Oxygen Deprived (Kilgore Fire Book 3) Read online

  There was good, and then there was good. And this wasn’t it.

  We sat next to each other in companionable silence as we both ate our food.

  I glanced over at the man’s plate, and nearly laughed when I saw how much food was on it.

  With the helping he’d gotten of the food mounded on the plate, I feared for the integrity of the Styrofoam that was straining to hold its form.

  “What are you looking at?” He asked, not bothering to turn his face, instead he kept shoveling his food into his mouth, imitating a Hoover Vacuum

  “I was just wondering if you left any for the rest of them,” I said absently, going back to my food.

  “Everyone had already eaten,” he muttered. “Apparently, when you’re a prospect, you eat last.”

  “Hmm,” I hummed. “Imagine that.”

  He snorted.

  “Why are you a prospect, anyway?” I asked.

  “Because I want to be,” he muttered, and I felt the instant coolness that came with the words.

  I didn’t say anything else, only went back to eating my food.

  The weird wall of tension between us slowly dissipated until the only thing left was awareness.

  He was a sexy man.

  He was tall with blonde hair that that I couldn’t decide whether it had a hint of red or not.

  He had a blonde beard that was trimmed close to his face, but wasn’t over the top like some of the other’s in the MC.

  He had light blue eyes that were rimmed with a hint of green, and a very muscular body.

  Not Hulk muscular, but a nicely toned body that looked to be from working rather than working out.

  Not that I didn’t think he did one over the other. He just looked like he didn’t go to the gym much.

  “So what do you do?” I asked curiously.

  “I’m a game warden…and a lumberjack,” he muttered, slurping up another forkful of chicken spaghetti.

  “A lumberjack?” I asked. “Is that even a real occupation anymore?”

  He turned to look at me.

  “Yes.”

  One word was all I received, and I knew better than to continue on that line of questioning.

  “I’m in school to become a paralegal,” I told him, sensing a change of subject was needed.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I heard.”

  “You did?” I asked in confusion. Had I already told him that?

  No.

  He nodded. “Your brother, Ridley, told me.”

  I blinked.

  Ridley didn’t often talk about me to other people.

  I was a very private person, but then again, having what I had, and experiencing what I did, was the reasoning behind that.

  “Oh,” was the only thing I could think to say.

  “He said you hate doing it,” he continued.

  I snorted.

  “Yeah, you could say that.”

  “Then why do you do it?” He persisted.

  “Because I need the job…and the money,” I said, raising my brows at him.

  And it was hard to find a job that would work around my ailment.

  “What’s so bad about it?” He asked, pushing his plate away from him.

  It was completely empty, and looked almost as if he’d licked the damn thing.

  “You really wanna know?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Well, my day started off a little like this: I walked into the building to hear a man say, ‘You’re always looking for a man to sweep you off your feet. Well, let me tell you something, woman!’” I imitated the way the man had sounded. “’Sweeping is your job!’”

  And that had been the turning point…the fork in the road, as one would say.

  “I knew, as soon as I heard the man say that, that it wasn’t going to be a good case.

  “Then he’d gone and proved me right by continuing to manipulate the woman over and over again, forcing her to agree to his edicts, all because he had money and she didn’t,” I sighed, and dropped my head into my hands. “I hate it. But I like it all at the same time. I like seeing my clients win. I like seeing the kids get what they deserve.”

  Apple nodded.

  “I’m not a full time lumberjack,” he said finally, going back to our earlier topic. “But my dad’s business is his livelihood, and if I’m not there to do it, he can’t pay the bills.”

  That made more sense, and I now had a reason for him and his reluctance to speak more on the subject.

  He got up and grabbed himself a beer from the cooler, as well as another drink for me.

  He handed them both to me as a commotion at the font of the room had me smiling at one of the men’s wives, Tasha, giving Casten, another member, the smack down.

  She was a fireball, that was for sure.

  “Thank you,” I muttered, reaching for the bottle to twist the lid off.

  He took it back out of my hands and twisted the top of effortlessly before handing it back to me without another word.

  I thanked him again before taking another sip.

  I was going to regret drinking in the morning, that was for sure. But I couldn’t figure my own mind out, and to do that I needed to let go a little bit.

  “Are they fighting about goats?” He asked.

  I nodded. “She wants some, and he doesn’t.”

  “I can tell that,” he muttered. “But don’t they live in the city?”

  I nodded. “She saw a video last week about a goat as a house pet. The owners even took them on walks and everything.”

  “Interesting,” he said. “I have goats.”

  “You do?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Yeah, but they’re not pets, that’s for sure.”

  I smiled, unable to help myself.

  Seeing this big badass in his tight red t-shirt, faded blue jeans that had holes in both the knees, as well as where I guessed his keys were held in his pockets, with his tight leather vest really made me want to laugh.

  He was the exact opposite of what I expected him to be when I walked into the clubhouse today.

  Fun, came to mind.

  I drank my lemonade, smiling from time to time when the man had something funny to say.

  And when he was asked to help him start picking up the trash, I didn’t even hesitate. I just helped him.

  My brother gave me a weird look, but ultimately ignored me for the conversation he was having with a few men from the police department.

  People started to leave, and the only ones left, by the time I thought it sufficiently clean enough, were my brother, Peek, the president, and his wife, Casten and his wife, Mig and his wife, Apple and me.

  “Thanks for the help,” he said genuinely.

  I shrugged and picked up a new bottle of lemonade from the cooler, then sat on the only open seat, which happened to be the fireplace ledge.

  Apple started to lean against the mantle, but I moved over slightly giving him room to sit next to me.

  Although it was a tight fit, he didn’t complain.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  I nodded, too busy smelling him to say ‘you’re welcome.’

  “I think we should go on a fun run two weeks from now,” Peek interrupted my perving, bringing everyone’s attention to him. “We haven’t gone on one in a couple of months, and now that everyone’s finally free of babies and shit, I want to go. To Arizona.”

  “What’s in Arizona?” I found myself asking.

  It’s not like I was invited to go.

  In fact, I hadn’t ever ridden on the back of a motorcycle.

  My brother was too scared of the possible consequences of me falling off during one of my ‘fits’, as he liked to call them, that I never bothered asking him anymore.

  I peeled the label off my bottle, completely forgetting that I’d even asked a question until the room got silent around me, finally making me pull my head up in confusion.

  T
hey were all staring at me.

  Even the newbie.

  “What?” I asked.

  My brother was the one to answer.

  “Mr. Prospect here just asked you if you wanted to ride with him to Arizona,” Ridley grinned, making it sound like he knew I would turn him down. “And to answer your question, nothing’s in Arizona. We just like to go to different places and see the sights.”

  My brother’s face looked so supreme, so sure of himself, that I wanted to knock him down a notch.

  He was always doing that, acting like he knew what was best for me, and it was suffocating.

  So I put my foot into it.

  “I’d love to,” I agreed, turning my head to see Apple staring at me expectantly.

  His eyes showed surprise, and then satisfaction…and then worry.

  He looked over at my brother, then back to me.

  “Am I missing something?” He asked.

  I grinned.

  “No,” I denied. “Not anything important.”

  “You’re not like a psycho or anything, right?” He asked for confirmation.

  I shook my head.

  “Not the last time I checked,” I teased.

  “You’ve checked to see if you’re psycho?” he asked.

  I shrugged.

  “I’ve taken those online tests on Facebook that makes you pick a bunch of pictures and answer random questions. It didn’t say a thing about me being anything close to a psycho,” I returned.