Ruined (The MC Motorcycle Club Romance Series - Book #1) (6 page)

“
Dax
!”
She was right outside my bedroom door.
It was the same
bedroom that I had slept in since I was a kid
. The only time I hadn’t
was the one year I lived in the dorms at college and the couple of years I
lived in Pelican Bay.

“What, Mom? Is something wrong?” I knew I was
whining but I had drunk way too much beer yesterday. I really needed to start
finding other things to do than hanging out around that damn bar.

“Everything’s fine, but your parole officer is
here.”

“Oh shit! Sorry, Mom. I forgot!”

“It’s okay, just hurry please.” She used her sweet
voice, but I could tell she was annoyed.
 
My parole officer had called two days before and said that she would be
by that morning. I told her that I would be sure to be there. I threw on some
jeans and a T-shirt, slipped my moccasins on my feet, pulled a beanie over my head
and headed out.

“Hi, I’m sorry.” I stopped dead in my tracks.

My parole officer was hot. She reminded me a lot of
Olivia with the petite build and the long dark hair that she wore in a straight
ponytail down her back. Her eyes weren’t dark like Olivia’s; that was the one major
difference. They were the most incredible shade of light blue. How the hell was
I supposed to take her seriously as a parole officer when she looked like that?

“Um…Miss Ortega, right? I’m sorry. I forgot to set
my alarm.”

Her sexy eyes were traveling all over me and it made
me shiver. She was the first woman other than Olivia who ever made me feel like
that without touching me.

“It’s fine,” she said, all businesslike.

She stood up when I came in the room and I said, “Please
sit down. Can I get you something to drink, coffee or something?”

“No thanks,” she replied.

“If you need me I’ll be out in the laundry room,” my
mother said.

Miss Ortega smiled at her. She was even prettier
when she smiled. It softened the hard set lines of her face.

When my mother was gone she opened the folder she
carried and said, “Who all lives here in the home?”

“Me, my mom and dad, that’s
it
.”
But she could move in any time.

“And your father is Joe Turner?”

“Yes, ma’am.”
She gave me a weird look, kind of
like
she had a bad
taste in her mouth. I wasn’t sure if it was because I called her ma’am, because
my father was Joe Turner or both.

“Have you been looking for a job?”

“Well, I was actually thinking about going back to
school.”

And helping out in my dad’s biker bar, which was a
known hang out for most of the felons in the county. Oh and taking rides out to
warehouses that were probably hideouts for drugs and guns.

She raised an eyebrow and for a second I was worried
that she was reading my mind.

“You need to decide soon. Sitting around doing
nothing every day will get you into trouble quicker than
anything
.
But I guess you know that since you spent most of your time in the SHU.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. No weird look this time so the
other one was definitely about my dad.

“Are there any weapons in the house?”

“My dad has a gun safe, but they’re all legal and
registered.”

“To him?”
Again, the look.

“Uh, I guess probably to my mom.” Shit! My dad had been
off parole for a long time, but I guess since he was convicted of a felony that
would mean he was not supposed to have guns. This was all new to me. I really
hated
being forced
to think like a convicted felon.

“I know your CCI went over all of this before your
release, but I’m going to touch on some of the things here that are pretty
common reasons why a parolee can be found in violation, okay? I don’t want you
saying later that I didn’t tell you something.”

Her beauty was quickly fading under the glare of her
talking about me going back to prison.

I swallowed and said, “Okay.”

“You understand that your residence and your
personal possessions can be searched at any time of day or night without reason
and without a warrant?”

“Yes.”

“You understand that if you want to leave the
county, it has to be approved by me and so you know, it would have to be a
pretty damn good reason for me to approve it?”

“Okay.”

“If you get a job or start school, you will have
three days to let me know.”

“Okay.”

“If you travel more than fifty miles from your home,
it will need to be approved by me.”

“Okay.”

“You cannot be around guns or things that look like real
guns, bullets or any other weapons. What that means is if you’re going to stay
here, your….mother will have to get rid of her guns or at least store them in a
place that is not your residence. You will have a week to sort that out and
when I come back I’ll expect them to be out of the house.”

Shit! My dad was going to have a fit. “Okay.”

“No knives with blades over two inches either,
unless it’s a kitchen knife and then it should be in your kitchen.”

“Okay.”
  

She looked at me, long and hard. I was actually
starting to sweat under her gaze before she spoke again.

“Listen,
Dax
, I do what I
do to help people, believe it or not. My one true goal is to keep you out of
prison and make you a productive member of society. I look at the fact that you
had no priors, no juvenile record and you were an honor student before this
happened and I would like to think that you were at least trying to break the
mold that being Joe Turner’s son poured around you. I have to tell you that I
wish you had somewhere else to go, somewhere else to live. I don’t know what
your relationship is with Joe and I don’t know if what I’m saying is going to
piss you off. The truth is I don’t give a shit if it does. Whether you admit it
or deny it or don’t want to hear it, you and I both know that if you continue
to hang out with your father and his friends your freedom will be tenuous at
best.”

I wasn’t pissed. She didn’t say anything I didn’t
already know to be true. But I didn’t have a job, any money or anywhere else to
go.

“I’ll make sure the guns are gone and I will be
looking for a job and an apartment.”

“Good,” she said. “As long as we have the same goals
in mind we’ll get along fine.”

“As long as that goal is keeping me out of prison,
then yes, we have the same one.”

I walked her to the door and after I closed it
behind her I turned to see my mom standing in front of me.

“I’ll call your father and have him send some of the
boys over to get the safe. They can keep it at the club.”

“I’m sorry about all of this, Mom.”

She came over and put her hand on the side of my
face. She and I never talked about why she wouldn’t leave him. It was one thing
that was never on the table.

But today she said, “Stop apologizing to me,
Dax
. I should have taken you away from all of this long
ago. I didn’t, so now you have to live with the fallout. I am going to do
whatever it takes to make sure the consequences you suffered already were the
only ones that you’ll have to suffer and I don’t care how pissed off it makes
your father.”

“I got lucky the day they handed out mothers, you
know that?”

She blushed and patted the side of my face. She
sighed and went back to cleaning the house or whatever it was she was doing.
The dynamics of our family
were seriously screwed up,
but at least I always knew that she loved me.

I showered and headed out. I hit a few auto parts
stores and picked up applications. I was sure if I asked, Olivia’s uncle would
hire me, but there was already enough awkwardness going around. When I ran out
of places to get an application from, I headed for The Smoke Joint. I knew my
parole agent literally just told me to stay away from those guys, but the
thought of sitting in my mother’s house doing nothing for the rest of the day
was almost equivalent to the thought of going back to prison.

I spent the early part of the afternoon helping the
guys do some modifications to a few of the bikes. It passed the time a lot more
constructively than watching reruns or daytime programming. My dad was there
and he was his usual gruff self. He didn’t mention the guns or the safe so I
didn’t know if my mom had talked to him about it yet or not. I figured
that was a conversation best left alone until he brought it up
.

Terrance had been making himself scarce lately and I
was grateful for that too. I guessed one of these days we might have to continue
that conversation we touched on that first night. I wasn’t looking forward to
it. I just couldn’t stand the way that he and Olivia both wanted to keep making
excuses, trying to explain it to me. The simple fact was that I wasn’t around
so the two of them got busy.
For some reason that was a
bigger slight coming from my best friend than it was from my ex-girlfriend.

I was getting hungry so I headed toward the kitchen
to see if I could find Cookie or something he may have cooked up and left
behind. I was surprised when I found my mother.

My mother pretty much steered clear of the bar and
the club unless there was something
going on that either
forced her to be there or that she wanted to be there for like a birthday party
or an anniversary party. She was still the Queen of the Joint no matter how few
and far between her visits were. When she walked in even the old timers jumped
to attention and she would always put everyone to work. She was gracious about
it and always thanked them all profusely, but there was never any doubt in
anyone’s mind that they would do whatever she asked of them.

I knew something was up when I found her and Cookie
whipping up a feast in the kitchen.

“Hey, Mom, what’s going on?” I asked, giving her a
kiss on the cheek and sticking my fingers in a bowl of freshly-made mashed
potatoes.

“Oh nothing,” she said as she slapped my hand away.
“Cookie and I just had some new recipes we wanted to try out.”

I doubted her sincerity, but I let it go. “Good, is
any of it ready? I’m starving.” Cookie was frying up some chicken and my mom
was making gravy. I spotted a platter of ribs that looked done on the far
counter and headed toward them.

“Only take one,
Dax
,
they’re for later.”

With my mouth already full of barbecue ribs I said,
“I thought you were just trying out recipes.”

“We are, but we’re going to serve them for dinner
later. I don’t want them all picked at.”

“Okay, Mom.”

I grabbed another rib and I wondered out to the
garage and found my dad and Blake shooting a game of pool. I joined in, after I
put up my fifty bucks of course. My dad didn’t do anything that didn’t involve
money. It was actually my mother’s fifty bucks. All the money I had in my bank
accounts at the time of my arrest had been seized by the State for restitution.
My mom had paid for my attorney. I had told her I would just use a public
defender, but she wouldn’t hear of it…for all the good it ended up doing.

While my dad was taking a shot Blake asked me, “Have
you had much time to catch up with Terrance?”

You had to understand the mentality of the club to
understand why no one seemed to get that I might be pissed at Terrance these
days. If she was your legal wife, nobody even looked sideways at her. No one
would ever consider approaching my mother and if
they
did, they would have hell to pay from my dad no matter how much he screwed
around on her. If you introduced her as your Old Lady, that was as good as
putting a ring on her finger too. She was off-limits while you were with her
and shunned when you left her. That part put the legal wife one rung above her.

If my dad and my mom had ever split up, she would
still be royalty and the guys
would still be expected
to treat her as such. But, if she was just a girlfriend and you didn’t make it
clear she was hands-off, those guys did a lot of sharing. It was kind of gross,
if you asked me, but that was their life. When Olivia and I were together, I
only brought her there with me maybe twice. I guessed Terrance didn’t mind
bringing her around. Maybe she wasn’t just his girlfriend. Maybe she had
reached Old Lady status. It was a weird system, but if you hung around those
guys it was one you
were forced
to live with.

“No, I haven’t had much of a chance yet,” was all I
told him.

There was no point in getting into an argument with
Blake over it. Terrance didn’t have a mother. He and Blake were a lot closer
than my
dad
and I were because of it. My mother was
the closest thing to a mother Terrance ever had. I had wondered once or twice
since I got back why my mom didn’t tell me about Terrance and Olivia. I
couldn’t hold it against her though, during that time everything had fallen on
her shoulders. It wouldn’t have done any good for me to know about them while I
was sitting in the Bay. I’m sure my mom knew that.