Page 58 of Marcus

Added to the list.

Cella stared up at the bright, early June sun as she slid a pair of large sunglasses over her face. “You know, there’s a portion of Americans who believe Canada is cold all year round.”

“No, they don’t.”

“Yes, they do.”

Marcus’s brow knotted. “Really?”

“Yes—but this heat is about to kill me.”

He laughed and put a hand to the small of her back before slipping his other in with Tiffany’s to walk them both down the stairs of his front porch. As always, his gaze scanned the street as he directed the girls toward the waiting SUV in front of the two-door garage that was currently closed, just in case. Habit, really, and while only his family knew he used the house in the suburbs when he needed to get away for a time, that didn’t mean word couldn’t get out.

Considering the biker gang was still reeling over the hit Marcus had gotten his men to put out on their president—he figured what better lesson than that—he still needed to be extra cautious. Nothing said the club knew about his house in the suburbs, so that was why he decided this would be the best place for Cella and Tiffany to be while they were here, and the nonsense with the gang worked itself out.

As for the hit?

That lesson?

It went through successfully.

Marcus’s hope was that would be the last message he needed to make where the bikers were concerned. They could now focus their efforts on picking a new president to run their chapter, stay the fuck out of Guzzi business, and hopefully come to an understanding that they were never going to be invited to sit at the table with him in business.

But what did he know?

The fuckers had surprised him before.

So, he wasn’t taking risks.

At least, not while Cella was in town with her daughter. He didn’t want his business touching them. Not if he could help it.

The enforcer that kept an eye on his house had taken the SUV out of the garage that morning at Marcus’s direction, but the man was nowhere in sight as he helped Cella to transfer Tiffany’s booster seat from her vehicle to his. Once the girl was buckled into her seat in the back behind Marcus’s driver seat, he and Cella rounded the back of the SUV to put the bag in the rear hatch.

He took his chance to kiss her, then. To push her against the back of the closed hatch after they’d tossed the bag in and wrap his hands around her trim waist while he got a taste of whatever lip balm she’d smoothed over those plump lips of hers that morning. Her soft gasp was swallowed by his lips working against hers, and when she opened that sweet mouth of hers, he didn’t waste time deepening the kiss.

Cella’s fingers twisted into the dress shirt stretching across his chest, and he slowed them down just enough to press two fast kisses to her lips before he pulled away with a ragged breath. The very last thing he wanted to do was stop touching this woman—she had quickly become an addiction of his that he was more than happy to feed—but someone else was waiting in the car, and he couldn’t forget that, either.

“Okay, now we gotta get in the car,” he muttered.

“After that, huh?”

Marcus grinned. “I’ve been waiting all morning to kiss you like that.”

Her expression softened. “Thanks for thinking about her … you know?”

“Of course.”

Did she expect anything different from him?

Marcus understood something big was happening here with Cella, but he also knew she had to think about her child. And the decisions she made for that girl weren’t choices he had any say in, or could even share his opinion about, really. She did, however, allow him to be around her daughter, to bring her here, and that meant she trusted him.

He wasn’t going to abuse that.

He certainly wasn’t going to confuse the kid about what was happening between her mother and him. Those were things for Cella to explain how and when she wanted to. He wouldn’t speed it up by the kid seeing things she was too young to understand.

Simple as that.

“Care to tell me what these plans of yours are for us this weekend?”