by Evie Monroe
He ran his tongue over his top teeth and gazed out the door, past me. Then he scratched at the back of his head and flattened himself against the door to let me pass. “Yeah. For a minute.”
I walked inside, gnawing on my cheek as I moved much too close to his chest. I didn’t want to do it. I hated being at Cullen McKnight’s mercy for anything. I’d been there before, and it was like extricating myself from a massive spider web. But I had no choice, now. Nowhere to go. No one to turn to.
I looked around—the foyer was sparkly. Through an arched doorway, I spotted a granite kitchen countertop, covered fully in all the kinds of bottles I’d expect from Cullen—Tito’s Vodka, Patron, Fireball, Jack, as well as an assortment of empty beer bottles. He didn’t talk much about his past, but he had told me he’d grown up with his father having parties all the time. I bet this was just normal for him. “I heard about your dad. I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “I’m not.”
“I thought you’d go and sell this place. It’s not really you, is it?”
He studied me. “How do you know what I am?”
I frowned. Correction: I’d known Cullen. Maybe I didn’t know him anymore. “I guess I don’t.”
He let in a breath, as Ella stopped looking in wonder at the chandelier and started to whine. He pointed to the door. “All right, well, nice catching up, but—”
“How about if I stay a little longer than a minute?” I blurted.
He closed the door and turned to me, eyebrow raised.
My eyes trailed to the floor. And then it all just poured out: “I had a place to live. A reliable sitter. A car. But then I lost my job. I couldn’t afford rent. I sold my car and have been staying in a hotel, until I couldn’t afford that. I stayed one night at the shelter, but I don’t want to go back. It’s not safe there for Ella. I wouldn’t ask you unless I really needed it, Cullen. Please.”
I swallowed the bile in my throat. I hated begging Cullen for anything.
His eyes narrowed. “You’re telling me you got nowhere to go?”
I nodded. Ella blew a raspberry with her cute little lips and gave him one of her killer smiles.
Oblivious, he stalked past us, into his kitchen. I followed behind him. Jesus, every surface was covered in bottles. I plopped Ella down on his clean white floor and let the backpack drop to the ground with a thud. Then I lifted Ella back into my arms. When I joined him in the kitchen, he was chugging a beer.
“So, is that a yes?”
He just stared at me, mouth full of beer, lips still wrapped around the bottleneck.
He finally swallowed. “I don’t know, girl. I’m in the middle of things.”
I looked around. He sure was. The kitchen showed he was in the middle of drinking himself to death. The living room had been gutted, and everything was covered in tarps. It looked like he was doing some serious renovations. “I don’t care. You can put me and Ella in one of the rooms upstairs and I swear, we won’t make a noise. Or if not, call me a cab and give me cash for a hotel room and—”
Suddenly, the doorbell rang.
Cullen tossed his beer bottle in the sink with a loud crash that made Ella jump and she let out a yell. He didn’t notice. He strutted in his fine jeans, slung low on his perfect ass, back to the front door. I tried not to salivate over that tight waist and little curved area with the two dimples, right above the swell of his ass as he pulled the door open.
I was expecting either a girly little giggle, or a sexy purr. Cullen didn’t discriminate. I got both. A giggle-purr. I watched as his flavor of the week—or maybe just the night?— strutted in, throwing her arms around him. He murmured something to her, and she said, “Oh? Then why did you . . .”
“Come on,” he barked.
I heard her heels clicking on the floor as she came closer. When she appeared, clinging tight to Cullen’s side, she wasn’t too far off from what I was picturing. Too much red hair. Big boobs, pushed up to her chin. Legs for miles. Practically no clothes.
She took one look at me and frowned. “Cullen. I don’t do the threesome thing.”
“Whoa,” I said, looking at Cullen. “Neither do I.”
“That makes three of us,” Cullen said under his breath. Ugh, I couldn’t believe I’d wasted an egg on this guy. He cleared his throat. “Phoebe, this is Grace. Grace, this is Phoebe, my interior designer.”
Right. His interior designer. I tried to suppress a snort, but it came out anyway. “You’ve done wonders with the place.”
Cullen scowled at me and took my elbow. “Grace was just leaving.”
Bastard. I frowned and picked up Ella, who slumped her head against my chest. I hated making this such a long night for her. All she wanted to do was go to sleep.
And the dickwad was kicking us out so he could get his fuck on.
He motioned me forward and reached into the pocket of his jeans for his wallet. He grabbed my bag and pulled out two hundred dollars as he walked me toward the door.
Dropping the bag at the door, he handed me the money and reached for his phone, dialing up a number. As it rang, he lifted his chin from the receiver and said, “Once you get through with this money, are you gonna be right back in the same spot?”
I didn’t want to say yes, but, yes. There was no doubt. It was impossible to find a job with a kid and no money. I nodded.
By then he was already on the phone with the cab company. He gave them the address and hung up. Then he reached into his wallet and pulled out another two hundred, as Phoebe called to him from the living room.
“Cullen! You called me over here. Don’t make me wait.”
His gorgeous blue eyes were distracted from me for a split second. Then he said, “Where’s your grandmother?”
“She died,” I mumbled. “Over a year ago.”
I didn’t expect a sympathy card from Cullen for the death of my last remaining relative, and I didn’t get one. He gazed in concentration at Ella. “What about its father? What the hell’s he doing about this?”
I looked up at him, then back at Ella, trying to keep the tears from my eyes. I did not need to cry now. But Cullen could be so dense, sometimes. Didn’t he see that his daughter had his exact same, piercing silver-blue eyes? She even had that little dimple, right on the center of her chin. I used to stare at it with adoration when we spent long, lazy mornings in bed together.
In the silence, it suddenly dawned on him. Cullen wasn’t easy to surprise. He never showed a ripple. All I got was a slight widening of the eyes.
He leaned his thick arm against the wall above him and raked a hand through the wild blonde hair. His voice was low, barely a breath. “You’re fucking kidding me, right?”
I shook my head.
“She’s yours, Cullen,” I said finally. “Ella is yours.”
Chapter Three
Cullen
My dick shriveled in my pants as my eyes swept over the kid.
The kid who Grace Wilson said was mine.
The kid who couldn’t be mine.
My life started to flash in front of my eyes, but I held that back. I refused to give in. Refused to accept my life was over.
We’d used protection, every time. I was sure of it. I was a fucking boy scout in the protection department, because the only thing I didn’t want more than a steady woman was a baby.
Fucking hell.
Suddenly, I was back at my little sister Aria’s place downtown. I’d rented that piece of shit apartment while I was getting my shit together, since I’d had it with my dad’s nightly drug parties. The man was sixty, and still having orgies in the fucking living room like some fucking twenty-year old hippie. He’d fucking disgusted me, but the final straw was when I came home to find my place in the pool house ransacked and a lot of my shit, and the thousands of dollars of cash I’d accumulated, taken. My father didn’t even care.
Aria’s little shithole was, in every sense of the word, a shithole, but it was freedom. Working at the Lucky Leaf Garage fixing motorcycles,
I didn’t have a lot of extra cash yet. I’d been with the Cobras a while by then, and had a good chance at being named president, and hadn’t wanted to be still living at home, anyway.
I met Grace three days after I moved in. She was Aria’s next-door neighbor and friend. I caught her looking at me from the outside steps of her house when I was moving boxes in, wearing these short-shorts and little halter top that had her taut stomach on display and full tits, with her nipples poking out. Strawberry blonde hair that fell in two pigtails, nearly down to her waist. She was a little spitfire of a girl, barely five feet tall, and all mouth. She lived with her grandmother and sometimes, I’d lean against the wall and listen to her screaming her head off at the poor old lady.
One night, she’d come over for a talk with Aria, but Aria was at work. The way she licked her lips, though, I knew she’d come for me. I let her in and we had a few beers.
Then, somehow, I lured her down to my basement, and she didn’t leave for the next three days.
We just fucked. Again and again and again, our bodies so in tune with each other, we couldn’t get enough. It was like a daze, a whirlwind. I’d never felt anything like that, before or since.
So, now, thinking back on it, one of those times might not have been protected.
Shit.
I bit down hard, trying not to think of those three days, and the six months afterward. The six months in my entire life that had been different. That had felt … I wasn’t sure how to describe it. Just different. In a way I never wanted to feel ever again.
Fuck that. Not with anyone, but especially not with her. She fucking left me. No woman left me and got a second chance.
“You left me in the middle of the night,” I bit out, drawing a hand over my face. “You didn’t fucking return my calls.”
She nodded. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? What the—?” I fisted my hands as Phoebe appeared in the doorway. She’d undone the tie to her coat and was wearing something red, that bared too much of her fine parts.
But my dick was completely dead.
I had a kid. My dick was hanging its head in shame.
Phoebe started to give me a come-hither look but I met that with a scowl that effectively shot that down. I held up a finger to her. “Don’t.” I growled. “Just. Go home.”
Phoebe let out a sigh and put her hands on her hips. “Wait, are you telling me—”
I pointed at her. Then the door. “Yes. Go.”
I reached for it, swung it open, and stepped aside. As I did, a cab pulled into the driveway, its headlights sweeping across Grace’s face. She took a step toward it.
I pointed at Grace. “You. Stay.”
Grace shook her head. “Do you really think ordering women around like they’re dogs is going to work for you?”
I scowled at her as Phoebe, without another word, scurried out the door, between us. She kissed her finger, pressed it to my bottom lip and said, “Call me again, baby.”
I raised an eyebrow at Grace. “Always has.”
“Well, not with me it doesn’t,” she said, thrusting her chin out and reaching for the door. Leave it to Grace Fucking Wilson to act like a princess even when she had absolutely nothing. I held her elbow.
“Tell me why you left, first.”
She sighed, hedged. Looked down at her kid—our kid—and gnawed on her lip some more. “I had a good reason to. Really.”
“Yeah? Well, I’d like to hear it. And I’d also like to hear why you thought it wasn’t necessary to tell me I’m a dad until now?”
Just then, the little girl lifted her head off Grace’s shoulder and yawned sleepily. Grace stroked her head. “Do you think I could lay her down somewhere first?”
I shrugged. She’d put me off for almost two years. Another few minutes wouldn’t hurt. I led her upstairs and into one of the guest rooms. Which happened to be the room on the other end of the house, furthest from mine. I flipped on the light and she looked around.
She dropped her backpack on the bed.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” I muttered, cursing to myself as I went outside to send the cab away.
As I did, I thought of that last night we were together. We’d been lying in my lumpy old futon at the shithole, and she was on top of me, naked, and I was inside her. She was doing that mesmerizing little dance she did, rubbing her perfect little body on mine, making herself feel good, her tits swaying in time to her movements.
Then my cell phone rang, and I saw in the darkness that it was Nix.
I’d been waiting all day for his call. Waiting for word on a car we were loading overseas.
And I made my first mistake.
I went to answer it. As I lifted it, she grabbed it from my hand and held it over my head, taunting me.
I motioned to her, serious. “Give me that.”
She grinned. “Nope. Make me come first. I’m close.”
I dug my fingers into her thighs to get her to stop. “GIVE. THAT. TO. ME.”
She stopped moving on top of me and tossed it across the room, a triumphant look on her face.
“What the . . .?” I lifted her off of my dick and scrambled across the room to pick it up. I answered it just in time and made the plans to meet Nix at the dock in a half hour. Then I turned to her. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
The girl had blue eyes that could turn to fire. Nothing any woman could do hit me quite like Grace’s eyes. She snapped, “What the fuck is wrong with me? What the fuck is wrong with you? I thought we were—I don’t know—in the middle of something important?” She’d already begun pulling on her shorts. “I’m such a terrible person. Maybe I wanted to be with my boyfriend without him thinking of his precious motorcycle club for once.”
She didn’t get it. The Cobras were everything to me. As far as I was concerned, it was Cobras first, everything else second. I’d never told her otherwise.
When I did mention it, she rolled her eyes. And if she didn’t understand, what the fuck was the point? “You’re not my girlfriend,” I spat out.
She was hooking her bra, but she suddenly stopped. I saw her face flame. But I’d never promised her anything. I didn’t do girlfriends. Wasn’t that for high school peckers? “Oh. Right,” she said, as if she’d just forgotten.
I sat down next to her. “Look. You know what the club means to me.”
“I do. But I also think I should mean something to you, too.”
I’d frowned, grabbing hold of her slim shoulders. “You do. But I’m going to be the president. I have responsibilities.” I’d been working toward becoming head of the club almost since day one. I’d never felt more honored in my life than the day I was named president of the Cobras. If one of the guys called me, there was no other choice than to be there, with them.
I’d checked my phone and reached for my jeans. “Look. I got to go. We can talk about this more when I get back.”
She didn’t say anything, just sat at the edge of the bed and looked at the ground.
I sat beside her and kissed her shoulder. “Come on. Don’t give me shit.”
“Me? I was close. And you . . .”
“That’s to be continued, okay? I promise, you’re first, when I get back.”
She gave me a half-smile, and said, “I better be.”
I’d left to go to the docks. I’d been there for the cargo shipment, and everything went smoothly. The guys probably could’ve handled it without me, but I knew if more stuff happened without me, they’d lose respect. So I shot the shit, went to The Wall and had some beers with them, carried on like it was any ordinary Friday night.
When I got back, it was sometime after midnight. Not rushing back, when I knew we were on thin ice? That was my second mistake.
My basement apartment was dark. And she was gone.
Not just gone from my house, gone from my life. She’d gradually moved more and more of her stuff from her grandmother’s house over to my place, until she was pretty much living with me. But in
the space of the few hours I was dealing with Cobra shit, she’d cleared it all out.
I looked everywhere for her. And she’d just disappeared.
Vanished into thin air.
And now, here she was, in my fucking guest room.
She’d left me before.
And now she was back. With a baby.
My baby.
And no fucking explanation.
I went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. When I came back, I expected to see the kid in the bed. But she had her on the floor, on the plush carpeting, boxed in by pillows. “What? The bed not good enough for you?”
She shook her head and brushed a wisp platinum hair off the kid’s forehead. “Ella tends to move around a lot. Don’t want her falling off the bed.”
Well. That made sense. When I last knew Grace, her job had been as companion for her grandmother, but since her grandmother was pretty with-it, that meant that all she did, day after day, was raid her grandmother’s medical marijuana stash, sneak booze from her dead grandfather’s liquor cabinet, and watch TV. She hadn’t been a pillar of responsibility. It occurred to me that she had a lot more on her mind these days.
She turned down the lights lower and then followed me out to the hall.
I turned to her. “So?”
She looked hurt. “So what?”
“Dammit, Grace. I’m waiting. Are you going to explain to me why you left, and didn’t tell me I had a kid?”
She just looked up at me, scraping her top teeth over her bottom lip in a way that made my cock twitch. It didn’t fucking help that she was even hotter now. She hadn’t been skinny before, but she’d filled out. Those curves were front-and-center, even in the oversize flannel shirt and cutoffs she was wearing. I didn’t think it was homelessness that agreed with her; it was probably motherhood.
I tried to get my cock to remember that. There was a kid in the other room. My kid. And it was all my cock’s fault.
“Well?”