Stone Cold

by Olivia Rigal

  CONTENTS

  Title page

  Special thanks to

  Legal matter

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Review

  Books by Olivia Rigal

  About the author

  STONE COLD

  An Iron Tornadoes

  MC Romance

  By

  Olivia Rigal

  Special thanks to:

  Christa Wick

  for her cover design and

  her friendly support during this ride.

  Also available in paperback

  This book is a work of fiction.

  Even if some locations depicted do exist

  and some collective events did occur,

  this story is totally fictitious

  The names, the characters, and the events described

  have been imagined by the author.

  Any resemblance to reality would be a coincidence.

  ©2014 Lady O Publishing LLC

  www.ladyopublishing.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below.

  contact / Lady O Publishing

  www.ladyopublishing.com

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Where's my order for table nine?" I ask in the kitchen.

  "Give me another thirty seconds, Lisa," the trainee answers. He's putting the final touch on a plate. When he's happy with the way he's nested the baby tomato in a tiny bouquet of pesto, he looks up at me and winks. "It's nice to have you back. How did the finals go?" he asks.

  "It's nice to be back, too. Believe it or not, I find this lunch madness relaxing after two weeks of exams," I tell him. I realize I've not answered his question, but I'm not really sure how my finals went, and anyway, even if it's no longer the busiest time of the lunch service, it's still not the perfect moment to chat.

  I bring the plates to table nine where a law professor is chatting with a man his age who's a partner in one of the most prestigious law firms of Manhattan. This is business as usual in this place. The restaurant is located between two law schools. The entire block is strictly office space rented out to law firms. It's no accident my boss called it The Law School.

  I ask my two patrons if there is anything else that I can bring them, and just when they tell me they're all set, Lyv calls me. Her face is grim, which is unlike her. She looks mad or upset. It can't be with me because I've been away for two weeks, and I just came back today. She signals me to come to her office, and when I enter she asks me to sit down.

  "Lisa, I'm so sorry," she says as she crouches in front of me and takes my hands in hers. I look into her big chestnut eyes and wonder what she's sorry about. Did she find out through her law school connections that I have flunked my year? No, it's too early—not enough time to grade our tests yet. Is she going to fire me? No, she always says I'm one of her best waitresses, and she'll be sad to see me graduate.

  "I just got a call from the Point Lookout police," she says softly, holding my hands tighter. "It's your brother…" She stops for a second, shakes her head, and for one second I think I see tears pooling in her eyes.

  Now I know it's got to be really bad because Lyv's tough. Lyv doesn't cry; no matter what happens, she always smiles like life's a stupid toothpaste commercial.

  "You've got to go back to the dorm and pack a bag, then I'll drive you to LaGuardia. I've made a reservation for you on the four o'clock flight to Fort Lauderdale."

  I try to process what she's implying, but part of my brain is refusing to do so.

  My brother, David, is larger than life and indestructible. He can survive anything. First he went through army training, and then he graduated top of his class at the police academy. David can't be dead.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “I don’t know, they didn’t give me any details,” Lyv whispers.

  "I need to call my mother," I say. I'll speak to Mommy, she'll confirm that it's been a horrible mix-up, and we'll laugh about it. I try to free my hands from Lyv's to reach for the phone on her desk, but she doesn't let go.

  "You won't be able to speak to her before you get home," Lyv says. "I understand the doctors have given her something to put her out for twenty-four hours." She pulls our hands to her chest and sighs. "I'm so, so sorry, Lisa."

  There's a knock on the door. It's Megan. She's the evening shift manager. What she's doing here so early? Why is she holding my handbag and my raincoat?

  Lyv goes over to her, and they speak in hushed tones while Lyv puts on her own coat. She comes back to me and makes me stand up. She dresses me like a child and takes my hand. While we walk through, there's a strange silence. They don't know what's happening, but the look on Lyv's face is such that no one says a word. For an instant I feel like the world is in slow motion around me, but this changes the second we leave the restaurant through the kitchen door and hit the street. Life in Manhattan never stops. There are people passing by, and there's loud traffic. Everything seems normal.

  Lyv walks me to the dorm. Once we're in the lobby, she asks for my unit number. I tell her, and we ride the elevator up to the tenth floor. After searching in my handbag, Lyv finds my keys and opens the door. I stand by the door and watch her efficiently get stuff ready on the bed. She turns to me and asks, "Is there anything you want that I didn't think about?"

  I shake my head. I can't think, and anyway, I still have plenty of stuff left in my closet at home.

  "Then I guess this will do," she says as she folds everything neatly in my suitcase. When we leave, she takes the key of my dorm room out of my key chain and puts it in her pocket after locking my door.

  "I'll check with housing about the spring term moving deadlines…"

  She probably realizes that I'm not really paying attention to what she's telling me, so she doesn't finish her sentence. Lyv is a hundred steps ahead of me, and in my haze, I wonder how I would have managed without her, so I say, "Thank you."

  "Don't mention it." She shrugs. "That's what friends are for."

  CHAPTER TWO

  By the time the plane lands at the Fort Lauderdale airport, it's night already. I'm still on automatic pilot. It's as if I'm watching a movie of myself going through the motions. I get up. I carry my bag. I walk down the steps and then along the hallway. It's me but it's not really me. Somehow, despite the fact that I've checked out, my body keeps doing what it needs to do to get back home.

  At the luggage carrousel, I find Uncle Tony holding my suitcase. He looks like he's aged ten years since I last saw him. When was that? Less than two years ago. He hugs me.

  "I'm so sorry, Lisa," he says, and he lets me go without another word.

  I just nod and follow him. During the ride to Point Lookout, he explains why he's alone. "Nancy's at the hospital with your mom.”

  Just as I’m about to question him, he says, “We don't know how it happened. The police just called your mother, and she mana
ged to get to our door before she lost it.”

  He lets his words sink in before he says, “I'm going to drive you home, and tomorrow, you can go to see her. No use going there now to watch her sleep."

  We remain silent for the rest of the drive.

  He parks in his driveway. I just need to cross a patch of grass to be home.

  Tony and my father were identical twins that nothing short of death could have separated. They drove identical cars, wore identical clothes, and even purchased identical neighboring houses. The main difference between them was their choice in women. Mom is nothing like Aunt Nancy. Mom is a softy, while Aunt Nancy is a survivor.

  Nancy survived foster care after being abandoned by her parents. At sixteen, she ran away and found shelter in a motorcycle club. They kept her on as a "sweet butt." She was such a lovely girl at the time that the VP's old lady, who was not the sharing type, ran her out of the club, but it was too late for Nancy's good. By then, she was already pregnant. She survived becoming a single mother at seventeen, and since then, she's survived all sorts of serious health issues.

  Yep, a real survivor with a sunny personality because she's decided that she wants to be happy and that's the way it should be.

  Mom's just the opposite. Even before Dad died, she used to make mountains of molehills. So when a truck hit Dad's car, it didn't only crush my father to death, it also broke my mother. I'm so lucky that I had David to take care of me.

  "Are you gonna be all right on your own?" Uncle Tony asks as I get out of the car.

  "Yes. Thank you for coming to get me," I say.

  "Sure thing. Now, you come on over here if there's anything you need or if you want company."

  I nod, but the last thing I want is company. I haven't had a chance to be alone since Lyv broke the news to me. I need to be alone, because I'm about to crumble, and when I start crying, I don't want any witnesses around.

  The door is ajar. No need to look for the key to get inside. I climb straight up the stairs. Four doors open on the tiny landing—one for each of the three bedrooms and one for the bathroom. I open my bedroom door and drop my suitcase by my bed. As I turn around, I look into my mother's bedroom. The bed is unmade, and there are clothes on the floor. It's totally unlike her. The only thing she's got some sort of handle on is her home. It's impeccable. She's a neat freak.

  I go into her bedroom, pick up her clothes from the floor, and make her bed.

  That's more like it.

  I turn around and brace myself as I step into my brother's room. He'd moved back in with her a few weeks after I started law school. He thought she shouldn't be left alone. We argued about it because technically she wouldn't really have been alone, with her in-laws next door. I thought it was time she learned to be by herself. David wouldn't hear of it, he is—he was—all about doing the right thing.

  I sit down on David's bed and look around at the mess. Hugging his pillow in my arms, I start to rock back and forth fighting the tears that are threatening to come pouring out. His leather jacket hangs on the back of a chair, and his helmet rests on the floor next to his mud-covered riding boots. One leg of his pants, caked with mud, is spilling out of a hamper.

  The mud is fresh, not totally dried out, like he's just come back from a ride and left to go to the Shamrock Bar and Grill. Yes, that's it—he went out for a drink, and he'll be back any minute. I'll hear his steps on the creaking stairs… and then I do.

  I look out the door, and I'm ready to call my brother's name when I realize it's not David. The man I see is the same height, the same build, and he's got the same gait as he climbs the stairs. It's not David; it's my other childhood idol, Brian. From the torn look on his face, I now know for sure.

  It's true. David's really dead.

  Oh, God, no! David's dead.

  Brian comes and pries my brother's pillow out of my arms. He picks me up from David's bed and carries me into my room. He sits on my bed and cradles me on his lap.

  "Come on, Lisa, you need to let it out."

  As always, when he asks me sweetly, I obey. So I wrap my arms around him, hide my face in his neck, and the dam opens. I cry hard, and the harder I cry, the tighter he holds me, as if I needed grounding, which I probably do. It takes a while before I realize that he's crying, too.

  I'm stunned; my invincible hero can shed tears. Never have I seen Brian cry, and I've known him all my life. He was five when Tony married his mother.

  Legally, he's not my cousin because Tony never adopted him. I'm not really sure why. Maybe because Brian's biological father, the VP of the Iron Tornadoes MC never let go of his eldest son. Every so often during the school year and one month every summer he would come and take Brian. I’ve always wondered how his old lady felt about that.

  I think the adoption never happened because Tony must have felt he didn't need a legal document to know that, for all intents and purposes, he was the only real father Brian ever had.

  I cradle Brian's face in my hands and wipe his tears away with my thumbs. His brown curls are all crushed, probably from the helmet he wore on his ride here; his incredible green eyes are red from the tears, and his chin is covered with two days' stubble. He looks like a mess, but in my eyes he's still the most handsome mess there is. He turns his head, kisses the palm of my hand, and then whispers, "Oh, Lisa, I still can't believe he's gone."

  "I know. I want to believe that he's going to come up the stairs and barge into my room any second. When I heard you, for a moment I thought it was him," I say with a ragged breath, and then I smile as I whisper, "Boy, would he kick your ass if he found us like this."

  "No," Brian says with a sad smile. "I think he'd be okay with this."

  The leather of his weathered jacket is wet from my tears, and after wiping it off with the sleeve of my restaurant-uniform white shirt, I rest my head on his shoulder.

  "What do you mean?" I ask.

  "One night when we were roaring drunk, I confessed," he says.

  I wish I had been a fly on the wall that day. David's always be extra protective of me. He felt he had to protect me as an elder brother and as a father. No one, not even his best friend and almost-cousin, was good enough for me.

  "I told him I was your first and how clumsy and brief my single performance had been that night," Brian says, his tone almost light. "He laughed so hard he fell off his bar stool."

  I close my eyes and imagine the two of them sitting at a bar and having this conversation. I can hear David's laughter. His laughter is—no, was—like a roar.

  "How are we going to go on without him?" I ask.

  "I don't know how, but for sure, life will continue, and you're going to be all right."

  I'm not sure I believe him, but I don't say so because actually his presence has calmed me down.

  He lays me down on my tiny bed and lies down next to me. The bed protests under our combined weight. Brian is no longer the skinny teenager he was the last time he lay next to me in this room.

  That was so many years ago, just before David and he ran way to enlist. Army training filled out their arms and shoulders and sculpted the rest of their bodies; they were boys when they left and men when they returned.

  I have wild fantasies about this man. I dream that now, since he's more experienced, it would be a stellar performance. Enough to erase the disaster of our first lovemaking session. It had been sweet but oh, so frustrating for me…

  At any other time, having him holding me like he does now would be a dream come true.

  But it's not a dream; it's a nightmare.

  I can't rejoice at the warmth of his touch, at the tenderness of his voice, because David's dead.

  "You need to get some sleep, babe," he says, stroking my hair. "The next days are gonna be very hard on you."

  CHAPTER THREE

  The sunlight wakes me up, and I'm disoriented. I become aware that I'm fully dressed in my restaurant uniform on my childhood bed, and reality hits me at full force. Better keep busy before I start thinkin
g too much.

  When I get out of my quick shower, the mirror shows me that my eyes are all puffy—I must have kept on crying in my sleep. I wet a washcloth and go downstairs to stick it in the freezer and get the coffee started. I run back up to comb and dry my hair, put it in a ponytail, get dressed, and come back down to the kitchen to drink my coffee and press my homemade ice pack against my eyes to reduce the swelling. I don't want to look like a wreck in front of my mother when I need to be strong enough for both of us—I'm the only one she has left now.

  I think back to yesterday and wonder if Brian has any idea that he was not only my first but also, to this day, my only. Not that I didn't have opportunities. I'm not top-model quality, but I'm actually okay if you're into the very curvy dirty blond version of the girl next door.

  When I started college, a few guys showed interest despite my being a plus size, but I couldn't be bothered. I had no time to fall in love. I needed to get top grades to get into a top law school while taking care of my mother, who was left in my sole care by my runaway brother.

  And then Dave and Brian came back on a short leave, and I saw how they had turned into real men. They were so grown up and mature that they made all the guys I knew look like boring kids.

  After that, I left for law school, and time just flew. They weren't kidding when they said the first two years of law school are marathon years. I got lost in my own world and barely took the time to speak to David… and now I'll never be able to speak to him again. I press my lips together to swallow the curses I want to scream. This is unfair. First my dad, and then my brother. What did my mother and I do to deserve that?

  I never even asked David what had happened at the academy. How did Brian manage to get kicked out a few days before they were to graduate?

  I thought for sure Brian had outgrown getting into trouble. As a kid, he always got caught, because he was really no good at being bad. It didn't change when he grew up. I'm sure David did all the same silly things Brian did. I'm sure he too smoked pot, got crazy drunk, and went skinny-dipping in the ocean, but David never got caught. He always flew through life with amazing luck. Nothing can touch him…