Ruined

by Jackie Ashenden

  He gave me a measuring look, letting the silence hang there for a bit. Then he said, ‘So what’s up? Something important? I can tell by the look on your face.’

  It was important. This was Annie and Cat, and there weren’t any other people on this whole fucking planet more important to me than they were.

  But I had to be careful about how I was going to ask for this. Keep had a good relationship with the police chief, a relationship that was important, too—especially if you wanted to stay on the straight and narrow like Keep did. He made sure the club maintained a low profile with the law and stayed out of trouble.

  Well, we weren’t called the Knights in Shining Armor. We were the Knights of Ruin for a reason. But that reason didn’t include drugs or whores or guns or any of that shit. We did the usual MC stuff for cash: a strip club, a couple of garages around town and a good bit of protection and hired muscle work. But we weren’t in it for the money. We were in it because we wanted to ride and live free, our brothers by our side.

  I was in it because the Knights were my family—certainly more of a family than my own had been—and I wanted it to stay that way. I didn’t want to rock the boat.

  Except this thing with Annie might just do a shitload of rocking.

  I had to try, though. For Cat’s sake.

  ‘Yeah, something’s up.’ I met Keep’s gaze. ‘It’s got to do with Justin Grant.’

  Keep’s blue eyes narrowed. ‘Campbell Grant’s son?’

  ‘Unfortunately.’

  He sighed and unlinked his hands, sitting forward in his chair, folding his arms and leaning his elbows on the desk. ‘Fuck’s sake, Smoke. Not again.’

  I fought a hot rush of irritation. Everyone knew I hated Grant’s guts because of Cat, and that if I’d had my way I would have put him in the ground with no regrets if I could have got away with it. But I’d never actually put a move on him. So Keep getting pissed at me was annoying.

  Still, I knew where Keep was coming from.

  Yet this was Cat. And that was a whole other story.

  So I swallowed my anger, kept my posture loose and held his gaze steadily. ‘If it was just about Grant being a dick, I’d agree with you. But last night he didn’t return Annie, and when I caught up with them I found him putting her into a car with a big suitcase.’ I paused. ‘He didn’t look like he was planning on coming back, Keep.’

  There was no expression at all on Keep’s face. He was good at hiding his emotions.

  ‘So? He’s the kid’s father.’

  Keep knew all about Cat and Annie. He knew Cat was the only thing that kept me sane, the only bright spot in the entire damn world when things had got really dark. He knew what she meant to me and he knew why this was important.

  The motherfucker was playing devil’s advocate.

  ‘And Cat is Annie’s mother,’ I said flatly. ‘He doesn’t have any right to take Annie away from her.’

  Keep lifted a shoulder. ‘Sounds like custody drama to me. Let them sort it out themselves. Got nothing to do with us.’

  ‘Grant’s going to come back,’ I went on, ignoring him. ‘He’s promised to get a court order giving him sole custody. And because he’s a lawyer, and full of shit, he’s going to tell them about Cat working nights and about how she’s got a biker boyfriend, that it’s dangerous for Annie to be around her.’

  ‘Yeah, okay. I hear you. But, again, what’s that got to do with us?’ Keep’s stare was sharp. ‘I know Cat’s important to you, but this isn’t club business. I got a whole lot of things going on now, and I don’t need any attention from the police. If the club gets involved with this...’

  Frustration rose, but I swallowed it down, playing it cool. ‘I know all that. But we have to do something. That prick hurt Cat. And I’ll be damned if he does it again.’

  Keep let out a breath. ‘She’s your friend—I get it. And the kid is cute. No doubt about it. But I’m saying no. We can’t afford the heat it would bring down. Not now.’

  Fuck. If it had been anyone else, I would have let it go. But it wasn’t anyone else. It was Cat. And I hadn’t been able to protect her from Justin last time, which meant I was not going to fail again.

  ‘Keep,’ I said clearly, levelly. ‘I’ve never asked you for anything. Not one single fucking thing. Not even when that shit went down with Dad. But I’m asking you now. I need you to help Cat and Annie.’

  Keep’s blue eyes turned cold. He was an easygoing guy on the surface, but that only went so far. There was a reason he was club president, and it wasn’t because he was a walkover.

  ‘No.’ His voice was very quiet. ‘That’s my final answer. I’m not saying it again.’

  I knew that tone. It was his presidential do-not-fuck-with-me tone. No one argued with that—not if they liked their balls hanging where they were.

  But I had a line, too. And Cat was it.

  ‘If they were ours, you would, right?’ A stupid question, since it should have gone without saying. I had to check, though.

  ‘You know I would. But they’re not.’

  No, they weren’t.

  Yet.

  I leaned back in my chair, an idea going around and around in my head. Because that motherfucker Justin was not going to hurt her again. Over my dead fucking body.

  Luckily, there was another option.

  Unluckily, Cat was going to hate it.

  There was only one way to make Cat and Annie part of the Knights, and that was for me to take her as my old lady.

  I couldn’t deny that it was something I’d wanted for years—a secret fantasy that wouldn’t ever make it into reality since Cat didn’t feel that way about me. But, shit, we could fake it, couldn’t we? Make it look like we were together at least enough for the rest of the MC to believe it and protect her, if and when Grant came gunning for her.

  Are you sure she doesn’t feel that way about you?

  I blinked, the thought hitting me hard. Where the hell had that come from? Admittedly her behaviour last night had been weird—not looking me in the eye and getting all strange and tense when I got near her. Then, when I’d brought up the topic of that blow job, she’d blushed. Like she was the one embarrassed about it.

  Still, discussing your best friend’s blow job would be pretty embarrassing for a chick.

  So why did you put your hands in the pockets of her jeans?

  I shifted uncomfortably in the chair.

  Never in all the years we’ve been friends had I touched her like that. In fact I’d never made one single move on her, even though sometimes I wanted to so bad I was like a junkie in search of a fix. She was my friend. End of. Besides, I knew how she felt about MCs.

  To say she wasn’t the Knights’ greatest fan was a severe understatement.

  Anyway, I still didn’t know what had made me slide my hands into the back pockets of her jeans, feel the heat of her against my palms, pull her close. She was trying to avoid me and I simply wanted to hold her there so we could talk about it.

  Yeah, sure. You fucking liar.

  I shifted again, my palms stinging from the memory. Fuck, she’d felt hot. Then she’d put her hands on my chest and it was like I’d been plugged into a goddamn wall socket. She’d touched me plenty of times before and it had never felt like that—mainly because I’d trained myself to ignore my reactions around her.

  She’d been blushing, too. Had touching me done something for her?

  ‘Jesus, Smoke,’ Keep muttered. ‘You got a problem or something? You’re shifting around like a two-year-old needing the potty.’

  Mother fuck. If I wasn’t careful Keep was going to notice something else, because my dick was starting to think interesting things about why Cat might have been blushing. And why she’d suddenly pushed me away as if I’d burned her.

  Why she’d been so weird about not wanting to discuss that blow
job.

  Christ. Getting a hard-on in the absence of any naked chicks, while sitting talking your president, wasn’t exactly a good look.

  Shoving thoughts of her and how she’d felt in my arms away, I pushed myself out of my chair. ‘Nope. No problem.’

  ‘I’m sorry about Cat.’ Keep looked it, too, but he had the club as a whole to consider and I understood that. ‘We good?’

  ‘All good, Prez.’

  And we would be. Because I’d made my decision.

  There was only one way to protect her and Annie from her dick ex and that was to make her mine.

  Cat wasn’t going to like it, but I’d talk her around. I’d convince her. This was all for Annie’s sake, and nothing was more important than making sure she was safe.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Cat

  I WAS FINISHING up my shift at Lucky’s when the door opened with a bang and Smoke strode in.

  Carl, who owned Lucky’s Bar, wasn’t a fan of the Knights, and he didn’t much like Smoke and the other brothers hanging around. He could make life difficult for me when he was in the mood, so Smoke tended to steer clear of Lucky’s whenever I was working.

  Though tonight it looked as if he had something important to say.

  Dear God, if it was about that blow job again, I’d get security to haul his ass out of there myself.

  ‘Hey, Cat.’

  His deep, husky voice rolled over me as he approached the bar and I had no idea why I found myself staring at him like a complete idiot. Because there was no reason to stare—none at all. Not when he was dressed like he normally was, in black boots, worn black jeans and a faded black T-shirt, his cut over the top. Nothing special, nothing fancy.

  Yet I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

  Looking at how the cotton of his T-shirt pulled over the hard muscles of his chest and biceps, how the waistband of his jeans sat low on his lean hips, how one corner of his mouth curved in a sexy half smile, how black his eyes were and how they drew me in, made me feel like I was drowning.

  What was wrong with me? It was like he was projecting some kind of electric field, sensitising my skin, making it prickle with awareness and a heat that was totally unwelcome.

  No. Just no. The weirdness of a couple of nights ago was fresh in my mind, and I’d been hoping that it would have all gone away and everything would be like it was.

  Seemed I was destined for disappointment.

  Smoke leaned his elbows on the bar and raised an eyebrow without saying anything.

  I jerked my gaze away, busying myself with folding some of the cleaning cloths we kept behind the bar for drying glasses.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ The question came out quick and graceless, but I couldn’t seem to moderate my tone.

  If he took offence, or even noticed, he didn’t show it.

  ‘I got to talk to you.’

  ‘Now? I’m in the middle of work.’

  ‘It’s important.’

  I folded the cloth in half, lining up the edges and making sure they met. ‘Can’t it wait? You know Carl doesn’t like you hanging around.’

  ‘Yeah, but, like I said, this is important. It’s about Annie and you.’

  I couldn’t avoid his gaze any longer—avoiding it was already strange enough as it was. Bracing myself, I finally looked up and met his dark eyes.

  There it was again, that electric shiver moving over my skin like static.

  Crazy. He was here to talk about something important, to do with Annie and me, and all I could think about was my physical reaction to him.

  I had to get a grip. I had to put this stupid...whatever it was...to one side and forget about it. I wasn’t getting involved with a biker—not after the lesson my dad had taught my mom, let alone the fact that the biker in question was my best friend. So there wasn’t any point fixating on this irrational attraction.

  I was over men—possibly for good.

  I had to let it go.

  ‘Okay?’ I leaned a hip against the bar. ‘So what’s the deal?’

  ‘I’ve figured out a way to make sure Grant never comes near you or Annie.’

  I blinked, my heart leaping inside my chest. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘I’m always serious, kitten.’ He didn’t smile, and there was an intense look on his face. ‘Especially when it comes to you two and your safety.’

  I let the kitten go, sagging against the bar in relief. ‘How? What did you do?’

  He still didn’t smile, which maybe should have clued me in to the fact that what he was going to say next wasn’t going to make my life any easier.

  ‘You’re not going to like it.’

  The relief ebbed, my muscles tensing. ‘What exactly am I not going to like?’

  ‘It involves the Knights.’

  Smoke was always like this when he was telling me stuff I didn’t want to hear. Calm. Direct. Straight-up. Laying out the unpleasant facts so I knew exactly where I stood.

  ‘It involves you and Annie being under their protection.’

  My first instinct was no fucking way in hell. I hated the MC and didn’t want to have anything to do with them—and I especially didn’t want any child of mine anywhere near them.

  ‘I told you I didn’t want to involve—’

  ‘I know what you told me. But hear me out, okay?’

  I bit down on my protest. I didn’t want to hear him out, but if he’d gone to the trouble of figuring out a way to help Annie, then the least I could do was listen.

  ‘Fine. So how are Annie and me going to be under their protection? We’re not part of the club.’

  He shifted on his feet, and if I hadn’t known any better, I would have said he looked uncertain. Which was strange, because Smoke was never uncertain.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’s the hard part. To be under their protection you have to be a club member.’

  ‘How? Unless they’re suddenly recruiting women?’ I put a little sarcasm into that last part, because obviously no outlaw MC would allow women to be full members.

  Smoke ignored that, gazing at me in a very focused, very intent way. It made that electric current stronger, lifting all the hairs along the back of my neck and my forearms, making me short of breath.

  ‘There’s one way,’ he murmured. ‘If you’re my old lady, you’ll have the full protection of the club and so would Annie.’

  Shock held me still. I had no idea what to say—no idea what to even think.

  First there was the whole issue of the club. Then there was being his old lady... He couldn’t be serious.

  But he wasn’t smiling. And the look in his eyes... Shit, I knew that look. He always had it when he meant to do something and he was going to do it whether I liked it or not. He’d always been a guy who liked his own way, and he got it enough that it made him unhappy when he didn’t.

  ‘You’re not serious, right?’ I tried to sound normal and not like a shaky little girl.

  ‘Yeah, I’m serious.’

  Of course he was. He was never anything but.

  ‘You and me will be together as long as it takes for Grant to get off your back, but it won’t be real or anything.’ He stopped all of a sudden, as if he’d meant to say something else and held himself back at the last minute. ‘We only have to make it look believable to the club.’

  Make it look believable.

  What the hell did that mean?

  You know what it means, idiot.

  Heat shot through me—a flare like a lighted match held against my skin. I tried like hell to ignore it. To concentrate on the facts instead.

  ‘So,’ I said carefully, busying myself with folding the cloths again. ‘Let me get this straight. You think that if you make me your old lady, the club will protect me and Annie from Justin.’

  ‘I don’t think. I k
now.’ He said it like the gospel truth, handed down from God himself.

  ‘I thought your president didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the police chief. If Justin comes after Annie and the club stops him...’ I let the sentence hang.

  ‘Checked it out with Keep this morning.’ Smoke put his hands flat on the bar. ‘He won’t lift a finger if you’re not part of the Knights. But if you’re one of us, you’ll have an army at your back. Club comes first, and the chief can go fuck himself.’

  Club comes first.

  Wasn’t that the lesson I’d learned all through my childhood? That the club, the brothers were the most important things in my father’s life.

  My mother had learned that lesson, too, when she was still a silly socialite, falling for a badass biker with tats on his arms and a gleaming Harley. She’d thought he was going to give her the freedom from her wealthy family that she’d always craved. Instead he’d given her a one-way ticket to Junkieville.

  He never married her—never made her his old lady. He got her pregnant, then left her in a shitty apartment trying to bring up his kid by herself because her family had cut her off. And the only reason she’d stayed was because he kept her in drugs.

  Oh, yeah, and apparently she loved him, even though he used to hit her sometimes.

  A real prince, my dad.

  To this day I have no idea why he didn’t make her his old lady. It was like he thought we weren’t good enough to be part of his precious club—like it was far too special to share with us. Not that we wanted to be part of it... Or at least I didn’t.

  I hated him and, because of its influence on him, I hated that club.

  I hated the Knights for their influence on Smoke, too. The day he told me he was going to sign up to be a prospect I didn’t speak to him for two whole weeks. I didn’t want him to join. I didn’t want them to take him away from me.

  We got over that years ago, but sometimes I still felt the betrayal of it.

  Like now.

  ‘Cat.’ Carl’s voice behind me was mean with annoyance. ‘You’ve still got fifteen minutes. Get back to work.’

  Smoke pushed himself sharply back from the bar.