Priest: A Motorcycle Club Romance (The Viking’s Rampage MC: Tucson Chapter Book 2)

We hadn’t gotten more than a few miles down the road when his cell phone rang. It was connected to the Bluetooth in the truck so the ringtone blared through the quiet cab and made me jump.

He cursed under his breath as he looked over at the screen. “Sorry. Have to take this.” His finger jabbed a button on the steering wheel. “Hey Wendy-”

“Dad?” A trembling voice came over the speakers and Priest tensed up visibly.

“Gabby? What’s wrong, Angel? Where’s Mom?”

Fear gripped my heart at the worry in his voice and the helplessness in hers. It was hard to determine her age just by voice alone. I still knew nothing about his kids and that was a bitter pill to swallow. I was being unreasonable, he wasn’t obligated to tell me anything. I just wanted him to. Wanted him to let me in. To let me help him through whatever this was that was making him so tense.

No. You wanted him to before you found all this out. Now you want him to leave you alone. Even with the reminder from my inner voice the desire to know him inside and out stirred in my chest.

“Dad, Mom passed out. I don’t know what to do.”

“Okay, Angel. I’m on my way right now. Just sit tight. Where are your sisters?”

“They’re here. They’re fine.”

“Okay, good. Listen, we’ve been here before. Put a pillow under her head, make sure she’s breathing alright. Is there any blood? Did she fall?”

“Yeah, I think she fell. She’s on the floor in the living room. I don’t know if she’s breathing.” The girl’s voice hitched on a sob and my heart broke apart in my chest.

“Alright, you did good, Gabby. Okay? I’ll be there in a few minutes. Just hang on.”

I clicked off my seatbelt and turned in my seat. Caitlyn’s eyes were wide and her skin was pale. “Hey, Sweetie. Everything’s okay. Have you met Priest’s other daughters yet?”

She nodded her head, answering my question, her eyes flicking over to the man who’d jammed his foot on the gas pedal. The truck lurched forward. Despite her fear, I wasn’t about to tell him to slow down. Not when his other daughters were alone and scared and their mother was injured. A thousand questions raced through my mind, but now wasn’t the time to ask them.

I reached back and brushed a lock of her hair away from her face. The feel of my fingers on her skin had her leaning into the touch. She was trusting despite what she’d gone through. Or maybe she just knew no one would ever harm her while Priest was nearby. He was her protector. I couldn’t blame her, I felt safe with him, too. At least physically. Emotionally was another story.

Turning back around, I clicked my belt back on then reached over and laid my hand on his bicep. The massive muscles there bunched under my palm.

“I can’t slow down.” Anguish raced over his face.

“Not asking you to. How far are we?”

“Five minutes.” It came out through gritted teeth.

We made it in three. The truck’s tires squealed as we flew into a driveway in a nice subdivision out in Oro Valley. It was beautiful and quiet, with a gorgeous view of the Catalina Mountains.

Expensive.

I wondered if he helped his ex-wife pay the mortgage. Not that it was any of my business. I could ask for the adoption paperwork and check his financials—and might have to in the future as this moved forward—but for now I wasn’t going to use the process to find out about him. If he’d wanted to tell me any of this, he would have during one of his trips to Texas. Or over the phone. Instead, he hadn’t mentioned any of it. Not a wife. Or kids. Or anything remotely personal.

Whether it was fair or not I was still angry that he’d withheld so much from me when we were originally getting to know each other. He’d said earlier that I had the right to be pissed at him. That was part of it. The other part was fear. I was scared he was going to make me fall in love with him and then drop me the moment things got sticky for him. It seemed to be his pattern.

“Go,” I told him, shoving down the anger and hurt. This wasn’t the time to be focusing on any of that. “I’ll get her.”

He ran inside, leaving me with Caitlyn. I got out of the truck and unbuckled her. Her hand slipped into mine and I couldn’t help but smile. Her mom must have drilled it into her head to hold an adult’s hand. She was six, so it wasn’t always necessary. Maybe it just made her feel connected. Either that or it made her feel safe. Which meant I made her feel safe. My heart clenched and I fought the urge to gather her into a hug.

The warmth filling me vanished as we walked into the house. His three girls huddled together, arms wrapped around each other while watching their dad tend to their mom.

He was on his knees next to her unconscious form. I led Caitlyn over to the other girls. “Hi,” I said with a warm smile, trying to keep them calm. The oldest gave me a brief look of curiosity through watery eyes. “I’m Jenny. I’m a friend of your dad’s. Can you watch Caitlyn while I go help?”

“Yeah.” When she spoke I recognized her voice.

“Thanks, Gabby.”

I hurried over to Priest. There was no time to react to the condition of the woman lying on the floor. Her scarf had fallen off her head, revealing hair loss that could have only come from chemo. She was skin and bones. I didn’t need to be a medical professional to know she had some kind of cancer. Sadness for her girls—and for Priest—battered at the calm exterior shell I’d erected around myself. More questions arose, even as the answers were staring me in the face.

“What can I do?” I asked him as I knelt down by her other side.

“Call an ambulance,” he said, his gaze tracking over her body as he tried to find the pulse at her neck.

I pulled my cell phone out of my back pocket and dialed 911. “Hello, I need an ambulance at…”

He grunted out the address as he began doing chest compressions. The cracking sound of ribs made bile rise in my throat. I choked out the address to the dispatcher. My eyes went to the girls. They looked frozen, terrified, and so unbearably sad.

“Gabby,” I called out, ignoring the operator for a moment. “Take the others into your room, okay?”

Her eyes were wide, tears tracking down her face, but she nodded. She ushered the other girls from the room and I was grateful she didn’t argue. His kids were sweet and the last thing they needed was to watch their father try to resuscitate their mother. I finished giving any information I could to the dispatcher.

I stayed on the phone while he worked diligently to make sure Wendy’s body stayed alive until the ambulance got there. There was a flurry of activity as the paramedics loaded her on a stretcher, one continuing CPR.

“I’ll stay with the girls if you want to go with her,” I told him softly.

His tortured eyes met mine. He wanted to go be there for her, but he was dying to go to his kids. I’d never seen this side of him before and it drew me in even more. Whatever shallow jerk I’d tried to make him into was being proven wrong. He had depth to him, and it was hard not to want more.

“Thanks, Jenny,” he said, voice deep and low. “Take care of them.”

“I promise,” I told him. “Go.”

He nodded, hesitating for a brief moment before walking out the front door, following the others to the waiting ambulance.

I shut the door and leaned back against it. My body was shaking. I needed to get myself under control before I could help those girls. Dealing with a sick patient wasn’t anything new to me. It was the CPR that had gotten to me.

It brought me right back to the afternoon when I’d come home from the grocery store. I hadn’t wanted to leave Grams, but it was either go to the store or starve. I’d found her on the floor in the kitchen, not unlike Wendy lying in the living room. I’d done CPR, but there was no bringing her back.

Tears welled in my eyes, but I knuckled them away. There was no time to sit here feeling sorry for myself. I shoved away from the door, then took a deep breath before going into the room marked ‘Gabby’.

She was sitting on the bed, her sisters gathered in close, reading them a story. This was why I loved kids so much. Their innocent, sweet natures. Gabby must have been terrified herself, but she’d called her dad and now sat comforting the others.

“Hey.”

They all looked up, a mix of fear and hope on their faces. Even Caitlyn had it. I wondered if she was remembering her own mom’s death? I couldn’t begin to understand how awful that must have been for her.

I went and sat down on the edge of the bed. “They took your mom to the hospital. Your dad went with her. Hope you don’t mind being stuck with me as a babysitter in the meantime.” I smiled brightly. One of the younger girls let a shy smile peep through the worry.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Jenny. A friend of your dad and Caitlyn here.” It didn’t surprise me that she didn’t remember my introduction. There’d been a lot happening, and all of it fast, when we’d first gotten here.

Gabby looked over at Caitlyn—who nodded enthusiastically—to confirm she knew me. Some of the wariness slid off her face. “I’m Gabby. That’s Taylor and Cassie.”

I gave them a little wave. “How old are you girls?”

Cassie popped a thumb out of her mouth. “Five.”

“Taylor’s six and I’m nine,” Gabby finished telling me.

“Is Mama going to be okay?” Taylor asked, voice quiet and withdrawn.

“Oh Sweetie, I hope so.” I couldn’t bring myself to outright lie to her. “They’re going to do everything they can for her at the hospital, okay?”

She nodded and looked down at her lap. Gabby leaned back and went back to reading the story to us. I looked around at each of the girls and hoped there would be good news for them.

It was nearing midnight when the front door to Wendy’s home opened. I gasped and held up the broom in my hands like it was a baseball bat. I could have sworn I’d locked it.

“Whoa there, it’s just me.” Priest held up his hands.

I sagged in relief, the broom dropping from its position. “Sorry. Just a bit jumpy.”

“That’s alright. Where are the girls?” He looked exhausted. Even so, he filled the room. He just had this presence about him that drew the eye. Huge and dangerous. But right now he was a worn out father worried about his daughters. The dichotomy of it all tugged at those places inside of me that wanted him. Not the naughty places that couldn’t seem to quit thinking dirty thoughts. The soul deep spots that saw the man and yearned for all he could give.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. I was just begging to have my heart shredded. “I fed them some dinner and they passed out not long after. That was about eight.” I eyed the clock. I hadn’t realized how quickly time had flown.

Priest nodded and walked back into the hallway to go check on his girls. I gave him privacy. Even though I wanted to run to him, throw my arms around him, and ask him how Wendy was, I couldn’t. His priority was to those sweet little girls. I had to give him space for them first. I could wait.

Needing to keep busy like I had been for the last four hours, I went back to sweeping. I’d already dusted, cleaned the bathrooms, vacuumed, and washed the sheets and comforter in Wendy’s bedroom. I’d have done the girls’ too, but they were using them. In between all that, I’d been cooking up every scrap of food Wendy had in the house. I was sticking it all in the freezer for when she came home.

A quick peek into the hall showed him moving toward the bedroom and looking in. I wasn’t sure if he was going to wake the girls or just check in on them. I went back to cleaning.

It didn’t matter if the man I was half in love with belonged to Wendy. Not when she was sick and had just gone to the hospital. I’d make her homecoming as easy as possible because that’s the way my mom and Grams had raised me. If Wendy was who he wanted, I’d get out of their way. My heart gave a wrenching throb.

I paused in the act of sweeping. If she came home. The thought made the panic rise up within me so I doubled my speed while sweeping. Strong hands clamped down on my arms from behind, stilling my movements.

“Hey, hey, what are you doing?” Priest spun me so he could look at my face.

“Cleaning. Cooking. Making myself useful,” I muttered. Trying to jerk out of his hold, so I could go back to work, I shrugged when he held firm. “I need to do something.”

He let me go and watched quietly as I swept the dirt in the kitchen into a dustpan. I set a mop bucket under the sink faucet and started filling the bucket with hot water. Searching under the sink, I grabbed a cleaning agent and dumped some into the water, watching it create suds.

“Sorry about missing dinner tonight.”

As if that was important right now. Sure I wanted to know what he needed to tell me, but that could wait. No one could have foreseen all this happening. I didn’t want to talk about it, so I changed the topic.

“Is Wendy…” I couldn’t bring myself to ask the rest of the question. There was no reading the expression on Priest’s face, it was closed up tight behind a blank mask.

“She’s alive, but in rough shape,” he told me, then fell silent again.

I didn’t pry, even though it all but killed me not to ask him anything. Instead, I went back to cleaning. My mom’s house was so clean you could eat your dinner off the floor. It was only after I cleaned it from top to bottom each day, during my time off work, that I’d resorted to watching movies and eating junk food. Both helped ease the grief.

A hand flashed past my face and he jerked the nozzle until the water turned off. “What’s going on Jenny?”

“Nothing.” I wasn’t about to tell him that if I stopped for too long that thoughts of my grams would creep in. Or that I was worried he still wanted to be with Wendy. He didn’t need that right now. The man was already carrying a huge burden on his shoulders. He didn’t need mine.

“If there was nothing wrong you wouldn’t be flying around my ex’s house like the Tasmanian Devil.” His mouth was set in a grim line.

Ex. I knew they weren’t together anymore, but the title eased some of the burden in my heart, which only created more shame. I shouldn’t be wanting Priest to assure me that he wasn’t interested in Wendy anymore. Not while she was lying in the hospital fighting for her life. It made me feel lower than pond scum, but I couldn’t seem to help it. The relief that flared inside my chest was white hot.

When I didn’t respond, he grabbed me again and this time jerked me against his body. He didn’t kiss me, just held me close, his huge hand smoothing over my hair. I wasn’t sure if he was hugging me because I needed it, or he did.

“I’m fine,” I mumbled against his chest. When had I turned my face into his shirt? Why was I breathing in the spicy scent of his cologne like it was the only thing keeping the air moving in and out of my lungs?

“Okay, but just let me hold you a minute.”

How could a girl say no to that? So I stood there, with his strong arms around me, letting myself enjoy this one last time before I had to let him go. I had to remember that it didn’t matter that he and Wendy were separated. As much as I wanted him I was more afraid of getting my heart broken again. Why was it so difficult to remember that when I was around him?