My Biker Husband Spent the Night in the Other Woman's Bed novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Cut

Hallie refuses to sew Rhett's new vice president patch in front of the prospects. Dutch offers a deal, and the lease notice lands on her door.

By noon I had cut forty feet of leather and not stitched a single thing.

I kept seeing Jesse's March photo, and the four more he had shown me after it, all dated, all of the same black Harley at the same curb.

I had stood in his bay and looked at every one.

I had given him back his phone without a word.

Now I could not make my hands do anything but cut.

My shop was one long room with a workbench down the middle, hides on racks along the wall and a wall of patches I had been sewing for the Iron Pines for six years.

Every member's vest on Mill Spur Road had come off that bench.

Rhett's did too.

I had put his road captain rocker on it myself, and he had kissed me in front of the whole club.

The bell over the door rang a little after twelve.

Rhett came in with two prospects behind him, kids of nineteen and twenty who still wore blank vests with nothing on the back.

He had a clean shirt on.

It was a gray one I had never seen.

"Hal," he said. "Can we talk like adults?"

"You can talk to the bench."

He set a paper on my workbench.

It was a club work order on Dutch's letterhead, written in Dutch's looping hand.

One vice president rocker.

One vice president patch.

Black leather, white thread, to be sewn on Rhett Brennan's cut by Saturday night.

"Sunday's the vote," Rhett said. "Dutch is putting my name up. He wants the patch ready, so there's no waiting."

I looked at the paper.

I looked at the two prospects, who were trying to be furniture.

"You want me to sew your promotion," I said.

"It's the club's order. It's a job."

"You want me to sit here and stitch your vice president patch the day after I watched you leave her house."

One of the prospects coughed.

The other one stared hard at a hide on the rack.

Rhett's smile didn't move.

"You're angry. I get it. I'd be angry. But this is the club, and the club doesn't care what happened in our kitchen."

"It happened on her porch."

"Hallie."

"I won't do it."

"You do every patch."

"I do every patch for people I'm not married to." I picked up the work order, held it by one corner and dropped it in the scrap bin.

"Tell Dutch I'm out of vice president patches."

The older prospect made a noise in his throat that was almost a laugh.

Rhett turned his head and looked at him, and the noise stopped.

Then Rhett stepped close, and his voice went low and warm.

"Come on, baby. Don't make this a fight. You know how this works. The club takes care of its own. I've got a place on that wall. You want to be the wife of the second-in-command or not?"

"The wife."

"What?"

"You said wife," I said. "You said 'the wife of the second-in-command.' That's who I'd be."

He frowned.

"I'd rather be a woman who owns a shop," I said. "Get out of it, Rhett."

He looked at me for a long moment.

He took his boy prospects and went out, and the bell rang behind them.

I sat down on my stool and found that my hands were shaking.

I wrapped them around a strip of scrap leather and held on.

An hour later the bell rang again.

I did not look up.

"I'm not sewing it," I said.

"I'd never ask you to."

I knew that voice before I saw him.

Dutch Maguire filled my doorway.

He was fifty-eight, wide as a barn door, with a gray beard down to his chest and reading glasses on a cord.

He wore a silver ring on every finger, and he had carried my casserole dish to my car after every club dinner for six years.

He took off his hat, which was a thing he did only for women and funerals.

"Hallie," Dutch said. "May I sit?"

"It's your building."

"It's your shop," he said, and sat down on the customer's stool, slowly, so it wouldn't creak. "I know you're hurting, girl. I've known Rhett since he was nineteen, and I could cheerfully drag him behind my truck."

"Then do it."

"I might." His eyes were kind and tired.

"But a club's a family, and families have messes. I want you taken care of. You keep the house. You keep the shop. Rent stays what it is. Nobody here says one word to anyone outside the club about any of this."

"And Rhett?"

"Rhett and Delaney have got something to work out that's bigger than you or me. It'll be settled by spring. I'm asking you to sit quiet till then."

I looked at his hands, the great square hands with their silver rings.

I thought about Birdie crying over the saucer.

"What's settled by spring?" I said.

For a second his face didn't change.

Then he smiled, a slow reasonable smile.

"Club business, honey."

"That's what Rhett said."

"Because it's true."

"I'm not going to be quiet, Dutch."

He studied me for a while.

Then he put his hat back on and stood up.

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said, and he sounded sorry.

He walked out slowly.

When I went to lock up that evening, there was a sheet of paper taped to my door at eye level.

It was a thirty-day notice of lease termination.

At the bottom, in a looping hand, was Dutch's signature.

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