by Doyle, S
“STRIPPING OIL RIGGERS!”
I wasn’t sure if it was Kate or Shelby who had made that particular declaration. I only knew it wasn’t going to happen.
Vivienne beamed. “I told you!”
I bent down and scooped her into my arms. “I’m getting you out of here,” I growled.
“Just like Rhett Butler,” she crooned, wrapping her arms around my neck.
I thought about where to take her. Back to our suite at camp felt like a long way away. Then I thought about the empty cabin just outside of town. Ground central, really, for Angel’s Alaska Dating Games.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked a little drunk and clearly a lot happy to be in my arms.
“To where it all began,” I said, holding her as close as I could. “The best possible place I can think of.”
“Too late,” she said, pressing her cheek against my chest. “I’m already there.”
* * *
Dear Readers! Thank you for coming on this journey with me to Hope’s Point. Hope you had as much fun as I did with these characters. And if you’re looking to see how it all started with Eve and Zeke check out Lovers to Enemies.
Lovers to Enemies
ZEKE
The End of the World…
Hope’s Point, Alaska
Fuck no. Like hell to the fuck no.
Zeke watched the scene play out in front of him and he wasn’t going to bite. Not even a little bit.
“Come on, honey… I bought you a beer.”
The bar was the typical crowd on a Tuesday night in Hope’s Point, Alaska. Which meant seven regulars. All men. One bartender. Also a man. And him.
Tonight, however, there was a special guest.
There was also one stupid-ass scientist. A woman. She was easy to spot, as she was the only person in the bar who didn’t have a full beard.
She pushed against the arm that was snaking around her waist, trying to drag her off the stool. “I thought you were being friendly,” she said. “I didn’t think I was going to have put out for a freaking beer.”
Zeke closed his eyes and shook his head. Fuck no.
Her accent was New York. Brooklyn, maybe Queens. She was about as far away from home as she could get in the small, tiny town in the northeast, nearly unpopulated, part of the state.
Men who came to Hope’s Point came for one of three reasons.
They hated people: two of the male regulars and the bartender. They worked on the oil rig just offshore and were on a night’s leave: five of the regulars.
Or they were hiding. Him.
Women didn’t come to Hope’s Point. The name of the town, while sounding friendly and welcoming, was in fact neither.
There was no hope in Hope’s Point. Not for this woman.
This woman was about to be raped. Certainly by Gus, maybe by all five of the rig guys who hadn’t seen a woman under the age of sixty-two, the bartender’s mother, in months.
They probably would have raped her if she hadn’t said yes to letting Gus buy her a beer. The fact she had, only made Gus think he had her consent to do it.
“Let go of me, asshole.”
Gus had succeeded in pulling her off the stool so that she was standing, while he was towering over her. All six feet four inches and three hundred pounds of him.
No, the petite blonde with the blue eyes and foul language had no shot.
“Come on babe, let’s get outta here.”
“Meathead, check it. I’m not going anywhere with you. Didn’t you hear me before? I’m a scientist. I’m here to do serious work and I’m not looking for a date. Get me?”
It was strange, because he couldn’t remember the last time it had happened, but Zeke could actually feel his lips twitching. Was he smiling? Was he seriously smiling because this tiny blond puff thought she was going to prevent her rape at the hands of Gus by referring to herself as a serious scientist?
That’s when Gus’s playful expression stopped. When he must have decided he was tired of playing with the fish on the line and was ready to reel it in and eat it.
“Bitch, we can do this in my truck or we can do it on that table over there, I don’t give a fuck. But we’re doin’ it.”
Zeke watched her eyes get wider. Finally she was starting to understand. She was no longer in a civilized place. Clearly, she still had faith in her fellow man though, as she pointed to the others in the bar.
“Seriously, you’re just going to rape me in front of one, two, three… nine witnesses?”
“Not rape. Bought you a drink. Fact sister, no one here cares what another guy does. Do we?”
The two locals deliberately turned their bodies back to the bar. Their eyes focused on the pints in front of them. The bartender left to go to a back room, which at one point was rumored to be a kitchen, but Zeke had never seen any food come out of there. Wafts of pot smoke yes, but no food.
The four guys from the rig—the ones ostensibly who were with Gus, as they had all come in together—crossed their arms over their chests in unanimity.
“Might be fun to watch,” Mike, the shorter beefy guy suggested.
“Yeah. Let’s watch.” Paul, a thin wiry guy who could have been fifty or a hundred and fifty, snickered. “Do her on the table.”
That’s when he saw it happen. When it finally registered she was a woman alone in a bar at the end of civilization and these guys seriously did not give a fuck what another guy chose to do with his dick. Whether the woman was willing or not.
She took a quick step back and reached for the pocket of her jacket. “I didn’t want to have to do this…” She pulled out a small silver .357 Magnum and pointed it at Gus. Her hand was shaking. “Now I’m just going to get out of here and pretend this never happened. Cool?”
It happened in a second. Gus took one step forward and she didn’t step back far enough. The gun was out of her hand and in his, and then he was pointing it at her.
“Yeah, we’re cool. The table it is, boys. Looks like you’re going to get a show.”
They started to move in on her, and Zeke thought it was how hyenas must move in the wild. Hungry, mean… a single nasty pack.
“Please don’t do this.” Her whole body was shaking. “You have sisters, you have a mother… Please don’t do this.”
“What makes you think I didn’t fuck them too?” Gus chortled.
Zeke sighed because he felt it in his gut. He wasn’t going to be able to watch this happen. He wasn’t some damn hero, but he’d be damned if he was going to let the scientist get gang raped by Gus and his cronies.
If only because she had almost made him smile.
Gus put her gun in the back of his jeans and then reached for her. He had his beefy hands wrapped around her arms. She was kicking his shins and putting up a struggle, but in seconds he had her ass on the table.
She looked like a squirming cat. As if she could simply wiggle her way out of the situation. She landed another hard kick, close to Gus’s crotch.
“Damn it, bitch. Hold still. Mike, grab her legs.”
“Stop.”
Zeke stood up slowly from his seat. Always located in the far corner of the bar, with his back to the wall so he could see the entire room in front of him.
Immediately, the atmosphere in the establishment changed. Everyone stilled, including the wiggling cat on the table currently being held down by Gus’s hand on her chest.
Gus turned just his head. “This ain’t your business.”
“Nope.”
“Then why the fuck do you care, old man? Take off, if it’s gonna upset you.”
Zeke shook his head. He’d turned forty-five two days ago. It was a particularly sore spot for him.
“Did you just call me old?”
Gus threw his head back as if that was a great joke. “Yeah, old man. What are you gonna do about it? Because nothin’ I like to do better than fightin’ except fuckin’.” Gus turned back to the cat on the table. “Not gonna be good for you though, honey. Aft
er a good beat down I like to fuck really hard. You won’t walk right for a week.”
Zeke eyed up the man in front of him. He considered the gun he still had tucked in the back of his jeans. Then he looked to Mike and Paul, the two most likely to attempt to intervene.
They wouldn’t. Not after they saw what Zeke was going to do to their co-worker.
“I’m going to break your right arm.”
“Old man, I don’t know what crack you’re smokin’.” Gus took his hand off the cat and faced him full on. She immediately scrambled off the table, but paused as if she was waiting to see what might happen next.
Idiot. She should have been running for the door.
“I am going to mess you up. Old. Man.”
Zeke felt the vibration in the floor as Gus stepped toward him. He waited, because he always waited for his attacker to make the first move. Reaction was a more effective tool in hand-to-hand fighting.
Gus lifted his beefy-hand fist and swung. Zeke quickly moved his body out of reach. With his momentum taking him left, Zeke moved in to strike left. A crippling shot to the elbow that would numb his arm. A right shot up the solar plexus to take away his oxygen. A pull of his foot behind Gus’s knee that sent him to the floor. Zeke lifted the gun from his pants and then moved around him and did exactly what he promised to do. He took Gus’s right arm lifted it high behind his back until the man squealed.
“You shouldn’t rape women. But I’m breaking your arm for calling me old.”
And with that, Zeke snapped the man’s forearm.
Gus fell to the floor in agony, clutching his now-broken and useless appendage.
Zeke looked to Paul and Mike, who had probably never seen anything like it before.
Zeke was five-nine and a half (he thought that half was very important) and one hundred and eighty-six pounds. He’d felled Gus in seconds.
“You want to go?” Zeke asked them.
A subtle shake of the head from the thin wiry one was all he needed. He looked at the cat, who was now looking at him with wide eyes.
“Get gone.”
That’s when it occurred to her she was free. She reached for her coat and then did exactly that, sprinting through the bar door and out into the frigid Alaska evening.
Zeke walked around the still-wailing Gus. Who in Zeke’s opinion was being a little dramatic. It was only a broken arm. His night ruined, he pulled out a few bills from his back pocket and dropped them on a table. This would ensure his welcome again with the bartender.
After all, he didn’t want to be banned from the only bar in town. A good tip and a few weeks away should do it. Memories weren’t long in Hope’s Point.
Zeke left the establishment and started walking. He felt the cold overcome him. He wore only a long-sleeve thermal, as jackets could be restrictive. His cabin was close enough there was no risk of hypothermia, and he’d long ago learned to accept the elements whatever they were.
Very cold, very hot—it didn’t matter. It was simply a matter of understanding what risk the elements brought to the body. As long as the body could survive, it didn’t matter if he was made temporarily uncomfortable.
He was fifty yards down the empty road when he saw her. She was standing under the only working street light in town, shrugging into her coat. The light was working because Zeke had fixed it. The visibility between that particular point and his cabin was necessary, as it was the only vulnerable point outside the perimeter of his cabin once he got into town.
He stopped and she started toward him.
“Go away.”
“Listen, mister, I just have to thank you for what you did back there. I mean, I think they were really going to do it.”
He took a deep breath and contained the need to tell her he had no time to suffer fools. Of course they were really going to do it. He also could have told her that whatever scientific work she was doing, she needed to not be doing it in Hope’s Point. This wasn’t a place for her.
He did neither.
Instead, he told her the only thing that mattered. “Go away.”
She cocked her head at him. “Okay, I get it. You’re a big bad dude. I mean I’ve never seen… anything like that. You are so fast.”
Zeke clearly wasn’t making his point, so instead he walked around her and headed on his way.
“No, come on mister. I need your help,” she said, jogging after him. Needing to jog to catch up to his long strides. Her boots crunched in the packed snow. Her parka covered her from head to knees.
He didn’t answer, but she didn’t give up her pursuit.
“I had no idea this place was going to be so uncivilized. I plan to contact the university, let them know I’m going to need backup. Like serious muscle backup, but that’s going to take days. Maybe even weeks. I need help until then, and you obviously are the only one I can trust around here.”
That made him pause, and he felt the impact as she ran into his back, not anticipating he would stop.
He wasn’t sure why he had. He turned to her and got in her face so as to make his point clear.
“You. Cannot. Trust. Me.”
“Okay. Fine. Right. I get it,” she said quickly. “You’re not a nice guy, you’re a badass. You didn’t do that out of the goodness of your heart. Although seriously, what kind of man stands back and watches some thug rape an innocent woman? But whatever. I survived it.”
He looked at her then. Cold puffs of air were coming out of her mouth, and snot was running down her nose. She was still cute though, and on some level it disturbed him.
“Aren’t you cold?” she asked him, even as she tried to wipe away the snot with her puffy parka sleeve.
“Yes.”
She rolled her eyes. “Right. Anyway, I’ll pay you. Like a bodyguard.”
Again, Zeke might have thought he felt his lips twitching. She would pay him.
“How much?” he asked. Because he wanted to hear the number, he realized. He wanted to know what this tiny little cat was going to offer him.
She danced on her feet, assessing him. Trying to determine what number might be big enough to make it worth his effort.
“Five hundred dollars.”
The United States Government had paid him three point two million dollars for his last and final job. She was offering five hundo.
This time it happened. A full-on smile. He needed to check that shit. At forty-five he had to worry about laugh lines.
“Okay, a thousand.”
His amusement obviously had communicated itself to her. And because she had made him smile, something he hadn’t done in so long, he decided he could give her the advice she so desperately needed.
He reached behind him and took the gun he’d removed from Gus’s jeans and handed it back to her.
She looked at it sheepishly.
“It’s not loaded,” he said, something she must obviously know.
“I don’t really do the whole gun thing. I thought just showing it would be enough of a deterrent.”
“Go back to the cabin where you are staying. Load the gun and stay up all night, staring at the main point of entry. If someone comes through it, shoot him. In the morning, get back to the airstrip where you flew in and book the first bush plane you can out of here. Offer any amount of money to get out, even if it’s not a passenger plane. They will do delivery runs on most days. Then don’t ever come back here again.”
“Mister,” she huffed. “That is really not cool. I have work here. Fifteen hundred.”
Zeke shook his head, turned and left her. He really hoped the little cat obeyed. Because if she didn’t, all the big bad wolves around here might eat her.
Including him.
Also by S Doyle
The Bride
The Wife
The Lover
The Baby
The Homecoming
* * *
Catching The Billionaire
Lovers to Enemies: A Hope’s Point Story
* * *
&nb
sp; Dating The Superhero
My Crazy Ex-Superhero
* * *
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