by Sue Wilder
Reckless
Sue Wilder
Copyright © 2021 Sue C. Smith
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ASIN: B098H9W7V6
eBook published in the United States of America
What happened after Scandal?
RECKLESS is Soleil St. Clair's story, and it follows Luna St. Clair's story in SCANDAL. While it is a stand-alone book, there are spoilers in Reckless that will make Scandal less enjoyable, if you haven't read that story.
I recommend reading Scandal first, then Reckless.
The WITH ME series features connected characters, coastal areas in the Pacific Northwest, enemies-to-lovers, second chance at love, with unconventional billionaires and independent women.
Other books in this series
RISK - Caleb and Lis
SCANDAL - Luna and Connor
RECKLESS - Soleil and Garrett
This book contains language, mild violence, and sexual situations, intended for readers over 18.
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CHAPTER ONE
Garrett
Trouble shouldn’t walk in wearing red stilettos and tight jeans, but she did, and a stupid line from an old movie crashed through my brain.
Of all the gin joints, in all the towns…
Except this wasn’t a gin joint.
More like a whiskey bar where the lighting was low and the drinks were expensive. I sat in a corner. I like corners for reasons I won’t go into right now. I like bracing my back without explaining why, and the taste of whiskey in my glass—which I limit to one inch since alcohol doesn’t mix with my meds.
Meds I take when the pain gets bad.
As in ah, shit, can’t get off the floor bad.
The last thing I did not need was trouble walking through my door.
But she’d always walked that way, with a sexy sway to her hips and those long legs. Blonde hair flowed around her shoulders, the white blouse draped enough for cleavage, and I watched as she braced both hands against the bar, hooked one red heel over the brass foot rail and leaned in. Whispered to my bartender.
He polished a glass while she spoke, then answered, and she glanced toward my corner.
Something about that look had me lifting the whiskey, taking a slow sip.
“Mr. Kincade?”
“Soleil.” I stared at her flawless face. “Guess you don’t remember me. High school, long time ago. Wasn’t even sure it was you until you got close.”
She frowned when the recognition hit. “Quarterback.”
“Cheerleader.” I tipped my whiskey in salute, but—damn, the woman could put a thousand layers of sarcasm into one simple word. Actress, I reminded myself. Always was, always would be.
The actress who wrote the book.
Even without makeup, she was stunning. Pale gloss on her lips. Eyes like an ocean storm. At fifteen, she’d been memorable, but at thirty, she had a smoldering look that drove her fame on the big screen.
Heard she’d been doing pretty well on the small screen, too, not that I watched much television, and I sucked in more whiskey, rolled it around my tongue before swallowing. “Offer you anything?”
“You own this bar?”
I nodded and gestured for her to sit. She remained standing, and idly, I dangled the glass while she studied everything except me. The bar was a converted lumber-baron house on the bay side of a steep, piney hill, with marred wooden floors and jelly-glass fixtures. When her gaze strayed toward the walnut-mullioned windows, I could imagine the view since I’d stared at it for eighteen months. Newport’s working harbor. Warehouses and commercial fishing boats beside the touristy fudge shops and those selling rainbow whirligigs. Yaquina Bay Bridge arching in the distance, with the lights that shimmered across the bay at night when the fog wasn’t rolling in.
I leaned forward, setting aside the glass as Ethan—my bartender—slowly approached, his gaze flicking from me to trouble, then back. “Refill, Mr. Kincade?”
“One for each of us.”
Trouble stiffened at my arrogance—which I didn’t give a damn about. She could use the drink as a prop or leave it on the table, the way I imagined our conversation going, unwanted and then discarded. Quickly, I ran through what I knew about her. She’d starred in a few films, then wrote a tell-all book about her mega-divorce from a mega-actor who hadn’t been happy with the exposure. Neither had his lovers, who weren’t all out of the closet, but what the hell. Wasn’t my business who people slept with. Or why.
She had her share of lovers too, men who wanted the publicity, and when Ethan returned with two tumblers—one inch, no ice—I flicked my thumb against the table because it got on her precious nerves. “At the risk of being obvious, why are you here?”
“You have something I want.”
I had nothing trouble wanted, but the stiff way she sat down made me curious.
“I asked a friend who knows a guy who knows another guy who recommended you.”
Perfect—the guy who knows a guy line. What I suspected from the moment she walked into my bar wearing tight jeans and red heels. “What guy did your sister talk to?”
“I said a friend.”
“Right.” And since I had whiskey waiting, I took another bored sip. “Your sister. Who is the friend who talked to a guy who talked to a guy and told you what?”
“That you’d help me.”
“How?”
“Fake ID. I remember you were good at that in high school.”
My mouth firmed. “I was good at a lot of things in high school.”
“That’s why you got sacked in the championship game and we lost by one point.”
Amazing, when she hadn’t “remembered” me, then pulled that failure out of the air, along with the fake IDs. My gaze slid to her face and she turned away, hiding what I’d already guessed was there, and I wondered who’d briefed her, told her to pretend ignorance until I engaged in conversation.
No point in wondering, since the likely guy who knew a guy was Maxton Wells. And the guy Max knew was Connor Lange—who married Soleil St. Clair’s twin sister, Luna, a few months ago.
I needed the laugh.
Or more alcohol when she opened her clutch purse and withdrew a business card, pushed it across the table.
Blackthorn in bold black ink.
I picked it up for show, flicked it over to see if Max had written any sweet nothings on the back.
The card was blank. “Tell your sister that her guy who knows a guy knows shit.”
“Mr. Kincade—Garrett.” Her face tightened. “I don’t care if you don’t like me. What I need is a fake ID and advice on how to avoid someone. Cover my tracks and hide out—”
“Probably shouldn’t have written that book.”
“So, I deserve the target on my pretty cupcake ass?”
Funny, how she remembered that insult too.
Hadn’t thought it worth a fifteen-year grudge at the time I’d said it, though, and I tapped the Blackthorn card on the table as if I could cut the wood. Hating that Max sent her here like this. Needing help. When, years ago, she’d been a distraction I didn’t want.
Now she aroused every dominant impulse I had—and I had what she needed. But I was selfish enough not to offer it.
“You’re good,” I admitted. “You’ve go
t the nervous apprehension down pat. Love the way you bite that sweet lower lip—is that method acting? Where you plan the body language to fit the emotion?”
“I’m not acting.”
“A woman on the run doesn’t do it wearing fuck-me heels and jeans so tight I can see her ass. And she doesn’t ask for fake ID when her face is plastered all over cable TV.”
“Impressive,” she bit back, “coming from a man who went from failed quarterback to running a dive bar on the waterfront. All I need is information. How to hide. Should be easy, since you look like someone who hates being found.”
Her eyes glistened, and I felt like an ass, but she was right because I didn’t want to be found. Came from dangerous living, I suppose, from thinking only the next few minutes mattered. I’d built a company offering specialized private security, then chased after a woman and lost two men while doing it, men who followed orders until the day went to hell and left me standing.
Well, not standing. More like flat on my back and unable to move. Life will be different, the hospital shrink told me while he sat in his pristine white coat, gray trousers and brown loafers as if nothing ever touched him in his perfect world. You can’t do what you’ve done before.
He followed up with yoga advice, which I nearly laughed at before I stood and walked out the door. Kept on walking until I’d left that life behind, and now I let the burn of expensive alcohol warm my throat. “I can’t help you.”
“Meaning you won’t help me. At least be honest about it.”
Trouble reached for the drink she didn’t want as if her fingers weren’t trembling, and that false bravado invited all my monsters out to play. There was a time when I would have accepted the invitation. But I had different conversations in my head these days. Whatever she did, it was reckless—and I didn’t save reckless women.
Not anymore, and I leaned forward, shoved the Blackthorn card through the opening of her draping, silky blouse and into what I hoped was her bra.
“Run along, now… cupcake.”
She had grace. I’d give her that. Courage, dignity. Despite my assholery.
But Connor Lange was behind this meeting. He was Blackthorn, the way I used to be Ibiza, and sending Soleil St. Clair was just one more tactic in his damn intervention.
Con thought I hadn’t dealt with what had happened.
I had.
Breaking your back in two places made you deal with what had happened.
People did reckless things. I couldn’t clean up all the messes, no matter what Con or Max thought, and anger churned over the reality. Over the loss. While trouble took her sweet cupcake ass out of my bar and into the sunlight.
I shoved my chair back so hard it hit the wall, but I required momentum to get to my feet and down a short hall to my office.
Meds weren’t working.
Alcohol wasn’t working.
What numbed me out were the invoices stacked on the oak desk—the desk my step-dad used when he was alive—and my gaze flicked toward the photo on the wall. A fishing trawler. The Ibiza Trident. Crew of three. Tad Wilks, age 26. Javier Garcia, age 39.
And my step-father. Captain Oscar Botero, fondly remembered as Oz. Age 42.
Their boat capsized the summer before my senior year, all souls lost.
The bar off Yaquina Bay was the second most dangerous crossing along the Oregon Coast. Particularly when the storms blew up and the river was running strong.
The Ibiza Trident had one more haul of fish to pull. The crew took the chance they’d get back to port before the ocean got rough.
Nearly killed my mother, losing Oz like that. To the sea. Me, I stepped up, took the brunt, handled the anger on the football field and made a hell of a lot of mistakes. But the aggression kept me numb. And I was never meant for an athletic career.
I followed my own path the way Oz did—there was only Oz in my book, since my biological father disappeared when I was three.
Oz, with his bushy black beard and boisterous laugh. The knitted watchman’s cap he always wore. He had fifty words for “idiot” and I’d heard most. Loved the stories of Ibiza he told when I was a kid. I knew he’d christened his trawler Ibiza for his homeland, and Trident for the three of us. Mom, Oz, and me.
One reason I left Newport after graduation was Oz.
One reason I named my company Ibiza was also Oz. Why I came home like a whipped dog when it all fell apart.
I was looking for something.
I’d found it here, once, but I’d been too jock-stupid and angry to know what it was. And then trouble walks in, screwing up my perfect world with one pouty look and that whip-sharp tongue I wanted sliding all over me while we got naked and serious.
Ethan loomed in the office doorway, slapped his palm against the jamb to grab my attention.
“Boss… thought you’d want to know. Maggs is coming up the hill. I’ll tell her you’re not here.”
“I’m taking off, anyway.” I stood, shoved in the chair and left through the rear entrance. I had an alternate path to the waterfront, where my sixty-foot blue water fishing boat waited. Maggs wouldn’t see me, but in the distance, I saw trouble.
She was surrounded by kids and posing for selfies. One more thing that revealed the lie.
A woman wanting to hide didn’t stand in the open, craving attention, and I turned in disgust, breathed in before bending down to tackle the tie lines.
“Hey, old dude—I’ll get that!” Tad Junior stepped between me and the cleats welded to my private dock. He was sixteen and too much like me, stubborn. Focused. He’d been in diapers when his father died along with mine, and we were brothers in tragedy.
“Can’t let you fall in the water,” he added with that teenage smirk I’d once perfected, and I knuckled his hair because he hated it.
“Ain’t that old, kid.” I stepped back to give him room. “Not ditching school again, are you?”
“Nah. Day off. Teacher in-service. You see Dacree of Wyvern over there?”
“Who?”
“Her.” Tad jerked his chin toward trouble. “Soleil St. Clair, only she was Dacree of Wyvern on that cable show, The Four Kingdoms. Where you been? What rock?”
“Must have missed it.”
“Duuude, that show won five Emmys. She got eaten.”
My mind went straight to the dirty place. “Eaten?”
“By her dragon.” Tad Junior made quick work of my cleat hitch like he was born to the trade. “Dacree’s evil cousin fed it ’shrooms and the dragon tripped out. Ripped her apart. Cold shit but totally epic.”
“I’ll check my DVR,” I said, wondering what kind of acting she’d used for that scene. “Maybe I recorded it.”
“Sucks, the way they killed her off.” Tad focused on coiling my second tie line so the old dude wouldn’t trip when he got on his own damn boat. “They did it with CGI, and it’s all over the feeds. Fans demanding that they bring her back.”
“Kinda hard to come back from dragon dinner.”
I sounded older than old, but I glanced at trouble again. The crowd drifted away while she walked toward a coffee shop—the shop Tad Junior’s mom, Missy, built from scratch.
But my tie line mocked with a neat coil, and I stepped toward the rear deck. Tad said the Ibiza was larger than some big-city apartments; I understood his boat envy. The Ibiza was my sanctuary, built for the ocean, and I could afford luxury that came with a six-figure price tag. “See ya around, kid.”
“Sure thing, dude.” Tad shoved both hands into the pockets of his jeans. I disappeared into the salon, then up the interior staircase to the enclosed bridge deck. The dual engines rumbled to life. Whitecaps flicked as the wind came up, but the trip would be quick across the bay. Then I’d be home, where I’d force trouble’s image from my mind. Forget the urge to fist my hands in her hair, grind against her body until I’d burned her from my system.
From my memory.
Anger had me whipping out my cell and shooting off a quick text to Maxton Wells: WTF???
His reply was immediate: She get there okay?
Been and gone. Don’t try that shit again.
Fuck! Calling. Answer if you like your ass.
My ringtone chimed. I swiped the screen. “Max—he can’t pull me back in with some damn stunt just because it suits him.”
“This is personal for Con. You owe him, Garrett.”
“I owe him nothing. He can have it all. I told him that. Told you. I don’t know how to make it clear—”
“Soleil St. Clair is his sister-in-law, you bloody ass, and someone wants to hurt her. Who the hell else would he trust, other than you?”
CHAPTER TWO
Soleil
Garrett Kincade.
Why hadn’t I made the connection before I got blindsided in his damn bar?
Realized G. Kincade meant Garrett Kincade?
But I knew why.
Three nights ago, I panicked and called Loony for help. Luna’s my twin, and she listened, then called Maxton Wells. Max is the guy who knows a guy, and since he’s head of security for Blackthorn—the mega-company Luna’s billionaire husband owns—I never questioned the information.
Stupid, right?
When Connor Lange doesn’t like me. In fact, he probably still hates me and only cooperated because Luna asked. And because they could send me to the one man who would refuse to help.
Maybe I deserved the rejection, but it still hurt, knowing Luna sent me to that gorgeous bar with the view and the imagined evening lights. Where I leaned in, asked the bartender for G. Kincade—never realizing I was asking for the first, worst crush I ever had.
Not until I stood there, staring at a man with whiskey in his hand and a flint-hard hazel light in his eyes.
Super fun, when recognition hit.
We’d been in high school together. I crushed hard for him. He was a jerk about it. Then he moved away. We moved away. Life went on, and Garrett Kincade had never been the kind of man who went home again.