Mine to Keep

by Rhenna Morgan

  Also available from Rhenna Morgan

  and Carina Press

  Men of Haven Series

  Rough & Tumble

  Wild & Sweet

  Claim & Protect

  Tempted & Taken

  Stand & Deliver

  Down & Dirty

  NOLA Knights Series

  His to Defend

  Hers to Tame

  Ancient Ink series

  Guardian’s Bond

  Healer’s Need

  Also available from Rhenna Morgan

  Unexpected Eden

  Healing Eden

  Waking Eden

  Eden’s Deliverance

  Mine to Keep

  Rhenna Morgan

  For my readers. Thank you for sharing your reading time with me and welcoming my stories into your hearts.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Excerpt from His to Defend by Rhenna Morgan

  Chapter One

  The good thing about public transportation was that it ran more reliably than Bonnie’s beat up Ford Focus.

  The bad thing?

  New Orleans’s Transit Authority didn’t run on-demand. Which was going to make for a slow getaway on her return trip home later this afternoon. Definitely not ideal when you were trying to escape the nightmare neighborhood you grew up in.

  Bonnie leaned against the bus’s hard plastic seat back, crossed one jean-clad leg over the other and took a good gander at her fellow travelers. At mid-afternoon on a Monday, Line 80 didn’t have a ton of passengers, but the ones on it looked like they all needed three solid days of nothing but sleep.

  Well, everyone but the guy in the dirty gray coveralls at the back of the bus. He’d been stretched across three seats and out cold since she’d gotten on near her apartment in Tremé. Whether he was drunk or just hiding from the quick January cold snap that had hit yesterday was a toss-up. But so far, nothing had made him budge. Not even the painful screech of the bus’s brakes at every single stop.

  Twelve of them, to be exact.

  At this rate, Bonnie was going to have permanent hearing loss before she got where she was going.

  As if the bus driver had heard her snide thoughts and taken them as a personal attack, he hit the brakes and sent another fresh squeal ringing from under the chassis. The passengers had barely righted themselves from the sharp forward jolt when he opened the doors and droned into the microphone, “Louisa and Abundance Streets.”

  Bonnie sighed and stood. “Home sweet home.”

  She’d murmured the snarky comment under her breath, but the middle-aged woman who’d been trying to keep two energetic young boys in line piped up before Bonnie could make the front door. “Look at it this way. From here, anywhere you go is up.”

  With a sharp laugh, Bonnie made her way to the pavement and hefted her backpack higher on her shoulder. The lady wasn’t wrong. For a neighborhood called Desire, it was a long, long way from what anyone would consider desirable. More like a country town that had been forgotten and left idling in the seventies. A few tiny houses dotted what had once been a fully populated area—some mostly well-kept and surrounded by chain-link fence and others falling apart. In between many of them were empty lots, the homes that had once stood in the average-sized plots now well overgrown with weeds big enough to rival trees. The only new structure in sight was a decent-sized church surrounded by baby Crepe Myrtles.

  The driver revved the engine and the bus trundled away, leaving Bonnie two blocks and a fruitless conversation away from her escape. Crossing the street, she ducked her chin deep in the collar of her jean jacket and forged into the crisp wind. “I have got to get my car fixed.”

  The walk to Clouet Street was over in no time, and the sight that greeted her was the same as it always was—Dad’s Chevy parked a little off the tiny driveway, the gate to the chain-link fence left open and the trash can that never left the front curb close to overflowing. The house itself was basically a double-wide that had taken on permanent airs and was painted in the drabbest tan color known to man. Once upon a time, the oak trees in the front and backyard had added a homey feel to their lot, but these days they’d gone so long without trimming they all but hid the house from plain view.

  She rounded her brother’s Triumph motorcycle blocking the sidewalk, jogged up the cement stoop and—sure enough—the front door was unlocked.

  Inside, the living room was all shadows and disarray, the blinds drawn tight against the clouds outside and all kinds of bills and junk mail scattered over the coffee table and couch. No lights were on in the kitchen either, but at least a little light streamed through one uncovered window. She headed that direction and opened her mouth to call out a hello, but stopped dead in her tracks when her dad’s voice bellowed from his room at the end of the hallway.

  “Boy, you’ve got shit for brains! What the hell were you thinking?”

  Well, guess that answered where everyone was.

  She changed directions and started clearing a pile of motorcycle magazines off the couch.

  Her brother Kevin’s response wasn’t intelligible from the living room, but the tone behind it was reminiscent of all the other lectures her brother had endured over the years. She’d bet his hands were jammed in the pockets of his jeans, a scowl on his face and his face flushed just like all the other ones before, too.

  The irony of those lectures was that Dad was often just as guilty of doing whatever it was Kevin had done (and then some). Hence, the reason Kevin had to fight so hard to keep from blowing a gasket.

  Ah, the joy of family.

  She plopped onto the couch, unzipped her backpack and dug out the stack of medical bills she’d spent the last week juggling and pleading over. Might as well settle in and get her ducks in a row while the two of them duked out whatever needed duking. Better that than getting in between them. She’d learned that lesson the hard way shortly after her mom had died when she’d tried to referee a drunken fistfight.

  “Enough!” Kevin’s shout was loud enough someone could’ve heard it from the street. “You can call me whatever the hell you want, but if you think Bonnie’s gonna have enough to bail you out with Pauley, you’re out of your mind.”

  Bonnie’s head whipped up from the stack of bills in her lap so fast her spine cracked. Pauley? As in Pauley Mitchell?

  She tossed the bills on top of all the other trash on the coffee table and stalked to her dad’s room. She hadn’t even fully reached the end of the hall before she jumped into their conversation. “Do not tell me you’re racking up another balance with that shark again. Do you have any idea how long it took me to get your last debt paid off?”

  Both men whipped their attention toward Bonnie, eyes wide and jaws slack.

  Translation: they were both guilt
y as hell about something.

  Her dad recovered first, shook his head and took on that blustering bullshit demeanor he used whenever he wanted to sweep something under the rug. “Got nothin’ going on with Pauley you need to know about, little girl.” He aimed a warning look at Kevin, then waddled toward her in that painful looking gait that plagued him these days. He palmed her shoulder when he got close enough and steered her down the hall. “Come on. I’m so damned tired of this bedroom I can’t see straight. Let’s get you settled and you can tell me what you’re here for.”

  As if he didn’t know. The only thing her brother and father wanted to talk to her about these days was money. Not surprising since she was the only one who could hold a job for more than a few months at a time. Or, in Bonnie’s case, two or three jobs.

  Still, one didn’t throw snark in the face of a dying man, so she pretended to fall for the nicety and sat her ass back on the sofa.

  Her dad wasn’t quite as quick getting settled, the swollen gut that came as a byproduct of his failing liver just one of the sad realities he had to face. “Now,” he said once he was in his recliner with his feet up. “Tell me what brings you here.”

  Seriously? They were going to dance around this? Usually he was all get-in-and-get-out with money business so he could get back to sipping whiskey on the sly. “Um, bills?”

  Her dad—or Buzz as his buddies called him since he was always on the search for a good high—waved her comment off and smiled. “No more with the bills. Those high-and-mighty assholes have already said they ain’t givin’ me a transplant. No point in either one of us bailing water with a thimble anymore if I’m just gonna kick it in the end. Now...tell me how that new job is coming.”

  New job?

  Which one? Answering phones at the TV station, or the dive bar where the owner had practically handed over managing everything? And how the heck he’d call either one of those new considering she’d been doing both for over six months was a stumper.

  “Well, uh...” She dared a glance at Kevin, who’d lifted one of the blinds and stared out at the empty lot next to the house like all the answers to the universe were gonna roll in any second. “The TV station is good. I sit on my butt, answer the phone and don’t let crazy people through the front door. It’s easy money so long as I don’t lose my shit with anyone.”

  Her dad laughed. Or tried to. It came out as a mix of a cackle and one hell of a smoker’s cough. “Public relations. You were always good keepin’ people in line. That’s why we rely on you like they do.”

  Rely on her? From her side of the coin she’d call it taking advantage of her. But hey—she’d never found the courage to tell anyone in her family no, so who was she to complain? “Yeah, they don’t call it public relations. They call it a receptionist. But it’s a desk job and I haven’t had a fight break out yet. Can’t say that for most nights at the Dusty Dog.”

  “Oh, yeah.” From the look on her dad’s face he’d forgotten all about the bar gig. “How’s that place doin’ anyway? Last I heard, that rusty old bastard who bought the place was about to go belly up.”

  Okay. Something was seriously wrong. Dad wasn’t the conversational type. Not unless he was trying to sugar someone up for a con.

  Bonnie gave up pretending and aimed her attention on Kevin. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

  Kevin shot their dad a nasty look then bit out, “Like he said. Nothing.”

  Nothing her ample white ass. She was just about to say as much out loud when Kevin muttered something she couldn’t quite make out under his breath and stalked to his coat thrown across the well-worn club chair. He reached underneath it and pulled out a slim, shiny laptop. “Here. I brought your computer back.”

  “Hallelujah and praise the Lord!” She was on her feet and cradling the hand-me-down MacBook Pro Cassie had given her several months ago in less than a heartbeat. “I was starting to think you’d pawned it.”

  Kevin scoffed at that, moved his jacket out of the way and dropped into the seat. “You gonna pile on and give me shit, too?”

  “I don’t know,” Bonnie fired back, easy-as-pie. “Depends on what Dad was giving you shit for.”

  “Nothin’ you’re gonna get involved in,” her dad answered before Kevin could. “If the two of you were smart, you’d steer clear of all that techno mumbo jumbo. It’s all gonna backfire on the lot of us one of these days and then what are you gonna do?”

  Bonnie ducked her head to hide her smile and smoothed her hand over the top of the computer. Prepping for Armageddon or just a good old-fashioned technological revolution had been her dad’s favorite topic since Kevin had first shown him the internet. That said, he’d never put one iota of effort behind his Prepper ideas.

  Rather than give her dad any more to chew on, she focused on Kevin. “I still don’t get why you needed a Mac. What was wrong with that new Windows machine you got last year?”

  Her dad grunted and wiggled in his recliner.

  Kevin cleared his throat and sprawled a little deeper in his chair. “I just thought I’d try my hand at doin’ some app front ends. Lots of demand for people who can do that kind of work—especially stuff that goes on an iPhone. Can’t do that with a Windows machine.”

  “Yeah? How’d it go?”

  Kevin rubbed the back of his hand across his nose and aimed his answer at the coffee table. “Not my kinda gig, apparently. Gonna have to stick to networks and databases, I guess.”

  “Or you could stay the hell out of all that nonsense and get yourself a real job like your sister,” their dad said.

  Kevin clearly wasn’t done with the arguing. “Just because I don’t clock in and out of some dead-end, boring-ass corporate gig doesn’t make it nonsense.”

  “Oh, right,” Dad said. “It’s not nonsense. It’s the thing that’s always landing you in deep shit.”

  Mmm. Fair point. What Kevin called networks and database work, most other people referred to as hacking.

  Kevin shrugged the comment off rather than debate it and focused on Bonnie. “A word to the wise—I turned location services off on your computer. If you’re smart, you’ll keep it that way.”

  “What the hell’s location services?” Dad said.

  Bonnie chimed in before the two of them could start going at it again. “It helps you find your computer if you lose it or someone steals it.”

  Dad snapped his attention to Kevin. “That true?”

  “Hell, yeah, it’s true. Phones, too. It’s the way things work today.”

  “Well, that’s bullshit.” Dad flicked his hand toward her computer. “You do what your brother says and keep that location thing off. Government’s got no business messing in your affairs.”

  Bonnie raised both hands in surrender. “Fine. Fine. I’ll leave it off. Now can we focus on these damned bills so I can get back home and enjoy my one day off?”

  Her dad crossed his hands over his swollen belly. With the blind Kevin had raised, the jaundice in his skin was even more evident. “Already told ya. Not gonna worry about bills and medicine and doctor’s appointments anymore. Gonna live my life the way I wanna live it with the time I have left. So, don’t go giving me any grief about it.” His stare slid to Kevin and he added, “Not either of ya. Understand?”

  No. She didn’t. Not even a little bit. She’d already lost her mom to booze and partying. Just sitting back and accepting her dad giving up wasn’t even remotely in the cards.

  Outside, the muted rumble of a car pulling up and idling in front of the house made its way through the thin living room window. With their house being the last one on the dead-end street, that meant her dad’s buddies were rolling in early to help him get his drink on.

  “Are you kidding me?” Bonnie said, twisting for a peek behind the blinds. “It’s barely after three o’clock in the afternoon.”

  Before she could get a glimps
e, Kevin shot to his feet, knocked her hand aside and looked for himself. He straightened and shot their dad a look that was all business. “It’s them.”

  “God damn it, boy. I told you this wouldn’t be good.” He folded down his footrest the way a gunslinger stowed his gun, stood as quick as he could and waved toward the hallway. “Get Bonnie out of here.”

  “She can’t leave. If they see her, she’s fucked.”

  “Then get her to my room. Hide her in the gun closet. I’ll stall.”

  “Are both of you out of your mind?” Bonnie interjected.

  Rather than answer, Kevin snagged her laptop, shoved it in her backpack and manhandled her down the hallway. He lowered his voice as they neared her dad’s room. “You gotta be quiet, Bonnie. No fucking around, all right? Not a single fucking word no matter what.”

  “Are you for real right now?” Bonnie twisted as much as his pushing allowed and tried to look in his eyes. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Nothing you need to know about.” He jerked open the closet’s bifold doors, slid the clothes aside and opened up the gun closet. The hidey-hole where her dad once kept his illegal firearms was a simple unfinished cabinet with now empty gun racks, but the outside blended with all the rest of the paneling in the room. Kevin shoved her inside and paused only a moment. “Promise me.”

  A knock sounded on the front door, and Kevin’s already pale face blanched a deeper shade of white. In all the years she’d known her brother and through all the crazy trouble he’d gotten himself into, she’d never once seen so much fear in his eyes.

  Bonnie swallowed hard and pulled her backpack tight against her chest. “O-okay.”

  Lips mashed tight together, Kev gave her a sharp nod and closed the door.

  The hangers scraped across the metal rod and the bifold doors whispered back into place.

  What the ever-lovin’-hell were the two of them up to?

  What they’re always up to, her conscience whispered back to her. Doing things outside the way the rest of the world lives and then ending up with their asses in one sling or another.