Iron Heart (Lords of Carnage Ironwood MC) by Daphne Loveling

Author:Daphne Loveling [Loveling, Daphne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

19

Tori

Dante doesn’t show up to work on my place the next day, or the day after that. Or the day after that.

I think about calling him or texting him. But I don’t. Because I don’t have any idea what to say. How to act normal, when what’s happened between us is anything but.

My life goes on, outwardly the same. Inside, though, I’m a mess. I can’t get that one wild night with Dante out of my head. His body feels like it’s imprinted itself on mine. I remember the exact sandpaper of roughness of his callused fingers as they brushed my back. I remember the heat of his mouth as it took mine.

I remember the raw, animal sound he made as he came inside me. The memory of it still echoes through me like an aftershock.

I go through the motions of my job. The days fly by, but the minutes drag so slow that it’s a kind of agony.

One morning, I go in to work and find a bouquet of pink and white lilies on my desk. And then I remember.

It’s my birthday.

The flowers are from my dad. Ever since he and my mom divorced, a bouquet of lilies has been his standard birthday gift to me. I think maybe he doesn’t know what else to give to his twenty-something daughter. The gesture is sweet and touching. But the flowers always make my birthday feel a little like a funeral at the same time. An annual memorial for my twin brother who never lived to celebrate it with me.

The card attached to the bouquet says what it always does: “Happy birthday to my best girl.” Smiling against the pang of complicated emotions — love for my father, sadness that he and my mom aren’t together, grief for my brother — I tuck the card into my desk drawer and sit down to work.

Savannah calls and invites me out for lunch to celebrate my big day. She takes me to Flavors, the nicest restaurant in Ironwood, and basically forces me to order an entree and a fancy dessert. We spend the whole time gossiping and laughing, and for a while I even forget to be preoccupied with Dante. I still haven’t told my best friend about what happened with the sexy biker who also happens to be my electrician. I push away my guilt by assuring myself that I’ll give her the full scoop later — once Dante has completed the project, and is solidly in my rear-view mirror.

After lunch, Frank surprises me by bringing in cookies for the whole office. He calls all the staff into the main room and wishes me a happy birthday — which prompts an embarrassing, off-key round of the birthday song. I’m not sure whether he already knew it was my birthday, or whether he was the one who accepted the flowers for me and figured it out that way. I suspect it was the latter.

I look around at my colleagues — Frank, Ryan, Jake, Heidi — feeling strangely touched by the cookies and song.

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