by Joanna Blake
Praise for Joanna Blake
From rockstars to bad boy bikers, her males are always hot and bossy but with a sweetness and vulnerability deep down.
Goodreads Reader
Short, sweet and to the point, in other words, near perfect!
Goodreads Reader
Oh she sure keeps her men dirty sweet and dominating. I love it
Goodreads Reader
Ride With Me
Joanna Blake
Contents
Ride With Me
Five years ago
1. Jake
2. Elle
3. Jake
4. Elle
5. Jake
6. Elle
7. Jake
8. Elle
9. Jake
10. Elle
11. Jake
12. Elle
13. Jake
14. Elle
15. Jake
16. Elle
17. Jake
18. Elle
19. Jake
20. Elle
21. Jake
22. Elle
23. Jake
24. Elle
25. Jake
26. Elle
27. Jake
28. Elle
About the Author
Ride With Me
I’m the bad seed. The black sheep of an uber wealthy family. But the salty waitress at the club isn’t impressed by my family’s wealth or the scars I earned in a never ending stream of bar fights.
I’ve been on the outs with my wealthy family since my wild teenage years. But now they need me back to help run the famous Delancey horse stable that has been in the family for generations.
Elle is a waitress at the Country Club in Brentwood, the exclusive neighborhood outside of Nashville. She's here to sing, not sling hash. When I nearly get her fired by trying to get into her pants, she hates me on principle.
But I’m the one who can't stop thinking about the gorgeous Irish girl from the club. When I start to chase, she has a hard time ignoring me, despite her dislike for so-called spoiled rich boys. I usually doesn't like to stick around, but this time I don’t want to run.
When I finally catch her, she’s the one who risks breaking my heart, not the other way around.
Five years ago
Jake
“You aren’t worthy of the name Delancey.”
My fathers words hung heavy in the air. Daniel sucked in a breath. Even Jackson looked upset. I was the only one who looked stone cold.
Me and the old man.
We were cut from the same cloth. We all knew it. He’d been wild in his younger days, just like me. He’d just been better at hiding it.
He’d told me a thousand times. It didn’t matter what you did. As long as you got away with it.
I didn’t agree with him. It did matter. I had lines I wouldn’t cross.
But for the most part, I just didn’t give a good goddamn about the rules.
“It makes me sick to look at you.”
“Jesus Christ, dad,” Jackson burst out. But no one said anything else.
“I’ll help you out with that,” I eventually drawled out, sounding like I wasn’t screaming inside. “You’ll never have to look at me again.”
“Walk out that door and you will never be welcomed back,” he warned, his face turning an alarming shade of red. “You’re out of the will, the estate, everything.”
“Good,” I said, standing in the doorway to the dinner room. We’d had a lot of tense dinners over the year, but this one took the cake. “I don’t want anything from you.”
I tilted my head and stared at him for a minute before taking one last parting shot.
“When she died, she took the last bit of good in you with her.”
I turned on my heel and strode upstairs to pack a few things. Very few things. But I needed the keys to my ride, my wallet, and my motorcycle jacket. I shoved the picture of my mother that sat on my dresser into my duffle along with a couple shirts and jeans.
I took one last look around. My bedroom had been a haven growing up. Cushy, luxurious, and filled with memories of my mother. Now it was a cage.
I didn’t need it anymore.
I ran down the carpeted stairs, not nothing to muffle my steps.
As soon as I stepped through the massive front doors to the mansion I saw her. A cute little waif with a mop of red hair. She was staring at me, looking bereft.
“You aren’t really going, are you Jake?”
“Sorry, Phee,” I muttered to my young cousin. Her cheeks were streaked with tears. We were buddies, riding together most mornings. I would miss the hell out of her. “I have to go.”
“Come back, Jake! He’ll calm down. You both will!”
“I can’t. But I will let you know where I am. Never tell.”
She nodded. The kid was barely a teenager, but I knew she would keep her word. She was solid like that.
“I’ll miss you, kid,” I said, before chucking her chin and striding down the path to the driveway. I climbed on my ride, hit the throttle and gave the big house one last look.
Then I turned away and rode into the night.
Chapter One
Jake
It felt good to be on the move again. I’d stayed too long in that last place. It was past time to get back on the road.
I gripped the handlebars of my Harley, my calloused hands barely feeling the strain of riding all day. My heavily muscled forearms were tanned where they peeked out of my broken-in black leather jacket. It was almost too warm for the jacket. I could have done with just a vest. But if I didn't wear it, I’d have to pack it.
And I liked to travel light.
Material possessions didn't mean anything to me. I’d grown up rich as fuck and where had that got me? Fucking nowhere. It was all an illusion anyway. None of it mattered. I didn’t need a cushy lifestyle. I had a handful of worn in clothes. A phone, my boots and my bike. That's it. I moved from place to place when the urge struck me.
And it struck often.
Nothing had any permanence in this life and that's the way I liked it. Easy come, easy go. I had a take it as it comes attitude when it came to clothes, personal belongings, friends and women.
Especially women.
In fact, I had just taken off from my last apartment when Suzy, one of the girls who hung around the bar I worked in, got a little too clingy. Hell, she got a lot too clingy. She'd started acting like she was my girlfriend.
I snorted. A girlfriend. That was a laugh. I didn't believe in relationships.
Hell, I didn't believe in much of anything.
A good beer, a good meal, a good lay. That and the feeling of my bike between my legs, hugging the road, riding like the wind. I liked to go fast.
I got a lot of traffic tickets. But that was okay. I could afford it.
The way I saw it, the family lawyer was on retainer whether I used him or not. It was the only thing I took from my family. And it was the only thing I ever would. I was well aware that my father had written me out of his will and I didn’t really give a damn about it. I still had money from the trust my mother had set up when she was dying, not that I would ever touch it. But this was one perk of being a Delancey that I accepted. As aggravating as my family was at times, that lawyer had come in handy after a bar fight or twelve. Especially the time I broke a guys jaw for hitting a woman in the parking lot.
That was one fight I never regretted, no matter how much it cost out of my share of a trust fund I would never partake in.
I had been at the end of my shift and enjoying a cold beer and a smoke out back when I heard it. A guy had been smack talking his woman. It had
quickly progressed to him laying hands to her, roughing her up and more than just a little.
I had come to the lady's defense. I didn't know her. Just doing the right thing. Hurting a woman was the lowest act a man could do. I didn't stand for it.
I'd beat him down until he was in no shape to hit anyone. Then I tipped my hat and left the lady in the parking lot with cab fare to get her home. Nothing more, nothing less. But by the next morning, the lady had been singing a different tune. She'd said my attack was unprovoked, even saying that her bruises came from getting in the way of the scuffle.
That was the part the pissed me off. Her saying I had actually caused some of the marks he'd put on her. Accidentally, of course. Even a scam artist wouldn’t go so far as to say I hit a woman. Nobody on Earth would buy that.
I had a reputation, but not that kind of reputation.
From gratitude to gold digging in just a few hours.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Hell, even if I knew in advance what would happen, I would have done it anyway. The feeling of pounding in the face of a no good woman beater was worth it, and then some.
But still, the lady could have told the truth instead of trying to take advantage.
That's what always happened. As soon as they'd found out who I was, who my family was, the gold diggers started swinging their pick axes. Nothing made me more disgusted than someone who was after my family's money.
Nobody robbed the Delancey's. It was a point of pride, even for me, the black sheep who'd turned my back on it. All seven billion of it.
Oh yeah, I’d walked away from all that dough without a backward glance.
I didn't want a cent of it for myself. I was a firm believer in living off what you made with your hands. Of course, I was also a firm believer in working as little as possible.
That's why Jake Delancey, youngest son of the richest family in the state of Tennessee, was a bartender.
I smiled to myself.
Sometimes I wasn't even that. I’d been bar back more than once. I didn't really care one way or the other.
But, oooeeee, it sure pissed off my father. And that was what I was after really, wasn't it? Punishing him for what he’d done to me.
What he’d believed. What they'd all believed.
And now for some mysteries damned reason I was doing the one thing I said I wouldn’t do. Not ever. I was going back.
I took the winding road through the expensive suburbs of Brentwood out to where the houses started to thin out and farms and ranches took over. As I crested a hill I could see it; Delancey Stables.
Home sweet home.
I nearly snorted. As if I’d called it home for more than a weekend since I’d been shipped off to military school at the tender age of twelve. I’d barely been back in all that time. But now I’d been summoned by my eldest brother Jackson. Not that I wasn't tempted to ignore such a high handed demand.
Just like I’d ignored all the other missives I’d gotten over the years.
This time it was different though.
This time, our Dad was sick. I wanted to be there, even if was just to argue with the old man. It would probably perk him up to yell at me a couple times.
I was practically penicillin.
Not to mention I was tired.
It was starting to feel like I’d run out of places to go. I wanted to come home, if only to remind myself why the hell I ran in the first place. And it would make the servants and my brother Daniel happy to see me at Christmas. Maybe my sweet little cousin would be there. Phee was like a sister to me, and the only Delancey I actually kept in touch with at all.
My big brother Jackson and my father could piss up a rope for all I cared.
And yet here I was.
Home for the holidays.
What a joke.
Chapter Two
Elle
The plate was coated in butter. That had to be the reason it slipped. I stared as it tumbled toward the floor in slow motion, smashing into a thousand pieces.
"Damnit all to hell!"
I was bent over, picking up the shards of broken china. I was stacking clean plates between lunch and dinner. The plates were still scorching hot, which is why I’d dropped one in the first place.
“Tsk tsk.”
I glanced up to see Shirley staring at me.
"Best not let Mr. Peabody hear you talk that way, girl. He'll dock your pay.”
I stood up, brushing my hands off on the skirt of my uniform.
"Yeah, well he didn't hear me now, did he? Sorry Shirl, I'm just having a day."
Shirley clucked her tongue sympathetically and bent down to help.
"Here, I'll hold the dust pan for you."
I nodded and grabbed the broom.
"Thanks, Shirl. I don't know what I would do without you."
I meant it, too. When I arrived in Nashville without a work visa, no one would hire me. It was a lucky break and a band that was looking for a singer on Craigslist that started all of this. Not only had I gotten a gig with a killer band, but everything else had fallen into place.
More or less, anyway.
Mark the bassist’s sister had just happened to be looking for a roommate. That’s how I met Shirley. We’d hit it off from the jump. She was sassy, direct, and didn’t pull punches. She could hold her whisky and loved to dance all night. We were pretty much two peas in a pod. Now we shared a sweet little apartment outside of Nashville. Now we were as close as sisters. She’s been the reason I’d landed the country club gig.
Just in the nick of time, too. I’d scrimped and saved for years to make the trip to America, but our gigs didn’t pay much and I was running dangerously low on cash. I’d been on the verge of living on saltines and ketchup.
God only knew what would I would be doing to survive if it weren’t for her. After the first week in the youth hostel I’d been relying on extra crackers and a cup of soup to make it through most days. Things had been dire to say the least.
I’d known coming to America was a risk. But as a singer, I’d been irresistibly drawn to Nashville. The center of the music industry. There was a reason they called it 'Music City U.S.A.'.
Not that I sang country back in Ireland. Not exactly. My style was a bit edgier, a bit more rock and roll. But I’d been told that my throaty voice blended beautifully in the country style. And since I’d known my share of heartbreak, I could sing country with the best of them.
Life may have been hard but the music had always been there for me.
Born to a single mom in a poor as dirt part of the Irish countryside, I had grown up hard and fast. The former mining town had one restaurant, owned by my mother's brother, Uncle Dave. If it hadn't been for Uncle Dave, my mother and I wouldn't have been able to eat, let alone live. As it was, my mum was a waitress slash cook slash cleaning lady. I had worked alongside her since I could walk.
Good old fashioned childcare my mother had called it, with a wry wink. For no matter how hard life had gotten, my beautiful mother had never stopped smiling. Or singing while she worked. My mother's voice was one of the prettiest I’d ever heard.
I was still trying to live up to my mother's example. I did my best not to complain, work hard and to make the best of the cards I’d been dealt. And when I made it big, my mother would never have to work again. I would buy her a big house, with a maid and a cook. And she could live anywhere she wanted in the whole world.
Hopefully, she’s want to settle somewhere near me. The French Countryside… or Los Angeles… or even here in Nashville. In one of those big fancy houses on the winding, tree-lined roads around the country club. The wealth around here astonished me. I was still getting used to it.
Not that I craved wealth and power. I just wanted to sing. But for my mother… I wanted the moon.
Anything was possible as my mother liked to say. I believed it, too. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here, risking my meager savings on a plane ticket and a dream.
I just had to get heard by the righ
t people and it would happen. I knew it in my gut. I believed in myself, or at least my God-given talent. With my voice and drive, I knew it was only a matter of time.
So far, my looks hadn’t hurt either. I didn’t take that sort of thing too seriously. I’d never been the sort of girl who was obsessed with boys. But the ones here in America seemed to have a marked preference for… me.
Huge green eyes and dark hair marked me as Irish for anyone who looked. And plenty did. My skin was pale as milk and unmarred, other than a tattoo high on my right hip. My long dark hair and plentiful curves meant that I was forever fighting off the unwanted advances of men.
As if I had time for the opposite sex.
They could bend over backwards for me for all I cared. It wouldn’t make a bit of difference. I’d never been tempted to take anyone up on their offers of a soft and cushy life as a rich man’s arm candy.
I could care less what I looked like, as long as it helped me on the road to stardom.
Someday I’d be a guest at places like this place instead of the help, I thought as I swept up the broken china.
Someday.
Chapter Three
Jake
Why the hell did I come back here again?
I pulled on my borrowed tie and swilled another gulp of the watered down bourbon. I stared balefully around the Gold Room at the country club my father and brothers belonged to. It was a time honored tradition. All the Delancey men had belonged here, in fact, going back three generations.