Not Anticipated (Red Eyes MC Romance Series - Book #4)

by Blair Grey

  “I’m afraid that Braxton is going to go after Darren,” I finally admitted. “When he was in here earlier with Grant, they were talking about something. They shut up as soon as I got close to their table, but they both looked kind of guilty.”

  “Did you try asking him about it?” Candice asked.

  “Yeah.” I sighed. “And Braxton assured me that even though they had work tonight, it was nothing to do with him.”

  “And you don’t trust him?” Candice asked, arching an eyebrow at me.

  “I’m just worried.” I sighed.

  “Please,” Candice said, rolling her eyes. “I’m sure that Braxton could take Darren in a fight. Easily. And maybe then Darren would finally get the message and stop messing with you. It might be for the best.”

  “Yeah, but what happens afterward?” I asked. “What do I do when Darren decides to sue Braxton for assault or something?” I shook my head. “I just don’t want Braxton involved in this. I don’t want him to do anything crazy. Darren might have gone overboard since we broke up, but he wasn’t terrible at first.”

  “You’re too nice to him; that’s the whole problem,” Candice said, shaking her head. “But anyway, Grant and Braxton were in here for most of the night, and they were drinking. I doubt they’d be drinking if they planned on going after Darren, right? Clear heads and all of that.” She shrugged. “And Darren wasn’t in here tonight. So nothing happened, and it’s all good.”

  “But how many more nights do I have to deal with this?” I asked, trying not to let the panic creep into my voice. “He showed up at my house yesterday too. I can’t help thinking that he must really be stalking me. Like, watching me all the time.”

  “Oh, honey,” Candice said, shaking her head. She squared her shoulders. “I know you don’t want to do it, but we’re going to finish up here and then we’re going to go to the police, and you’re going to tell them about all of this. I think you’ll feel better when you’re not dealing with it alone, and if Darren really is stalking you, I’m sure they can do something to help you.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean, maybe I’m the one who’s going crazy.”

  “Oh no,” Candice said, shaking her head as well. She pulled me into a hug. “Trust me, there’s one crazy in this situation, and it’s him. But we’re going to get through this, I promise.” She pulled away, smiling at me. “What do you think, can you finish the stuff that’s in the sink while I take out the trash?”

  “Okay,” I said, sniffling a little.

  “Good girl,” Candice said. She grabbed the trash bags and headed for the door. We had already locked it when we closed up for the night, so she had to first unlock it and then open it.

  When she did so, though, she immediately slammed the door closed and started locking it again. “Call the police,” she said over her shoulder. “Now!”

  “What’s going on?” I asked, rushing toward the door and peering out through the window. I swore under my breath. Darren, of course. I sighed. “I’m sure he just wants to talk to me again,” I said. “Just open the door.”

  But Darren, having had the door shut in his face, was going nuts out there. I could hear him yelling incoherently, and then I heard the thud as he charged at the door, trying to break it open. I swallowed hard, exchanging a glance with Candice.

  “The police,” she snapped again, clearly wondering why I was still just standing there. But I couldn’t help it; I was transfixed by the scene outside the window. Darren was pounding on the glass now, and I was terrified that it was going to shatter. If he really was the one who had broken my car window, this wouldn’t be the first window he broke.

  The glass held, but Candice finally grabbed the phone herself, dialing nine-one-one and asking them to be there as soon as humanly possible. Darren went back to body-slamming the door, trying desperately to get inside, his face twisted into a look of rage. I couldn’t stop thinking back over our relationship. There had never been any sign of anything like this. I didn’t know what had gone wrong between us, but I had never realized that they could go so drastically wrong.

  But they were about to get worse.

  I saw a flicker of movement behind Darren and realized there was someone running down the street toward the bar. And I knew that big, muscular form. My fingers were at the locks immediately, trying to undo all of them at once, knowing that I needed to diffuse the situation before it got out of hand.

  Candice grabbed my hands, trying to stop me from opening the door. “What the hell are you doing?” she asked. “He’s still out there. You can’t. Just let the police deal with this!”

  I yanked my hands back, fumbling with the locks once more. “Braxton’s out there!” I told Candice, a hysterical note in my voice. “I have to stop him before something terrible happens.”

  I knew that I should never have told Braxton about Darren. Even if it had threatened our friendship, even if it had threatened our almost-but-not-quite relationship. I had known exactly what was going to happen here.

  But it was too late for those regrets now.

  By the time I got the door open, Braxton was on top of Darren, his fists flying as he landed punch after punch on Darren’s face. “Stop!” I screamed, going to Braxton and grabbing his arm. But he just shook me off.

  I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know why Grant wasn’t stopping him. And then, I heard the sirens, and three flashing patrol cars pulled up around us.

  It was as though everything started moving in slow motion. The police jumped out of their cars and grabbed Braxton, pulling him off Darren, while a couple others knelt next to Darren, checking on him and then saying things into their radios. I wondered how bad it was, if he needed an ambulance.

  But he wasn’t the one I was worried about. There was no question now that Braxton had beat up Darren. If Darren wanted to press charges, it would only be too easy. And Braxton seemed to realize that, too, judging by the look he gave Grant. “Get out of here, kid,” I heard him say, but it was as though from far away.

  Grant nodded and slipped off into the darkness.

  But beyond my fear, I was just angry. Not least of which was because, yet again, here I was feeling helpless. They had Braxton now, and there was nothing that I could do to stop them. “I told you not to get involved!” I yelled, hitting both my palms against Braxton’s chest as the police officers put handcuffs on him. “I told you to stay out of it! Why didn’t you just listen to me?”

  “Hey,” Braxton said sharply, scowling down at me. “I was just trying to protect you.”

  “That’s why the cops are here,” I said, gesturing around. “They’re the ones who are supposed to protect me. Not you.”

  “How could I know that you were finally going to call the cops?” Braxton snapped. “You haven’t wanted to tell them about any of this before, even though the guy’s been obsessing over you for long enough. You should have seen his apartment.”

  I stared at him. “You went to his apartment?” I exploded. “What part of not having anything to do with this did you not understand? I specifically told you to stay out of it.”

  “And what, just let you get hurt?” Braxton asked.

  “No!” I said. “He would never have hurt me. I would have handled it. I could have handled it.” I lowered my voice, shaking my head. “You’re not my boyfriend. You’re not the one who’s meant to protect me.”

  Braxton stared at me for a long moment and then huffed out a laugh. “Fuck you too,” he said.

  Then, the police pushed him into the back of one of the squad cars, and they drove away.

  The thing was, even as I said it, I knew it was a terrible thing to say. Nor was it really true. I might have been adamant, this whole time, that we weren’t in a relationship, that I couldn’t be his girlfriend. I had been afraid of just something like this. But we had been acting like we were in a relationship. And I knew that he had feelings for me.

  And deep down, I was glad that Darren had gotten w
hat was coming to him. I hoped he was okay, but I also hoped that this meant I would never have to deal with him again. At the same time, though, I couldn’t help feeling betrayed by Braxton. I had told him not to have anything to do with this. To stay away from Darren. I had trusted him to listen to me. And he hadn’t, not at all.

  I was scared of what might happen now. And I was scared of the raw, empty feeling inside of me when I thought that I might have lost him for good. There was nothing I could do about it. And this all felt too much like watching Maggie slip away in the hospital.

  I sank down on the sidewalk, tears streaming down my face. What the hell had I done?

  33

  Braxton

  I had to admit; I was kind of worried when they brought me to jail. I didn’t regret what I had done. I had shown up at the bar and seen the way that Darren was going nuts outside. It was only a matter of time before he broke a window or something and someone got seriously hurt. And if that was Mia, it would just kill me. No, I didn’t feel bad about jumping in to defend her.

  But in the back of my head, I knew that instead of letting my emotions get the better of me, I really should have just held him down. I could easily have pinned him to the ground until the police got there. That would have been the better thing to do.

  Instead, Darren was pretty much a free man, and I was here getting my fingerprints and mug shots taken.

  I tried to think if there was anything on me that the sheriff could use to tie me to Red Eyes. Anything in my wallet or anything else in my pockets. I had my tattoos, of course, but he couldn’t know about those. I wondered if it really mattered, though. The sheriff knew that I was in Red Eyes, and even if there was nothing on me at the moment linking me to them, I had a feeling he would find some sort of evidence. This was a prime chance for him to make a big political move in cleaning up Las Cruces.

  He wouldn’t even care that Darren was the guy that he really should be after. I would make better headlines for him.

  I felt sick to my stomach, and I hated that that was the way our justice system worked. But then again, it wasn’t like I hadn’t been involved in Red Eyes. I had made my bed. And everything that I had done along the way, up to and including beating Darren up, had been worth it.

  I was just terrified that while I was locked up here, he’d find some other way to go after Mia. I knew that I had gotten him pretty good, but who knew how long they were going to keep me here?

  There was one other guy in the holding cell with me, and he sidled over to me not long after I arrived, stinking of booze. "Rough night, huh?” he asked, gesturing at my bruised knuckles.

  I rolled my eyes. “Yep,” I said, not really wanting to talk to him.

  “Me too,” the other guy said. He sighed exaggeratedly. “You know, they really have no reason to keep me in here. They’ve got me here for drinking, but I’ve never had a drink in my life, I swear it.” He put a hand over his heart, like that would make his story more believable.

  I gave him a look, but I kept my thoughts to myself.

  “I’m telling you, what they’re doing right here isn’t legal,” the man continued. “They should be the ones behind bars.” He laughed a little. “I guess they kind of are, though, if you look at things from our perspective.” He went up and rattled the door for a moment, looking out at the cell officer, who I could tell wasn’t pleased to have this guy in here.

  The man finally sighed and came back to the bench near me. “What about you; who’d you beat up?”

  “No one,” I muttered.

  “Ah, punching the walls again, are you? ’S not a fair fight. The walls always win.”

  I rolled my eyes. “No, I wasn’t punching the walls,” I told him.

  “Then who was it? You can tell me; I don’t have anyone to tell. You’re my only friend in here.”

  “I’m the only other person in here,” I pointed out.

  “Same difference,” the guy said dismissively. “Come on, what’s your story? Let’s make the time pass a little faster. Entertain us.”

  I shook my head, but finally, I just said, “I was defending a bartender against an unruly dude twice her size.”

  “Huh, can’t believe they’ve got you in here for that,” the guy said, and he suddenly sounded a lot more lucid. “Wouldn’t happen to be Mia Lamb, would it?”

  I looked over at him in surprise. “How the hell did you know?” I asked. I narrowed my eyes at him. “Do you know Darren?”

  He shook his head. “Nah, don’t know him. But I know Mia pretty well.”

  “Even though you’ve never had a drink in your life?” I asked skeptically.

  The man laughed and held out his hand. “My name’s Jack Renshaw,” he said.

  “Braxton,” I said, shaking his hand. “How do you know Mia?”

  “She was on trial a few years back for killing her father,” Jack said, his eyes clouding as he thought back. “It was one of those cases that you just didn’t know who to believe, really. Solid evidence on both sides. And a lot of anger in that courtroom there.” He shrugged. “But anyway, in the end, she was acquitted.”

  I stared at him, trying to reconcile his words with the image that I had of Mia. I could barely believe it, though. She’d never told me anything about her parents, but she had told me about her sister, and I’d been able to tell that she was really twisted up with the loss of her sister. So to think that she might have killed her father? Impossible. No one would ever believe that.

  I shook my head. “You must have it wrong,” I said.

  “No, I’m telling you. Mia Lamb. She works at, what’s that bar called? Sunshine.”

  I frowned. “How do you know all of this?”

  Jack flashed his teeth at me. “I was her lawyer,” he said. He suddenly jumped up and bounded over to the bars of the holding cell again. “And this whole police department is in for a suing!” he shouted. “You have me illegally detained here.”

  “Sir, I’m going to need you to step back from the door,” the holding cell officer told him mildly.

  “Or you’ll what?” Jack asked, but he obediently came back to the bench, shaking his head and muttering under his breath the whole time. After a couple minutes of silence, he glanced over at me. “So what the hell did she need defending for this time? You know, from one defendant to another.” He grinned at his pun, and I rolled my eyes.

  But hey, there was no reason not to tell him, and maybe it would make the time pass a little quicker. I didn’t even know how long I’d been in here. They’d taken my watch and everything else when they’d brought me in here.

  I shrugged. “There’s this guy, her ex-boyfriend. He’s a total nutjob. Pictures of her all over his house and everything.”

  “Jeez, sounds like a bad situation,” Jack said. He snorted. “But I bet I know why she didn’t have the police deal with it.” He looked pointedly out toward the officers beyond our cell, and suddenly a lot of things made sense.

  If I believed Jack, Mia had run-ins with the police before. Maybe some not-so-good interactions with them. I remembered what she had said about Darren having connections, and I wondered if she knew who his connections were because of her previous trial. Maybe she’d done more things than just kill her father. Maybe she was afraid that she’d end up back on trial herself.

  Or at least that the police wouldn’t believe her when she told them about Darren. She might have been acquitted before, but that probably meant there was a pretty strong bias against her in here. Of course, she wouldn’t have wanted to have anything to do with the police.

  Suddenly, I had to wonder about what she’d said before, about how I should have let her handle this herself. I felt a chill run down my spine. What if she had killed a man before? What if she had been preparing to kill Darren as well? She didn’t have the advantage of muscles and size like I did, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t ways. She could have been planning something the whole time that we were in Florida.

  But I didn’t know why
I was dwelling on all of this. I didn’t even know if Jack was telling the truth, if he had the right person. He might claim that he had never had a drink in his life, but he definitely reeked of the stuff. I didn’t know if I could believe him.

  Yet again, here I was, trying to figure out if I could trust Mia or if she was lying to me. That was the part of all of this that I hated the most. She kept insisting that I wasn’t her boyfriend, even as I was arrested for trying to defend her. And I realized that when I really looked back at things, she had never treated me like one. She didn’t give me a single reason ever to trust her. She didn’t let me in.

  Except when she was talking about her sister. But who knew what the truth of that was? We’d touched on it briefly, not long enough for me to really learn the details. Hell, at this point I might almost believe that she had killed Maggie as well. I could believe anything. Because she hadn’t given me any reason to doubt Jack’s words.

  I hated that feeling. And I knew that even if I got out of here, things would never be the same between Mia and me again. I closed my eyes, tilting my head back against the wall. An aching feeling of loss opened up inside of me. But you couldn’t lose something that you had never had.

  “Hey, kid,” Jack suddenly said, elbowing me. “They’re here for you. Because they’re definitely not here for me. They’re going to leave me to rot in here, without representation, for the rest of my life.”

  I opened my eyes and saw that the guards were actually opening the door and gesturing toward me. I glanced over at Jack. “Good luck, man,” I said to him.

  “Yeah, you too,” Jack said. He peered over at me and then cackled. “You’re going to need it,” he called as I walked out of the cell.

  When I got to the front of the station, Ray was waiting there, his arms folded over his chest. He grabbed my arm in a vice grip as soon as I had my things, steering me outside. “I just had to post bail for you,” he said, his tone icy. “After I specifically told you to let me handle things with Darren.”