SCORE: Hell’s Seven MC Biker Romance

by Jolie Day

  Score

  Hell’s Seven MC Biker Romance

  Jolie Day

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author.

  The characters, places, and events portrayed in this book are completely fiction and are in no way meant to represent real people or places.

  Warning: This story contains mature themes and language. It is intended to be enjoyed by an 18+ audience only.

  Copyright © Jolie Day

  ISBN-13: 978-1974574292

  ISBN-10: 1974574296

  Dear Readers,

  This novel is based on a short story that I wrote some time ago. Many of you on my list will be familiar with the short story — “The Biker.” Your feedback and reviews on that short story encouraged me to transform it into a full length book.

  Learn more about Lauren and Marc in this novel. But readers, beware — it will get very steamy…

  Enjoy reading,

  Jolie Day

  Table of Contents

  About this Novel

  Score

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  New Release Sample

  About the Author

  About this Novel

  Marc “Angel Face” Kelly

  Aloof. Dominant. Damn sexy.

  And knows it, too.

  The man with the face of an angel is on the run from his past and wants a new beginning. But his old buddies from the biker gang still have a score to settle with him.

  Lauren Stanton

  Cool. Collected. Vulnerable.

  She, too, has a past that she wants to forget.

  She has found a new home in the small town of Slightuckett in Narragansett Bay, where she feels safe.

  Marc literally slides into Lauren’s life. Both immediately feel drawn to each other, but Lauren is afraid of the handsome, dominant man. And Marc can deal with pretty much anything, except a woman who gets under his skin.

  When Lauren is in danger, he has to decide: does he really want to desert the woman who awakens such strong feelings in him?

  Disclaimer: SCORE is a full-length standalone bad boy biker romance novel with a HEA, no cheating, and no cliffhanger. Contains mature themes and language.

  Score

  Chapter One

  The sand was still warm under her toes as Lauren Stanton started the short walk back to her house, perched just a few hundred feet from where the brilliant blue ocean kissed the shore. This was the part of her day she loved best; her walk on the beach. She tried to go as early as possible, when the sun was still high in the sky, the sky bright blue and dotted with cotton candy clouds. Her dog—a gorgeous, strawberry-blonde golden retriever named Emma—would splash around in the water while Lauren enjoyed the view and occasionally threw her favorite tennis ball, laughing at Emma’s puppy-like demeanor as she shot off like a cannon after the toy.

  When it looked like the sun was about to start its descent, Lauren pushed herself to her feet and grabbed her flip flops at her side, brushing the sand off of her backside and whistling for Emma to heel. And, like the good girl she was, the golden would race back to stand at her feet, tail wagging as her belly dripped salty sea water and her smiling mouth held tightly to her ball. Then they walked together to the back steps of Lauren’s beach house, Emma bumping her head against her best friend’s hip for scratches behind the ear.

  Like every other day, Lauren took her time on the walk back, luxuriating in the warmth of the sand under her feet, the grittiness as it smoothed her heels and slid up into the cracks between her toes, the spray as she kicked it with every single step she took. There was a strange sense of safety in these tiny grains of sand. For a couple of hours every day, it was like the beach erased every single scar on her body, forming her into a new person.

  It usually only lasted until she returned home, however; when she had to get back to work.

  Lauren spent her mornings in the town of Slightuckett, RI, far from the city she used to know—or any cities, really—and acted as one of the only doctors within a five-mile radius. She treated citizens of all ages, and was well-known here, even after only a couple of years where most of the town people had lived here all their lives.

  She would see her patients in line at the grocery store and ask about how their children or spouses were feeling. She knew everybody by name and they knew her as “Dr. Stanton.” A few lucky ones got to know her as Lauren. But nobody knew about her past, which she kept close to her chest, hidden away deep inside her, behind polite smiles and chitchat.

  Her clinic opened at half-past six AM and Lauren often found herself working the early morning shift, which she didn’t mind in the least. She was the only person, doctor or nurse, that didn’t have children to take care of in the early mornings—unless you counted Emma, who had to be fed and walked before sunrise—or a spouse to spend those last moments of nightlight with before the sun broke through and forced them both from the warmth of their bed.

  Very few patients came in during the opening hours, anyway. The ones that did usually needed a dose of medication that they weren’t allowed to keep in their own home and had to be administered by Lauren or whatever nurse was unlucky enough to be scheduled at the same time. The real rush began at ten, when parents came in with flu-stricken children, or tiny babies and toddlers that needed their checkups. There were a few regulars that showed up; seniors with arthritis or respiratory issues; college students coming in for free condoms or to receive their monthly notes for birth control, or just to take advantage of their school-paid insurance plans, which allowed visits every two weeks for anything they needed, at no extra cost to them.

  By the time Lauren’s shift was over, at two in the afternoon, she could feel the blisters on her feet, the scars burning under her clothing, injuries that had long faded giving her aches like they’d been left there last week. The office was a ten-minute walk from her beach house and the beach was less than two more, but the second Lauren stepped foot on the warm, early afternoon sand, she felt the stress melt away. The tension was always gone from her shoulders by the first time she threw Emma’s ball in the direction of the ocean.

  Today had been no different, of course, but Lauren couldn’t help but feel as if something was…missing. She tried to shake the feeling off as she ascended the steps to her cozy beach house. It was tinier than most that lined the coast, but that was just fine with her. Perfect, actually. Why buy a house with all that space when you didn’t need it?

  Her current home had everything she needed and nothing more; a bedroom with a balcony overlooking the ocean, a kitchen just big enough to fit all her utensils, pots, pans, and appliances, with an attached dining room, a sitting room with a fireplace and bookshelves built into the walls, and a fence around the front of the property, keeping trespassers out. Even better, Lauren could see anybody approaching her house from the windows in her sitting room. The view was clear enough that anybody who so much as turned the corner was visible to her, nearly any time of day.

  As she reached the deck behind her house, Lauren tossed her flip flops under her patio table and stretched her limbs, smiling contently as the light ocean breeze and the sound of waves lapping against the shore. She was done treating patients for the day, but a pile of paperwork awaited her on the table, held down by a couple of heavy medical journals she often took home with her from work. This is where she came after her beach walks; an attempt to
balance her work life and her after-hours relaxation.

  Before, when she was still living in an apartment and dragging herself through the door at all hours of the night, she might have poured herself a glass or two of wine while she pored over the papers at her kitchen table, her feet propped up as her eyes and pen scanned over words that she was too tired to read.

  But that was before Slightuckett; before working at the clinic and living among people who all knew her name and smiled as they passed her on the street; before Emma; before…it.

  Lauren shuddered and it wasn’t because of the wind on the bare skin of her arms. She shook any thoughts of cities and concrete and dim streetlights out of her mind as she sat down with Emma at her feet, nibbling on her toy. There was a cooler next to the table and Lauren reached inside for a bottle of water, cracking it open and taking a long, refreshing sip.

  She hadn’t had wine in nearly three years now. Nor had she had anything else with the ability to make her lower her defenses. And, she’d vowed, she never would again.

  Emma nuzzled her ankle and Lauren reached down, scratching that spot behind her ear that made the retriever arch into her touch, her tail thumping on the hardwood floor of the deck. She’d gotten Emma not long after she arrived in Rhode Island, from the daughter of one of her deceased patients.

  Mrs. Pollack had been sick with Dementia for a long time, her mind deteriorating to the point that she was never allowed to be left alone. The last time she’d come to see Lauren, she hadn’t even known who her daughter, Claire, was. Nor did she have any idea who Lauren was. Every few minutes, she asked who they were and where she was, not recognizing her surroundings in the slightest. Claire Johnson had held her hand as tightly as possible as she continued to remind her mother, over and over again, that they were at the doctor.

  Lauren heard the words, “Am I sick?” more times than she’d been able to count that last day. Most Dementia patients didn’t last longer than half a decade, but Mrs. Pollack had started showing symptoms over a decade ago and had gotten into drug trials from the get-go. Her daughter had done everything she could to keep her mother healthy. She took her for walks around their neighborhood, telling her stories of when she was a child, hoping to keep her mother’s memory fresh, but soon even the most advanced and hopeful of medications stopped working.

  Emma was a rescue from the local shelter, and a last-ditch attempt at keeping her mother happy and alive. Claire had heard that dogs had some kind of inexplicable healing power and she’d taken Mrs. Pollack to the pound, hoping that the karma of saving the life of one of those dogs would outweigh the Dementia that had by then firmly set into her mother’s mind. Mrs. Pollack had fallen in love with Emma from the first second she saw the young dog, smiling up at her from inside a cramped cage, her brown eyes big and hopeful, her tongue lolling out of her mouth.

  For three years, Emma was Mrs. Pollack’s companion. She kept her company on the days that Claire couldn’t stay home to watch her, kept her calm when she didn’t recognize her nurses, kept her healthy for longer than any doctor—Lauren included—could have predicted. Mrs. Pollack lived a year longer than anybody thought she would.

  After her funeral, which Lauren attended out of respect for the sweet old lady, Claire had approached with Emma on a leash, tears in her eyes.

  “I can’t keep her,” she said, looking down at the dog, whose tail no longer wagged. “Just looking at her reminds me of my mother and she’s…” She trailed off, her voice choking as she dabbed her eyes with a tissue. “She misses my mother, too. She looks out the window all day long, as if Mom’s just at the doctor’s, about to come home any minute. She won’t eat or sleep or…” She took another deep breath. “The vet said that a change of scenery might be best for her, but I don’t want to take her to the pound, you know?” Lauren nodded in understanding. “So I was wondering if you might possibly have any room for her in your life.”

  A year earlier, Lauren might have said no. She worked long hours in a hospital and could barely remember to buy food for herself, let alone do it for a pet. Any pet that she owned when living in her cramped little apartment in New York would have been miserable, no doubt about it.

  But one look into Emma’s eyes and she was a goner. The poor girl had no idea what was going on; all she knew was that her best friend had gone somewhere and wasn’t likely to come back. All she knew was that she was sad and Mrs. Pollack wasn’t there to comfort her.

  Lauren had taken the leash and, from that day on, Emma was hers. She has never regretted that decision. Not once.

  Especially not as Emma laps at her fingers and nudges her leg, before settling her warm, furry chin on Lauren’s foot underneath the table. The weight of her friend’s head is a comfort as Lauren started in on her paperwork, drowning out the world as she focused on the words on the page.

  It was the familiar roar of an engine that had her falling out of her chair, the paper in her hand crumpling as her fingers squeezed around it. Her arms raised above her head as she fell into a fetal position on the ground and her heart pounded a punishing rhythm against her ribcage as she tried to make herself as small as possible, her knees pressed firmly to her chest. Beside her, Emma jumped to alert immediately and began to sniff around, looking for the threat to her master’s safety that had affected her so.

  When the obedient dog found nothing in sight, she began to bark, which startled Lauren even further, causing her to curl into an even tighter ball before she looked up at her dog, who was facing away from her and clawing at the sliding glass doors that led into their house.

  “Emma, no,” Lauren hissed, her eyes beginning to scan the beach for any signs of a familiar nightmare.

  But he couldn’t have actually found her. Could he? They promised her she’d be safe. That so long as she stayed hidden, nobody would ever harm her, ever again. Least of all, him.

  But who were any of them kidding? There was no safe place from somebody like that. Not after he’d done what he did to her. It was bound to happen sooner or later, wasn’t it?

  Lauren’s eyes scanned the inside of the house, which was beginning to darken as the sun set behind her. From the deck, she could see clear to the front door (another great thing about this place); all three locks were in place and there was no other way to reach her unless you went through one of the other properties and walked the quarter-mile through the sand dunes.

  Still, the roar of the engine—which was beginning to sound like the growl of a dying creature—gave her pause before she stood. She brushed off her bruised knees, slipped into her flip flops, and reached for the door, sliding it open and stepping into the cool house. She still had the crumpled form in her hand and she gave thanks that she’d placed the medical journals back on the ones that she hadn’t started to fill out yet, lest they all get lost in the wind.

  Lauren crept through her own home, turning on each light as she went, Emma dutifully at her heel, keeping the slow pace with her master, until they arrived at the front door. Lauren undid the locks like second nature, without even thinking about it, and tugged the door open slowly. She listened for his voice and tried not to breathe too loudly, as if he’d even be able to hear her over the roar of that engine.

  The curses she heard, in a deep, gruff voice both relaxed and startled her.

  It wasn’t him, but upon closer inspection, the man sitting outside on the pavement—albeit ruggedly handsome—didn’t look too friendly, either. His Harley sat two feet in front of him, on its side, the engine still running. And dying. He was looking at it with an angry expression on his face, but made no move to get up. She wondered if he even could.

  Before Lauren could decide whether to call an ambulance or go out and help him herself, Emma had slipped by her and hopped down the three steps from the porch to the pavement, barking as she ran right toward him. The man seemed startled for half a second as the unfamiliar animal came toward him, before his face fell and he gave the retriever a frown.

  “Scram!” he growled,
but Emma didn’t pause. Not even as Lauren called for her to return.

  It seemed that her pet had made the decision for her. Lauren checked the pocket of her scrub bottoms, relieved to find her house key in the left one, and locked her door before running out to help the biker. She was a doctor, after all, and as such she had taken an oath to help those in need.

  She checked her right pocket to find that her pepper spray was there in case she needed it.

  “Sir?” she called out as she came closer to the man, who was waving his hand at Emma, still trying to shoo her away as she continued to bark. “Sir, are you alright?” He glanced up at her, a glare set firmly on his face.

  “This your dog?” he asked, gruffly. “Can you get it away from me?”

  “Emma, heel!” Lauren demanded. This time, the golden retriever obeyed, trotting over to sit obediently at Lauren’s side, panting and looking up at her as if waiting for her next command. “Stay,” Lauren said, patting her head. She looked back at the biker splayed on the ground. “Are you okay?” she asked again. “I’m a doctor; I can help.”

  From the way he held himself, even on the ground like that, she could tell from first glance that he had no internal injuries, but that didn’t rule out something just as serious. A concussion or some kind of sprain or broken bone. There had to be some reason he was still sitting there, after all. She scanned his body for signs of blood or protruding bone. In doing so, she couldn’t help but be impressed by his physique.

  He was relatively young, his dark hair reaching his shoulders in a tangle of curls and waves. His jaw was angled and dotted with stubble that went beyond a simple five-o’clock shadow. His eyes were a startling shade of blue that looked almost like ice as he glowered up at her, through a mask of stone. His body was muscular and she could see tattoos on his ripped forearms. The patterns snaked up his arms like vines and disappeared under the tight shirt he wore beneath his leather vest. There were more on his neck that reached to just under his ears. His jeans were dark and ripped at the knees. There were a few scrapes where his skin was exposed, but not much else that Lauren could see without searching further.