by Tracy Wolff
BA, short for badass, the leader, was either going to hug him or shoot him—there had never been any middle ground when it came to the Bastards of Hell. You were either in or out; they didn’t deal in gray area. At one time he’d been grateful for the black and white of it all. Paradoxically, it was what had finally given him the strength to walk away.
Taking a deep breath, he told Heath, “You should know … I have history with the gang that owns the bar.” He really wasn’t prepared to give any more than that.
“Good history or bad history?” Heath turned off Cherry Cherry and pocketed the keys.
“Depends on who you ask.” He opened the door and stepped out onto the dirt parking lot of the last place on earth he wanted to be.
“I don’t have a weapon. Do I need one?” Heath pulled out his phone. “I can call the defensive line. They’re intimidating as hell, but I kinda need them to not get hurt.”
Dalton buttoned his navy suit jacket. His tie was in his suit jacket pocket. Should he put it on so his armor/disguise was complete? He took a deep breath and let it out slowly and tried not to show just how badly this little trip down memory lane was messing with his head.
“You’re the offensive coordinator. Shouldn’t you be calling the offensive line?” Dalton hoped rather than believed they wouldn’t recognize him. He was the spitting image of his old man.
“Come on? Really? Everyone knows the defensive line is expendable.” Heath grinned. “Don’t tell them I said that.”
“So your sister-in-law … does she normally get into this much trouble?” Dalton rolled his shoulders because his knots of tension had knots of tension of their own.
“Yes, only Lyric is usually blamed for all of the messes that Harm starts.” He shook his head. “No idea why.”
Dalton had been cleaning up his father’s disasters ever since his mother tapped out when he was ten and Cat was two. Life wasn’t fair, God knew. He’d committed that mantra to memory about five minutes after he’d learned the word Da-Da.
“Well, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it.” The voice came from a large figure smoking a cigarette next to the double glass front doors.
Dalton walked toward the voice he knew instantly, even if it had been fifteen years since he’d last heard it.
“Hey, Rooster.” The huge man pulled him in for a hug, and Dalton clapped him on the back. In all the important ways, Rooster had been more of a father to him than his own.
“The prodigal son returns.” Rooster stepped back and beamed down at him. “Buff, look who it is. D-Boy’s back. And he’s all fancied up too.”
Buffalo, the treasurer and Dalton’s godfather, walked up to Dalton. “In case you forgot, we don’t gotta dress code here.” He pulled Dalton in for a rib-cracking hug.
“Been a long time. Guess I forgot.” Dalton hated that his eyes burned just a little bit as he hugged Buffalo back. Hated even more how much this felt like a homecoming.
But how could it feel like anything else when he’d grown up in this bar? How many years had he and Cat spent living out of the back room on a blow-up mattress while their father was off doing God knows what to God knows who? Too many to count.
“BA’s gonna shit himself when he gets a load of you.” Rooster pulled him in for another hug, then glanced back at Heath. “Aren’t you the Deuce?”
Heath shot him an affable grin, even as his eyes remained focused on the door to the bar. “Sure am.”
Rooster nodded in the general direction of the front door. “I hope you’re here for your sister-in-law. She’s a firecracker. She broke BA’s nose. He can’t decide if he wants to kill her or marry her.”
Holy shit. Who the hell was this woman, and how the hell had she managed to break BA’s nose? Furthermore, how the hell was she still alive? BA had killed men for doing much less.
Dalton threw open the door with a renewed sense of urgency. No way in hell was he letting Heath’s wife or sister-in-law die in this piece-of-shit bar. The place had already seen more than enough of its share of death.
But as his eyes adjusted to the dim light and smoky haze, he couldn’t quite believe what he saw. A woman—Lyric, or possibly Harmony—was standing on the pool table in a black leather mini and bitch boots, waving around the leg of a broken barstool like a club. Surrounding her were all of the members of Bastards of Hell, except Rooster and Buff. Each one looked half like they wanted to tear her limb from limb and half like they wanted to run for the hills.
“Christ, Harm, what the hell?” Heath yelled at the woman on the table. “Where’s my wife?”
“Lyric pussed out and locked herself in the bathroom.” She pointed her club and shot a death glare at a bleeding BA. “Bring it, big guy.”
BA growled, but he didn’t move. Still, he was tracking her every move, and that made Dalton extremely uncomfortable. He, more than anyone, knew that BA was fast and mean and deadly.
Determined to avoid bloodshed—at least of the Wright sister variety—Dalton walked up behind BA and asked, “What’s going on?”
BA turned around, and the anger in his face turned to suspicion. “Well, hello, little brother. Long time no see.”
“Who the hell are you?” Harm demanded, waving her club at him like she thought it would actually protect her.
“Dalton Mane, I’m a friend of your brother-in-law.” He didn’t say any more. There’d be time for explanations later, when he wasn’t terrified BA was going to murder this woman. But now that he had Harmony’s attention, he continued, “I’d hold out my hand for you to shake, but you look a little busy at the moment.”
Heath’s sister-in-law was really something else. Dalton tried not to notice how sexy she was, but it was difficult to notice anything else, even as she waved that club around. She was built. Really, really built. Large, full breasts, a tiny waist, and legs that would have made a supermodel jealous—especially when encased in those black leather bitch boots.
And her tattoos—he’d spent years dating women with pale, perfect skin, years telling himself that tattoos didn’t do it for him. Looking at Harmony Wright, he couldn’t help thinking that he’d been lying to himself all those years. Because her tattoos were gorgeous. Vibrant, exotic, and dangerous, they added a whole lot to her already prodigious sex appeal.
Then again, he’d always had a thing for dangerous.
“And why are you here?” Harmony’s eyes darted from man to man, clocking everyone’s movements, even as she spoke directly to him.
“Stay out of this, little brother.” BA’s voice was slow and even, which Dalton knew from experience was a very bad thing. It meant that he was about to lose his shit. “She broke my goddamn nose. She has to pay.”
“Don’t you think you’d be better off taking care of it than standing here hassling a frightened woman?”
“I’m not frightened,” Harmony squawked. “I’m pissed. If he comes any closer he’s going to see just how pissed I am.”
Goddammit. Didn’t this woman see what kind of danger she was in? Dalton shot her a look that told her to keep her mouth shut so he could get her out of this. He could tell the look had been received—and rejected—by the fact that she got even more pissed off. And when she opened her mouth to say God only knew what, he decided to hell with it. There was only one way to stop this, and it was time to take matters into his own hands.
“I’m not your brother. I never was.” Dalton waited until BA was looking straight at him, then he punched his stepbrother in the kidneys, grabbed his hair, and smashed his face into the pool table. Quick as lightning, he wrenched the club from Harmony’s grasp, scooped her up, and threw her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
“Put me down.” Harm wriggled and tried to kick her way free, but he held on tight.
He headed out the front door. Once in the parking lot, he yelled back to Rooster, “Tell them not to come after me. I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”
He might not be in a biker gang, but
fifteen years of Krav Maga had taught him the most efficient way to hurt someone. And for some reason, seeing his old family circling Harmony like a bunch of hyenas definitely put him in the mood to hurt a lot of someones.
“Put me down. Now.” Harm punched and kicked.
“Not until you settle down.” He carried her over to Cherry Cherry. “You need to learn not to pick fights you can’t win, little girl.”
“What the fuck did you just call me?” Harm demanded, redoubling her efforts to beat the hell out of his back and kick him in the balls.
“Stop it,” he ordered again, delivering a swift smack to her leather-clad ass. The sound made a nice pop in the night air.
It must have done the trick, because Harm stopped kicking and punching. He was just about to congratulate himself when a burning pinch came from his lower back. The burn quickly turned into flaming pain.
“What the hell?” He dropped Harm on her ass. “Did you just bite me?” He looked over his shoulder, trying to see if she’d drawn blood.
“You’re lucky I didn’t kill you.” With that proclamation, Harm popped up onto her feet and nailed him with a mean right cross.
Jesus. She wasn’t a firecracker, she was a hellcat.
He grabbed her, went to put her in a restraining hold, and she easily twisted out of it.
“Krav?” Dalton choked out as she twisted his arm behind his back. If she didn’t stop, she’d break his wrist.
“Level-four black belt.” Harm released his arm. “You?”
“Level two.” Dalton stood, ears ringing as it registered that she could kick his ass.
“You shouldn’t bite people.” He rolled his shoulder—she’d damn near dislocated it.
“You shouldn’t pick up strangers in a bar.” Harm crossed her arms and smirked at him.
But before he could say anything else, Heath ran out of the bar, pulling Lyric behind him. “Time to go.”
Dalton tried to open the passenger door, but it was locked. “Unlock it.”
“It is unlocked.” Heath didn’t slow down until he was next to Cherry Cherry. He hit a button on the remote, but the doors didn’t unlock. “Come on, Cherry Cherry. This is an emergency. We need to get out of here now.”
Nothing happened.
“Come on, baby. Harmony needs a ride, just his once.” Lyric was cajoling. “I promise I won’t let her hurt you.”
Cherry Cherry’s trunk popped open.
“I’m not riding in the trunk of that possessed car.” Harm rolled her eyes when the doors remained firmly locked. “Screw it. I’m going back inside.”
“That’s not a good idea.” Heath leaned over and whispered something close to the car window and the doors unlocked. “We gotta go now. I set a little fire in the bathroom to distract them so we could get away.”
“How big of a fire?” Dalton wrenched open the back passenger’s door and practically threw Harm inside before he jumped into the front seat. Then he pulled out his phone to call 9-1-1. He might have walked away from them, but the Bastards were the closest thing he had to family. The last thing he wanted was for one of them to get hurt. Well, except BA. A little smoke inhalation could only improve his attitude.
Cherry Cherry peeled out of the parking lot and onto the road.
“I’d say a solid two alarm, but since the building is cinder block, the damage should be contained to just the bathroom.” Heath drove like the devil was on his ass—or like the Bastards of Hell were.
That made Dalton feel a little better. As long as he didn’t think about the fact that BA was going to be pissed as hell. Because all Dalton needed was his father’s biker gang trying to kill his brand new offensive coordinator and his family.
Damn it. He was going to have to find a way to make peace with the Bastards. It wasn’t like they wouldn’t know where to look for Heath. Tomorrow morning, he fully expected his stepbrother to be waiting outside of Lasso Stadium with guns drawn and an extra bad attitude. It was how he’d gotten his nickname, after all.
“How exactly do you know those guys so well?” Heath didn’t spare him a glance as he kept his eyes on the road and his foot down hard on the gas pedal.
“I grew up in the Bastards. My dad founded the club.” Yep, Dalton was biker royalty. He didn’t feel the need to go into his life with the gang any further.
“Wow. And I thought my dad was an asshole. He was only a drunk.” Heath turned into the gated community where he lived.
“You have no idea.” Dalton turned around to glare at Harmony. “You have no idea just how dangerous those men are.”
“I can take care of myself.” She cocked her head to the left. “We both know I can kick your ass.”
“Yes, Krav is wonderful for taking people down. But you can’t take down twenty angry and armed men at once. It’s reckless. You put your sister’s and Heath’s and my lives in danger. If you want to die, there are easier and faster ways to do it.”
“Nobody asked you to come save me, biker boy. I sure as hell didn’t ask you to manhandle me and throw me around.”
“Manhandle?” Lyric piped up for the first time.
“Don’t worry about it,” Harmony told her with yet another roll of her eyes.
Jesus, it looked like eye rolling was her favorite form of communication. Which might explain why she had the self-preservation sense of a thirteen-year-old girl. Maybe that was why he had the nearly overwhelming urge to spank her again.
He’d never met anyone who needed a spanking more than Harm. “Do you always cause this much trouble?”
“Yes,” Heath and Lyric said in unison.
“All I did was try and help a fellow oppressed female by giving her some valuable vocational and financial advice. How was I supposed to know that her pimp was in earshot?” She truly sounded like she was in the right and was insulted that anyone could think otherwise.
“You’re a five-alarm fire in high heels.”
“Five-Alarm Harm,” Heath said with a laugh. “That’s a good one.”
“Before you call me that again, I suggest you reflect on the fact that I know a dozen ways to kill a man while he’s asleep and two dozen while he’s awake.”
Dalton loved the naked rage on her face and in her voice.
Harmony was definitely a hellcat, he decided, as Heath pulled into his driveway and pressed the button on garage door opener. Too bad he’d sworn off hellcats a long time ago.
* * *
Chapter 8
* * *
Soooooo … last night hadn’t gone well. Harmony was woman enough to admit that … to herself, even if the rest of the world could kiss her ass. Heath had spent an hour lecturing her after they got home, a lecture that ended up with him forbidding her to take Lyric anywhere ever again.
As if. Lyric was her twin sister and her best friend. No way was she giving that up just because her husband had a serious stick up his ass.
So did his very attractive friend.
She tried not to think of Dalton Mane as she poured canola oil into the commercial fryer in Lyric and Heath’s kitchen. Right now they were both at work, which was fine with her since things had been a little tense around the coffeepot this morning. It just gave her a chance to make her donuts uninterrupted.
Not that they were a peace offering or anything. It was just that she needed donuts and latte and more donuts. And maybe some cookies too. And a cake. And maybe some more cannoli—
She made a list of the necessary ingredients in her head as she pinched off a piece of dough and started to shape it. She always baked when she was mad. Or sad or glad or bored or horny, and right now she was a little bit of all of those things.
How could she not be when, looking back on last night, she was willing to admit that possibly, in some itty-bitty tiny way, she was to blame for how everything went bad?
Dalton might have had a small point when he’d called her reckless. Maybe. In some teeny-tiny way.
It nearly killed her to admit it. Almost as much as it kill
ed her to admit that Dalton Mane was Hot with a capital H. He might wear an Armani suit like he was born in it, but there was a chained-panther quality about him that really revved her engine. Something that said that once he broke free, whoever was in his path was going to have to deal with a whole lot of raw power and lethal animal. In his tailored designer suit and fancy-dancy loafers he’d looked so civilized, but underneath was an alpha male ready to tie her to the headboard and take what he wanted.
It was an enticing thought, one that had her nipples peaking and a shiver sliding seductively down her spine. At least, until she remembered that two alphas couldn’t coexist in the same relationship. It was the way of the world, and there was no way in hell she was ever riding bitch behind him. She did enough of that when she bent over backward trying to please her mother.
She took the donut dough out of the proofing bowl, punched it down, sprinkled flour on the marble kitchen island, and rolled out the dough. Using a paring knife, she cut out her handprint over and over before setting the shapes out on a baking sheet to rise.
All of this silence was getting to her, so she pulled out her smartphone and cranked up Marilyn Manson before moving on to the oatmeal cookies.
She mixed the ingredients from memory, minus the raisins everyone seemed to love in this damn cookie. She hated raisins. On the whole, grapes were fine, but only before they dried up into shriveled raisins. Seriously, who in their right mind wanted to eat desiccated fruit?
With a cookie scoop, she plopped down mountains of oatmeal cookie dough into rows on a parchment-covered baking sheet, then popped them into the oven and went back to her donuts.
She flipped up the dish towel she’d used to cover them. After the finger test showed that the dough had risen just the right amount, she picked up the baking sheet and took it to the fryer. The oil was at a perfect three-fifty.
Abruptly, her music stopped, and a male voice said from behind her, “Do you always bake in a bikini and high heels?”
She jumped a foot in the air and nearly dropped the baking sheet into the hot oil. Damn it, she hated being sneaked up on.