“Good, you can answer all my questions about Angel Tears. I can’t say it’s a favorite because playing favorites with your movies would be criminal. We’ll just start there,” Lucky jumped in, guiding me out of the room and toward the sofa.
“Did you really die in the end or did you just go to an alternate plane of existence?” he asked, then looked toward the mess of leather-wearing men dispersing. “A Prospect better get me a fucking beer and Anastasia a drink or they’ll be target practice as warm-up,” he yelled.
A younger man with impressive tattoos ran to do just that and returned quickly with a beer for Lucky and a fresh cocktail for me.
I smiled. “Thank you.”
He blushed and all but ran off. The tall, tattooed man blushed at me. Now I’d seen it all.
I turned to Lucky. “So, I know that the director is pretending it’s up for interpretation, but I know for a fact that he...”
I then proceeded to inform him of the most closely guarded secret about one of my biggest films. It was only fair, since the man seemed to be risking his life for me.
Normally, I worked on autopilot talking to fans about my movies. They mostly asked all the same questions and very few actually cared about the answers. They just wanted the bragging rights to say they spoke to Anastasia Edwards. And as social media got bigger, people cared more about the fucking selfie than they did a conversation.
Many times I’d wanted to snatch the phone shoved in my face and crush it with my designer shoes. But of course, I couldn’t do that. Imagine the publicity, the names that would be hurled around in the media, talking about how the “crazy” female star had snapped at a loving fan. It didn’t matter that the fan in question stalked me coming out of a fucking gyno appointment when I was walking with discomfort and just wanted to get out without speaking to anyone.
I became jaded and slightly hateful toward the hoards.
But Lucky was a breath of fresh air. He really was a true fan, and a bit of a geek. An intelligent one at that. A couple of the other men had joined the conversation, surprising me with the fact they were huge fans of the movie where I played a woman who exacted revenge on any man that wronged her.
It seemed that most of these gruff, alpha bikers were feminists. The wedding rings on their fingers helped tell me that they’d either changed for the right woman, or the right woman hadn’t been willing to put up with any patriarchal bullshit.
“I’m back,” Rosie declared, interrupting the conversation. She glanced around at the men. “Don’t you have infidels to beat into submission?” she questioned. “It’s girl time. And you”—she pointed to Lucky—“call your wife and tell her to meet us at Gwen’s place.”
Lucky’s eyes darkened ever so slightly. “I’ll tell her that you suggested that, but no way am I ordering her to do shit. She’s growing a human inside of her. My child. Where she takes herself is totally up to her.”
Rosie rolled her eyes. “Whatever. I’ll text her.” She got her phone out. “Pussy,” she muttered under her breath.
The men quickly got up, offering me goodbyes.
Rosie took Lucky’s place beside me and grabbed my drink from my hand, draining the last sip.
“Okay, so tonight is kind of a write-off regarding the whole revenge thing,” Rosie said. “So I was thinking we have a girls’ night.”
“Girls’ night?” I queried.
“We’ll get dressed up so everyone’s husbands grumble about the outfits, because their wives are just that fucking hot. We’ll go to our favorite, get one tier down from blackout drunk—those of us not preggos of course—and talk about men. You’ll have to share your story about you and Duke because, honey, we’ve been waiting for it. He might not be in the Sons of Templar universe, but he’s the kind of guy who transcends universe, if you know what I mean. He’s been around for a while and we’ve all been waiting to see what version of shit his woman puts him through. I’ll say so far...I approve.” She winked. “We’ll go to Gwen’s place, I’ll kiss my niece and nephew. We’ll pregame, torture Cade a little. Then go out. I’ve got word that every old lady is gonna be there and it’s been a hot minute since I’ve seen all those bitches. It’s gonna be fun. You down?”
This was a lot to process. I’d just had a sit down with the Sons of Templar. That was after driving across the country in twenty hours. That was after sneaking out of the bed of a man I love, leaving behind the only home and family I’d ever truly known without even saying goodbye, because I wanted to inflict vengeance on the man who had my only friend killed.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m down.”
15
We went to Gwen’s house to “get ready” and pregame—two things I’d never done in high school. I was too busy trying to survive when all the other girls were putting on their prom dresses and planning on letting the football captain take their virginity.
My virginity was long gone by prom. If I’d stayed at one school long enough, I was sure I’d get the reputation of the school slut. As it was, I was never somewhere long enough for a label or to even make girlfriends. I didn’t need a therapist to tell me my sexual exploits at such a young age were connected to losing my father and never really being loved since then.
Yeah, of course they were fucking connected.
Whatever.
The point was, I didn’t have the experience of the blaring music, the clink of glasses and popping of corks—because everyone getting together was cause for celebration, even if they were planning on murdering a crime boss—and just the general atmosphere.
I’d gotten to meet Gwen and Cade’s two children, a girl and a boy, both of whom got all of the best qualities from their parents—and there were a lot to choose from. Looking into Isabella’s beautiful wide eyes and watching Kingston squeal and run away from his aunt Rosie made my womb clench suddenly and unexpectedly.
My thoughts crept away from the beautiful beach house in California to a ranch in Montana. I remembered the family gathered at the hospital, Tanner coming out with wet eyes and a smile that seeped from his very soul.
I thought about a baby with blond curls, with Duke’s eyes, in his arms.
“You with us, honey?”
I jerked out of my thoughts to focus on Gwen. Her hair was tumbling around her face in messy curls, an expertly applied green smoky eye turning her already piercing gaze electric. She was wearing a black bustier and a black leather skirt.
In short, she looked hot, damn hot.
“What?”
She smiled with an empathy that told me she was suspecting what I was thinking about. “Now that the children have been passed on to their grandparents, we’re actually going to have a peaceful afternoon outside, a calm before the storm.” She paused. “But if you’re not feeling up to it, we can call this whole thing off, put on sweats, eat terrible things, watch equally terrible movies. None of yours of course, as they’re all good.”
I smiled. “No, Rosie is totally set on this girls’ night. I don’t think I’d fare well being the reason for it ending.”
“I can handle Rosie,” Gwen said, a hard edge to her tone that told me Gwen was yet another badass woman in this town.