Nolan: Return to Signal Bend Read Online Free PDF Page B

lightly, and Iris thought she might just pass out right there, just drop right off the barstool and onto the clubhouse floor.
     
    He ended the kiss but didn’t go far, and they stayed like that, sort of leaning on each other, for a second that never seemed to end.
     
    “Papa Bear coming up on your six.” Len’s voice, right at their side, blew the moment into fragments, and Nolan and Iris both reared back. She saw her dad talking to Badger and Isaac at the back of the Hall, near the side hallway. He didn’t seem to have noticed them yet.
     
    Iris wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “Hi, Uncle Len.”
     
    “Hey, beautiful. Glad to have you home.” He kissed her cheek and turned to Nolan. “We gotta roll, brother.”
     
    “Yeah, okay.” Nolan stood and met Iris’s eyes. “I’ll see you later.”
     
    When she nodded dumbly, he also kissed her cheek, and he headed for the door.
     
    Confused and actually, literally dizzy, Iris could only watch while Nolan walked away.
     
    When she turned back, her father was standing at her side, staring at the door Nolan and Len had just passed through.
     
    “Hi, Daddy.”
     
    He turned to her, frowning. “There something goin’ on between you and Nolan?”
     
    Everybody knew that her dad had almost killed Badger when he’d started seeing Iris’s stepsister, Adrienne. Badge and Adrienne had been married now for years, but her dad had beaten the hell out of him a few times at first. Iris knew that, if that kiss even meant anything—and who knew if it did—her father would not take it well if she got with a member of the Horde. Not that that would stop her.
     
    She laughed, and she heard that it was way too high-pitched and manic. “No, Daddy. We were just talking.”
     
    He stared hard at her, then reached out and pulled the stupid mistletoe headband from her hair and dropped it onto the bar. She’d forgotten all about it.
     
    “Let’s take a look at your truck,” was all he said, and he held out his hand for her keys.

CHAPTER THREE
     
     
    Len had pulled Nolan from the clubhouse because they were on patrol together. There wasn’t much to being on patrol, not these days. Since Signal Bend had no police force or sheriff substation, the Horde kept order. That had been true since long before Nolan had been Horde, or had even heard of the club or the town.
     
    They could afford a small police force now, and about once a year or so, somebody at a town meeting floated the idea, but it never got any traction. Since the Horde had put down Julio Santaveria and gone straight, Signal Bend was a safe, quiet place. Almost no crime happened here, and that was because the Horde was the law, and when people got out of line, it wasn’t a courtroom they were in when the penalty came due. So far, most of the townspeople, even the newcomers, were content with that arrangement.
     
    The business owners all paid the club for protection, but the residents got it for free. There were some people among the newcomers who didn’t quite know what to make of bikers riding around town, enforcing the rules, and those were usually the ones standing up making an issue of needing the police or the county sheriff. Once they saw the numbers and understood the bargain they were getting, most of them shut up, too.
     
    If no one from away ever came to Signal Bend, then they’d have had themselves a little utopia. But a big part of the town getting better and stronger was attracting people from away to spend money in Signal Bend businesses. Not everyone from away was down with the rules. The Horde handled that, too.
     
    During the day, the Horde assigned a couple of members in four-hour shifts to be present in town—hanging out on Main Street or sitting in Marie’s Diner with a cup of coffee, whatever. Just visible. During the night, they did the same thing, but they checked every few hours on the closed shops in town, they did a circuit over all the residential streets, and