People like they'd once been.
"Well, for a couple of reasons," Haven said, putting her arms around her knees. "First of all, just being totally real here, I don't have any experience in running a business. I can bake the heck out of anything and make it pretty amazing, I'll admit, but I don't want to jump in without having the first idea what I'm doing. So I've been thinking about applying to the culinary arts program at the community college, and maybe taking some business classes, too."
Cora nodded, a slow smile spreading on her face. "I'm liking this new take-charge Haven Randall. I think this is really smart." Cora meant every word. It was so gratifying to see her once timid and shy friend become so confident and brave.
"Yeah," she said, grinning. "It's too late to apply for the fall semester, but I think I can start in January." Her eyes went wide. "You could totally take some classes with me. How fun would that be?"
It was all Cora could do not to roll her eyes. "Haven, I can't afford coll-"
"I knew you were going to say that, which is why I would pay for the classes."
Cora dropped her face into her hands. "No."
"Why not?"
"No way."
"Yes way. Come on, look at me." Cora did, and Haven gave her the sternest glare she could manage. "Your dad worked for mine, which means he helped make some of the dirty money I inherited, which means some of it is rightfully yours, too." She arched a brow, her expression daring Cora to challenge her logic.
Instead, Cora changed the preposterous subject, because Haven's father had taken too much away from her for Cora to even contemplate taking any part of the one thing he'd given. "Okay, so what else? You said you had a couple of reasons to go slow with the bakery idea . . ."
Haven rolled her eyes. "We're not done talking about that yet." She stared until Cora finally nodded and waved her hand in a gesture to continue. "Well, for another reason, Dare is really twisted up over Jagger still being in jail, and worried about who Alexa's ex hired to set him and the Ravens up. I don't want to pile any more stress on him while that whole situation is still being resolved."
Cora shook her head. Jagger Locke managed the Ravens' main business operations at the racetrack they owned, and he'd been arrested over two months ago on several counts of illegal dumping of oil and tires, which carried surprisingly stiff penalties in Maryland. But the thing was, he didn't do it. The Ravens had already collected more than a little evidence that Alexa's now dead abusive ex-fiancé, a man who unfortunately had held a lot of influence as the town's biggest real estate developer, had hired someone to do the dumping to get back at the Ravens for helping Alexa. Cora didn't know Jagger well, but she knew that he'd been right there with the rest of the Ravens ready to help her and Haven out when they'd been in trouble. "What's happening to him is so unfair. Why the hell does it take so long to get a court date anyway?"
"I know, waiting is driving Dare insane. But it's two weeks now. Hopefully they'll let him go on time served or just drop the charges altogether," Haven said on a sigh.
Just then, a knock sounded against the door. "Come in," Cora called.
"Hey," Bunny said. "Any chance you gals wanna help an old lady cook dinner for a bunch of miscreant bikers?"
They both laughed, because they'd fallen in love with Bunny McKeon in the time that they'd been with the Ravens. Bunny was the sister of the club's founder and owner, Doc Kenyon, wife of another founding member, Bear, and Maverick's mom, so she'd become something of a mother hen to all the younger guys. And she'd definitely become a mother figure to Cora and Haven, too. But with her wavy white hair, jeans, black T-shirt, and kick-ass black cowboy boots, she was the coolest sixty-something person Cora had ever met.
"You know we'd do anything for you," Haven said.
"And for those miscreants," Cora added.
Bunny grinned. "I was hoping you'd say that. Because word is that it's gonna be pretty busy in here tonight."
"Why can't Cora come over?" Ben asked Slider in what was possibly the twentieth rendition of the question since he'd gotten home from his only full day of school this week.
There'd also been: Is Cora babysitting? Why isn't Cora babysitting? When is Cora babysitting again? Can we call Cora? And too many others Slider couldn't remember, but all boiled down to this: his kid missed Cora Campbell. And maybe preferred her company to Slider's.
Not that Slider blamed him. Because he missed her, too. Her company, her positivity, her ability to distract Ben when he was cranky or bored or bickering with his brother. She'd been a lifesaver all week when Ben had been unable to make it through the school day and Slider had either been at work or sleeping after pulling an overnight shift. And when she wasn't around it was as if her absence sucked all the life right out of the house. The lights seemed dimmer. The rooms felt emptier. The quiet seemed lonelier. And the boys' smiles seemed fewer.
Actually, there was no seeming about that one. It was true.
"She's not working tonight, Benji. She can't always be with us," Slider said, patting the boy's feet, propped on Slider's lap while they sat on the couch together watching TV.
Footsteps padded down the hall, and Sam entered the family room only far enough to lean against the door, his arms crossed. "Why not?" he asked.
Slider frowned. "Why not what?"
Sam licked his lips and looked at Ben, and Slider caught some sort of silent exchange between them. "Why can't Cora always be with us?"
"Yeah," Ben said.
Talk about an ambush. How long had they been thinking about this? And what the hell was he supposed to say in response? After the night Slider and Cora spent together in that tiny bed in Ben's hospital room, no way was Slider allowing this question inside the weakened defenses of his imagination. Because when he'd awakened to find Cora's gaze sliding over his body like maybe she wanted to hold him down and ride him, he'd been tempted to invite her to do it. Right then and there. Nurses, doctors, and inappropriate time and place be damned.
And that lust-drunk, throw-caution-to-the-wind attitude where Cora was concerned was a problem he neither wanted nor needed. Starting with a father who left and a mother who didn't stay sober, the past had taught him too damn many times that people didn't stick around-at least for him-that they couldn't be trusted, and maybe even that he could never really know anyone else, even those he loved. Hell, maybe even especially those he loved.
Kim's betrayal and loss had left Slider wrecked enough. No way he was risking what was left of him. Because that belonged entirely to his boys. It had to. They already didn't get everything they deserved from him as it was.
The reality of that thought crept uncomfortably under Slider's skin. Ben was going to be fine, but for a few minutes the morning he'd been hurt, Slider didn't know what'd happened to him or how bad it was. Terror had flooded him at the possibility that he could lose Ben, just as he'd lost so much else. Given all that, shouldn't Slider be doing more with the time he had? Shouldn't he be doing more to pull himself the fuck together? If not for himself, then sure as hell for them.
"She just can't," Slider said lamely, moving Ben's feet off his lap so he could get up. The turn in his thoughts had him feeling like shit and craving a moment of solitude, so he made his way to the kitchen and got a drink of water. But the boys weren't having it, and there was no missing the fact that two pairs of eyes had followed him and were burning holes in his back.
"That's not an answer," Ben said. "Why can't she?"
Slider turned to find them standing shoulder to shoulder, a united front in their effort to demand this answer from him. Little carbon copies of him, the both of them, though they had pieces of Kim, too. Sam's brown eyes and darker brown hair. The shape of Ben's mouth and the freckles across his cheeks. Of course, the boys picked now to get along, and about something that made no fucking sense. "We can't just ask Cora to move in with us."
"Still not an answer," Sam said, brow arched.
"Okay, first off," Slider said, "she has her own place to live. Second, a babysitter is a part-time job, and we can't expect Cora to give up her whole life for it, and it would be weird to even ask. And finally," he said, his brain scrambling for more ammunition, "she's not family. The three of us, we're family."