by Ali Parker
“She’s still digging,” Ryder was saying to Jax. “She thinks there’s still a chance she’ll be able to track him down. His picture is posted all over the precinct, and most of the cops know he’s Dani’s family now, too.”
Axel caught my eye. I could see the same thing written on his face that I was thinking: the kid wasn’t turning up. There was just no fucking way. Not after two years.
And if he did turn up, it wouldn’t be in a good way.
Ryder wasn’t stupid. He had to have run through all these thoughts already—probably before any of them occurred to me. But he loved Jason despite all his flaws. He had to do everything he could to find him. And after everything Ryder had done for me, I was going to stick by him. It was the least I could do.
“New York is a big place,” I said as I stood with the others. “And Jason’s not a stupid kid. He’ll know you won’t stop looking for him. If he doesn’t want to be found, he’ll be giving the cops a run for their money.”
Ryder nodded. “I know. The little shit.”
I chuckled, but only once. “Yeah, well, he took after you. Let’s hope that’s doing him favors out there. Maybe he managed to set out on his own.”
“Maybe,” Ryder said. “And maybe he’s still with those assholes.”
“If the Black Hearts had him in their ranks, you’d know about it,” Jax said. “They’d want to rub it in like dirt in a wound. They’d know full well how much it would piss you off.”
“He’s got a point,” I said.
Ryder nodded. “True. But things are calming down. Since TJ, we haven’t had any issues. I haven’t even seen any of them out on the streets. It’s like they disbanded.”
“I fucking doubt that,” Axel said. “I think they’re waiting.”
“Waiting?” Ryder asked quizzically.
“Same,” Jax agreed. “I don’t know if it’s just me, but things haven’t felt right for the last couple months. It feels like shit is about to turn south. You know? Like the way the air gets before a lightning storm. Thick with electricity and moisture and—”
“Danger,” I said without thinking.
“Yeah.” Jax nodded. “Danger.”
Everyone was quiet. We had spoken what everyone must have been thinking for weeks now. Something felt off, but none of us could put a finger on it. We had no reason to worry; no reason to think things were about to change. Besides business being slow, things were great for us and the MC. Money wasn’t coming in as heavily as it usually did, but we were still generating a healthy profit while being able to afford our most valuable members plenty of family time. Things had never been better for us.
Which was, in my opinion, exactly why we all thought things were about to take a turn for the worst. We were waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Ryder ran his hands along his thighs and sighed. “There’s not much we can do about it right now, boys. I hear you, though. Loud and clear. Let’s keep our eyes open out there and make sure we communicate anything we see that might seem out of the ordinary. All right?”
We all agreed solemnly. Communication was key when it came to looking out for one another. We were family. We had each other’s backs.
Ryder nodded again and pushed himself to his feet. “Good. You fuckers head home. It’s been a long day for everyone.”
“Before we go,” Jax said slowly, “let’s end on a lighter note. I want to discuss the little surprise last night.”
“No,” Axel hissed from where he stood near the reception desk. He had his arms crossed over his chest, and the scowl he was giving Jax was enough to freeze running water.
Jax held both hands up and shrugged his shoulders. “All right, all right. I’m just saying. Angela held her own around us, and we’re a rowdy bunch.”
“That she did,” Derek agreed. “She fit right in. Like a glove. It’s a shame we’re only meeting her now.”
“But not a surprise,” Caleb added, leaning into Derek jokingly.
“I like her,” Ryder agreed, lifting his chin and looking down his nose at Axel, who was still stewing. “She’s all spit and fire, like you. Not that I’m surprised.”
“She matched me in drinks,” Hyde chimed in. “And handled her liquor like a champ. You Coopers are made of grit and stubbornness.”
I kept my mouth shut and my eyes downcast. I was not going to play these games with Axel. I was already in hot water. He had pulled me aside at his house that night to warn me to stay away from his baby sister. I had tried to assure him that I was staying away. Nothing I said seemed to convince him. He told me to keep my distance and to keep my cock in my pants.
“She’s my baby sister, and she’s not cannon fodder for our discussions.”
Ryder rolled his eyes. “You’re such a fucking drama queen, Axel. She’s not a baby anything anymore. Not that I was looking,” he added quickly and with a chuckle. “But she had eyes for someone. That much I noticed.”
“I think we all noticed,” Hyde mused. I could feel his eyes on me as everyone but Axel giggled like fourteen-year-old girls on the first day of gym class.
I didn’t look up. I prayed to the God I didn’t believe in to spare me being called out by Ryder.
I had never been that lucky.
“Sabian,” Ryder said. “She had her eyes on you all night long.”
“I didn’t notice,” I said a little too quickly.
Ryder barked with laughter, and the others joined in—everyone except Axel, that is. “You were too scared to notice, hiding in the corner with your tail between your legs.”
“Enough,” Axel hissed.
“Please,” I said.
Axel looked at me out of the corner of his eye, and we shared an unspoken agreement. I wouldn’t talk about his baby sister like this. I respected her too much. She was a hellion and the kind of girl who could handle herself. She commanded the attention of any room she was in, and she didn’t shrink away from conflict. I’d seen her in action more than once, and she knocked my socks off. Her wrath was infinitely worse than Axel’s.
Another thing I would never speak aloud to him.
“Come on, you pricks.” I nodded towards the door. “Get the hell out of here. I still have to lock up and close down the system.”
“Fine.” Ryder shouldered his way out of the office and led the others through the shop. He turned to me over his shoulder as he paused in the doorway that opened up to the gravel driveway. “Hey, Sabian, don’t let Axel scare you. You’re my man. He isn’t allowed to fuck with that.”
Axel paused and looked back at me too. The warning was loud and clear, but it didn’t convince me that Axel wouldn’t shove his boot up my ass if I touched his sister. Some things were just too much for a man to take. Me dating Axel’s sister was too much for him. His boot up my ass was too much for me.
I would just have to keep my distance and find a way to let her know that the flirty thing we had going on had to stop. This was life now, and if she was living in New York City, we had to find a way to make it work that didn’t end with me being impaled by her brother’s shoe.
The engines of the trucks and cars and bikes out front hummed as I logged out of all our computer systems and shut everything down. Then I walked my nightly route around the shop to make sure all the side doors were locked. I checked for any potential funny business along the perimeter. When I found nothing, I went back inside and turned off all the inside lights. Then I let myself out and locked up.
When I turned to the driveway, I drew up short.
Angela was there, leaning up against her Alfa Romeo, looking like sin incarnate.
Somehow, in the dusk of the New York summer evening, she looked like her skin was reflecting sunlight. She was dressed in spiky black heels, high-waisted denim shorts, a black leather vest, and a crop top that showed a lean stomach and pierced navel.
She pushed herself off the car as I approached and dragged her heel through the gravel. “Hey,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if you’d still be here.”<
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“We had a meeting,” I said as I gestured back to the shop. “It ran later than expected.”
“Ah.” She nodded like what I was saying was interesting.
“What are you doing here?” I tried to make the question sound as polite as possible. I had to keep my head. The woman was a vixen, and everything about her was sending the blood rushing straight to my cock. The sensual curve of her lips as she smiled at me, the glint in her eyes, the way she popped her hip to the side as she shifted her weight. Everything was kryptonite to me.
“Well,” she said slowly, tracing her bottom lip with her index finger. “I actually needed to ask you a favor.”
“A favor?”
I prayed for a second time that night for a God that didn’t exist to save me.
Chapter 8
Angela
Sabian was looking at me with that cool, disinterested look he always had. He was smug, and cocky, and ridiculously attractive. Convincing him to go along with the ploy I had devised over the afternoon was going to be tricky. He wasn’t the kind of guy who liked to play games, so I was going to have to be straightforward and honest with him if there was any chance of him helping me.
I took a deep breath and met his dark, steely gaze. “I’m going to explain it all, but you have to bear with me, okay?”
I noticed his jaw clench, but he nodded.
I took that as permission to continue. “Okay, so, I have this wedding coming up that I’m supposed to go to. And by ‘supposed to go to,’ I mean I have to go. Originally, I was going to bail because it’s my cousin, and she didn’t know I moved here. But her mom spoke to my mom, and now the cat’s out of the bag.” I took a deep breath before continuing. “And my parents will be there, of course. It’s a Cooper family wedding, so everyone will be there. And I kind of, sort of, really, really need you to come with me as my date.” I blinked up at him and batted my eyelashes twice for dramatic effect.
He stared at me blankly before a big grin washed over his face. He laughed, shook his head, and kicked at the loose gravel between us. “Angela, I think we both know that’s a terrible idea. Me? At a Cooper wedding? Are you crazy?”
“No,” I said. “Hear me out. There is reason to my madness.”
“Okay then,” he said. The note of disbelief in his voice told me I needed to try harder. He wasn’t biting. And I needed him to bite.
“You know how I said it took a lot of persuading for me to get my parents to let me move here?”
“Yes.”
“Well, by persuading, I kind of mean lying. At first when I told them about the New York Times, they shot it down. You know how my folks are. They want me to stay home with them until a rich guy proposes to me, and then I can move into his mansion and keep doing the same boring old shit day in and day out until I die. Of course, I’d be expected to pop out a few babies and maintain my figure and sit quietly by his side at the dinner table—” I stopped talking. “I’m getting sidetracked. The point is, they said that I couldn’t move to New York. So, I told the one lie that I knew would convince them to change their minds.”
Sabian tucked his hands in his pockets. “You told them you were seeing someone in New York City.”
“Yeah, pretty much. And it worked. They agreed to let me move here. But I hadn’t planned it all the way through because I never intended on going to this stupid wedding. But now my cousin knows I’m here, and the whole family is expecting for me to show up with the guy I’ve been seeing for six months.”
“Six months, hey?”
“Yeah. I know. At the time, it felt like the only move I had left, and I needed to get the hell out of there. You get that, right?”
“Yeah. I get it. You and Axel both.”
I bit my bottom lip. “Yeah.”
He scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t know, Angela. This seems like dangerous territory for me. You really think the Cooper family is going to look highly on me?” He gestured down at himself. His jeans were stained with grease and torn in several places. His T-shirt had once been white, and now it was varying shades of brown and gray after being used as a rag as well as a shirt. “I’m going to stick out like a sore thumb.”
“No, you won’t,” I countered. “Let me handle your tux and—”
“Tux?”
“Yeah. Cooper wedding, remember? You can’t just show up in dress pants and a button down. You wouldn’t get in. I’ll get you a tux and shoes and everything else you’ll need. You just have to pick me up and get me to the wedding and pretend to be my boyfriend while we’re there.”
“Listen, Ang, in theory it sounds good, but in reality? Not so much. Not only will everyone there see right through me, but your brother would be pissed. I’d be—” He cut off abruptly and shook his head. “I don’t think this is a smart move for either of us. Isn’t there someone else you can ask?”
“Like who?” I lifted my hands and let them fall back to my sides in exasperation. “Sabian, I’m in a new city. I don’t know anyone. And I realize that I singlehandedly put myself in this position. I get it. But I had to do what was best for me, and getting out from under my parents was right for me. If I don’t have someone on my arm at that wedding, they’ll kick me out of the penthouse, and I’ll have to go back to Los Angeles.”
He was looking me in the eyes and shaking his head. I was not used to a man saying no to me like this, and it was throwing me for a loop. He really respected Axel. That was for damn sure. Screw my meddling brother for scaring away the one guy I trusted to not fuck this up for me.
“I can’t,” Sabian said finally. “I’m sorry.”
I groaned and resisted the urge of stomping my foot. It was a compulsion that sickened me and a reminder of who I was. A spoiled rich girl. “It’s okay. I get it.” I blew out a breath and ran my fingers through my short hair. “I can always find a last-minute Tinder date or something. Someone out there will be down to go to a free wedding I’m sure. They just might fuck it up.”
“Why don’t you just tell them this fake boyfriend of yours couldn’t make it?”
“You don’t know my family.” I sighed.
“No, I don’t, but I know you. You convinced them to believe in a boyfriend that wasn’t real. How hard could it be to persuade them that he had to work or something?”
“I see where you’re coming from, but it wouldn’t fly. There’s already quite a few doubters in my family who I know are just waiting for all this to blow up in my face. There’s a lot of resentment pointed my way for leaving the Estate and pursuing what the Coopers see as an unconventional path.”
“Becoming a journalist is unconventional in their minds?” Sabian scoffed. “Ang, if they found out who I really was, you’d be in a worse spot than you are now.”
I grinned up at him and shrugged one shoulder. A cool evening breeze danced over my bare skin. It felt nice after a day of sweltering heat. “They wouldn’t find out. We’d make a good team. I know you wouldn’t throw me under the bus.”
Sabian’s jaw flexed once more as he looked away from me. His eyes settled on my car and I held my tongue. He was thinking; musing over the potential outcomes of the wedding, I was sure. He was weighing the options to decide whether or not accompanying me was a risk he was willing to take. Just the fact that he was considering it told me he cared enough to not want my family breathing down my neck all night, asking where my boyfriend was.
“All right,” he said heavily. “Fine. I’ll go.”
“Yes!” I squealed and threw my arms around his neck.
He chuckled and wrapped one arm around my waist. The smell of his cologne and sweat and grease filled my nose. His laughter rumbling in his chest against my breasts made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It had been a long time since I was this close to a man I was actually attracted to. For the most part, I was always surrounded by blond preppy frat boys being pushed through university by their parents’ wallets. Sabian was everything they weren’t. He was a man who worked for everythin
g he had. He had gone through rough times in his past that made him who he was now, and everything about him was alluring.
I leaned back, afraid that I might do something both of us would regret if I stayed close for too long. I peered up at him, imagining what it would be like to trace the line of his jaw with my fingertips while I kissed him. I wondered what it would feel like to touch the hot, taut muscles beneath his shirt.
The smell of him and the closeness of our bodies reminded me of that night three years ago when I had come to visit Axel for the week. I was lost, confused, and looking for something that could be mine. Something that wasn’t tainted by my parents’ wealth and privilege. I had started throwing the idea around of journalism, but it hadn’t become a plan just yet. But Sabian had been there, and he had been kind to me and saw me for who I was, not the rich girl everyone thought I was.
Sabian’s lips danced across my cheek, and then he kissed my eyelids, one at a time. His forehead pressed to mine, and I wanted to stay like that forever, listening to his even breathing as I lay in his arms, wrapped up in him like we were a human pretzel.
“I don’t want to go,” I whispered.
“Then don’t go.”
He didn’t understand. He knew nothing of the Cooper family and what their expectations were. He had no clue how hard it would be to start out on my own without their support. I had no work experience. My life had been sheltered while living at the Cooper Estate. My strengths and skills consisted of tanning at the side of our pool, fine dining, and self-pampering. I was ill equipped to abandon that lifestyle and choose the rugged existence of the girlfriend of a Lost Breed member.
“I have to. Axel won’t let me stay. He’d call Mom and Dad if it came to that.”
“He hasn’t spoken to them in years.”