“Let’s not do the long, drawn out goodbye,” he said as if he was on the verge of cracking. “I can’t bear it.”
Candy felt the tears coming again, and she jumped up and ran to him. He took her in his arms and cradled her.
“I’ll be back in a few hours.”
He ran his fingers through her hair, and Candy sobbed into his chest. How could he really be going through with this? She knew that this was his world, that men like him killed when they had scores to settle, but she just couldn’t face the reality of the situation. What if he never came back?
“I love you, Candy,” he said. “I have since the second I saw you, and I’ll never, ever stop.”
He gave her a solitary kiss on the lips, and then he walked away from her, leaving her in the darkened room all alone.
***
Hours had passed. She sobbed into the pillow and drew her knees up to her chest. She couldn’t think about what was happening. She had to keep her mind somewhere else.
There was a light knock at the door, and she sat up and wiped her eyes. The door creaked slowly open and Lexi stood in the hallway, her eyes wet and streaked with mascara.
“King said you were here,” she said softly. “Mind if I come in?”
Candy shook her head and smiled. Lexi stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.
“I can’t sit still,” Lexi said. “I’m a mess.”
“I can’t even imagine how you’re feeling,” Candy said. “I’ve only been with Steel a few days, and I’m in bits… I can’t bear the thought of losing him.”
Lexi nodded and wiped tears from her eyes.
“Will they be okay?”
Lexi shrugged. “I just don’t know.”
Candy sighed and pulled the pillow up to her face and wrapped her arms around it, as if in some way it could protect her from this terrible situation.
“They’ve all gone,” Lexi said. “Only a couple of the old boys are left, including my dad.”
“I didn’t know your dad was a biker,” Candy said, welcoming the opportunity to talk about anything else.
“Neither did I, until I met King,” she smiled. “We’re just getting to know each other… He’s not well, though. We won’t have much time.”
“I’m so sorry,” Candy said.
“Don’t be,” Lexi smiled, “That’s just life, I suppose. At least we’ve had our time now.”
Candy nodded.
Lexi climbed onto the bed beside her and lay down. It had been such a long time since the girls had been around each other, and yet at the same time, it felt like only days.
“I can’t believe Marv is dead,” Lexi said.
“I know,” Candy agreed. “I mean…he was a jackass, but…you know…”
“Totally,” Lexi agreed. “The Forsaken never would have killed him. The Iron Riders have really fucked up.”
“They’ll get what they deserve,” Candy said, meaning every word.
***
They lay there together until the early hours of the morning. Neither of them moved, and each time there was the slightest noise from the highway right out in the distance, they both stopped breathing momentarily so they could concentrate on the sound.
It must have been close to 4:00 am when the lights started down the dirt track that led to the clubhouse. Lexi shook Candy awake and both girls jumped up and ran to the window.
Lines of lights came piercing down through the darkness. There must have been at least twenty, maybe more, all flying towards them through the night.
“Is it them?” Candy asked excitedly.
“I don’t know,” Lexi said with hesitation. “But if isn’t, we’re all dead…”
She and Candy took each other’s hand and walked to the doorway of Steel’s bedroom. They opened it wide and moved out into the hallway. Part of Candy wanted to run downstairs and shout for them. She wanted so badly to run into Steel’s arms and for everything to be okay. But until they knew it was them, they couldn’t risk being seen. If the Iron Riders were coming to storm the clubhouse, both of the girls would be in grave danger.
They crouched at the top of the staircase on the third floor, both with their hearts in their mouths. As they heard the thumping of boots coming up the wooden steps to the front of the house, Candy could barely breathe.
The front door opened and the men, whoever they were, came inside. Lexi lifted her finger to her lips and shushed Candy even though she wasn’t making a sound.
“It’s done,” a voice came from downstairs and Candy sat up straight, straining to see over the bannister rail while remaining out of sight.
More steps thumped closer and others started up the stairs towards them.
“It must be them,” Candy hissed. “It must be.”
She got to her feet and shouted, “Steel!”
Lexi grabbed hold of her feet and tried to pull her back down, but in an instant, he croaked a reply…
“Candy… it’s me.”
She ran down the stairs to the second floor and threw herself into his arms. He was covered in blood and his eye was swollen. Cuts that looked like knife wounds ran all down his arms, and he was trembling.
“Steel,” she panted. “Come here.”
Lexi charged down the stairs after her and found her way to King. He too was wounded, but he was okay, and they locked themselves in a passionate embrace.
“We won,” Steel croaked. “We got Red X back.”
He collapsed into her arms while she helped him up the stairs and back into his room and lay him down on the bed.
***
She cleaned him with water and washed the dried blood away. Most of it wasn’t his, but his cuts were deep and she knew he would need a doctor. As he lay there with his head on her lap, she couldn’t believe the love she felt for him. He was the single most important person she had ever met in her life, and she never wanted to be faced with a situation where she could ever lose him again.
She thought back to earlier in the day, when he had asked her what she was running from. She had lied; she had told him no one. But now, she didn’t want secrets. She had seen him cracked open and vulnerable at the loss of his friend, and she was sure that not many people would have ever seen that side to him. She wanted him to know everything about her—she wanted to give him the same courtesy. She had to be honest and tell him about her past. She wanted him to know the wrongs someone had done to her, how much she had needed saving and how grateful she was that he had come into her life.
She looked down at him and brushed the hair away from his eyes. He was soundly asleep, and she wouldn’t wake him.
“Tomorrow,” she whispered. “Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of our lives together.”
She leaned forward and kissed him gently on the forehead and then she closed her eyes. She was part of the Forsaken Riders now. She was Steel’s woman, and even though she had been on the run for months, now she knew she could finally call somewhere home.
THE END
I hope you’ve enjoyed the first three Forsaken Riders stories. The next in the series, GUNNER, is available from Amazon now
Through the Highland Gateway
Leela Ash
Copyright ©2015 by Leela Ash. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 1
When she took the time to think back over the previous few weeks (or had it been hundreds of years?), Lily Rey would not know what to think. Any number of things could have happened any other way, and she would not have found herself living with the man she had always felt that sh
e deserved, in the land that she had always dreamed of living in. In her scheme of thinking, things had changed so drastically in such a short period of time; she had gone from stressed to easeful, ignored to revered, and downtrodden to wealthy.
It had all started at the desk outside of Reginald P. Wooley, Esquire’s office. Reginald was a senior partner at the offices of Davis, Franklin, and Wooley, Attorneys at Law, a prestigious criminal defense office in Daytona Beach, Florida, when she received a telephone call from Tyler Yancey, her great aunt’s estate attorney. She had been expecting the call for about a week, and was beginning to worry that it would not come in time for her trip to Scotland.
“Reginald Wooley’s office, Lily speaking,” she had answered.
“Yes, Miss Rey,” the man’s voice had said through the crackle of cell-phone static, “I am calling in regards to Mrs. Henry’s estate. The reading of her will is this afternoon, and she had specifically asked that you be present, as it concerns you very much.”
“Okay, what time?”
“We will be starting at 4:00 p.m., exactly.”
“I’ll be there,” she said, replacing the telephone in the receiver. She remembered glancing at the clock and thinking to herself how they could have called her earlier. Her flight was scheduled to leave the runway at 8:15 that evening, and with the post-9/11 security, she would need to be at the airport by no later than 5:00 that evening.
She was cutting it mighty fine, indeed.
She had been looking forward to the trip—her chance to visit the land of her ancestors—for several months. She had always felt drawn to Scotland, most likely because family tradition had always said that they were descended from Scottish nobility, and it made her dream of castles, of handsome men full of chivalry and honor—basically what every young girl dreams of. The problem was, those young girls eventually learn that there are no more castles, princes to sweep them off their feet, or dragons to slay.
No, in modern life, there were only asshole law partners who prevent qualified women from promoting their lowly secretary’s job to a full paralegal, all while making her do the work of one. The bad part was, Reginald P. Wooley, Esq. was a perverted old man who only wanted to keep her at his front desk because of her round ass and large, perky tits. It was almost as if she was nothing but a long pair of legs and a vagina to the assholes at Davis, Franklin, and Wooley. They didn’t care that she was a certified paralegal, or that she was much better qualified than the ugly guy they had just hired to hold the title. They would rather have Lily in the position of “eye-candy-in-chief,” all while working her to death.
When she was honest with herself though, it wasn’t hard to understand why they wanted her to act as the company eye candy. In addition to her obvious physical assets of a large bust and round derriere, she also possessed with long, dark auburn hair that perfectly complemented her stunningly bright and large blue eyes. Her slightly hollowed cheeks and strong, thin chin perfectly balanced her face, and her legs were toned much more than the average, a testament to the multiple marathons, half-marathons, 10 and 5ks that she competed in every year. All in all, she was easily one of the prettiest women in Daytona Beach.
That day at lunchtime, she told the partners that she had finished her work, and told Reginald that she was leaving for her vacation. “Don’t you get lost in time over there! Make sure you come back!” he had answered, his eyes raking the plunging neckline of her blouse.
“I won’t!” Lily answered, all while thinking to herself that if she could help it, she definitely wouldn’t…come back. “Asshole,” she said to herself, as she walked out the front door of the office she so despised.
As she rode down A1A listening to P!NK’s most recent album, “The Truth About Love,” she cranked up the music and lost herself in her own world for a few moments. After she got home, showered, threw her suitcases in the back of her car, ate some lunch, and watched a last little bit of American television before leaving, she headed off to Tyler Yancey’s office for her appointment.
She had been very close to her Great Aunt Yvonne, who raised her from the time she turned eleven. When her mother had been killed in a car accident, her father wanted nothing to do with Lily, so the deadbeat asshole gladly signed his rights as a parent over to Yvonne, who was Lily’s mother’s aunt. Yvonne had not had any children of her own, but Great Uncle Harold, Aunt “Vonny’s” husband, had a daughter from a previous marriage. His granddaughter, Rose, was the same age as Lily.
As an only child, Lily had never known what it would be like to have a sibling, and Rose quickly became something of a surrogate sister. Rose’s father had abandoned her before she was born, leaving her to be raised by her mother, who had barely graduated high-school. Because her mother had to work two jobs to provide for her, Rose spent a lot of time with Lily’s Uncle Harold and Aunt Vonny. Now that Aunt Vonny had passed away, Lily had no family left besides Rose. Rose, of course, was not even related to her technically, but might as well have been.
When Lily arrived at the lawyer’s office, Rose eyed her white halter top and short blue shorts and immediately began laughing, her cigarette dangerously close to falling out of her mouth. “Hey, ho!”
“Hey yourself, skank!” Lily answered, breaking out into a wide grin. It was a normal routine of theirs to greet each other with insults, but it could not have been clearer to the average on-looker that they were close. “How’ve you been?” Lily asked as they embraced.
“I’m okay…it’s still hard to believe that Vonny is gone, you know?”
“Yeah, I’m really going to miss her.”
“What do you think she left you?”
“Probably $10 million…”
“Wishful thinking, much?”
“Considering that she didn’t have two pennies to rub together, yeah.”
“Yeah…I guess the fact that she paid for our college was our inheritance, huh?”
“Couldn’t have asked f0r more.”
“So, why are you dressed like a whore?” Rose said, snuffing out her cigarette, “You thinking that the lawyer will give you more if he thinks you’ll give him a blowjob in the car out back?”
“Well, I figured it couldn’t hurt” she joked, punching her on the left shoulder before opening the door to the small storefront that Tyler Yancey had rented for a law office.
“Hmmm…you’ve got a point there. Seriously, though…why?” Rose pressed, walking through the open door.
“I’ve got a plane to catch in a few hours, figured I’d make it easier for them to strip search me,” Lily answered sarcastically.
“I forgot! Where are you going, again? Ireland?”
“No, Scotland.”
“What’s the difference?” Rose asked as the lawyer walked from behind a small partition.
“Only the North Channel of the Irish Sea,” Yancey answered before Lily could open her mouth. “Ladies, thank you for coming. Shall we begin?”
“Aren’t we expecting anyone else?” Rose asked.
“No, you are the only two who Mrs. Henry made specific bequests to, and you are the only two who she specifically requested to be here. Shall we begin?”
“Sure,” Rose answered, sitting down in an office chair by the front door as Lily took a seat beside her.
“The last will and testament of Yvonne T. Henry,” the lawyer read aloud, “It is my wish that with exception of two personal effects, to be named herein, all of my assets be liquidated, and used to settle my final debts. First, my necklace of sterling silver and amethyst is bequeathed to my grand-niece, Lily O. Rey, along with the letter that accompanies it. Additionally, Lily is to receive one half of the monetary value of my estate, or two million dollars, whichever is less.” Trevor paused to take a sip of water while this sank into Lily’s consciousness. He then continued, “Secondly, my antique dining set, incorporating sterling silver cutlery and fine china plate are bequeathed to Rose S. Tolliver, along with the letter that accompanies the set. Additionally, Rose is to receive one
half of the monetary value of my estate, or two million dollars, whichever is less. If there are any funds available after the monetary value of my estate has been determined, I leave everything to the Florida Cancer Society, in remembrance of my late husband, Harold M. Henry.”
Lily and Rose sat there in shock as the attorney reached behind the partition and handed each of them a fine wooden chest, containing their bequests. “Naturally, we are unable to give you your financial inheritance, but we can arrange to have it deposited in your personal bank accounts.”
“How much was it?” Rose asked, obviously still in shock.
“You will each receive $1.98 million.”
“Wow,” Lily said quietly a few moments later, when they had exited the office.
“Did you know?” Rose asked.
“Know? Know what?”
“That Gramma Vonny was rich?”
“No…” Lily said before carefully opening the case and removing the yellowed envelope that sat inside on top of the pristine necklace. Opening the envelope, she found a letter dated in 1999, written in her Aunt Vonny’s minute, tidy handwriting:
My Dearest Lily,
I do not know if you were aware that the necklace I have left you exists. It has been passed down through the generations from our ancestors, always to the first-born woman of the next generation. If your mother had not passed, it would have been left to her; however, as you are the only surviving woman in our line from the generations after my own, it is now yours. I have had it appraised, and the certificate of authenticity, signed by the Department chairwoman of the University of Florida’s Anthropology Department, will verify that it originated in the early fourteenth century in our ancestral homeland of Scotland.
Also, family legend says that the necklace conceals a power that only one woman, the descendant of our ancestor, would be able to unlock. Unfortunately, I do not have any way of knowing (or passing on to you) what that power is. I can only tell you that many women in our line have borne her name, including you—Lily.
A Baby For the Outlaw Collection: Biker Romance Box Set Bundle (BBW Pregnancy Bad Boy MC Club Romance) (Contemporary Motorcycle Mega Pack Anthology Short Stories) Page 116