Tastes Like Candy (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 2) by Lauren Gilley Page A

“Fine.”
                  His hands lifted, hovering near her shoulders.
                  The absurdity of the situation struck her all at once, and she turned so she faced him, his features veiled by the dark, nothing but a glimmer of eyes and a faint outline of his nose. “This isn’t chivalry.”
                  “What?”
                  “You dragging me out of that place. Making a scene. Treating me like baggage you can throw over your shoulder.” She grew more upset the longer she talked. “That doesn’t have anything to do with protecting me.”
                  He didn’t reply; she felt the weight of his gaze and shivered beneath it.
                  “I know why I’m angry. But why are you?”
                  “I…don’t know, actually.” He rolled his shoulders. “I just am.”
                  “Well…I suppose I have to give you credit for admitting it.”
                  He made an amused sound in his throat. “I guess I just don’t know what to do with you. I don’t understand why you didn’t want to go away to school, or get a life outside the club. Or why you didn’t settle down and marry one of your dad’s boys.”
                  The same old clichés again. She hated them…but she did understand them. For all their claims to outlawry, these biker boys lived by strict codes and worked within a terribly rigid social structure. Some of them resented her; but others – Candy, obviously – were simply flummoxed.
                  “Are those my only options?” she asked. “A schoolgirl, a typist, or a wife?”
                  “There are powerful women in this club,” he consented. “But they’re all old ladies. Nobody’s ever done it the way you’re trying to. All by your little self. I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish.”
                  She thought she’d gotten past his presidential veneer; she was inside his head now, and the view was giving her a whole new perspective of the man. “Does life have to be about accomplishment?”
                  “Yes. Yes it does. Everyone’s trying to accomplish something, sweetheart. I’m trying to keep all our asses outta jail.”
                  “And your personal accomplishments?”
                  “Don’t have any. Don’t need any. This is my club; I belong to it. I owe it everything I’ve got. I’m not a pretty girl with a bright future who could get the hell out.”
                  “Out?” Her throat constricted painfully. “My mother was an outsider. She walked the line between Dad’s world and her own. And she got killed. On the outside. The club didn’t hurt her; the world did.”
                  She could still remember the phone call, the way Phillip had fallen down into a chair, breathless and weak, the phone pressed to his ear. She remembered – five and playing on the rug with Tommy – the indescribable expression on her father’s face. She’d never seen grief before; had no point of reference for the cartwheeling shock and devastation in his eyes.
                  Her hands were numb, not with cold, but with memory, and she rubbed them together.
                  Candy’s voice was soft. “You can’t walk away from the life, can you?”
                  “No.” She was afraid she’d cry, and bit her lip. “And all anyone ever tells me is that I don’t belong. So where does that leave me?”
                  “Then get married,” he urged.
                  “Marry who? Someone like your boy Gringo?” She breathed a harsh laugh. “Do you think Phillip Calloway raised me to lose my head over some idiot like that? Every pretty boy who winks at me? Your worry was wasted tonight. You couldn’t pay me to touch that