shoulders daily. More important than school, than petty childhood feuds and crushes. With Paul there had never been a chance for a future, or anything as solid as love, so she’d never allowed herself this sort of response. She felt all her overlooked girlhood emotion slamming into her now, with the force of a loaded-down lorry. Candy had told her he loved her. And he was a manwhore who’d fucked every two-legged thing in Amarillo, Texas. She would either have to deal with that, or drive herself insane.

              Trina was long gone by the time she finally plugged back into the moment, the chair across from their table empty, Jenny’s hand on her shoulder now.

              “Chelle.”

              “I’m fine,” she said, automatically.

              “You’ve seen her before,” Jenny said, and her eyes, when Michelle looked at them, were full of unwanted sympathy.

              Michelle forced a stiff smile. “That night I went to the Armadillo with Fox and the boys,” she said, hating herself some more. “Candy was with her. They were leaving together.”

              “But he came home with you,” Jenny said, hand squeezing. “Remember that: he came home with you.”

              Some consolation that was.

~*~

Candy

The little bell above the door jangled as three men entered the shop. All wore dark long-sleeved shirts and jeans, work boots. Anyone passing on the street would have been able to tell the boss from the two security thugs. Ruiz was striking enough as it was, but then the two detail guys wore the blank masks of personnel. Candy didn’t approve: when he went somewhere with his boys, they all looked like hungry wolves, assessing, circling. They were a pack, working in sync, and not a minor king with his subjects in tow.

              It made his life easier, though. It meant anyone working under Ruiz was just that: under him. Without decisions or ideas of their own. If he could handle the boss man, he could handle all of them.

              “Jorge,” Candy greeted, smiling. “Look at you. You just driving by? Stopping in for queso?”

              “I take it that’s not why you’re here,” Ruiz said, admirably poised, but a little sweaty along his hairline.

              “I wanted a word,” Candy said. “And our mutual acquaintance is indisposed lately. How’s Armando doing by the way?”

              Ruiz ground his teeth and glanced toward one of his men.

              “I should probably warn you,” Candy said, “the guys you have coming in the back? They’re not coming.”

              On cue, the swinging door that led into the storage area crashed open. Candy wanted to grin. He checked the impulse, and darted a glance over his shoulder to see Mercy and Colin marching four duct-taped cartel boys in at gunpoint.

              “Look, boss,” Mercy said with a dark laugh. “We’ve been making friends.”

              “I can see that.”

              There was a flurry of clicks as guns were drawn. Ruiz, his two boys. The clerk still held the sawed-off with shaking hands. Fox outed his piece as well, but Candy held up his empty hands.

              “Hey now, let’s all take a deep breath,” he said. Through the shop’s glass door and windows he saw the rest of his own crew approaching, Jaffrey with them. He grinned. “No reason anybody needs to get shot today.”

~*~

Michelle

“I’m beginning to like America,” Tommy said.

              Michelle smirked. “You’re beginning to like American waitresses, more like.”

              “Were there waitresses here? I hadn’t noticed.” He laughed when she socked him in the arm.

              “Pig,” she accused as they rounded the bar and headed for the gym.

              For the first time since demo had begun, the sounds echoing through the concrete space weren’t the ring of hammers or the buzz of saws, but the smack of taped fists on one of the heavy bags. They found Niko giving the Everlast a workout, in track pants and white wifebeater, gaze pinned to the letters on the bag, expression fixed and distant. He looked nothing like the almost-timid guy who’d approached them yesterday. This was a cold, calculating fighter who struck the bag again and again, blows sure, fueled by muscle memory and training.

              Michelle breathed a little sigh of relief she hadn’t known she’d been holding. Yes, they’d made the right call in hiring him. Talented, yes, but worried about pleasing them and performing well too. The perfect combination.

              He noticed them, and went rigid. Stepped back from the bag and pushed his hair off his forehead, still coiled tight with energy, damp with sweat. His eyes snapped through the fight barrier, opened wider, turned nervous as his gaze came to them.

              “Hi.”

              Michelle nodded a hello. “The equipment all right?”

              “It’s fine. It’s great.” He smiled. “Better than what I’ve been working with.”

              Again she felt the little stab of sympathy she’d felt yesterday.

              “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, “for hiring me.” He ducked his head a little, and Michelle knew the urge to pet the top of his head as if he were a puppy.

              “You were our best candidate,” she said. “I’m glad you got the job.” And before he could blush or thank her again, she added, “Niko, this is my uncle, Tommy. Tommy, this is our new trainer, Niko Markov.”

              They shook hands.

              “Uncle?” Niko asked, surprise in his voice.

              “It’s a very long, very sordid, very boring story,” Tommy assured him. “But yes, uncle.” He folded his arms and braced his feet apart in a stance that was so totally her father’s, Michelle had to bite back a smile. “How long’ve you been fighting?”

              “Since high school, really…”

              They were going to talk shop. Fine. Wonderful. But she’d had too much coffee and didn’t feel she was missing out.

              “I’ll be back,” she said, tapping Tommy on the arm. “Washroom.”

              He nodded and asked Niko about weight routines.

              The restrooms were situated in the hallway between the gym and the bar, in a cool pocket of shadow that smelled like lemon cleaner and fresh AC vent filters. When she entered the alcove, Michelle realized it was the first time she’d been alone all day, and she let out a deep, tired sigh. All the activity was electrifying, but it was also hard to follow a single thought through to completion. This, she decided, was why mothers hid in laundry rooms and pantries: a little “me” time.

              She pushed through the door into the ladies’ and was surprised to hear a voice. The door to the third stall was shut and someone was saying, “I don’t know. I need more time.” A woman’s voice, tone hushed and tense. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s what–”

              “Jen?” Michelle called.

              “Shit,” the voice said, and Michelle heard the quiet beep of a mobile phone disconnecting a call.

              The stall door opened and out stepped Trina the waitress.

              She jammed her phone in the back pocket of her jeans and tidied her hair with her other hand. She looked too-tan under the bathroom lights. And her eyes looked a little wide and wild, features frozen in an expression she hadn’t displayed during her interview just a half hour ago.

              Michelle’s stomach soured. “What are you doing in here?”

              Trina cocked her head and pushed a fake smile across her lips. “You know. Like…going to the bathroom.” The flip-switching change in her voice was starling. Then again, women specialized in manipulating their personalities to suit their surroundings.

              “We dismissed you earlier,” Michelle said, her own voice flat. “Why are you still here?”

              Trina shrugged and stepped forward, eyes bouncing around the bathroom in an obvious show. “I wanted to have a look around. That’s not illegal or anything.”

              “Actually, since we aren’t open for business, and this is private property, it could be taken that way, yeah.”

              Her gaze came to Michelle’s, something dark flickering through it, a fast flash of…hostility? Maybe. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re kind of a bitch.”

              “Duly noted. Now get out of my bar.”

              Trina rolled her eyes, reached to fluff her hair…and that was when Michelle saw it. Someone else – anyone else, any girl who’d grown up normal and hadn’t been used as a spec ops agent by her MC president dad – would have missed the sinuous line of a wire visible beneath the thin fabric of Trina’s shirt. It was on her side, just beneath her arm, and it might as well have been flashing neon.

              Michelle saw it.

              And Trina knew she did, eyes flipping wide.

              A wire.

              Attached, no doubt, to a mic pack.

              Their undercover fed? Standing right in front of Michelle.

Thirty

Michelle

Trina stood frozen, hand still caught in her hair, nostrils flaring as she breathed. The longer she stared at the wire, the more Michelle knew, in her gut, that she was standing across from an ATF agent.

              Fuck.

              Stepping backward, slowly, carefully, she reached the door and turned the lock; it slid into place with a smooth
snick
.

              “Take it off,” she said, a whisper that would sound like static across the mic.

              All traces of the ditzy waitress bled out of Trina, seeming to take some of her tan with it. The act dropped away, and in its place, a sharp, frightened, calculating federal agent. The transformation was sudden and startling.              

              She lowered her arm slowly, gaze tracking up and down Michelle, assessing.

              “Take it off,” Michelle whispered again. “If you alert your friends” – and they had to be waiting in a van or something out on the street – “they can arrest us, sure, but they can’t get in here in time to save your life.” Gaze trained on the agent, she reached down quickly and drew the knife from her boot, brandished it down low by her leg, so the light glinted along the length of the blade. “Do you want to collar us? Or do you want to live?”             

              She watched the decision happen behind the woman’s eyes. Saw the jerky nod.

              “In the sink,” Michelle instructed. “Slowly.”

              Trina raised her shirt up inch by inch to reveal the small mic pack taped to her skin, removed the strips, as told, slowly. The wire caught in the shirt collar and she gave it a tug, dropped the whole of the device into the sink.

              “Turn the water on.”

              She did, and then whoever was on the other end was doubtless getting an earful of static. And then nothing.

              “What’s your real name?” Michelle asked at a regular volume.

              “Fuck you.”

              She shrugged. “Alright,
Trina
. How long have you been under?”

              “Like I said before.”

              “You’re one hell of an actress, I’ll give you that,” Michelle said. “Or else you really are that stupid, which, given what’s happening now, would be a good bet.”

              Trina folded her arms. She was almost a head taller than Michelle, and her posture emphasized the fact. “There’s something I haven’t been able to figure out,” she said, a humorless smile twisting her lips. “The groupies I get. They have nothing better to do with their lives, and at the end of the day, they’re just passing through anyway. They don’t know anything and they don’t owe anything. But you guys? The old ladies? Why the fuck would anyone want to throw their lives away like that? I mean, your boy, he’s
alright
in the sack, but he’s sure as shit not worth going to jail over.”

              Michelle’s stomach turned over, and she felt a dark, angry smile streak across her face. She tightened her grip on the knife handle, the smooth bone of the hilt pressing against the freshly-healed bones in her hand until it hurt. Bones. It always came back to bones, didn’t it? This club was in her bones.

              “You don’t have any idea who I am, do you?”

              The smug look faltered.

              “You think he picked me up at the Armadillo some night? A child with a bad boy fetish?” The chuckle bubbled up out of her throat before she could register what it meant. She glanced down at the knife to steady herself, the shining steel a touchstone, a comfort.

              “Let me explain something to you,” she continued. “The women who choose to become old ladies are a special kind of mad. Who would want pubs and knife fights and late night calls from the police when they could have cozy little houses and boring day jobs? Insane, that was my mother. Reckless.

              “But then there are those of us who were born into this. We’re the legacies.” She started to twirl the knife slowly, walking it down her knuckles the way Albie had taught her, blade flashing. “We don’t know anything
but
the club. That’s a whole other kind of mad.”             

              Trina’s eyes were on the knife; her throat rippled as she swallowed. Her voice was hard, when she spoke, but her lips trembled. “As shitty as your life is, trust me, you don’t want to add assaulting a federal agent to the pile.”

              “No.” The knife was gliding between her fingers, the movements smoother and surer the faster she went. “Mad, not stupid, remember?”

              And Michelle stepped neatly to the side, giving the woman an exit.

              Trina didn’t move right away, gaze wary.

              “You’ll be off the case,” Michelle said.

              “No. Just no longer embedded.”

              “Ah.” She nodded. “Well, then. Guess I’ll be seeing you.”

              Trina fled.

              When she was alone. Michelle shut off the tap and fished the mic equipment from the sink. She sheathed her knife and broke the components into fragments, the brittle plastic snapping between her fingers. She trashed all of it, and then called Candy.

~*~

Candy

His phone shrilled in his pocket and every eye in the place snapped toward him, some more panicked than others. Considering his entire club was around him now, it could only be Jenny or Michelle, and the possibility of either shot panic through his veins.

              “You boys go about your business.” He dug his phone out. “I just gotta take this real quick.”

              Jaffrey, already twitchy and ready to bolt, gave him a you’re-fucking-kidding-me look, but went back to explaining things to Ruiz.

              Candy checked the screen and saw Michelle’s name. Shit.

              “Hey, baby doll. What’s up?”

              “…undercover,” Jaffrey was saying. “It isn’t PD, and it isn’t the Dogs. Someone’s trying to burn both of y’all…”

              “Hi,” Michelle said on the other end of the line, and though her voice was steady, he heard the little catch in her next breath that told him things were very much not okay. “I just had a face-to-face with your undercover fed.”

              “What?” He didn’t realize he’d shouted until the eyes came his way again.

              Michelle sighed. “That waitress from the Armadillo? The one you were going to take home before you ran into me that night.”

              “No. Nuh-uh.” He shook his head as if she could see him, dread crawling across his skin like ants.

              “No you don’t remember her? Or no you don’t believe me?”

              “Are you sure it’s her?”

              Jinx edged in closer, and mouthed
What?

             
“She came in for an interview, and she was wearing a wire.”

              “Jesus…
fuck
.”

              “I got the wire off her, and sent her packing.”

              “Shit. Are you okay?” His heart slammed against his ribs. God, how could he have been so stupid that he never suspected? He’d spent the night at that woman’s house, he’d…Christ. He was an idiot.

              “I’m fine. I just wanted to let you know.”

              “Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Shit…”

              “Candy, don’t panic.”

              “Little late for that.” He heaved a deep breath. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

              “Completely.”

              “Where the hell’s Tommy?”

              “I’m on my way to him now. Our little showdown happened in the washroom, so…”

              Alone, where anything could have happened, where that woman who was twice as big as Michelle could have shot her, bashed her head into a mirror, handcuffed her…The possibilities spun through his mind in a terrifying loop.

              “Candy,” she prompted.

              “Right. Find Tommy. Don’t leave his damn side again,” he growled. “If you gotta pee, he’s just gotta go with you, understand?”

              He swore he could hear her rolling her eyes. “Sure. Fine.”              “I’m serious.”

              “Yeah.”

              “Let us finish up here and we’ll head your way.”

              “Take your time.” She was the first to hang up. Because unlike him, she had her wits about her and wasn’t seeing everything though a filter of red-hot fury.

              “What?” Jinx said out loud this time.

              “Chelle found the fed,” he said, numbly.

              “She what?” Fox asked, something like alarm leaping in his eyes.

              “You found the guy?” Jaffrey asked.

              “Not a guy.” Candy’s shoulders slumped with shame, embarrassment. “A waitress from the Armadillo.”

              “What?” Ruiz took an aggressive step forward and a half dozen gun muzzles followed him. He paused, hands curling into fists. “How could you be so careless–”

              “Hey, this shit happens,” Jinx said. “It’s the risk we all take. Be glad they only got your guns, and your guy, and your whole crew isn’t getting deported right now.”

              Ruiz ground his teeth, jaw flexing.

              “The good news is, we know who it is now. And I’d like to think that between all of us” – he gestured to the room at large – “we can figure something out. We ain’t that stupid, are we?”

~*~

He couldn’t take a deep breath until he had Michelle crushed against his chest. Which of course then meant she couldn’t breathe.

              “Candy,” she said, face mashed to his pec. “You’re going to snap me in half, darling.”

              “Oh. Right.” He forced his arms to relax a fraction. Glanced down at her as she tipped her head back and showed him her face. Her as-always beautiful face, without a mark on it. Then again, she could be hurt any number of places, and it wouldn’t show. “Are you–”

              “How many times do I have to tell you I’m fine?” she asked, looking like she was fighting off a smile. Her eyes were clouded with worry, though, and that was what he kept going back to.

              “A million.” He shuffled her deftly so she was tucked under one of his arms and looked at Tommy, who’d been standing off to the side rolling his eyes. “Did you see her?”

              “Your undercover bimbo? Yeah. Nice legs.”

              “Helpful.”

              “Right.” Tommy made a face. “Because nobody here knew the bitch was a fed, but I was supposed to. That’s fair.”

              “Michelle was–”

              “Fine,” Tommy said. “She was fine. Don’t you think if she’d needed me, she would have called? And don’t you think I would have gone running to her?”

              Candy bristled on principle.

              “Boys–” Michelle started.

              “She’s my blood,” Tommy said. “We were raised together like brother and sister. You think I wasn’t worried? I bloody well was, but Chelle knows how to take care of herself. I get that she’s your girl, or whatever,” he said, rolling his eyes again. “But you clearly don’t know shit about her.”

              “Enough!” Michelle shouted, a sudden explosion of anger and movement as she pushed herself away from Candy and took up a solo stance off to the side. She folded her arms and braced her legs – a pose Tommy mirrored. Something unconscious both of them had observed and then fallen into themselves. “Are we going to keep sniping at each other? Or talk about our ATF problem?”

              And damn if that didn’t make Candy feel like a scolded schoolboy.

~*~

After a (mostly) civil discussion, it was decided that letting Trina – or whatever the hell her name was – go had been the only option at hand. “If she’d gone missing, or gotten hurt, that would have been all the nudge they needed to raid the clubhouse and drag us all in,” Michelle had pointed out. “Working with undercovers is nothing like working with dirty cops,” she’d added with a meaningful eyebrow twitch.

              Fox had been dispatched do relay a message to Ruiz’s people.

              The girls had gone back to the office to make their hiring decisions.

              Candy had been introduced to Niko and had to approve of the guy, even if he did have such goddamn blue eyes.

              Now he sat at his new bar, having a Scotch with Jinx, worry crawling through his gut, regular laps of it that made the drink hard to enjoy.

              He felt Jinx staring at him, a silent question.