Crossroads (Beautiful Biker MC Romance Series) - DD Prince Page 0,48
I would’ve been paid a grand for participation but more if I got the cover, but I told him I wanted my money to go to charity, too. My chosen charity. He told me he’d make the check out to me, that I could do what I wanted with it but remarked that if I did want to set something up to hand it over, he’d make sure that he covered that as an event and posted it on the blog that he shot photos for, the blog that had originally covered the charity carwash and then went on to feature Spencer and Rider’s custom motorcycles.
I figured free press for the charity, for Luke Hanson’s legacy, it was a good thing.
I was wrong. I was wrong, because a week later, my father got a sample copy of the calendar layout sent to him with a pitch to buy advertising for Deke’s Roadhouse, the garage, and/or the bike dealership in the calendar. Actually, two of those pitches arrived, because they sent something addressed to Valentine Custom Motorcycles, too, meaning that it came with the names Rider Valentine and Spencer Valentine.
Oops.
Lawrence told me while we did the shoot that his wife did all the marketing. She put a list together every year of local businesses to ‘pitch’ for advertising and it never occurred to me that my father would get pitched, especially not so soon after my photo shoot.
But, of course we’d got put on there because we were definitely their target demographic and their customers were our target customers.
Yeah. Big oops.
But, before we get to that shit storm, there was Delia’s birthday party.
And it was a doozy.
6
I was the closest thing Aunt Delia had to a daughter.
Jet would’ve been her daughter-in-law if she and Edge had gotten married, which I think everyone assumed they eventually would, and the loss of Jet wasn’t just felt by Edge, it was felt in a major way by Delia who had gotten very tight with her.
Edge wasn’t Delia and Rudy’s biological child, but they’d called him their son for as long as I knew him. They took him in when he was a teenager living on the streets.
Jet was considered a problem child by her parents who sent her to the group home to knock some sense into her. She later moved back home with her parents, losing touch with Edge for a few years, but then they were together again and had been for a long time before she was brutally raped and murdered by the Wyld Jackals, her body left outside the Sioux Falls gates with the names of all the women that the Jackals planned to murder on her body. My name had mysteriously been left off.
Then again, they almost killed me – in error, supposedly – when they ran Luke’s bike off the road on that rainy night. And again when they launched a firebomb at Rudy’s house, though it was highly suspected to be about Edge. They were out there with a big problem with Edge, who had made it known in our circles that he had taken out Mantis, former Wyld Jackals Sioux Falls Prez.
***
We were around the firepots at the Sioux Falls clubhouse. It was dark and the flames of firepots licked at the sky. Bad Company was playing on low and the vibe was mellow. I was surrounded by most of my favorite people.
I was in an Adirondack chair beside Deacon and Ella. Ella was on his lap and they were snuggled up and whispering against one another’s mouths while Deacon played with Ella’s curly blonde hair.
Jenna and Pippa were huddled over Pippa’s phone laughing at something opposite me. Rider was away from the group and off to the side, talking to Brady about something. Brady was clearly tanked as he was being extra animated with whatever he was telling my brother.
Spencer was reclined, his feet on a log in front of him, looking at the fire with a look of peace on his face that made me so stinking happy I wanted to just happy-cry. It was so good to see my brother with a spring in his step because he wasn’t walking around weighed down by a chip on his big shoulders. Instead, he had a beautiful girl who loved him. His focus of making Pippa his had resulted in peeling away layers of bitter skin he’d grown in the past few years.
I smiled at Pippa. “You’re my favorite future sister-in-law today.”