Meanwhile, he’d had a daughter the whole time. She hadn’t left him. She hadn’t betrayed him. Hell, she’d worked in his bar and lived in his house, and he’d still mourned his lost brothers—especially Ajax, who he’d often called the son he’d never had, if only when he’d been drunk—like they were the only family who had truly mattered to him.

Sophie had always believed her dedication would win, in the end. That her loyalty and love would count for something.

Ajax tilted his head slightly, watching her closely. “You got something to say about that?”

“What could I possibly have to say about club business?” she threw back at him, and she didn’t work too hard to control her bitter tone. “I’m not a brother. I’m not anybody’s old lady and I’m certainly no sweet butt out for a good time. I’m the old president’s daughter, off-limits to everybody.” She sniffed. “Except you, apparently. Is that because he’s dead or because you’re a dick?”

She half-expected him to come at her again, and her heart kicked at her, anticipation and adrenaline at once. Maybe she wanted him to, she acknowledged, when he only stayed where he was, that cool blue gaze of his punching holes through her forehead.

“Probably both,” he said, his voice dark. “But don’t you worry. I know all my demons by name. I’ll just add your daddy to the list.”

Sophie blinked. “I didn’t think you’d answer that. Much less admit it.”

“Was that you saying no down there?” he asked quietly. “I couldn’t hear it over the sound of you shooting off that mouth of yours and then coming apart in my hands. My bad.”

She nodded. “Of course. Why am I surprised that you’re terrible?”

A crook of those lips, hotter somehow with that dark gold beard of his to frame them. “You’re not surprised that I’m terrible. You’re surprised that you like it.”

Sophie refused to think about that little bomb that felt an awful lot like truth. She crossed her arms and winced when the movement dragged her tank top over her sensitive nipples, and he saw that, she was sure he did. She didn’t think he missed a thing.

“You didn’t answer my question. You could have made your calls downstairs, in the street, or wherever the hell you’re staying. You didn’t have to break into my house.”

Ajax’s mouth curved. “You think I broke in?”

“I know I locked the door.” She was Priest Lombard’s daughter and this was New Orleans, not Disneyland. “I always lock the door.”

“I have a key.”

“You disappeared ten years ago. You kept your key?”

He didn’t reply, and she didn’t feel like another trip down memory lane. Back to when she’d been a curious teenager with a strict father and he’d been so beautiful his smile made the gargoyles weep. Back when she’d had to awkwardly navigate around this house with him always underfoot, always oozing that deadly, feral charm of his all over the kitchen table, but never at her. Back when Ajax had been her father’s confidant in a way she never was and now never could be—there was no point thinking about any of that. It only made that raw thing inside her worse.

“Well, you can’t stay here. You’re not actually my brother, despite the way my father treated you. You don’t have any right to come rolling in here like you’re my family and I have some obligation to put you up.”

“Never thought I was your brother, babe.”

That took on a different shade of meaning, given what had happened between them downstairs, but she couldn’t focus on that just yet. Or maybe ever.

“Sophie.” And that blue gaze of his was serious then. “I was his family, if not yours. You know that.”

He didn’t ask her what her plan was, because, of course, he didn’t have to. If he refused to leave, what could she do? There was no forcing him. And Lombards didn’t call the cops.

Are you really this person? she asked herself tightly. Ajax was his favorite. Are you really going to shit all over that because you’re jealous?

The funeral would be later this week, she assumed. Next week at the latest. Then all of these things she wanted gone from her life would fade back into the shadows and the gutters where they belonged, Ajax along with them. She could deal with him for a few days, surely. She could deal with anything for a few days.

“I made the third bedroom into a yoga studio,” she gritted out, which wasn’t entirely true. She’d once done a yoga DVD in there, yes. But she was hoping the idea might horrify him straight down to his adamantly anti-hippie soul. “It’s not really a guest room anymore.”

Ajax did something with his mouth and those gleaming blue eyes of his, where he grinned at her and even laughed a little bit without actually doing either one of those things, and she felt that like he was on her again, hard against her, so hard it made her shiver deep inside.

“I tell you what. You want to come on in and tie yourself into knots on the floor and then show me all the ways you’re as flexible as you are hot, I won’t complain.”

She made a low, frustrated noise, and forgot her half-formed good intention to stop being a jealous little brat. Only partly because he’d had that heat in his voice when he’d said that, and it could hardly be a part of her grief process she planned to excuse away if she kept doing it, could it?

“Maybe I just don’t want you here. Does that matter to you?”

“Probably not the way you want it to.”

She started to speak but he rose then, shoving his phone in his pocket and then raking his dark blond hair back from his face, and he looked exactly like the man he was. A cool, tough outlaw who did as he pleased. And Sophie was just one more example of the collateral damage men like him stacked up along the way. Her entire existence was a monument to the hard life and hard choices of one more self-professed outlaw who’d died before his time. She wanted to slap the living one in front of her across his face.

Ajax’s eyes narrowed, and she realized she’d stepped toward him with her hands in fists.

Not smart.

“You looking for something to regret, Sophie? You’re not gonna like what happens if you swing at me. I were you, I’d tell me what your fucking problem is instead.”

“Aside from the fact I have to go to the morgue and identify my father’s body right now, you mean?” she threw at him, like bullets, and she almost wished they were. Almost. “Nothing. No problem at all. How weird that I might want to come back here and cry myself to sleep in peace!”

—

That shit definitely wasn’t happening, but Ajax didn’t want to argue with her about it in the old apartment, where he could feel the ghost of the only man he’d ever considered a father figure all around him, sharp and real. Waiting for Ajax to step up and be a man, he was sure of it, especially after failing so spectacularly downstairs. He could almost hear Priest’s gravelly, pissed-off voice issuing that very order.

And Ajax had the distinct feeling he wasn’t going to keep his hands off Sophie Lombard the way he probably should, but that didn’t mean he was going to let her deal with the fucking morgue.

He waited in silence for her to finish dressing. She stalked over to the door and stamped her feet into very black, very butch motorcycle boots, swiping up her keys in one hand and shaking out her damp, wavy hair with the other, like that might dry it faster down here in the delta where nothing was ever really dry. Ajax didn’t let himself think too much about how smoking hot she looked in a pair of jeans plastered all over that ass of hers or that stretchy little tank top that hugged those juicy tits in front and let her tattooed wings peek out in back. Or those boots that he deeply appreciated because when she moved they gave her hips a little swagger that made him really, really want to get those hips and all the rest of that soft, curvy body of hers beneath him.

No point thinking about these things when it didn’t matter, and it definitely didn’t matter where they were going right now.