Read Shift (The Disciples' Daughters #2) for Free Online Page B

extended the little boy my way. I’d guess he was about a year old. He was bigger than Emmy had been at that age, but Gauge wasn’t a small man. There was no doubt who his father was, even though it had been years since I had seen Gauge. Levi had his dad’s deep tan coloring, his dark eyes, and his mess of black hair. The resemblance was so absolute, I saw none of his mother in him.
    “Gauge’s genes were dominant, huh?” I mused.
    “Thank fuck for that.” My head snapped up in confusion at Tank’s words. He read it right away. “He’s not Cami’s. Not by blood, at least. But the papers just went through and he’s her son now.”
    Jeez. A lot had happened.
    “I didn’t even know Cami and Gauge knew each other.”
    Cami had grown up with the club as well. She was a few years older than Gabe and I, but we were like cousins. There weren’t a lot of kids around, so age differences were set aside. Cami left for college at eighteen and essentially never came back. From what I’d known before I left, she started seeing some guy Tank was not at all fond of and they were living together. She never came back to visit and Gauge hadn’t become a brother until after she’d left.
    “That was my doing,” Tank said, a note of pride in his voice. “I’ll let Cami tell you the story when she gets back in town. Gauge took her on a ride out for a few days for their honeymoon. Didn’t want to leave Levi for too long. They’ll be back tomorrow night.”
    I was about to formulate some version of how I was looking forward to seeing her so I wouldn’t cause an awkward silence—which was my standard way of handling things—when Emmy came running into the room.
    “Momma! Momma, it’s so pretty! You hafta see!”
    Having no idea what could be “pretty” in a house full of bikers, I handed Levi back to Tank and followed her down the hall. Most of the rooms were upstairs, but there were a couple at the far end of the main floor. Back in the day, they were used as storage rooms. Gabe used to sneak us down that same hall, into those unused rooms. No one came looking for us there…
    Crap. I needed to shut that down.
    I focused on Emmy and her palpable excitement as we approached one of the rooms. The door was open, so I followed her as she turned in.
    I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
    What had to be a whole new set of furniture filled the room. Had to be, because no one living in the house would have been using a white wood framed canopy bed with pink gauzy curtains. The shelves on one side and the dresser with little tiara-shaped handles were likewise not in high demand.
    They’d done this for us. They’d gone out of their way to make a room fit for a princess.
    I could just imagine a group of these men in well-worn jeans and leather cuts, bearded and tattooed, walking into a furniture place and asking for the girliest set they had. The image was funny enough to hold back the threatening tears.
    “It’s a pwincess room!” Emmy declared, in case I hadn’t gotten that.
    “I see that, baby.”
    My eyes swept over the whole room again, my chest constricting. I’d never been able to give her that. I’d tried. Every day since I found out I was pregnant, I had tried to provide my daughter with everything. We’d gotten by, but I’d never been able to give her something so luxurious. All the furniture we had was second hand. We got what we could from resale shops and garage sales. Her room at home was a mismatched nightmare, but it was what I could afford.
    For a moment, the crushing sense that I had been failing her made me feel about a foot tall.
    I ducked back into the hall as Daz helped Emmy rip open the moving box full of her toys. She was going to town on it, getting everything unloaded at top speed. She wouldn’t notice if I was gone for a while.
    Standing in the hall did nothing to clear my heavy heart. It only reminded me of where I was. The club had been there, right where it always was, ready to welcome