Checkmate With Bishop: A Hellions MC Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

order to calm myself, only hoping afterward that Stan hadn’t heard.  “I got your message.  What’s up?”
    Okay, I had been trying for breezy during a time I felt anything of the sort but still, I’d gotten the main portion of my question out there.
    “We need to talk,” the velvet growl answered, a noise that I felt in places that had no business being awake at that time of the evening and with my son looking on.  “You didn’t call me back.”
    Grabbing the first bag at my feet and bringing it up to the waist-high counter, I waved towards J.R. in an effort to encourage him to go back to the truck to continue removing the groceries. 
    And to get him out of earshot, if I was being honest.
    True to his early-teen attitude though, my kid stood across from me in a pose of studied casualness and watched with sharp, all-seeing eyes.  He was deliberately ignoring my hints.  Covering the bottom half of my cellphone, I was done with suggesting and decided to give a clear directive.  “J.R., honey, can you bring in the rest of the groceries?”
    “Sure, Mom.  Groceries.  You got it,” he grumbled, his changing voice only breaking once as he shoved away from the counter and exited through the still opened back door.
    “Sorry, Stan,” I offered, calmer without an audience, although not by much.  “You were saying?”
    There were a couple of beats of silence, enough so I pulled the phone away from my ear to check the connection.  But when he spoke again, I thought Stan’s voice sounded weaker and more strained than it had before.  “Did he just call you mom?”
    I swear to god, my heart that had been beating so fast and so deep stopped at his question.  In fact, everything I was stilled on both my insides and outer body.  “You heard that?” Another blurt but this one was offered on a whisper.
    “Kinda hard to miss, babe.”
    As my body restarted, my mind raced to come up with an answer.  But wait!  I didn’t owe Stan a goddamn thing, much less an explanation of my life now and who was or wasn’t in it!  And that knowledge gave me courage while adding steel to my tone.  “Why are you calling, Stan?”
    “How old is he?”  Stan’s growl came across loud and clear, enough for me to know the expression he was wearing as he asked the question.  It would be one of pinched eyebrows that were lowered around narrowed eyes.  “Your son, Dory.  How old is he?”
    I sighed.  I knew the man on the other end of the phone.  Had dated him for two years then had been married to him for five.  So unless he’d gone through a drastic personality change in the time we’d been apart, I knew he wasn’t going to let the question go.  “Listen, Stan.  I’ve had a long, exhausting day and don’t have the time or the strength to deal with this right now.  Maybe we could talk another time.”
    “When?”
    “I don’t know.  How about I call you when I have a few extra moments?”  Actually, I thought that was a great way to get him off the phone.  Of course, I had absolutely no intention of following through on it.
    “Babe…” he started and just that one word, that one measly little word said in his bedroom voice shot straight through me and I knew I needed to stop the conversation as fast as possible.
    I closed my eyes as I blustered my way through the only way I could think of to get him off the phone.  “I’ll talk to you another time then, Stan.  Bye!”   Only opening my eyes wide enough to see the red button, I disconnected the call and put the cell down, wiping my sweating palms on my jeans.
    God!  That had been close!
    “Mom?” J.R.’s voice broke the silence and I realized my relief, such as it was, was to be short-lived.  “Who was that?”
    “Uhm…” I started, turning to the first grocery bag and peering into it as if it held an answer suitable for my inquisitive son.  “Just a guy.”
    “But he said his name was Bastian.”  Damn the kid and his memory!  “Is he