CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE

Website where all photos of all outfits mentioned is on my profile.

Cocking my eyebrow at him I put my hands on my hips "And if I am?"

Clay grimaces for a split second before plastering a smile on his face so fake that it almost could belong in a museum. "I guess I would have to say congratulations and then be there when my Old Lady tries to strangle you in happiness."

Rolling my eyes I glance around the lot "Yes, Gemma will be over the moon." I pause for a few long seconds watching as he swallows hard, hearing his teeth grind in his mouth a laugh bubbles out of my throat that draws Jax's attention from down the other end of the bay and the raised eyebrow has me shaking my head and snorting around giggles. "No Uncle Clay, I'm not pregnant, yet."

Clay sighs in relief and wraps his arm around my shoulders, pulling me way from the garage bays and towards the clubhouse "You have no idea how glad I am to be Uncle Clay again."

I rest my arm around his waist and try and match his steps "Well, I figure we covered the whole thing that if you try any bullshit I'll feed you your own brain so we're good now. And it's not good for Jax, or any of the other Sons for that matter, to see me so pissed off at you."

Clay and I go through to the kitchen where I shake my head in disbelief at the empty coffee pots and growl "Couldn't someone have reset these things!?"

Clay laughs at my frustrated expression "Probably, but they didn't."

Shaking my jacket off my shoulders before doing anything I glance at Clay, "I swear it's like a bunch of teenage boys around here. You need a Mommy to do everything for you." I quickly clean the machines and set them both going again setting two clean cups on the bench and empting the dishwasher while the coffee brews.

In the 10 minutes it takes for the coffee to brew I manage to get the dishwasher empty and refilled, clear the dead food out of the fridge and wipe down all the benches in the kitchen while Clay leans against the stove and watches.

Finally pouring coffee into the two cups I wave towards the main room "Come on, we need to talk and sort some shit out."

Clay looks confused but leads me to one of the round tables right by the wall of mug-shots and sits down "So what's up?"

"Sturgis." The single word has Clay relaxing and I almost laugh at the tension he was holding in his huge shoulders.

"What about it?" Clay takes a mouthful of his coffee and sets the cup down beside the pad of paper that I'd grabbed out of the office as Jax and I had walked through it.

"It's only a month away, I need to know how many people are going, how many single men and how many of them are bringing their Old Ladies. I need to know if I have to book mid-trip accommodation for all the guys on the way up and the way back. Names of whose going would help too, but I can do without them. Also, I need to know if it's a Sons trip or an unpatched trip, and where the kuttes are being left if it's a non-Club related trip. Or if it's an off the radar run, and how far off the radar it's meant to be."

Clay holds up his hands "Hold up pumpkin, let me catch up." I smile at the childhood nickname coming back out, I'd not heard it since my return to Charming and part of me was grateful, but the part that's happy to hear it now overrules that part.

I stick my tongue out at him and swallow some of my coffee jotting notes of what I need to know on the page while he thinks.

"It's not a Sons trip, we may do the part from here to Reno as a run just to get some of the overstock out of the warehouse but other than that it's a completely not related to the patch. As for how many are going, Tank and Blade were sorting numbers so I'll give them a ring and find out. Just wait there a second." Clay pulls his cell from his pocket and punches in a number. The short conversation that follows has my eyebrows rising when he's finished with the greetings and checking how the charter is doing.

"Blade, I have a small annoying woman staring at me demanding to know numbers for this trip you planted into her head that she seems to have seized control of, help get me outta the shit here, please tell me you know whose going." Clay is silent for a few seconds while the voice on the other end becomes an unintelligible noise before Clay nods and reaches for the pen and paper I'm holding.

Flicking to a blank page he starts scribbling some things down and after a minute or two he says thanks and hangs up the phone pushing the paper towards me. Attempting to read his writing I rip the page out and hand it to me "Decipher that chicken scratch for me please."

Clay laughs and pulls the paper back in front of him "So from the other charters you've got 8 couples and 8 solo's, Opie, Hap and Chibs are going with you and Jax from here so that's 10 couples, 10 solo's total."

Clay drops the paper and heads into Chapel returning a few minutes later with a giant map and a bunch of matchbooks spreading the map out across another table before pulling it close, the circles on the map indicating where there are Charters based. Clay leans over the map setting matchbox down on the charters that are coming and a square of pool chalk in the middle of South Dakota which is our eventual destination.

Setting the small squares over the circle where we are he drops one on Fresno, Eureka, San Bernadino, San Gabriel, Reno, Indian Hills, Salt Lake and the last being dropped onto Moab he cocks his head to the side contemplating the 9 Charters that are being pulled into the trip "If this was an actual run it'd be an interesting inter-charter experience."

I laugh and shake my head "But it's not, it's a further building of relationships between the charters, and if we plan properly we can make it a yearly thing."

Clay shrugs "Let's take this year first and see how we go."

I smile and look down at the map calculating the distances between the matchboxes, I mean charters. "If we had Fresno, Eureka, San Bern and San Gabriel come here we could leave in the early hours of the morning and make Reno by that night."

Clay nods "The ones from Indian Hills can meet you in Reno then you should be able to make Salt Lake by that night and the guys from Moab can be there to greet you. Then the final run from Salt Lake to Sturgis the following day."

"So we can do it in 3 days?" I ask, double checking the jotted notes.

Clay nods "You better double check riding times between the places you plan on sleeping at but that should work. One night here, then Reno, Salt Lake and Sturgis on the fourth night. What dates is the rally on?"

"Umm, 4th till the 10th." I continue jotting notes down, putting the charters that are going to start the trip from Charming.

"So if you left here on the 1st you'd get there the night of the 3rd ready for the rally to start the following day. Then you could be back by the 14th if you left the 11th." Clay mutters, more to himself then to me so I stay silent, still writing down the charters that are going to be involved and where we're meeting up.

The page looks like a mess by the time I'm done with little lines and scribbles all over it but there are blank lines for me to put in how long the ride is between charters and squares for the numbers from each charter. "So, from here we have 4 Sons and 2 Old Ladies, how do the other charters fall in numbers?"

I turn to a fresh page and write down the names of the charters going while Clay reads off the numbers. By the time he's done I've almost given up hope of keeping the page neat but the information is all there. The easy part is working the Charters that are all starting from Charming, they'll be given rooms in the Clubhouse if we can fit them in, otherwise mattresses on the floor will do.

Clay and I sit and talk for a while longer before Juice comes in the door and heads to the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with a cup of coffee, before he can walk out the door again I look up "Hey Juice. Can I borrow you a sec?"

"Sure thing, what's up?" The mohawked biker spins on his heel and comes over to the tables that we've spread ourselves across whistling low at the amount of information on the spread out pages.

"I need your laptop for a while if that's okay?" I ask looking up at him.

He nods and sets his cup down heading towards the dorm rooms and returning a few minutes later with the silver and black laptop in his hands "It's all good to go, battery should last a coupla hours unless you're doing resource heavy stuff."

I shake my head "I'm only looking at distances and ride times. I really only need it for about 10 minutes I'd say."

Juice nods and picks up his cup "Oh, and Al said for me to tell you the next time that I saw you that you're a snob and she's gonna come kick your ass."

I laugh at the nervous expression on his face "Tell my dear Ali-bean that she knows exactly where my ass is whenever she thinks she can lift her foot that far off the ground."

Juice throws up his hand and mutters "Women!" as he walks out the door.

Loading up the website it doesn't take much before Clay and I agree that the way we've done the nights is about the best way for it to work in terms of riding days. I stack all the pages together leaving one sitting on the table which I pass to Clay "So you need to ring the charters and let them know this is where we're going to be meeting on those dates. The ones that I've underlined I need to know if they're going to have the room to accommodate the patches and old ladies, total number of visitors to the charter is in brackets beside it. Can you do that for me like now?"

Clay laughs and pats my hand "You know, anyone else I wouldn't take that from but you, cause I love you and you're my midget, I'll go do it now."

Clay returns about 15 minutes later with the page in his hand now covered in writing and a frown on his face "So there's good news and bad."

I roll my eyes "Wouldn't be a day around here without some of both. Give me the good news first."

"Well, we're almost fine for the additional bodies around here. Juice can stay with Al for the night which frees up his room, Jax will be at his place, Ope will still be at home and so will I and we've got two empty rooms, that leaves 2 rooms we still need."

I nod "It's fine. They can stay at Jax's with us, he's got the rooms, we'll just get a couple of blow up mattresses."

Clay nods and makes a note in his completely illegible writing. "Now the bad news. Neither Reno nor Salt Lake has more than 3 spare rooms at their clubhouses. We can farm some out to spare rooms, but it's gonna still leave a slack of at least 3 rooms needed in Reno and 5 in Salt Lake."

I run my hands through my hair and tug lightly "Okay, well if we can get the ones travelling from other charters into spare rooms we'll get the mother charter patches booked in at a hotel in Reno and do the same in Salt Lake, plus an additional one for whoever ends up joining us."

Clay nods and gets back to his feet "Let me know costs and we'll recover it for you."

I laugh and flick through to a hotel website that looks for prices from all over the city you're searching in "Jax said the same thing. Actually he told me that this wasn't going to be a trip for the guys on his Old Lady."

Clay grins "Good. It won't be, any of them try and get a free ride they'll be in a shit load of trouble."

It takes me just over an hour before I get back to my feet, the laptop battery is still sitting quiet happily at 60% when I close it, receipts for everything I've booked and charged to my card emailed to my address so I can print them out. Booking 5 rooms in Reno and 6 in Salt Lake before I went searching for the Sturgis accommodation I almost laughed when I found one place offering cabins that had enough for the 30 people that were going to be on this trip. I'd ended up ringing them and double checking that all the rooms were within the same area and the poor person one the phone had spent 10 minutes moving reservations so that I could book out a whole section of rooms. The 5 cabins that had been sorted each have 2 double beds, 2 singles, a bathroom and space to make hot drinks in the rooms, but the communal area of the 'grove' has a full sized kitchen for use of all the guests in the area.

Stretching as I stand I'm startled when a hand lifts the back of my shirt and settles on the small of my back but looking over my shoulder I relax when I spot Jax's blue eyes fixed on me.