Now she turns back with something akin to a look of scorn on her face. “I’m his wife.”
I bark a loud laugh and add a snort for good measure. “Don’t know what your game is, but it’s not going to work. Lizard is single, has always been single. Ain’t no bitch in his life and never has been.” I’m firm on that. Lizard would have mentioned if he’d ever entered into matrimony. He shares my views that life is best lived as a single man, and never hinted there was a time he’d thought otherwise.
I expect her to look disappointed being caught out in her lies, but she slumps as though completely defeated. Had she really thought that ploy would work? Well, whatever business she thinks she has with my brother, with that untruth, she’s not getting close to him now.
“I still need to see him. To try…” Her eyes flick away then back. She looks like a woman at the end of her tether when she adds now sounding desperate, “Is he here? Or if not, what time will he be back? I’ll wait…”
No she fucking won’t. “I think you need to leave,” I state firmly, noticing Dirt listening intently, his body language taking its cue from me.
“I can’t leave until I’ve seen him,” she says firmly. “Not until I’ve at least tried.”
“Tried what? What do you think you’re playing at? What are you trying to get over on Lizard?”
Neither my enforcer’s snarl nor my threatening step forward, work. Instead of cowering, her back straightens. “Whether or not he acknowledges it, I’m his wife. And he needs to know about his son.”
Lizard has always been firm about not wanting children. He’s never knowingly sired a child. My voice comes out in a growl. “Are you trying to say you had his kid and kept that fact from him?” Dirt I noticed has stiffened as well. If, in the unlikely event, Liz had fucked a town woman, or someone he met on his travels, he should have been told about the outcome. “How old is this fuckin’ baby you’re trying to blame on him?”
“Fourteen.”
Four-fucking-teen? The reply shocks me. This is ancient history, before Lizard joined the MC. It must have been while he was still serving as a Marine. Maybe there is something in his past he hasn’t shared with me. I start to think there could be something to her story. But fuck it, she’s admitted Lizard didn’t know he had a kid. That shit doesn’t sit right with me. You do not hide a kid from a man, even one who doesn’t want one. What bitch does that? Then has the fucking nerve to turn up out of the blue as she wants something. Money probably, that must be it.
While I’m filling with disgust, she’s staring at me. Her head coming up as she seems to read what I’m thinking.
“I’m his wife,” she insists. “He’s never divorced me, and I haven’t divorced him. I can prove who I am, and what I am to him.”
“Prove it, then,” I challenge.
Chapter Five
Vanna
I suppose I should have expected I’d not be able to walk straight into the MC’s clubhouse and demand to see my errant husband, but my hastily devised plan hadn’t involved much more than trying to find Cas’s father. At my wit’s end, I didn’t know what else to do.
Lindy had offered to have Cas with her this evening. By now she’ll have collected him from school and probably fed him all the types of junk food he likes eating, but as a good Mom, I restrict access too. Then she’ll get him playing on her Xbox and he’ll be having fun. He likes Lindy, sometimes I think a lot more than he likes me, which left me free to drive down from Denver.
Now that I’m here, I’m not giving up without at least getting the chance to talk to the man I’m still legally tied to, and who the law says is bound to me.
Prove it, he’d said. The man who’s confronting me hasn’t introduced himself, and neither has the one refusing to open the gate. But I can read, and the name on his cut says Mace, and under that there’s a patch saying he’s the enforcer. I’ve no idea what that means, but deduce he probably enforces the rules. Right now, he’s protecting Lizard from me. I actually feel a warmth that Lizard has such support, but the main emotion is anger that he’s preventing me from seeing my husband, and that, in turn, is doing nothing to help Cas.
Delving into my bag, I pull out a crumpled piece of paper and unfold it. Then, I show him the marriage certificate, unwilling to completely let it leave my hand.
“You know him as Lizard,” I explain, “but his legal name is Norton James. And that’s proof he married me.”
“I know what my fuckin’ brother’s citizen name is,” Mace snarls. “This could be a fake.”
My eyes widen. “Well the original in the courthouse in San Diego will prove it’s not.”
“We’ll be checking,” he warns me. “But for now I don’t fuckin’ believe you.”
Enraged I turn, pull up my jacket and ease my pants down a fraction. I don’t show him all of the tattoo—well, Lizard was the last and only man, except for my doctor, who’s seen all of my ass. But it’s enough for him to read, “Lizard.”
“That’s not a property patch,” he sneers. But I can see by the way his eyes have widened that the tattoo’s registered with him. He tries to dismiss it. “Our tats read ‘Property of’.”
“Lizard was Lizard well before he joined your club,” I tell him, wondering why I’ve the need to justify myself. “As you’d know if you really did know him. He got his name not long after he joined the Marines and preferred it to Norton. Lizard has been Lizard to me since we met.”
He almost flinches as I give him the explanation he must recognise. But still he hesitates, gesturing again at the paperwork and checking the date on the certificate. “You’re telling me you married just after he enlisted?”
I nod. “I met him when he returned from his first tour.” I feel my eyes glaze as I remember those happy days. “When he came back from his second, we got married.”
“How did he get his name?” Mace snaps.
“He could remain still like a lizard basking, then go from being a statue to moving fast and pouncing.” It was lame, but most of them had picked up nicknames for barely any reason.
It’s at that moment I hear the sound of a motorcycle coming up the road. Mace’s face tightens, then he says, “Well, I guess you’re going to get the chance to see your old man, if he really is that to you.”
My gut clenches, realising the enforcer’s somehow recognised the sound of Lizard’s bike. My hands sweat and my body starts shaking. Don’t expect much, I tell myself. Or better, don’t expect anything. Nothing may have changed.
But it’s been years since I’ve seen him, and I’m here out of desperation and hope that something has.
The bike draws closer, then slows, then pulls over and the engine stops. I get my first look at the man who the years have treated kindly. To my eyes, he’s more handsome than ever before. His hair has grown longer, and I like that change.
As I’m drinking him in, studying him intently, he gives me no more than a quick glance before turning to Mace.