She glances over at me. “The thing is… I mean…”
“She doesn’t know you’re being guarded,” I finish for her.
“Yes,” she sighs.
“No problem. She doesn’t have to know I’m there. I can make myself invisible.”
Ember looks relieved. “Thanks. I mean, it’s just kind of awkward, you know? If I was going to tell her, I should have done it by now. Not that it’s any big deal, but it’s just kind of hard to explain without it sounding weird.”
I wave a hand. “Stop tryin’ to convince me. I got it.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll stop blabbering.”
After Bert’s walk, I hang out outside and toss a tennis ball for him in the front yard for a while. Ember goes in to shower and change. When she comes back out, she’s dressed in a casual, faded pair of jeans and a simple white T-shirt. A pair of aviator-style sunglasses is hooked into her V-neck collar. Her hair is pulled back in a high ponytail, and she’s wearing a pair of casual black knee-high boots with just a little bit of a heel. She’s got on a little bit of makeup — not much, just some eyeliner and mascara and some berry-red lipstick — and a simple gold chain with the tiniest heart I’ve ever seen around her neck. She’s carrying a thin windbreaker in one hand, and one of those backpack purses slung around one shoulder. The whole effect makes her look more carefree than I’ve ever seen her — casual and understated. I don’t know why, but just watching her bounce down her front sidewalk like that makes me want her so bad it hurts.
I offer to drive her over to Margot’s in the Tahoe, and tell her I’ll even park a ways away from the house if she wants me to. She agrees, and tells me she needs to stop at her office on the way, to pick up some papers she forgot to bring home over the weekend.
I drive her over, and wait outside in the parking lot as she goes inside. When she emerges a few minutes later, her face is pinched.
“I looked through the mail that came yesterday,” she tells me once she’s back in the car. “Wren’s birth certificate came.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She waits a beat. “Tank isn’t listed on it as the father.”
“Well, shit,” I murmur. “That’s bad, ain’t it?”
“It’s not good,” she agrees. “It would have helped if he was, but I’m not surprised. It’s not the end of the world.”
“So, what does that mean?”
“It means we move on to the next step. Contacting the birth mother.”
“Jess?” My lip curls in disgust.
“Jessica Anderle, yes.” She eyes me with curiosity. “Do you know her?”
Do I know her?
Loaded question.
Fuck yes, I know her. All the Lords do. She hung around the club for a while a few years ago. Never got to the status of club girl, though. In fact, the MC’s club girls hated her. She was just a lay, but she wanted to be more. She sniffed around me and Tank in particular, and both of us had our fill of her, back in the day.
I got sick of her pretty quick. She was clingy as hell, but she never wanted to do any work around the clubhouse like the other chicks did. She’d lay around on the couch, snorting or shooting whatever drugs she had and trying to get any and all of the brothers to pay attention to her. One night after she picked a screaming, clawing fight with one of the old ladies, Angel finally had enough of her shit and banished her. We never heard another word from her until more than four years later, when little Wren showed up on Tank’s doorstep.
That fucking cunt sold her own kid down the river in the end, and almost got us all killed. Hell, she did get our brother Lug Nut killed — and made a widow out of Eden, his old lady. I’d wring the bitch’s neck if I ever saw her again. The only smart decision she’s ever made is not to show her goddamn face around here since that all went down.
“Yeah,” I simply grunt to Ember. “I know her.”
She looks like she wants to ask me more, but she doesn’t. “The birth certificate for Wren came from two counties over from here,” she says. “So that’s where we check next for Ms. Anderle. Hopefully, there will be some sort of home address listed in the records.”
I snort. “Good luck with that. Our computer dude, Tweak, has looked for her already. Didn’t turn anything up.”
Ember purses her lips. “I remember Tank mentioning something about him. How recently did Tweak look for her?”
“Maybe six, eight months ago.”
“Can you bring me to talk to him, Striker?”
The way she says my name takes me by surprise. It’s not like she hasn’t said it before, but this time it feels natural. Like I’m a friend of hers. Someone she trusts.
It makes me feel a little funny inside.
“Sure,” I say gruffly.
Ember beams. “Thanks. If we can find her, we want to talk to her about whether she’d be willing to sign away her parental rights. Which I’m hoping won’t be a huge hassle, since she clearly doesn’t want to be a parent, anyway.”
“You don’t know Jess. If she can make a fucking mess out of something, she’ll do it just to be an asshole.”
“God, I hope not,” Ember says, her smile fading. “This part is going to be a little like poking a hornet’s nest, I’m afraid.”
“How so?”
She exhales. “Well, because if she doesn’t agree to let Wren go, we may have a fight on our hands. A fight that’s going to end up in court. And frankly, a biker with Tank’s profile is going to get a lot of scrutiny from a judge.”
“But he’s a hell of a lot better parental choice than a junkie mom who abandoned her daughter,” I argue.
“I don’t doubt it. But the problem is, depending on how things go, a judge might feel that it’s in Wren’s best interests to be removed from her biological parents completely. Placed with a family that could give her a more normal life.”
“Like fuck it is!” I scowl, slapping my hand on the dash. “Anyone who sees Tank with that kid knows there’s no better father for her!”
“I know, Striker,” Ember soothes. She reaches for me, puts a hand on my arm. It sends a jolt of something through me, and Ember must feel it, too, because she pulls away a second later, like she made a mistake.
“I know,” she repeats, more softly. “Believe me, I’ve seen the way Tank and Cady are together. I’ve seen the way Tank talks about Wren. But I’m not the decision-maker.” She inhales deeply, then lets her breath out in a rush. “All I can do is give this my best shot, and keep Tank and Cady informed about all the possibilities, every step of the way. But there’s no use in pretending that there aren’t possible road blocks. We can’t avoid them if we act like they aren’t there.”
I don’t say anything. I know she’s probably right about everything she just said. But I can’t fucking stand to think about this not going Tank and Cady’s way. The idea of Wren being taken away from them makes me want to puke. I know I don’t have any right to be mad at Ember about it, but that doesn’t mean I’m not.
“I’ll take you to Margot’s,” I say through clenched teeth. “And after you’re done there, I’ll take you to see Tweak.”