Then again, this was a world where Priest let some tourist trap art fair take over the clubhouse, apparently. All bets were off.

He and Blue stood there a minute, scowling down the alley.

“The fuck,” Blue muttered, sounding disgusted.

“I feel fucking violated,” Ajax grunted in reply, scowling at an offensive watercolor painting of the very street they were standing on, propped up on an easel. And Ajax was a practical man. He liked tourist dollars as much as the next guy. But here? In the Deacons’ home?

None of this made any sense. It was one more piece in the puzzle of Priest’s last ten years and his death, and he couldn’t see it clearly yet. He couldn’t make it come together.

But he would, Ajax vowed. He would.

When he couldn’t take it any longer he started walking, and Blue fell into step with him the way he always had, like there had never been any rhythm but this. Their loyalty was stamped deep into their backs and they walked shoulder to shoulder. They always had.

He hadn’t been alive, Ajax realized then, in ten long years. He hadn’t been anything close.

“I need a drink,” he said now. “And you can tell me why the fuck you spent the last ten years out in that swamp, of all places.”

Blue shrugged, as talkative as ever.

Ajax laughed and clapped him on the back.

“I hope you brought your game face, brother,” he said as they headed into the Priory. “We got some shit to do.”

—

Sophie woke up late, alone and confused—and then in a panic when she realized that ringing sound that had jolted her awake was the phone.

The whole day was like that.

She spent hours on the phone, calling as many old friends of her father’s as she could think of and letting them know about the funeral service on Friday. She played phone tag with her father’s obnoxious lawyer. She had to go over to the funeral home and deal with a thousand decisions she hadn’t wanted to make, ever. She and Priest had never talked about these things, and they probably should have, given the life he’d led. He’d always laughed when she’d expressed any worry about the way he conducted himself, full throttle and full on, like he was invincible. Took you away from that junkie bitch and kept you safe, didn’t I? he’d tell her. That’s not gonna change, angel.

Even if, these last five years, especially, Sophie had felt that she did a lot more taking care of her dad than the other way around, some part of her had loved that. She’d always known he could have handled the situation the way a lot of the men they knew had and simply left her with her mother—and god only knew what would have become of her then. Instead, he’d raised her in his own eclectic fashion. She knew he’d loved her in his own stern, gruff way. She’d liked that the drunker and more erratic he became in these last few years, which she’d thought was him feeling lonely, she’d had the opportunity to love him back the same way.

But that hadn’t prepared her for this. For the reality of dealing with what had to happen now that he was gone.

Somewhere in there, after her seventieth or eightieth phone call, she realized that she was going to have to throw some kind of a reception after the funeral on Friday to take care of all these people who were going to want to gather afterward and lift a glass to Priest and who would, of course, head straight to the Priory to make that happen. Which meant planning for the inevitable and accepting the fact that on some level, her dad would have liked that his life was going to be toasted on a Bourbon Street Friday night, with all the cheesy pageantry and tourist influx that entailed.

And of course, word of Priest’s death had spread through the French Quarter already. That meant Sophie couldn’t walk three feet down the street without someone stopping her to pay their respects, and ask after her, and then talk a while. This was New Orleans, where folks didn’t think community stopped at the cemetery gates. She assured them all that as far as she knew, everything would carry on the way it was. She’d keep running the bar and collecting the rents, just without her grumpy, usually pissed-off father to complain about everything while she did it.

By the time she made it to her evening shift at the bar, she was dragging. She’d compensated for that with too much eye makeup, and she’d told herself that there was absolutely no reason for her choice of outfit—a very skimpy little plaid skirt over killer boots and a white T-shirt like a very naughty Catholic schoolgirl. No reason at all.

She was fine, she told herself as she poured drinks. Perfectly fine. It didn’t matter that Ajax had slept in her bed. That she’d woken up at one point and found him wrapped all around her, big and tough, as if they’d slept entwined like that a thousand times before. Or every night.

Or ever would again.

He hadn’t been there when she’d woken up. She certainly hadn’t heard from him all day. The only reason she knew he hadn’t disappeared off into the ether was because that gleaming black Harley was still squatting there at the bottom of her steps, reminding her. Of last night. Of the life. Of too many things that crawled around inside of her, restless and achy, that she didn’t want to name.

She was washing glasses when he shouldered his way into the bar from the back hall, and every ache in her body went electric. Hot and liquid, calling bullshit on every little lie she’d spent the long day telling herself.

His blue gaze was hard and hot when it hit hers, and she hated herself for freezing. Ajax didn’t seem affected. He took in her outfit at a glance, and when his gaze moved back to hers there was something much darker there. Something she told herself she didn’t recognize, even as her pussy clenched down hard, like she was getting ready for him. Like she was already…

How could he still be so potent? When she’d already had him and the way he was looking at her was not exactly friendly?

That last part sank in.

It felt a lot like he’d kicked her in the stomach.

He walked up to the bar, tourists falling out of his way like water, and jerked his chin at her.

“Bourbon,” he said in his hard voice, not a hint of that grin of his anywhere, and flashed two fingers. “Neat.”

Then he waited. Watching her. Waiting for her reaction, she understood.

And Sophie thought exactly one thing: Oh hell, no.

She was not one of his little bitches. She hadn’t been the one to start shit with him. She’d walked away and given him his goddamn space last night and what had he done? Walked into her shower and then cuddled up to her in her bed.

Sophie would rather chew on glass than let Ajax think he was letting her down easy.

So she dried her hands and kept her expression blank. She slapped down two shot glasses on the bar and poured them out.

“Seven fifty,” she said, not that he’d made a move to pay. “A discount since you were a friend of my father’s. He never could resist a stray.”

Ajax’s hard face went stonier, but Sophie ignored him and looked at the man who’d stepped up beside him. And cursed a little bit, deep inside. Because this was happening whether she liked it or not. The Deacons were coming back. It was one thing to deal with the older men, like that sweet Rigger across the street who ran the strip club and whose groceries she sometimes collected, to save him the trip when his longtime old lady, Annie, was up north visiting her people in Shreveport.

But this was Blue. Tall and built, just like Ajax, with that poet’s face and a head of shaggy gold hair.

“Holy shit,” she said, trying to look more welcoming than dismayed. “Blue. I thought you were dead.”

His mouth twitched faintly. “Happens.”

“Glad to be wrong,” she said, and smiled at him.

Only at him, not that he was any more responsive to that than the average rock wall, but that wasn’t the point. And then she found a way to be really, really busy at the other end of the bar.