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Exclusive Preview – Crow: Blue Devils Book 3
Chapter 1
~ Faith Hope ~
She sat at the diner table, pushing the last of her stuffed French toast around her plate, sneaking glances at the Native American sitting just a few tables away, next to some blond brick shithouse that some other girl might drool over, but Faith barely noticed. The Indian, though? God, he was gorgeous, and she was having a hard time breathing just looking at him.
He was the calendar model, the centerfold, the epitome of what every Native American eye candy should look like. Square jaw, full lips, clear skin, straight white teeth. And his muscles! He was wearing a leather vest so he was probably part of some motorcycle gang, but from here, Faith Hope couldn’t tell which one. The intricate tattoos that wound their way up his arms emphasized his bulging biceps and Faith swallowed hard. What she wouldn’t do to run her hands up those biceps…
She quickly looked down when he looked up and caught her eye, embarrassed to have been caught staring at him. A flush stole up her cheeks and she stuffed the last of her French toast into her mouth. It wasn’t like this guy was going to be interested in her. Girls with her curves just didn’t get laid.
With a sigh, she pushed her empty plate away from her just as she saw a ticket flutter to the floor next to her out of the corner of her eye. Quickly, she picked it up and, straightening up, she saw that it was him. Reminding herself to breathe, she held it out to him with a smile.
“Here you go,” she said and then their fingertips brushed as he reached out to take it and oh God, a lightning bolt went up her arm. This guy was way too good-looking for her mental state of being.
“Appreciate that,” he said.
“Sure, you’re welcome,” she said and smiled again, feeling like an idiot but unable to stop herself. There was something about this guy that was just yummy and breathing seems to have become…optional.
She realized belatedly that she was still holding the receipt and hurriedly let go. Just treat him like you would a customer.
“So, you from ‘round here?” she asked, a question she asked almost every customer she’d ever waited on in a restaurant. Bonus points for sounding like a normal human being.
“No, just t-t— on our way back to Copper Lode.”
Her eyes widened with surprise. She let her eyes flick down to his leather vest where she saw the patch “Blue Devils” emblazoned.
Then back up to his face.
Ho
Ly
Shit
He’s from the Blue Devils.
Keep it together; don’t act like an idiot.
If it wasn’t too late for that already.
“Oh, how nice,” and even as she uttered the words, she knew how banal they sounded but she seemed to be devoid of all intelligent thought. “I’ll go with you up to the cash register,” she said brightly and grabbed her ticket that the waitress had dropped off quite a bit earlier. Damn waitresses in this diner - no knowledge of how to treat their customers. Everyone knows you don’t give the customer their ticket for their meal as you deliver said meal to them. It was just plain rude.
But, whatever. She had to focus, and not act like a crazy person.
Two things that seemed more difficult than normal around this guy.
She scooted out of the diner booth and followed the Blue Devil up to the front counter, eyes skimming his back and ass with appreciation as they went. While drooling over him earlier, she’d been wondering how long his hair was and now she knew. She looked at the long braid trailing down his back and imagined wrapping her hand around the length of it and then pulling his lips towards her and…
Oh God, I gotta get myself under control.
She’d never reacted to a guy like this before and God only knew how many men she’d been around in her life. As a waitress, she’d interacted with every kind of humanity out there.
But no man had ever affected her this way. It was thrilling, and totally fucking scary.
But more thrilling.
No waitress was around and so Faith Hope figured they had a bit of time to kill – okay, to flirt – before a waitress finally made her way over to them.
“Copper Lode is a couple of hours north of here – whatcha doing in Brownton?”
Something flicked across his features so quickly, she had a hard time catching it but then his face smoothed out and he said casually, “A ride to Mexico. A…day ride, just down there and back.”
“Day ride”? Normally people call it a “day trip.” Maybe this was a motorcyclist thing…?
“I’m on my way down to Mexico myself,” said Faith, more convincingly than she really felt. “Going to go wander around and play tourist.” Actually, I’m supposed to be going to Copper Lode too, but I’m currently playing the part of a chicken rather convincingly.
Not really something I should tell him right now.
He nodded. “Cheap shopping. Ever been?”
She noticed that he tended to use less words than pretty much anyone else she’d ever met, and yet, somehow, got his point across. A talent she didn’t possess on the best of days, and especially didn’t possess around fucking hot men who made her tongue feel like it was two feet thick.
He cocked his eyebrow at her and she realized she hadn’t answered his question yet.
“No, my passport is a virgin,” she said without thinking, which caused him to laugh, which she couldn’t help but feel was an incredibly unusual experience. It came out rusty and hard, as if he’d long-ago forgotten how to do it. They grinned at each other and she was back to not being able to breathe and lightning bolts were striking again and —
“Sir, I’m ready whenever you are,” the waitress said.
Oh, right.
Waitress.
At a restaurant in a line to pay for food.
Dammit.
He turned towards the waitress to pay for his meal, which conveniently gave Faith a chance to eyeball his ass again. But really, not her fault. What do you expect a girl to do when a guy wears jeans and then leather chaps that perfectly frame his ass?
Which, of course, made her think about him not wearing jeans at all.
But still the leather chaps.
Oh yeah…
He turned back to her, finished with the waitress, and she opened up her mouth to say something — anything, really, although she hadn’t actually thought of what she was going to say, but she hoped something brilliant and witty and, you know, not stupid would come out — when he beat her to the punch.
“Sorry we leaving Mexico. Coulda showed you around.” Which, of course, did not help with the non-breathing problem she seemed to be experiencing. To have a guy this handsome offer to show her around Mexico was…mind-blowing.
Before she could do something desperate like throw herself at Crow and beg him to take her to Mexico, the blond guy who’d been sitting next to her Native-American-model-in-the-flesh showed up at his elbow.
Shit.
“Come on, Crow, gotta go. Ma’am,” and with a nod from both of them, they turned around and walked out of the restaurant. She stared after them longingly, sure that there was drool somewhere on her chin but not even caring. Suddenly, the idea of going to Copper Lode wasn’t nearly as intimidating. She c
ould go there and go to the Blue Devils clubhouse and ask where her dad was and flirt with Crow and —
“Ma’am, I’m ready,” the waitress said impatiently, and with a sigh, Faith turned back to her. Nothing against the waitress of course, but needless to say, she was a hell of a lot less gorgeous than Crow.
Faith Hope had never been one to go after the bad boy — okay, let’s be honest here, she was never one to go after any guy — but there was something about Crow that set her on fire.
In a good way.
The motorcycles roared off as Faith headed back to her table to grab her mom’s journal and her phone, which she’d stupidly left behind when she’d followed Crow up to the front. Good thing Brownton was a tiny town, and the diner didn’t seem to be full of thieves — her items were still at the table where she’d left them.
God bless small towns.
She walked across the street in the blazing hot sun to the park and sat at the base of a tree in the shade on the stubby grass — the only kind of grass that can grow in the hot Sonoran Desert — and opened up her mom’s journal to reread that first entry again. By this time, she’d read several journal entries ahead but the first was still her favorite. Who wouldn’t want to read about their parent’s meeting for the first time?
Although she guessed that most people didn’t know quite as much about their parent’s sex lives as Faith now did.
September 17, 1992
So I met the sexiest motorcycle rider ever last night at Jennifer’s party. She turned 21 yesterday and she just went batshit crazy. Lots of alcohol and, of course, lots of Mary Jane.
There we were out on the front lawn, taking a coupla hits, when the Scorpions pulled up. I know Dad would never approve, so it’s a good thing I don’t live at home anymore, right?
Piston - I’m sure that’s his name as much as mine is Kandi - got off his bike and ran his hand through his hair - yaowee!! Damn, he’s hot. When we started talking, he just had such a great attitude. He doesn’t take shit from anyone; he just knows what he wants, and last night, he told me that he wants me!
I can already tell that he’s the one for me. We went behind the shed and fucked out under the stars. We could hear everyone at the party but no one saw us. It was the most naughty thing I’ve ever done!
He says he’s going to come over to my apartment today and we’re supposed to go out on a real date. I don’t know where we’re going or what we’re doing, but I do know I can’t wait.
And then, Faith flipped back to the inside flap of the journal to reread her mom’s inscription for what was probably the hundredth time, but she excused her obsession with the thought that her mom had been talking to her. Her mom had never woken from her coma; Faith had never been able to tell her goodbye. Here were her final words of wisdom to her only child. Of course Faith would read it once or twice…or a hundred times.
Faith could almost her mom’s lilting voice as she read it:
I dedicate this journal to the only man I’ve ever loved - the father of my daughter. And to my little girl, who will never know her dad. I love you, Piston. I love you, Faith Hope. I wish you both knew how much I loved you, and how much I wish you knew each other…
Faith closed her eyes and leaned against the tree trunk, letting the journal close her lap.
When she was eight, Faith had stopped accepting her mother’s non-answers about who her dad was, and began pushing. Pushing for information. Pushing for a name. Pushing for something more than, “He was a good guy - I’m sorry you never met him.” But instead of getting answers, her mother had gotten angry with her and hadn’t spoken to her for two days. Faith hated for people to be mad at her - she was a peacemaker, through and through - and so she finally broke, apologizing to her mom for her bad manners.
It taught her two things: Her mother was damn stubborn and capable of becoming a cold, thick wall of silence when angered, and that the topic of her father was truly off-limits.
All of this meant that finding this journal in amongst her mother’s things after her death was, by far, the best present she’d ever been given, a small salve for the bottomless wound of losing her best friend and confidante. Faith had been reading the entries slowly over the last two weeks, forcing herself to savor them, rather than to devour them all in one sitting like she’d been tempted to.
Realizing that she’d gotten inexplicably hotter, she opened her eyes and realized that the sun had moved and her shade had moved with it. Scooting to the right so she could continue to stay under the shade of the acacia tree, she pulled out her second favorite part of the journal: A newspaper clipping from the XX, a newspaper down in the southern part of the state. Far, far away from where she’d grown up in Flagstaff, up in northern Arizona. She reread the caption, The Blue Devils Motorcycle Club from Copper Lode presenting a $1750 check to the Tucson XX, proceeds from their annual fundraiser held on the second Thursday of every July in honor of John Abernathy. Then a list of the members who were present for the photograph.
Third over from the left was her dad. The lightly smeared clipping didn’t give her enough details - she could tell that he’d smiled for the picture, and was wearing a bandana around his head. She guessed that it was blue, but the newspaper was in black and white, so she’d never know. Did his eyes crinkle in the corner when he smiled? Did he have a cowlick in his hair like she did? Did he have her hazel eyes, an indescribable combination of green and brown that defied a name? And how did he end up with the Blue Devils instead of the Scorpions, as he had been when her mom had met him? Just a hundred puzzle pieces that didn’t quite fit together.
Not yet, anyway.
She also knew that she had to quit impersonating a chicken if she was ever actually going to meet her dad and put these puzzle pieces together, but…what if he didn’t like her? What if he didn’t think he was her dad? What if he laughed at her and walked away? The last connection she had with her mother would disappear under the weight of his scorn, breaking into a million different pieces. It would hurt so damn bad if he were to reject her. Could she handle it? Could she do it? It’d been so much safer to dream about this adventure in the safety of her mother’s bedroom; it was a lot more fucking scary to actually do something about it.
Realizing that she’d only ever looked at her dad in the photo, Faith smoothed the clipping open again, curious to see if Crow had been there that day. Her eyes ran across the row of men until they fell on his angular features, two men over from her dad. The photographer had obviously been lazy that day because only first names of all members were listed - names like Rush, Crow, Piston, and Pug. Faith squinted harder at Crow’s face, trying to make out his eyes and square jaw, but the quality of the newspaper print failed her again.
With a sigh, Faith refolded the clipping and slipped it into the pages of the journal, just like she’d found it. She had to remember that her mom had liked Piston from the first moment she’d met him, just like Faith had felt fireworks just now in the diner with Crow. Also, Piston and Crow were both bad boy motorcycle gang members. She wasn’t really sure what this meant, but she did know she had to tread carefully. She didn’t want to end up like her mom - single and lonely and trying so very hard to hide it from her only daughter and failing desperately in that attempt.
Faith stood up and wiped the dirt off her ass, and headed for her car. If she was going to be a chicken, at least she could do it while traveling footloose and fancy-free down in Mexico, right? Her virgin passport needed to get stamped up at some point, and that sure as hell wasn’t going to happen in the parking lot of the only restaurant in Brownton, Arizona. Having already driven from Flagstaff to Brownton, getting back into her car appealed to her like…well, like watching Crow walk away, but she couldn’t live a life of an adventurer by sitting in a city park, now could she?
And that’s what she wanted to do, right? She was going to do the things that she hadn’t been able to do before, now that she was on her own. She was going to take life by the horns and no longer let it
ride on by.
She was pretty sure she just mixed metaphors there, but oh well. She was a waitress, not a writer.
She pulled into the Nogales parking lot that evening and got out, stretching, then pulled out her backpack filled with her toiletries and a change of clothes. She was going to cross over the border, finally get her passport stamped – yahooooo! – spend the night in Mexico, and then maybe buy some of that cheap shit tomorrow that Crow was talking about.
She’d spent her life planning trips she’d never gone on, dreaming about places she’d never seen, but that was the old Faith Hope. The new Faith Hope was going to do shit.
Like go to Copper Lode and meet her long-lost father who didn’t know she even existed.
She pushed the scary thought away. First, a trip into a new country.
Hawke: A Bad Boy Fighter Romance
© 2016 Ashley Rhodes
Sometimes, love comes at a price.
Naomi
My job’s hard enough without Jack Hawke making things even worse. He winds up on my list of patients, having been on the wrong end of a savage beating. He won’t tell me what happened, and he seems more interested in getting into my pants than getting better.
When I finally manage to tease the truth out of him, he wants more in return from me than just my advice. And the trouble is…I’m having a hard time saying no. His rippling muscles and his dangerous smile tell me to steer well clear…but I always have had a hard time listening to good advice.
I end up getting drawn into his dangerous world of mobsters and underground cage fighting – he might be right at home there, but I’m completely out of my depth. Can he protect me? Will he give himself to me, even if it means leaving his old life behind?
Hawke
I never lose. Ever. I’m undefeated in the cage, and I plan to keep it that way. So when Valentino, the local mob boss, tries to get me to throw a fight, ain’t no way in hell I’m agreeing to that.
The Hitman's Baby - A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance (With extra added bonus novel for a short time only!) Page 17