Chaos series by Kristen Ashley

Shy didn’t miss much and he didn’t miss this. We were the kind of couple that got close. Even shuffling around the kitchen, we touched, brushed mouths, stood near when we were both doing something at the counter.

So he didn’t miss the unusual distance I was putting between us. He also didn’t approach.

What he did was order, “You take time to come to terms with this. You need me to help you, I’m there. Now, I’m gonna give you time alone to sort your head out. Not much, we’re sleepin’ together, we’re wakin’ up together, so now you got a sense of how much time you got. Use it wisely, honey. This is me, you knew that was what you were gonna get, you can’t expect me not to be me and I’m not gonna lose you over somethin’ as meaningless as that douchebag.”

On that, he gave me a long look and sauntered with his tall, loose-limbed biker grace to and through the door.

I sucked in breath.

Then I moved to the phone with only one person on my mind.

My dad’s rough voice came at me after one ring. “How’s my girl?”

“Dad, I need to talk to you.”

He didn’t answer immediately and when he did, his tone was quiet.

“You had dinner?”

“No.”

“Buyin’ my girl dinner. See you at Lincoln’s in twenty.”

“Okay,” I agreed.

Twenty minutes later, I walked into Lincoln’s Road House, a biker bar off a slip road on I-25 that doubled as a neighborhood watering hole. I didn’t know how they managed to mix bikers, booze, and often live music with the staunchly middle-class ’hood that surrounded the joint, but they did it. Likely because the food was good, the waitresses were friendly, and the music, when they had it, was great. Not to mention, Denver was eclectic and folks were used to rubbing shoulders with just about anyone. It was one of the reasons I loved my town.

I saw Dad sitting at the bar with a beer, and his eyes were on me the moment I came through the door. I moved through the bar, slid my bottom up on the stool beside him, and plopped my purse in front of me.

His eyes moved over my face then they moved to the bartender. He jerked up his chin and waved a hand toward the beer in front of him.

Nonverbal badass speak for, Get my daughter a beer.

The bartender clearly spoke badass because he got me a beer. I took a pull, put the bottle on the bar, and looked at Dad.

“Talk to me,” he demanded.

“Shy beat up a doctor at work who was giving me a hard time.”

Yep, that was what came straight out.

“No, he didn’t,” Dad stated, and I stared.

After staring awhile, I asked, “He didn’t?”

Dad shook his head. “Nope.” He lifted his beer, took a pull, put it back on the bar, and looked at me. “Shy, Roscoe, and Hop f**ked him up. Not just Shy.”

Oh my God!

Three of them?

I leaned in and hissed, “Are you serious?”

“Yep.”

I sat back and threw up my hands. “Already, it was bad. That’s totally overkill. No wonder he was totally messed up.”

“Not overkill, Tabby,” Dad told me and I glared at him.

“Dad, he’s a doctor. They do that shit. It wasn’t that big of a deal, and by the way, I was dealing.”

“No, they don’t do that shit. Not to my girl and, obviously, not to Shy’s old lady. An old lady doesn’t deal, darlin’, she breathes easy.”

I hated it when these bikers had good, albeit lunatic, answers for statements that had no good answers.

I didn’t give up. “Okay then, Dad, he’s a doctor, not a heavyweight fighter. Three guys? That’s insane!”

“Not insane either, Tabby.”

“Dad!” I snapped and he leaned in, his voice going low.

“Lesson,” he started and I drew in a sharp, annoyed breath but at his tone, a tone I’d heard often in my life, I knew to shut my mouth. “You do somethin’, you do it right and you do it so there’s no blowback.”

There it was again. Blowback. A word which I was beginning to think they didn’t really know the meaning of, but since it was a brand-new word coined by, my guess, Hollywood, perhaps it hadn’t made it to the dictionary.

My eyes narrowed.

Dad kept talking.

“To make his point Shy needed firepower and he needed presence to make certain that weasel didn’t hightail his ass to the cops. Shy needed to make certain all his messages were clear. Those messages being, one, he does not f**k with you. Two, he does not f**k with the other nurses. Three, he does, Shy’s got the backing to f**k him up worse than he did during his first lesson. Four, he does not go to the cops and report the assault or he buys Chaos displeasure. Shy’s lean but he’s tall, fast, smart, and he’s got one f**kuva power punch. He could have taken care of that ass**le on his own but if he did, he wouldn’t get his point across.” Dad dipped his head to me. “He did it smart, doin’ what he had to do to get his point across, and he got his point across.”

I ignored Dad knowing Shy had “one f**kuva power punch” and, more to the point, how he might come about that knowledge and instead, snapped, “I’ll repeat, that’s insane!”

Dad’s brows went up. “He apologize?”

Oh. My. God!

Ty-Ty was totally right. Shy was Dad, just younger.

“Yeah, he did, but that isn’t the point,” I answered. “Shy didn’t talk to me about it and, I’ll add, he didn’t tell me about it after the fact either.”

Dad’s face registered surprise and he asked, “Jesus, why would he do somethin’ stupid like that?”

I stared at my father.

Then I replied sarcastically, “I don’t know, maybe because it’s me”—I jerked my thumb at my chest—“who has to work with this guy.”

“Bet that’ll go better,” he muttered.

I rolled my eyes.

“Thinkin’,” Dad continued, “we’re gettin’ in the zone where you should be talkin’ to Red.”

“Well, Tyra isn’t here, so you’re going to have to guide me through this one, Dad,” I pointed out, and Dad’s gaze locked to mine.

“He loves you.”

I sucked in breath as that hit me in the gut.

Dad was far from done.

“He loves you, Tabby. Boy’s totally gone for you. He don’t like you eatin’ shit, he can do somethin’ about it, so he did. He let you have your time to sort it, let you have your time to stew about it, but you didn’t make a move, so he did.”