by Sybil Bartel
“Which time? When I was wondering why the hell she was drinking at six a.m., or when she was trying to head-butt me after catching her before she pitched face-first into the coffee table?”
Candle set the bottle down. “Don’t grab her from behind, and you’ll be fine.” He turned toward the front door. “I got shit to handle. Good luck with her.”
He didn’t say good luck with sarcasm or even sincerity. He said it as if I were well and truly fucked. “All right.” Damn it. “I’ll take her on one condition.”
His hand on the door, Candle looked at me. “You think you’re owed a condition?”
Hell yes. “You don’t have another option.” Not if he wanted someone outside his MC to take her.
He puffed up his prison muscles like he could intimidate me and glared. “You’re in my fucking house, without permission, and you’re still breathing. That’s your fucking condition.”
I called his bluff. “Fine. She stays.”
“Why are you even here?” he snapped.
“Same reason you gave her. Talerco sent me.” Talon didn’t send me, he’d asked, but I’d stupidly jumped at the chance.
“Right.” Candle smirked. “Keep lying to yourself. Like that won’t catch up to you.”
“You really wanna go down that road, pendejo?” I nodded toward the front door. “You’re the one with his past sitting outside waiting to fucking pounce on your woman.” I had more shit going on than I could handle in a thirty-hour day. I didn’t need to stand here and take his shit.
Candle snorted. “My past ain’t got nothing on hers.”
Cagey prick. “What’s she coming from?”
“Nothing. Get her out of here.”
I wanted to know what the hell he was talking about, but first he needed to know I wouldn’t fucking kidnap her. “I’m not taking her against her will.”
He kept talking like I hadn’t said shit. “Take her to your place, and when she sobers up, I’ll talk to her. She knows I have club business to handle. She’ll know it’s better for her to not be around.”
I hated the asshole, but even I had to acknowledge he was trying to do right by getting her away from his shit. “What club business?”
“Damage control.”
“What’s left to control?” The Lone Coasters had imploded after he’d gone to jail. Their president was in the wind and anyone left outside had gone rogue. Or they had until this morning.
Candle leveled me with a look. “My reputation.” He walked out the door.
NO SLEEP AND TOO MUCH alcohol were making my hands shake. My chest hurt like a heart attack, and I couldn’t focus. Fucking Candle. André. Whatever. I hated them both.
All set to tell them both to fuck off and take my chances on my own, I opened the door, but the voice I’d dreamed about for months made me pause.
“All right,” André sighed. “I’ll take her on one condition.”
I shut my bedroom door, and every embarrassing second of that morning in his condo six months ago flooded my head.
André Luna. Cuban Boy. President and owner of Luna and Associates, a damn personal security firm. Six feet, two inches of pure golden muscle and melting chocolate-brown eyes that sold a promise of lies. I hated him. I hated his strong muscles, and I hated every inch of his stupid, charismatic, heavenly musk smelling, infuriatingly alpha self.
My eyes filled with tears.
I hated him touching me. I hated his presence. I hated his smile that was more beautiful than a lifetime of peace.
God, I wanted him.
I’d wanted him six months ago, and now I wanted him more. Just once, I wanted to know what it would be like to be in his arms, just once before….
I shook my head.
Fucking focus, Kendall.
Goddamn it. I hated the fucking alcohol fucking with my head, and I hated my own damn thoughts. I hated Candle for going to jail and leaving me without a backup plan, but more, I hated the sexy Cuban in the living room who’d made me want more from this godforsaken life than I was ever going to get.
God-fucking-damn it.
I sucked in a breath. Then I ripped my favorite slip off and threw it on the ground. Stupid slip. Stupid clothes. I grabbed the first thing in the closet my hands landed on and pulled it over my head. Tight and black.
Okay, Kendall Reed, whoever the fuck you are, suck it up. Deep breath. Focus, focus, focus. Candle home. Kick out the Cuban. Disappear. Hate everyone.
But put shoes on first.
Hate needed shoes. Really good shoes.
My vision blurred. I swayed. Then I closed one eye and saw them.
Boots.
Like the military boots Cuban Boy wore. Laces and treads. I snatched them off the floor then stumbled to my bed. Candle’s bed. Because this was Candle’s house. Everything was his. Nothing was mine. Except the boots. And the Jack Daniel’s I’d been drinking for a week as I waited for a tattooed biker to come home. A tattooed biker who was no less military than a Cuban Boy. But Cuban Boy was a different kind of military. Fresher, more there. More everything, like he’d never left the military. Not like Candle. Candle took his training and twisted it all to hell, then spat it out with a mouthful of rage and regret.
Cuban Boy didn’t do that. He packed his service in the Marines into an impenetrable second skin and wore it like the proud armor of an Olympian gold medalist in badassery.
I yanked at the laces. I hated laces. I hated rope. I hated anything that bound my body. But almost everything I wore had laces or strings. Because I was fucking bound.
I sucked in another breath.
Then I tied the boots tight and stood.
Fuck Cuban Boy. Fuck Tarquin “Candle” Scott. Fuck them all.
“I’M NOT GOING WITH YOU.”
Mierda. Second time she’d caught me off guard. My expression locked, I turned away from the window. Her hair combed, wearing a black dress that was tighter than her nightgown, she was more beautiful than I remembered. “Yes, you are.”
She gave me a defiant look. “I have somewhere I need to be.”
I half smiled to throw her off. “I’ll drive you.”
“You’re not driving me anywhere.” She pushed past me in knee-high lace-up boots. “You’re leaving.”
The rumble of motorcycles revving shook the windows in the old beach house as her natural scent filled my head. I tried another tactic. “Candle wants you gone.”
She grabbed the bottle and shoved it in a cupboard, but she held on to the counter for balance. “Do I look like I care what he wants?”
Was she fucking kidding? “You stuck around for six months waiting for him.” She could’ve gone anywhere.
“He was my back-up plan,” she snapped.
Shit, I should’ve known. “Waiting around till something better comes along.” It wasn’t a question. I was pissed, mostly at myself for not seeing it.
She filled a coffeepot with water. “Fuck you.”
“Just say when, chica.” There was no humor in my voice.
“How about never.” She shut the water off and turned too quick with the pot in her hand. Water splashed onto her dress and the floor. “Damn it.”
I crowded into the small kitchen and tore some paper towels off a roll. Dropping my voice, I held them out to her as I studied the dark circles under her eyes. “Last night wasn’t your only sleepless night.”
She took the paper towels and dabbed at her dress, but she didn’t say shit.
She smelled like fire and spice and the kind of trouble I should walk away from. “No comment?”
“I hate you.” She rubbed harder with the paper towels.
I gently took them from her, dropped them to the floor and stepped on them. “You know what mi madre taught me about hate?”
Her head down, her breathing sped up as she stared at my boots. “I don’t care.”
I slid my foot back and forth to wipe the spill. “Hate doesn’t mean you don’t care.” I moved my foot next to hers just to see how
close she’d let me get. “What are you afraid of?”
“Not a damn thing.”
I needed to cut my losses and get the fuck out of there, but the overwhelming urge to protect her had me rooted in place. “Then what was that reaction when I caught you from falling?”
“I wasn’t falling.”
My hands behind my back to show her I wouldn’t touch her, I was left with only my tone. Quiet and firm, I used a voice I would’ve used with my nieces. “Do me a favor?”
“No.”
I noticed a line of scars, dots and dashes, running up the inside of her left arm. “Look at me.” My gaze cut to her other arm.
“I’m not a child,” she snapped. “Don’t talk to me like one.”
Her right arm was smooth. “No, chica, you’re not. You’re a beautiful woman who’s drinking before the sun rises to fend off something big.” Ducking my head, I imitated her body language. “You wanna tell me what that is? Let me help you?” Instinct was telling me something was so fucking off, it’d redefine my definition of FUBAR.
She sucked in a breath then straightened. “Screw you.”
I was becoming an expert at ignoring her empty insults. “Why didn’t you show up for work?” People didn’t derail for no reason. This was bigger than Candle showing back up.
She poured the water into the coffee maker. “Tell Talon he can fuck off for firing me.” She snorted out a fake laugh. “Just let him try and find someone to replace me.”
He already had. Some surfer had been watching his shop since the first day she hadn’t shown up. “Already done.” I didn’t want to rub it in her face, but I wanted her to know there was nothing holding her here. If what she’d said was true about her and Candle, then she’d be better off away from him and his MC. “Come work for me.” I was fucking insane for offering, but I needed an office manager. And not just any manager, but someone who could handle twenty-seven ex-marines. Sober, Kendall could do it with one hand tied behind her back.
She dumped coffee grounds into a filter with a shaking hand. “Again, fuck you. I live here, not Miami.”
Not hearing a no, I upped the ante. “You can have one of the corporate apartments until you find a place.”
She turned on the coffee maker then leveled me with a look. “Corporate apartments.” Venom seeped into her tone. “What’s that? Code for ‘be my bitch during the week and fuck toy on the weekends’?” Anger contorted her sexy features. “You think I’m stupid?”
Jesucristo. “First of all, I’m offering you a job, with health benefits. I don’t fucking hire prostitutes, so watch your damn tone. Second, if you were stupid, I wouldn’t be here.” I’d never met a woman who could dish it out like her, but that didn’t mean I was going to put up with constant shit if she came to work for me. “We both know you were wasting your time working for Talerco in a surf shop. Come work for me. I need you.”
“As what? Your personal dick holder?”
I shouldn’t have wanted to smile. “Office manager.”
“Right.” She scoffed. “How many ex-marines do you have working for you?”
“Twenty-seven.” I needed twenty more. I couldn’t recruit them fast enough.
“Mm-hm. And how many women?”
“One.” I smiled. “You.”
Her chest rose on an inhale, her mouth opened to respond—and a gunshot rang out.
“Get down!” I grabbed her and took her to the floor.
Her face went white, and her knees drew to her chest as another shot sounded.
“Stay,” I barked. In a half crouch, my weapon already drawn, I glanced around the kitchen cabinets into the living room. The room clear, I moved to the wall by the front window.
Two more shots were fired, then the front door crashed open.
Rip hit the floor with two holes in his chest as his gun flew from his hand and skittered across the tile. Candle stumbled past him, kicked his legs out of the path of the door, then he slammed it shut.
“How many more?” I demanded, glancing out the window.
“It’s handled,” Candle grunted, aiming a gun at the biker’s head.
Motherfucker. “There were four shots. Two are in the asshole on the floor, and you’re hit. That leaves one shot and three bikes in the driveway.” One asshole unaccounted for.
“I said, it’s handled,” Candle ground out. He kicked the biker in the leg. “Get the fuck up.”
Rip groaned.
I scanned the front yard, then glanced at them. Bright red spread across Candle’s shirt from his shoulder as Rip tried to crawl forward in a pool of his own blood. I didn’t lower my weapon. “Where’s the second LC?”
“Dead,” Candle snapped. “Next to the front hedge. Drag him inside or get Kendall the fuck outta here.”
Rip lifted a shaking hand and pointed toward the kitchen. “She’s fucking dead,” he sputtered, coughing up blood. “She’s not gonna bring us down.”
Candle jammed his 9mm against Rip’s forehead. “What the fuck are you gonna do? You’re bleeding out faster than you can crawl to your gun.”
“Dead,” Rip spit the word out. “LCs first,” he wheezed, blood covering his teeth. “Shoot the Riv—”
Candle pulled the trigger.
The back of Rip’s head exploded, spraying blood and skull fragments everywhere.
“Candle!” Kendall screamed.
“Goddamn it!” Candle growled at me. “Get her the fuck outta here.”
Madre de Dios. I stepped between Kendall and the body and cursed not being able to fucking touch her. “Come on, chica, we’re going.”
White as hell, she stared at the floor beyond me. “He was going to kill me?”
“Luna,” Candle warned.
I closed my fist and held it up. He’d fucking get it. I concentrated on Kendall. “You need me to pack you a bag, chica?”
Kendall started to tremble. Her gaze cut from the body to Candle. “He knew?”
Candle shoved his gun in his back waistband and whipped his T-shirt off. Wadding it up, he pressed it to his shoulder and leveled Kendall with a look. “You got two minutes. Get the fuck outta here or Luna’s going to carry you out.”
The tremble turned into a shake, and the color came back to her face a split second before she let loose. “You fucking told him?” Her voice amped up. “You goddamn asshole, you told him?”
“I didn’t say shit,” Candle shouted back.
“He fucking knew!” she accused.
“Not my fucking fault. Keep your goddamn clothes on next time!”
“I’m dressed!”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Candle roared. “I didn’t do shit but look after you.”
“By telling him!”
“I didn’t tell him,” Candle yelled. “I didn’t fucking say shit, and you know that. Get the fuck out of here so I can clean up your goddamn mess!”
“I don’t need you,” Kendall yelled back. “I can take care of myself!” She skirted a wide berth around the dead biker and fled to her room.
“I swear to fucking God.” Candle kicked a side table over.
Half my attention still on the front yard, half down the hallway, I spared him a look. “What the fuck just happened?”
“Nothing.” He tipped his chin toward the front of the house. “Her car’s too fucking small. That your SUV?”
“Rental.”
“You take out the extra insurance?”
I knew what he was asking. I reached in my pocket for the keys, then tossed them at him. “Take it, but my prints are in there. You better fucking wipe it down,” I warned.
He winced as he snatched the keys out of the air with his bad arm. “I know what the fuck I’m doing.”
“From where I’m standing, it sure as hell doesn’t look like it.” I glanced down the hall.
“Yeah, it wouldn’t. Not to a fucking golden boy like you.” His face contorted, either in pain or at the thought of Kendall.
I didn’t give a shit which. “I’m gettin
g her out.” Right fucking now. “But I’m done with your cagey bullshit. Give me something.”
Candle swung his gaze to me, and for the first time since I’d met him, he didn’t look like the ruthless biker he was. He looked fucking haunted. “Protect her.”
“I can’t do my job if you don’t tell me—”
“Assume the worst,” he quickly interrupted, before his gaze shot to the hallway.
Kendall walked back into the living room with a bag over her shoulder and a death glare aimed at Candle. “You’re dead to me.” She stepped around the mess and slammed the door behind her.
TEARS WELLED AS I TRIED to yank the stupid garage door up. I hated Candle and his stupid house and his stupid no automatic garage door opener because he didn’t believe in them. I hated his stupid green eyes and the stupid fucking look on his face when I told him he was dead to me. And I hated that he was shot. I hated it so bad, I couldn’t breathe.
I choked back a sob and a strong hand covered mine.
“I got this, chica.”
I hated him too. I hated Cuban Boy like I hated my stupid fucking pathetic life. But I hated it more that I was glad he was here.
I jerked my hand away. “I don’t need you,” I lied.
“I know, baby girl.”
His quiet voice washed over me like the reassurance I’d been desperately craving for six months, and I lashed out. “You don’t know anything.”
He effortlessly lifted the old wooden door up, then he took the keys from my hand. “I know you’re strong and tough and beautiful as hell when you’re mad. But you’ve also been drinking.” He slipped the bag off my shoulder. “You’re gonna let me drive, chica.” His hand barely touched the small of my back.
A reaction I’d fought years to conquer swelled up and took me off guard.
My back arched, my jaw clenched and I hissed as if he’d struck me with a branding iron. Air fought to get into my lungs, panic choked my throat, and I forced myself to do what Candle had taught me to do. I mentally reached for an anchor.
But Cuban Boy didn’t understand.
His eyes wide, his hands out, he didn’t fucking understand.
He didn’t do what he was supposed to. He didn’t step closer. He didn’t level me with a warning look. He didn’t put his hand firmly back and tip my chin as he forced me to look at him. He didn’t hold me in his gaze, and he didn’t make me breathe through the fear until I calmed down…. He didn’t do any of it.