by Jayne Blue
Steel
A Great Wolves M.C. Romance
Jayne Blue
Contents
Text copyright ©2019
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Up Next
Clinch
Also by Jayne Blue
Join my newsletter for a free gift!
Text copyright ©2019
Jayne Blue All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law or for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
One
Darby
* * *
I didn’t belong there. I felt it down to my bones. I shouldn’t have come. I struggled to swallow the knot in my throat. I tried to ignore the dull, sick feeling in my stomach.
Truth be told, I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere. Ever since my parents died, I felt like someone had pushed me into a little boat and let it loose into a rough sea. I always had the sense that I had to hold on tightly to the edges. The waves threatened to tip me over anytime I left the house.
And yet here I was. In this stupid mall. Doing what didn’t feel right.
I had constructed my world around keeping calm. Since my sixteenth year, when my life with my family ended, and the life with my uncle began, I’ve felt life, the world—everything really—was too much for me. I was used to putting my hands up and trying to push fear away. But it really was only at an arms-length. I could never keep my fear far enough away to feel calm when I left the house. In my room, I could at least breath. Just not deeply.
Uncle Reid said it was fine to stay at home; he said he wanted me to stay safe. He said the world was a dangerous place. Even a simple car ride could kill you. That’s what happened to my parents, so it could happen to me. In a snap.
Uncle Reid took me in. He hired tutors so I could finish high school without going in person. I experienced most of my life from the safety of his huge house and grounds.
Five years went so quickly. And then I looked up. On my twenty-first birthday, I resolved to try. I had to find a way to have some sort of life. For the last year, I’ve pushed myself. I expanded my comfort zone, on inch at a time. And it’s been working: my books have turned my safe little life under glass into something more. Not something huge, or epic, or even a full life. But I was on the cusp of something more than before.
My books kept me from collapsing inward.
I loved rare books. I knew how to find them. I knew how to appraise them. And over the last year, I learned how to sell them. I did most of it from the safety of my computer. As fearful as I was in the rest of my life, in this area, in this space, I was the hunter. I solved mysteries, found hidden gems, and then shared them with the people who loved them like I did.
The books were my connection to my parents. It was what they did, sold books. I wished I’d paid more attention to that when I was a kid. But I didn’t know they’d be taken away from me. I was slowly learning that their business was something that could help me climb out of the fog of their deaths.
To Uncle Reid, it was a hobby, or way to cope with grief even. He didn’t share my interest, but he helped me pursue my pastime, as he called it. It was Uncle Reid that made sure I had high-speed internet. When he was around, he didn’t complain about deliveries showing up at the door every day. Or that the packages I shipped were now going out almost as frequently. He left me alone with my hobby. He was glad I stayed indoors to pursue that interest.
I knew it wasn’t just a hobby. It was the only job I could envision for myself now. Finding the right books for the right readers. Living among my books, showing other people their beauty, that was my life, or what I wanted it to be. I was my parents’ daughter.
That’s what prompted me to come to the Arbor Lane Mall outside of Grand City. It wasn’t too far from Uncle Reid’s house on the waterfront. I drove myself there. I was proud of that. I had a license I rarely used and a car I wouldn’t let Uncle Reid sell. It was from my parents. It was the last gift they had given me, on my Sweet Sixteenth. A month before they died. I would keep this car, a cute little Jeep, for as long as I lived.
When I got to the mall, I remembered it. Things I had blocked out of my memory flooded back. A wave nearly toppled over that small boat I clung to so fiercely. I had been here with my mother and had forgotten it or had suppressed it.
We’d shopped at this mall together once. I smelled the fried food in the food court mixed with the scent of perfume from the department store. Mom and I came here to buy soccer shoes, socks, and all the things I needed for my new team. I’d made varsity as a freshman. I was so excited. She was so excited. I remembered with a sharp pang how much fun we’d had shopping together. Why hadn’t I prepared myself for this memory? It was enough to do me in and start a wave of panic.
Since I’d lost my parents, fear was the defining feature of each choice I made. I wasn’t the same girl who played sports or made varsity. I was less than that, with each passing year.
I took a deep breath. I could do this. I would do this.
I was meeting another book dealer. Pete Jenkins worked with my parents and found me through their old eBay Store that I’d revived. I was excited to build this connection. I hoped he was a great link for rare treasures here in Michigan.
He’d also worked with the master of rare books in the Midwest, John King. He knew I had a copy of a rare Beatrix Potter work, The Tailor of Gloucester. I had an idea it was worth over five thousand dollars; it was a prized item in my parents’ collection.
I managed my fears because this meeting was a way to find more of the treasures I loved. And it was a way to broker sales of things I’d found. The desire to walk in my parent’s footsteps overrode my terror at leaving the house. When Pete casually mentioned meeting, so I could tell him about my Beatrix Potter, it made perfect sense to meet in person.
I was terrified. I was out of my carefully constructed comfort zone. But I was doing this. I had to carve out a real life. Even if it was one small step at a time.
I walked into the food court. I took in the smells, the sights, and the people. None of them were scared like I was scared. They looked like I supposed I used to look, shopping here with my mother.
I sat at the table, where we had arranged to meet. I waited.
The time ticked away, and nothing happened. The man I was supposed to meet was late. This was not in my carefully constructed visualization.
I waited for a full hour. And then realized, with all my concern about leaving the house, driving, even facing people in the mall, that I’d probably messed up something really basic, like the time. I looked at the email and the details.
I hadn’t made a mistake
. I was where I said I would be, when I said I would be there.
So, he was late? Or forgot? I supposed that happened. I still felt stupid, young, and inadequate. Everyone else could just do things, but me? No, even the littlest things could cause a major meltdown. I was feeling it now, the beginnings of total system failure.
I needed to get out of here, go home, regroup. Maybe try again to do what normal people did. Maybe not.
I stood up. I looked around one last time.
My eye stopped. Or maybe it was better to say my eye was drawn to a tall, broad-shouldered man. He wore all leather and was made of all muscle. He had a beard and his jeans were worn, but even with the rough edges, it was clear that his face was gorgeous.
I wondered about him. For a moment, I forgot about my fear and had a wild fantasy of walking up to him. I used to be the bold girl, the unafraid, the athlete. Used to be.
He looked at me; I felt his eyes lock on mine. A different me would have smiled. The me I used to be was hopeful about life and adventure.
Was that me still there? Had she been buried with my parents? Could she claw her way back?
I didn’t know. I was trying though. But coming here to the mall was enough. More than enough for one day. The sexy biker was beyond me. He was an adventure I wouldn’t have. I hoped for a much smaller life than most people my age did. I had dreams, but they were just that. Dreams.
I looked down. I needed out of here.
I walked back to the doors at the end of the food court. I was nearly in a run now. I needed to get back to my safe space. I practically ran to my little Jeep. That would be the first touchstone. I’d get to my Jeep, and then get control on my breathing. I knew I was hyperventilating.
As I put my fingers on the door handle, I felt a rough yank on my shoulder. I was being pulled away from the safety of my car.
“What the heck?” I managed to say.
And then everything went dark.
My last thought, before I lost touch with consciousness, was that I was right. It was almost relief. I was right to be afraid. This validated everything.
It was cold comfort.
Two
Steel
* * *
I hated the mother-fucking mall.
“Look, Bess wants us to scope it out. She’s had a few tips come in, and it has her worried,” Sawyer said to Ridge and me.
Sawyer was the Prez of the Great Wolves M.C., Grand City Chapter. His old lady, Bess, was a social worker. We’d helped her stop a child trafficking situation a while back, but this one was new.
“I thought the Russians were long gone.”
I remembered vividly the revulsion we all felt when Bess keyed us into what was happening in Grand City. How the Russian mob had tried to infiltrate our town. The M.C. helped put a stop to it. It was a fucking proud moment.
I was Sawyer’s Vice Prez these days, it was still fucking weird to be earning money on the right side of the law. But what felt right for all of us was protecting Grand City from evil bastards that preyed on the weak. Which was happening again, and under our fucking noses. I was first in line to stop that shit. I listened carefully when Bess raised a red flag. We all did.
“This is something new, girls are a little older. Bess doesn’t have jurisdiction.”
Bess handled cases with kids. She said she was worried that vulnerable women were being targeted, not little girls. The traffickers we might be facing this time were a slightly different flavor of evil.
“She said this new group is targeting women already at risk, addicts, homeless, or even abused by their boyfriends. They’re vulnerable because these are women who aren’t being missed by society,” Sawyer relayed Bess’s concerns.
“That’s fucking sick,” said Ridge.
Ridge and I worked as a team for a lot of the Great Wolves shit. Ridge, Ryder, and I, we’d all moved up in the M.C. and were officers. We’d earned our places in this club and the table. In our world we were practically the police in leather in Grand City.
I remembered my days as a probie, my fucking temper hadn’t gotten any cooler, but at least I knew where to aim it. Most of the time.
Sawyer counted on Ridge and me to handle shit without crossing the line if we caught any scum bag mother fuckers trying to prey on women like Bess described. And if we did cross the line, Ridge and I knew how to keep that shit quiet.
God help those assholes because they didn’t deserve our mercy. They sure as hell wouldn’t get it from me.
My own dirtbag father hit my mother. He was the kind of man who used and abused women: my mother, my stepmother, even my sister. When I got old enough, I protected them by putting him in the hospital, repeatedly. My mom and sister got smart and left town.
But my step mom did not, and that’s where my life went from shitty to colossal fuck up.
There were times I wished I’d killed my Dad, ended it clean, fast.
Instead, we did a dance of anger, me throwing his ass out on the street, me forgiving him because my step-mom begged me to and then me saving her when the old man got out of control. The last time I pulled my dad off her, I threw him just a little too hard, a little too far, and he’s been in a wheelchair ever since.
I’m supposed to feel bad about that. But the old man hasn’t beaten women since then, so I am sorry, not sorry.
My stepmom, of course, hates my guts, and they both pressed charges. I was the problem. He was an innocent old man! He sure looked that way in court, and that’s how I wound up in fucking prison at nineteen. That good deed of mine was punished, hard.
I did five years, half of my sentence. But it wasn’t all shit.
I learned a trade. And I met Ridge, who brought me into the Great Wolves. I had risen to the role of veep because half the time Ridge, who had more seniority, was deployed to other clubs. He was fucking useful anywhere Sawyer sent him. I, however, was a sharpened blade Sawyer could best deploy here, in my hometown of Grand City.
I guess it all worked out. But I still wish I would have killed my old man before he could destroy all the lives around him, instead of just mine. I knew he was out there, alive, drinking the day away and cursing my name. I also knew that when I saw people like him, abusing women it was a red cape, and I was the bull. I didn’t know how to give gentle warnings in this department.
I hoped that Bess was wrong, overreacting, because I knew I would overreact if she were right. This shit brought up all my shit, and I had a lot when it came men hitting women, or whatever. I was not rational in that department.
I scoped out one corner of the food court and Ridge had the other. Bucky, a newer member of the MC, was in the parking lot.
I fit in the mall about as well as I fit in at a public library. But the longer I stayed still, the easier it was for people to walk by and move on. I watched teens, families, moms, walking in and out of the food court. I was alert but only because I kept reminding myself why we were here. Otherwise, this was boring as shit.
I hated the mother-fucking mall.
Things got a lot more interesting when I noticed the redhead sitting alone at a food court table. She sure as hell didn’t look like the kind of woman we were supposed to be keeping on an eye out for. Light from the skylight turned her strawberry hair into glowing gold. She had it in a thick ponytail. She wore a gray turtleneck that emphasized her long neck. She had dark jeans on. They were pristine, unlike the beat-up shit I wore.
She was thin, almost like a ballerina. Yeah, that was the way it looked. She sat with perfect posture, alone. But perfectly straight.
I kept scanning the place, but my eyes kept settling back on her.
She didn’t order any food. That seemed weird. She also didn’t have any packages. If she’d been shopping it had been a bust.
I studied her face. She was damned stunning. She had big blue eyes, a strong nose, there was a bump on it. I wondered if she had freckles. Probably, she did. I had an itch to get closer.
Shit, this was not in my current best inte
rest. I was supposed to be looking for human trafficking in this damn mall.
I forced myself to get back to the job. Ridge and I nodded to one another every so often. Other than the red-headed woman, who looked more like a supermodel than a mall walker, this place was boring as shit. If there was trafficking going on here, it wasn’t happening right now.
The redhead stood up. She put on a navy colored pea coat and slung her bag over her shoulder. She was leaving. For a moment, we locked eyes. Leather, a cut, my size, my beard, all of it fit in at The Wolf Den, none of it fit in at this suburban mall. But she looked at me, and it sliced through all the noise that surrounded us. She was bold, I liked the hell out of that.
But then she cast her eyes down, and I watched her body change. She was scared. For a hot second, I wished I looked like a pretty boy or a whatever kind of douche bag that she dated.
She was leaving the place, and I had no idea who she was. Ridge would probably say I was thinking with my dick or some shit, but I followed her. I didn’t tell Ridge or call Sawyer. I just watched her ponytail bob up and down as she exited the mall.
She was a good bit of distance away. I didn’t even know what I was following her for. I’d tell any woman to call 911 if someone followed them. Especially if that someone looked like me.
I looked around the parking lot. There she was. I spotted her by that hair.
Out of my peripheral vision came two men, moving faster than I was, faster than she was, bearing down on her. What the fuck?