Ricky let the bar door slam. Don refused to understand how important Liv was to him, and what made it all the worse was that it was, quite possibly, the first time in Ricky’s life that his father hadn’t understood him.

He pushed that thought aside and answered the phone with, “Hey, thanks for calling me back.”

He could barely hear Gabriel’s reply over the booming beats of Madonna’s “Vogue.”

“Damn, it’s louder there than it is here. Where are you?”

“At a bar.”

Ricky tried to picture that and failed. When the Saints had first hired Gabriel, Don had made the mistake of suggesting they meet at a strip club. Their last lawyer had expected that. Hey, that was the advantage of representing bikers, right? Hanging out in dive bars and strip clubs, associating with gun-toting thugs, surrounded by barely clad young women. Which had proven the lawyer didn’t know much about the Saints. Don had accommodated him . . . until they replaced him with Gabriel, who’d gotten as far as the door of the strip club, turned his cool gaze on Don, and suggested that it might not be the most conducive environment for business.

“Is Liv still with you?” Ricky asked.

“Of course,” came the frosty reply, as if Gabriel was offended Ricky would suggest otherwise. “If she hasn’t contacted you—”

“She texted to say she was fine.”

“Then she is.” Impatient now.

“Just because she said she’s fine doesn’t mean she is, Gabriel.”

Silence. Ricky could imagine him struggling to process the possibility. There were guys in the gang who joked that Don had hired a cyborg who did a remarkably lifelike impersonation of an actual human. Gabriel wasn’t robotic. He just wasn’t exactly personable. Or emotionally literate.

“I’m worried about her,” Ricky said.

“I’m watching out for Olivia. I’ve seen no sign of Morgan—”

“I’m not worried about her safety, Gabriel. She just saw her birth father for the first time since she was two.”

“And she’s fine. She’s having a drink.”

Ricky relaxed a little. “So she talked you into a bar?”

“No, I thought she might need it, so I insisted.”

Ricky leaned against the tavern wall. Okay, maybe Gabriel wasn’t as emotionally illiterate as he seemed. At least not with Liv. Maybe that should worry Ricky. Hell, the whole Olivia–Gabriel situation should worry him. It didn’t. Gabriel had been perfectly clear that he had absolutely no romantic interest in her. Which was bullshit. But he’d given Gabriel the chance to step up, and he hadn’t, which meant it was only a passing interest. If Gabriel wanted something, he’d never let someone snatch it from under his nose.

“Okay, so you guys are having a drink—”

“Olivia is. I’m having coffee. Under the circumstances, I need to remain alert.”