Gideon sagged into the seat of his auto. He’d had more uncomfortable Sunday dinners. He couldn’t remember when off the top of his head. The dinner had been fine. The dinner had been delicious. It was Brand’s probing questions about Jasper and Beda and his prodding observations that made Gideon uncomfortable.

And then Brand had teased him about all the ladies who were interested in him and whether or not Gideon was interested in babies until Esme and Savannah couldn’t breathe and were almost crying from trying not to laugh as Gideon had ineptly tried to deflect the accusations. At least, the questions hadn’t been about his past or where he came from. He wasn’t ready to answer those yet.

Plus, there was the somewhat unsettling notion that to the country of Colorado he was joining a gang to consider. The Saturday party had eased his mind somewhat on the matter. Hunter and Brand had implied they were a gang to the country of Colorado. Now Esme had outright stated it. He shifted in his seat.

He needed something to suck on. He leaned over, pried open his glove compartment and rummaged through the papers there searching for either his secret emergency stash of peach flavored clove cigarettes or a lollipop. He got to the back, pried up the top of the ‘secret’ compartment where he hid the cigarettes, reached in and then remembered he was out.

He sighed and straightened. Damn it. Gideon ran a hand through his hair. He glanced into the mirror. Muttering to himself, he turned the key, put the auto into gear and backed out, driving off the hill and into downtown Jasper. He parked in front of Lollytarts and got out.

Lollytarts was as zany looking on the inside as the name suggested. He would have thought with the rainbow rows of every type of candy imaginable, the walls would have been white. They weren’t. They were painted to look like the striped large round flat lollipops that it was almost impossible to get your mouth completely around. Pictures of fruit, candy, and candy logos broke up the stripes other than the racks of candy.

He paused inside the door to get a feel for how busy they were. From prior experience, he knew where the lollipops were.

The shop wasn’t busy. There were kids by the M’Ms and jelly beans, a few with parents. A few adults browsed. And the one paying at the register finished up with a smile and a good day to the cashier, who as soon as Gideon moved out of the way of the door and the customer got out of the way, she saw him. She brightened and smiled at him.

“Hey!” she said.

He smiled back. “Hay is for horses,” he said.

She rolled her eyes and beckoned him over. He looked with longing at the display of lollipops but went over to her. She grinned at him. “I know exactly what you want.” She reached under the counter and firmly set a clear bucket full of lollipops onto it.

Gideon flushed and rested his forearms against the counter. “Okay. Okay,” he muttered. “I get the hint.” He ran his fingers through his hair.

The girl’s grin didn’t fade. “It’s not that we don’t appreciate your business,” she said. “And we don’t mind seeing you twice a week.” She paused. “Have you ever considered you have an addiction?”

He stopped running his fingers through his hair and glared at her.

She winked at him.

“Maybe I like looking for peach hard candy,” he said.

“Ohh, tough flavor to find.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’ll see if I can get them ordered. I’ve got peach mango lollipops?”

“Not the same.” He reached for his wallet. “How much for the bucket?”

“Twenty,” the girl said and entered it in.

Gideon handed her the money and put his hand on top of the bucket.

“And when you finish that, bring it back and we’ll refill it for fifteen,” she said.

“You know, I could have not been after lollipops.”

“You had that look in your eyes,” she said.

“I might have surprised you anyways.”

“And you don’t have a girlfriend yet. I’d know.”

“How is it,” Gideon growled and then sighed. “No. No. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know which one you have the ear of.”

“Flossie.”

“I said I didn’t want to know!” Gideon glowered at her. “I might have been buying for Savannah,” he said in a hurt tone.

“Oh!” She brightened. “Chocolate covered pretzels, extra salt.” She turned around and grabbed a bag. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Though she’s not your girlfriend.”

He slid the money across the counter and took the bag. “She might be.”

“But she isn’t. She is your sponsor,” the girl said with a look of triumph. “And everyone would know if she was your girlfriend.”

He rolled his eyes. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“I won’t,” he told her.

She wrinkled her nose and stuck her tongue out at him. Gideon left the store swinging the bucket of lollipops in one hand. He got into his auto and put the candy on the passenger seat. Now, how was he going to give Savannah a bunch of chocolate covered pretzels without it being awkward?

--

Gideon entered his apartment with a small sigh, sucking on one of the lollipops and his arms full. He kicked off his dress shoes and walked around the apartment putting the lollipops in his almost bare kitchen cupboards and his suit jacket and tie he tossed into the laundry. He unbuttoned his dress shirt and tossed it in there. Since the t-shirt felt disgusting, he pulled it over his head and added it to the pile. In a sudden rash of brashness, he decided, what the hell and divested himself of all his clothes and went back into his living room.

It was his apartment. He didn’t feel like going anywhere. He wasn’t hungry at the moment and if anyone, which included nosy people with keys like Savannah, wanted to talk to him, they could either wait for him to find pants or deal with the fact he was naked. It would serve Savannah right. Plus, it wasn’t anything she hadn’t already seen before.

He itched. It wasn’t a dirty type of itch or a rash or anything truly physical. There was an itch under his skin. Clothes seemed to make it worse. And it wasn’t until he was completely free of the restricting and confining things that he felt he could breathe freely again. He didn’t understand the whole purpose of clothes anyway. Oh, he got that they were a form of protection from the elements. He didn’t have to like it.

He entered his living room and with a glance at the couch, didn’t want to settle yet. He walked around the couch and the table once, decided he liked the motion and continued to walk. This felt like the first opportunity he had to take a breather and think since he’d made the, in hindsight, somewhat rash decision to try and join up with the Heathens.

The pack was Club and Club was pack. The Club protected them. The Club was a gang. Gideon felt the urge to scratch again and ignored it, staring at his toes. The Club was something else too. He wasn’t sure what.

Zeke had said something about hiring Heaven Has Mercy for security work. Isn’t that what Savannah had told Dr. Brown, that they were with Heaven Has Mercy and there to rescue him? What exactly was Heaven Has Mercy and how did he fit into it?

Brand had pounced on him because of his military background, at least according to one of the guys. Was Heaven Has Mercy that important to the club and in this case, to the pack? What role did it fill in the overall scheme of things?

There were many questions he didn’t have answers for, things he should have asked before taking Brand’s test.

It all came down to the Club and the Code. He had to go on what he’d seen, what he’d smelled and what he’d heard. There was this constant mantra of protection. Protect the pack, protect the town, protect the innocent. They didn’t have to protect the town. They didn’t have to keep the Rebels out of Jasper. They had their bit of territory. Brand could look the other way at the other gangs. And they chose not to. Savannah actively went out of her way to drive them out of town limits, even on a Sunday. And her reasoning was that they didn’t need that type of people in Jasper. They didn’t need gangs in Jasper.

Then, why were the Heathens themselves a gang? Hunter said it was a disguise, another ploy to keep the pack safe. Brand had told what he’d considered a funny story about the pack acting like a gang and getting away with it.

Outside of that story and outside of Savannah running gang members out of town, Gideon didn’t think the Heathens acted like any gang he’d ever heard of. He didn’t know a lot of about gangs, but he certainly didn’t think they acted at all like the Heathens did. Every Thursday potlatch felt like a big church dinner. Tuesday officer’s meetings, or church he guessed, were like corporate business meetings where the Heathens had their paws in every aspect of Jasper from having a religious church, a wing at the hospital, and down to owning the Jasper Olde Tyme Country Store and he didn’t know what else. There were a lot of businesses mentioned. Hell, they owned the building he was living in.

Gideon used the side of his foot to kick his table and kept walking.

The party they’d held for him, that, that had been over the top. He still couldn’t quite comprehend holding a party of all the members of the pack to welcome one new person. Then again, his pack hadn’t had any new outside people in his entire life. As much as he wanted to belong somewhere, they were throwing open the doors and their arms and dragging him into their circle. It was rather scary. It also felt really, really good.

At the parties, he hadn’t smelled anything stronger than tobacco and alcohol. None of the kids seemed to be frightened or bruised. Violet, a teenage human female, wasn’t the least bit afraid to grab him by the arm and hug and kiss him. He knew she didn’t know about them being werewolves, but they were still bikers. She should have felt somewhat intimidated. But did she really actually feel more protected by the Club? She was the adopted mascot and really close with Savannah.

Despite the fact that the Club was supposedly a gang, he hadn’t seen anything to make him uneasy. Hell, if these Rebel guys were selling drugs on street corners, he’d be more than happy to help run them out of town. He despised drug dealers. It wasn’t the drugs themselves that were always the problem. It was what the drugs led to, addiction, poverty, prostitution, assault, and usually people died. No. They didn’t need that in Jasper. He hadn’t smelled anything to make him uneasy. If any of the club members were into drugs, he would have smelled something by now. He’d been around the clubhouse long enough.

And if Heaven Has Mercy was something to do with security work, then he’d be perfectly happy. It’d be enough like his beloved military experience to make him feel comfortable and less stressful on his morals and conscience. He didn’t always believe in what New York had been doing. However, orders were orders and his job was to follow them not think about or question them. Gideon walked around the back of the couch. Hell, Brand seemed to encourage questioning, thinking, and forming his own opinion about things.

If that truly was the case, then Gideon might feel more at home in the Club than in the military. At least in the Club telling his superiors to blow it out their ass wouldn’t earn him a deduction in rank and thus pay and a write up in his personnel file. It was something he’d exploited a few times to stay precisely where he wanted to be.

If Hunter was correct, and everything he’d seen so far agreed with Hunter, and the idea of the Heathens being a gang was cover to keep them safe and from others barging wholesale into their territory. And if others meant gangs, mafias and cartels, then Gideon was perfectly fine with being considered part of a gang, as long as the inside of the Club didn’t actually match the label.

He took a deep breath and stopped pacing feeling something settle. He shook his shoulders and cracked his neck. He’d stay. He’d see if this really bore out over the long term. He had five years to prove himself and he doubted that any game they could play would last more than a year or more.

But, whatever Heaven Has Mercy was, he didn’t know if he was part of it yet. And since he was going to stay, he might find out more about Jasper the city. And since they’d given him information about the town, he should take advantage of it to see if he could wiggle out the mindset of the people from the laws. He’d done that with the military as he memorized their rules. He didn’t see why it couldn’t be the same here.

He picked up the business directory and the book of laws, and in case he got hungry later, he found a box of crackers, the sausage he’d thought he’d seen, a block of cheese and the fudge out of the basket. He stretched out onto his couch and put his nose behind the covers of the business directory and started flipping through it. He crossed his ankles.

He needed to find a job. And then Beda would let him pay his rent.

Gideon settled in for a quiet evening.

--

Sunday afternoons happened to be the few hours of free time Savannah had. She guarded these precious moments with all the tenacity of a mother wolf defending her cubs. She tended to shut the fence across the driveway and didn’t take visitors unless they were friends that required nothing of her but conversation and could help themselves to drinks, entertainment, and food out of the fridge.

Today, no one had asked to come over and Savannah wasn’t in the mood for company. She changed out of her church clothes and into something that she could get dirty in. She went back to her kitchen. And while her cupboards over her counters were for cooking and baked goods, the cupboards under her counters were for something else entirely.

She pulled a large pot and several boxes out and set them on the counter. Opening the boxes, she lifted out several large blocks of white and cream colored wax. She unwrapped them and felt the outsides and tested them with a fingernail. She’d never used these types of waxes before and didn’t know exactly how they would work. She changed her mind, put the big pot away and took out two smaller pots, putting the different wax blocks in each of them. She turned to her molds and instead of taking out the larger molds, she went for her tea light molds. She didn’t know how these waxes were going to take scent or hold color or mix with each other or other waxes.

She hummed as she set the molds out in lines, checking them to make sure they weren’t bent or dirty. And while the waxes melted, she opened dark brown glass bottles of essential oils and sniffed them, setting those she liked off to the side and recapping the others to put them away.

Colored wax chips went into small cups that she set into water and started the water to heat in another pan. Once her preparations were complete, she picked up a watering can and went around to her plants checking their soil with her fingers, murmuring to them, calling them by name, and giving them the care and attention they needed.

The wax melted before she finished with the inside plants. She set her watering can aside, washed her hands and went back to the kitchen. Where she spent the next hour spooning hot wax into molds in different ratios and giving it color and drops of essential oils. Once the she was finished with her experiments, the left over waxes went into large square molds to reset and she cleaned up and went back to fussing over her plants.

As the sun went down, she went outside to give her outside flowers and plants the same type of love and attention she gave the inside ones. She sighed. Weeds, they grew too quickly. She knew she should be out in the garden weeding every day. She wished she had that time.

She frowned. She was going to have less time now that she had to take care of Gideon. Savannah growled, got a basket, and got down to the dirty business of weeding.

Gideon was annoying. Savannah tugged at the weeds. She flung them into her basket. He was mouthy. He asked too many questions. And he didn’t know anything.

And he was incredibly sexy.

Savannah growled again. He was driving her crazy and he’d barely been with them for a week! And she was the one who was supposed to be introducing him to the Club, teaching him their way of life and making sure he minded his manners. How was she supposed to do that when she wanted to jump on him and either kiss him senseless or whack him upside the head for his smart mouth?

Savannah tugged at a weed as her eyes grew hot. She wasn’t ready for this responsibility! Maybe it would be different if he were say, Violet. Savannah could handle Violet. She loved Violet like Violet was the little sister she never had and always wanted. Violet was female.

Violet didn’t have six pack abs or a nipple ring or warm brown eyes that made Savannah melt or kissable lips.

Savannah gave a little shriek and dropped her weeding claw. She shut her eyes and panted. Thinking about him like that wasn’t helping anything. She wiped at her forehead with the side of her arm and held back tears.

She’d give him to one of the older men in a heartbeat, if it had been anyone but Grandfather who had assigned him to her. She didn’t want to let him down. Grandfather had to have his reasons for giving her Gideon to be her prospect. She didn’t know what they were yet. If she could figure out what they were, she’d could at least pretend to learn the lesson. Then she could get on with her life. But, she couldn’t turn him over to someone more experienced now, not when her grandfather believed in her. She had to prove she was worthy of that belief.

And thinking of Gideon as a handsome available male wasn’t going to help her prove anything.

Savannah took a deep breath, picked up the weeding claw, and went back to her plants. She could do it. She could train Gideon to be a Heathen. She had too much on the line and her pride was at stake to fail now. She would eat the responsibility if it choked her. She would do the best she could do. No. She’d do more than the best she could do. She’d do a good job.

If her grandfather had been looking for a way to torture her, this was it.

Savannah blew out and dug into the dirt. She was who she was. She couldn’t change that. She was Club and the Club was her family. She wouldn’t let them down by abusing her authority to give into selfish desires. Even when selfish desires were tall, dark, and handsome.

Maybe, maybe when he was a member. If he survived that long and was still single at the end of it. Maybe then she could put aside being Vice President and put aside that she’d sponsored him into the Club and express interest him purely as a female. Until then, she’d swallow her desires, if it killed her.

Of course, she might want to kill him a month from now or be incredibly bored by his whole personality. Oh, it was useless to think about this. He’d been there a week. She was overthinking things now that she had a chance to think. She wiped at her forehead again and grimaced. How had things become so complicated so quickly?