LACED WITH FEAR
A CASH BAR NOVEL
Hayley Faiman
Laced with Fear
Copyright © 2017 by Hayley Faiman
All rights reserved.
Cover Designer: Pink Ink Designs. Cassy Roop. http://www.pinkinkdesigns.com
Editor: Gray Ink. Ellie McLove. https://www.grayinkonline.com
Proofreading: iScream Proofreading Services. Rosa Sharon. http://www.iscreamproofreading.com
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Visit my website : http://hayleyfaiman.com
ISBN-13: 978-1987796155
ISBN-10: 1987796152
Created with Vellum
Contents
Other Titles By Hayley Faiman
Stay Connected
About the Author
Dedication
ROUGH & SHAKEN
PART I
PART II
LACED WITH FEAR
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
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
EPILOGUE
LAYERED WITH RELIEF
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
Special Thanks
Other Titles By Hayley Faiman
MEN OF BASEBALL SERIES
Pitching for Amalie (Men of Baseball #1)
Catching Maggie (Men of Baseball #2)
Forced Play for Libby (Men of Baseball #3)
Sweet Spot for Victoria (Men of Baseball #4)
RUSSIAN BRATVA SERIES
Owned by the Badman (Russian Bratva #1)
Seducing the Badman (Russian Bratva #2)
Dancing for the Badman (Russian Bratva #3)
Living for the Badman (Russian Bratva #4)
Tempting the Badman (Russian Bratva #5)
Protected by the Badman (Russian Bratva #6)
Forever my Badman (Russian Bratva #7)
Betrothed to the Badman (Russian Bratva #8)
Chosen by the Badman (Russian Bratva #9)
Bought by the Badman (Russian Bratva #10) — May 2018
NORTORIOUS DEVILS SERIES
Rough & Rowdy (Notorious Devils #1)
Rough & Raw (Notorious Devils #2)
Rough & Rugged (Notorious Devils #3)
Rough & Ruthless (Notorious Devils #4)
Rough & Ready (Notorious Devils #5)
Rough & Rich (Notorious Devils #6)
Rough & Real (Notorious Devils #7)
CASH BAR SERIES (NOTORIOUS DEVILS SPIN-OFF)
Laced with Fear (Cash Bar #1)
Chased with Strength (Cash Bar #2) — Summer 2018
FORBIDDEN LOVE SERIES
Personal Foul (Forbidden Love #1)
Kinetic Energy (Forbidden Love#2)
STANDALONE SERIES
Royally Relinquished: A Modern Day Fairy Tale
Stay Connected
WEBSITE – hayleyfaiman.com
FACEBOOK — https://www.facebook.com/authorhayleyfaiman
READER GROUP— https://www.facebook.com/groups/433234647091715/
GOODREADS — https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/10735805.Hayley_Faiman
AMAZON — amazon.com/author/hayleyfaiman
NEWSLETTER— http://eepurl.com/b5a_1v
BOOKBUB— https://www.bookbub.com/authors/hayley-faiman
About the Author
As an only child, Hayley Faiman had to entertain herself somehow. She started writing stories at the age of six and never really stopped.
Born in California, she met her now husband at the age of sixteen and married him at the age of twenty in 2004. After all of these years together, he’s still the love of her life.
Hayley’s husband joined the military and they lived in Oregon, where he was stationed with the US Coast Guard. They moved back to California in 2006, where they had two little boys. Recently, the four of them moved out to the Hill Country of Texas, where they adopted a new family member, a chocolate lab named Optimus Prime.
Most of Hayley’s days are spent taking care of her two boys, going to the baseball fields for practice, or helping them with homework. Her evenings are spent with her husband and her nights—those are spent creating alpha book boyfriends.
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'
Eleanor Roosevelt
Dedication
To all of those who have lived and survived through the fears that life has given them.
You are fearless.
ROUGH & SHAKEN
A CASH BAR SERIES SHORT STORY PREQUEL
PART I
GINGER
My phone rings. I don’t even have to look at the caller ID to know who it is. It’s him. Snake. Prescott. The man I’ve loved since I saw him from across the crappy bar almost two years ago.
I moved to a sleepy little Canadian town when I turned twenty-five. It wasn’t because I’d wanted to. It was because my uncle, a grumpy ass old man, had become ill and needed help with his bar. He didn’t have kids; he didn’t have anyone. He’d served in Vietnam, and as soon as he came back to the US, he packed his shit and went to Canada.
A lot of people assumed he’d been a draft dodger, but he wasn’t. He served his country and did it with pride, but it fucked him up, so he left. My mama didn’t blame him even a little.
So, when he got sick and couldn’t run his bar, she packed my bags and told me to get to Canada and help him out. Didn’t matter that she hadn’t seen him in decades, family was family, and family helped family.
I’d always been a kind of lost soul. Nothing called to me after high school. I fooled around at community college but never found anything that interested me. At twenty-five, I’d been working aimlessly at a waitressing job. Mama said I was the only one who could go because I was the one most like Uncle Cash.
My first night there, Uncle Cash’d frowned when I showed, but he didn’t push me away. Instead, he pretended as if he’d known me my whole life, and he started showing me how to run his business, coughing every so often and holding his stomach. He had cancer, pancreatic; there was no beating it.
On my third night, a Friday night, my eyes widened in surprise when a wild group of men came inside around midnight. They were o
utfitted with leather vests, holey jeans, tight t-shirts, beards, muscles, chains, and boots. I’d never seen so many sexy men in a group in my entire life.
One stood out to me, though, as if he was a beacon. He was almost the tallest, but not quite. He was the most muscular, and I swear, his beard made me drool a bit. He was beyond the word sexy. I didn’t know what word fit him. Maybe it hadn’t been invented yet.
I sucked in a breath and made my way over to their table. I didn’t want to, I didn’t feel steady enough, but Uncle Cash said I couldn’t hide behind the bar and wait for customers to come to me. He said I needed to get out and push the booze. So, that’s what I did.
The stranger eyed me up and down, then the rest was history. He took me home that first night and every night after. I had his name tattooed on my body - my neck - by the three-month mark, and by six months we were fighting. The back and forth was exciting, stressful, and heartbreaking.
I was about to surrender, give him the control he wanted over us, our main reason for fighting. I was trying to be in charge, but Snake was a man, a leader, a president of a motorcycle club; no woman could be in control of him—ever.
Then I was kidnapped. Held for months by the scariest, cruelest men I had ever encountered in my entire life. It’s hard not to think about, the countless number of hands that have been on my body, pawing at me, then violating me.
I try not to think about it, to pretend that it didn’t happen, but every time I close my eyes, it’s right there slapping me in the face—the cold hard reality that it was indeed my life for a time.
Now, six months after my rescue, I don’t feel worthy of Snake. I’m damaged, and I’m not good enough for him. But he won’t leave me the hell alone. Why won’t he just leave me alone?
“Hello,” I say bitchily into the phone.
“Hey, peaches,” he murmurs, his voice deep, husky and too damn sexy for his own good.
“Prescott,” I whisper, using his given name instead of his road name.
“How you doin’ today?” he asks.
It’s the same question he asks me every day.
“Better,” I answer.
It’s the same answer I give him every day.
“Miss you,” he mutters.
I close my eyes, pinching them closed so tight that I see stars in my vision. I usually don’t answer him when he says this, but today, I do.
“You shouldn’t, but I miss you, too,” I admit as I open my eyes. Tears start to fall down my cheeks.
“You ready to come home to me yet?” he asks.
“No,” I whisper.
“Bar’s doin’ good. Brothers are runnin’ it, turnin’ profit,” he says, changing the subject.
Uncle Cash passed away three months after my arrival. He left me the bar in his will, as well as his house. The house was wrecked. Snake and his brothers helped me fix it up, then Snake moved in. I kicked his ass out, but he still came over when we’d be on again, at least to sleep with me.
“I’m glad,” I say, bringing my knees up and resting my chin on them.
“You need anything?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
He’s set up an account for me and deposits money into it, claiming it’s my income from the bar, but I know better. I know him better. I don’t mind, though. I’m keeping a tally, and I’ll pay him back once I get back to Canada, back to my life—which I should probably do, sooner rather than later. It’s been six months. It’s been long enough.
SNAKE
I end the call and turn to my computer. I don’t even have to fill out my information, or Ginger’s, anymore. I’ve sent her so many boxes of chocolate that both of our addresses and my credit card number is saved in the system. Chocolate covered pecans straight from South Georgia. I know they’re her favorite, and from her home state, my little Georgia peach.
“You get your woman handled?” Free, my vice president, asks as he walks into my office.
“Fuck, no,” I grunt, closing my eyes after I press confirm on the chocolate order.
“It’s been six months. She stays away much longer thinkin,’ she’ll get some fucked up shit in her head and it’ll be hard as nails to get her stubborn ass back here,” he advises.
“Yeah. I’m leavin’ tomorrow,” I admit.
“Yeah?”
“Think you can hold the fort down for a week?” I ask.
“A week?” he chuckles.
“It’s gonna take a day for me to get there, a day to talk her back into my bed, two full days of fuckin’ her to talk her into coming back with me, a half a day for her to talk herself out of coming back, another half a day to talk her into coming. Then two days to drive her ass back here,” I say, counting the days on my fingers.
“Got her all figured out, do you?” he asks with a big smile on his face.
“Fuck yeah, I do. Love that woman. Know everything there is to know about her,” I shrug.
“You sure about that?” he asks as his eyes darken, most likely thinking about the time she spent held hostage by those sick fuck racists.
“Whatever I don’t know, she’ll tell me,” I state.
“Don’t count on it,” Free announces as he stands up and walks out.
I watch after him, cursing to myself. I forgot about his woman. A woman he loved back when we were younger—a fuck’ve a lot younger. A woman who was brutally raped and then ended up taking her own life. I remember her, pretty little thing. She had been hurt, but she refused to talk about it. The weight was too much for her to bear, and she swallowed a bunch of pills one night when Free was on a run.
It was years ago, but he’s never really gotten over it, never recovered from losing his first love the way he did. I don’t want that for Ginger. She’s got too much good in her life to leave it behind. I’m going to not only bring her back here but bring her back to life.
She’ll never hurt again. It’ll be my mission to make her smile at least once a day. Fuck. I’m turning into a giant fuckin’ pussy.
I go to my room. Looking around, it doesn’t feel like my home anymore. Ginger’s house, the place I helped her remodel, that’s home. I make a decision; one she’ll probably be pissed about, but I don’t care.
I pack all my shit, carry it down to my pickup truck, and ask a prospect to drive it to her place, following behind him on my bike. I’m moving home, bringing my woman back, and marrying her as soon as fuckin’ possible.
This shit ends now.
Once I’ve moved all my shit into her house, not that I had a bunch, I decide to go to bed, wanting to leave before the sun rises tomorrow. Laying in her bed, my head on her pillow, I inhale and close my eyes in defeat. She’s been gone so long that I can’t smell her scent on her pillows anymore. I should have swallowed my pride when she disappeared. I should have known she wouldn’t have walked away from her uncle’s bar like that—abandoning it.
I should have known.
I should have looked for her.
I’m swimming in a pool of guilt over her kidnapping, over her abuse. It’s my fault. One of the men from my club, a man who was supposed to be my brother—a man who ended up being nothing but a piece of shit traitor—he hurt her, my sweet Georgia peach. He fuckin’ hurt her.
I close my eyes and force myself to get at least a couple hours of sleep before I climb on my bike and haul ass to bring my woman home. She’s been gone long enough.
GINGER
I curl up in a chair and sip my coffee, watching the birds fly from tree to tree from my front porch. It’s my morning routine and the calmest part of the day, the sun shining down on me, the warmth of my coffee filling me from the inside out. I feel older than my almost twenty-seven years, but I also feel smarter than the woman I was just two years ago.
That is—until I hear the sound of a familiar motorcycle buzzing down my street.
I stand and walk over to the porch banister, setting my coffee cup down before it slips out of my fingers. I watch as none other than Prescott—Snake—Gordon pull
s up in front of my house. His head turns, and though I can’t see his eyes behind his helmet and sunglasses, I know that they are aimed right at me. I can almost feel them searing my skin, seeing through the little short and tank set I’m wearing.
I wrap my arms around my stomach, a stupid move to try and protect myself, but I’m frozen as he lifts his leg, swinging it off of his bike. He then takes his helmet off and sets it on his handlebar before he begins to march up my walkway.
I’m staying in a house the Notorious Devils club in California, owns. It’s a little, two-bedroom, one bath home that they rent out when someone needs help. It just so happened to be empty, so they let me move in for a while.
“We gotta talk,” he says, running his hand through his long hair.
Laced with Fear Page 1