Just Lucy's Luck [Grey River 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)
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Grey River 2
Just Lucy’s Luck
When bad things happen, is fate or bad luck to blame? Lucy Blake didn't believe in fate, but knew how dangerous bad luck could be.
Lucy was having a really bad…well, life! She put it all down to having the worst luck in the world. She had always thought that perhaps someone had replaced the L in her Luck with an F. Running for her life, being chased by a drug dealing, murdering people trafficker was just the icing on top of a craptastic cake. She found herself in Grey River hurt and alone, but with offers of help and protection coming from the two EMTs who had saved her.
Cody and Brendan Anderson were Grey River Pack beta. They find more than an unconscious woman when they answer a call for help. They had just had the very good fortune of finding their mate! Now they just had to convince her to let them keep her.
Genre: Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal, Shape-shifter
Length: 53,886 words
JUST LUCY’S LUCK
Grey River 2
Maia Dylan
MENAGE AMOUR
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Amour
JUST LUCY'S LUCK
Copyright © 2015 by Maia Dylan
E-book ISBN: 978-1-63259-209-5
First E-book Publication: April 2015
Cover design by Harris Channing
All art and logo copyright © 2015 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
Dear Readers,
If you have purchased this copy of Just Lucy's Luck by Maia Dylan from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.
Regarding E-book Piracy
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This is Maia Dylan’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Maia Dylan’s right to earn a living from her work.
Amanda Hilton, Publisher
www.SirenPublishing.com
www.BookStrand.com
DEDICATION
Thank you to all the Siren Authors who have befriended me in the past few months. Your guidance and support has been invaluable, and I was truly blessed by the fates with good luck when you reached out to me.
And to my husband, who is most definitely my fated one.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
About the Author
JUST LUCY’S LUCK
Grey River 2
MAIA DYLAN
Copyright © 2015
Chapter 1
Pain had levels. That was something that Lucy Blake had never known before. Since she had stowed away in the rear cab of this truck trailer as it rocked and rolled its way along the highway taking her God knew where, she had come to appreciate each and every level on this newly discovered spectrum. There was the dull level, the aching pain that was constant but dulled by the spiked adrenaline that flowed through her entire system. Next came the hello-I’m-still-here level. That was a really hard level to deal with because the pain-relieving adrenaline that she had been running on since she had ran for her life from her apartment had abandoned her.
Stupid adrenaline.
Then came the son-of-a-cracker level where she had to bite her tongue to keep from shouting out at the pain. This level was amplified by the fact that the driver of the vehicle she had decided to stow away in had obviously deemed today ABBA Revival Day and played what sounded like the band’s greatest hits. Super Trouper must have been a personal favorite as she was subjected to that fifteen times. Fifteen loud times. She had the worst luck!
At least the volume hid her whimpers of pain as the rocking of the vehicle caused her to roll onto her sore ribs time and time again. Ever the optimist, always looking for the silver lining, Lucy realized it could have been worse. She could have been lying on her right side and rolling time and time again on her really sore ribs, and then no volume level in the world would have hidden the sounds of her screams. A while ago, she had fallen head first into the next level, the this-can’t-be-good level. This level was a relief and a major concern all at once. This level had the pain subsiding and it came with a lethargy that compelled her to close her eyes and sleep. Something she was fairly certain was not something she should be doing, despite her body almost demanding that she simply give up.
But she was not a quitter, never had been never would be. She hadn’t given up at sixteen when her mother tried to get her to do a favor for one of her long line of “‘boyfriends’” in return for something to eat. Instead of doing as her mother had asked, and given her mother’s new flavor of the hour a blow job, she had simply left the apartment and never looked back. She was found a week later trying to steal bread from a bakery, refusing to give them any details about where she had come from she ended up in the system until she was eighteen.
She hadn’t given up the first time that Seth had shown his true colors and raised his hand to her. No, she had taken it for three months while she planned, scrimped, saved, and worked double shifts at the Greasy Spoon to get enough money to leave him. And she certainly hadn’t given up the night before, when Seth had effectively sold her to his friend—no, his dealer, Mani—to wipe his debt.
Lucy had always been wary of Mani. He had a way of looking at her that made her feel
like she needed to have a shower and scrub herself down with Lysol. She had avoided him like the plague in the four months she had shared an apartment with Seth. He would often be in the apartment when she returned from her shift at the restaurant. He would use any excuse to touch her, and it freaked her out. On a couple of occasions he had cornered her and told her that she was going to be his. The crazy son of a hairy yak actually thought she would be honored that he had chosen her! As if!
She hadn’t known he was due to come over last night when she returned after her late shift. She had tucked a portion of her pay and tip money in the pasta sauce jar she had squirreled away under a lose floorboard of the hallway that led to their apartment. She knew that Seth regularly searched the apartment for anything of value to sell to feed his disgusting habit so ensured that she only ever took the minimum back to the apartment to avoid his suspicion and hid the rest. She had almost a grand in that jar.
One more night and she would have been gone. One more shift and she would have had enough for a deposit on her own place, but she was Lucy Blake and the unluckiest person on the planet. Add to that Seth’s addiction and his desire to keep his kneecaps intact by paying off his debt and and—voilà!—you have a recipe that completely ruined all of her plans and very potentially her life. That son of a humpless camel!
He had started in on her the moment she had stepped in the door. Never before had he been so violent! The odd slap or punch yeah, but this beating was something she had never thought him possible of. She lost count of the number of punches and kicks he had given her.
Then came the whole crazy, surely-I’m-dreaming moment with the “I’ve sold you to Mani, you useless bitch” conversation. Mani had turned up with his two henchmen to take possession of his new property. Lucy had played possum on the floor of the main room, listening to the heated conversation between the two men. Mani was extremely unhappy that Seth had used Lucy as a personal punching bag. At first Lucy was taken aback, thinking that maybe Mani wasn’t all bad. The next words out of his mouth after he finished a string of Spanish, which Lucy was fairly certain had turned the air blue, compounded the fact that she well and truly did not know men. A–at all.
“For fuck’s sake, Seth!” Mani had screamed into Seth’s increasingly pale face.
Lucy could see spittle landing on his cheeks.
“How in the hell, am I supposed to make back the money you owe me if the bitch I plan to sell is beaten all to hell! The men I have lined up to pay me a fucking small fortune for her, wanted to use their own fists, you dumb son of a bitch!”
Lucy watched with an almost dispassionate air as Mani brought back his arm and backhanded Seth across the face.
Ha! Let’s see how you like it, she had thought as she lay there trying to think small thoughts in order to keep the attention off her prone body lying bleeding on the living room floor. What happened next was a blur. A flurry of fists and kicks that Mani had ordered his men to deliver landed onto a whimpering Seth. At one point Lucy thought they were going to let him go as they eased back for a moment and let him crawl into the small kitchenette.
It was then that Mani pulled a gun from a holster at his back and with an evil grin fired into the kitchen. Lucy watched Seth’s legs twitch as when the bullets hit their target, the only part of him visible from her vantage point.
So this latest chapter in Lucy’s life that if she were writing it she would entitle “The Time I Witnessed a Maniac Confess to People Smuggling Commit Murder,” ended as when the three thugs, still assuming that she was passed out, walked into the kitchen to discuss how they would get rid of Seth’s body.
The adrenaline that had assisted her in level one of the pain spectrum had ramped up in her system giving her the strength to get up off the floor, out to the hallway, pry the board loose that hid her get away money, run the three blocks to the truck stop near the apartment, and leap into the first unlocked truck she came across.
Now, here she was, in the rear of a truck driven by an unsuspecting truck driver with a love for ABBA and questionable personal hygiene, fighting to stay awake…or conscious. Tomato, tomahto. The truck began to slow down, and Lucy squelched a scream as the driver turned left and she rolled hard onto her ribs. He powered down through the gears, and Lucy realized that he must have been pulling over. Suddenly there was a surge to her system as her old friend adrenaline came screaming back into her life. Hello, old friend!
As the truck came to a stop and the driver levered himself out of the cab, Lucy listened for all she was worth, as the crunch of gravel under foot signaled the driver moving away from the truck, and going on adrenaline alone, Lucy managed to drag her poor abused body out of the cab and onto the gravel road. Looking around at all the trucks lined up around her, she surmised that she was in another truck stop. She had no idea where, but as long as she wasn’t in Dallas anymore, she was fine with wherever the hell she was. It must be north of Texas as the climate was cooler, not as humid. Because the sun was setting and she had finished her shift and been home at around ten o’clock the night before, she must have been in that truck for near on sixteen hours.
Walking on legs that shook, Lucy made her way toward the restaurant attached to the gas station. Pulling the hood up of the sweatshirt she had brought from the truck—and yes, she had paid for it, she left ten bucks in the cab for the driver—she tucked her short black hair behind her ears and ducked to hide her face from the people going about their business. She walked into the diner made her way toward the restrooms that were off to the side. The heavenly smell of burgers and steak assaulted her senses, but before she could even think about food—and to be fair, there was hardly a time that she didn’t think about food—she needed to do some damage control on her face. She didn’t want to draw any unwanted attention.
Once in the bathroom, she locked the door and leaned back against it with a sigh. She couldn’t stop shaking, and her legs felt like lead. Pull it together, Lucy! Taking several shallow breaths as her ribs would not allow her the deep breaths she needed to calm herself, she shuffled over to the sink and mirror. She winced when she looked at herself. She looked like something out of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Her skin was pale verging on translucent. She had a dark circle under her left eye, a huge black circle around her nearly swollen right eye, a split lip, and a dried blood left a trail on her chin and down her neck and she knew it stained the neck and front of her black T-shirt. Probably the only reason she hadn’t raised too much attention as the blood wasn’t visible.
Tears filled her eyes as she wallowed a little and embraced a shot of self-pity. The woman in the mirror had the look of someone who had lived through hell. Jeepers, that woman could write a whole book on hell and it would effectively be her true life story! So much pain and misery and she was only twenty-two. She unzipped her sweatshirt and shrugged carefully out of it, gasping as pain radiated through her entire rib cage. Owie, owie, owie.
Next, she needed to lift up her shirt p and see how bad the cuts to her abdomen were. Seth had decided to up his pleasure the night before and tried his hand at a little knife sport. When she went to tug her shirt off, pain exploded throughout her as the blood from her wounds had dried and sealed the cloth to her skin. Unable to prevent herself from screaming at the pain she felt her legs give out completely and knew she was headed for the floor. Thankfully, she was unconscious for the landing as darkness pulled her into its welcome embrace.
* * * *
“Come on, AJ, move your arse, boy!”
“Go, Brendan! Don’t let that smoke-jumping bastard get the better of you!”
“Run, Forrest!”
Brendan Anderson tried to block out the catcalls from his friends and family and to concentrate on running up the twelve flights of steps in the training area of Grey River’s fire department. It was hard to run and carry a fire hose that weighed close to 140 pounds without dropping it or, worse, missing a step and falling flat on your face in front of said family and friends. That last goading
comment had come from his own twin brother, Cody—the bastard, no doubt laughing his ass off.
Why the fuck had Brendan allowed himself to be dragged into Cody’s bet with their cousins, AJ and Sam, about who could complete this insanely difficult training exercise the fastest. AJ and Sam owned Country Blue, the bar in town, but were also two of the county’s famed volunteer smoke jumpers and had to complete this run each year within a specified time limit in full gear in order to remain qualified. But Cody was adamant that Brendan could hold his own. And like a fucking idiot he had allowed himself to believe him and now he found himself in a race against his cousin to carry twelve long fire hoses, weighing 140 pounds each, up twelve flights of stairs. Even for a fucking wolf shifter with increased strength and speed and the totally cool ability to shift into a wolf at will that was a tall order.
Fighting for breath and calling on all the hidden strength and speed of his wolf, he charged up the stairs with his last hose. He knew he was losing to AJ, but not by much. Ever the sore loser, he felt his wolf give him a burst of speed that saw him almost leaping the last two flights and exiting the stairwell onto the roof. He ran to the edge of the building and threw his hose on top of the pile of eleven others he had humped up the stairs. Dropping his hands to his knees, he panted, no wolf pun intended, and turned his head to look for his cousin.
Who was standing upright and looking for all the world like he had been there all night. Fuck! He had lost, and the bastard looked like he was barely even breathing hard.