by AnonYMous
She felt his breath coast over her ear. His lips touched her temple, curving into the shape of a smile.
Suddenly she didn’t care what exactly he was. He felt right.
“Sure,” he said then, and she knew he was deliberately imitating her, using the language she would have used. “You can do your own research.”
Another thought was niggling now. That fifty thousand dollar check . . . That wasn’t a great way to start a relationship, either.
And he wanted to work with her. She’d be useful, he’d said.
Let it go, she told herself. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? She’d been so lonely. Dark and—yes—depressed. And now, in a single day, a new universe had revealed itself, and the most gorgeous man she’d ever met was showing an interest in her.
But gift horses couldn’t be trusted. So history suggested.
“There’s a saying,” she said as she eased away from him. “‘You’re not supposed to mix business and pleasure.’”
He cocked a brow. “A human saying, I believe. Nothing to concern me.”
“Oh, well then.” A foolish grin took over. Yep, goodbye, common sense! “Then thank God it doesn’t apply here.” Casting caution to the wind, she leaned in to kiss him again.
Around them, the mundane world rolled onward. A siren started up. Brakes squealed, and a passing group of joyriders traded shrieks.
But there was another world to be explored now. Kate put her arms around North, and let herself believe in magic.
FREE
Brad White would be an ordinary accountant with an unrequited crush except for two things: he works for a criminal motorcycle club, and he’s in love with the club president’s daughter. When she discovers the truth about the family business, Brad has to move beyond ordinary and put his life on the line to keep her safe.
Wren Masters, unlike everyone else in her graduating class, chose to stay in Fallow, Montana because, also unlike everyone else, she loves it. But when she finds out her father’s club is running drugs, her family and world crumble. She and Brad risk everything to uncover the truth . . . and begin a scorching affair.
As the conspiracy—and their feelings—deepen, Brad and Wren must choose between family and justice. And neither seems to include a future for them.
Chapter 1
Brad
Ethics were funny things. I liked to think mine were intractable, that the line between what I would and wouldn’t do was so bright they could see it from space. Then Wren Masters would stroll into our office, and I’d have to face the truth—I was a liar.
I flipped the coffee maker switch back and forth a few times. Several seconds passed before the light sputtered on. It was a crummy machine in a crummy town, so the hesitation was honest enough.
No, my lying had nothing to do with the town or even the office itself, a prefab from the seventies standing in front of a used car lot and garage. It was more about who owned this shitty establishment and what they used it for: the Lone Gun Motorcycle Club, and drugs.
To the rest of the world I was an accountant. I didn’t wear a pocket protector, but it didn’t matter; I was the moral, boring type. Except I knew I was aiding and abetting felons.
Take this morning. I had more than enough evidence that my ethics were worth jack even before I watched Wren stroll toward the building, her brown-blonde hair streaking out behind her like a sail, before I scrutinized the roll of her hips and the cling of her blouse—could something that tiny be called a blouse?—before I could see how the anemic October sun lit her face. Because while I might be a good accountant in the absolute barest sense, what I did for Lone Gun wasn’t good.
When Wren propped the door open, said, “Morning, hot stuff,” and my stomach flip-flopped like a pancake, I knew my motives—lifelong unresolved lust—made what I did even worse.
“Morning yourself,” I muttered.
My lies started then and would go until I left at the end of the day.
*
Wren
I fiddled with my keys. The lock was a piece of shit. The casing was flecking off and the metal underneath was rusting. One good kick and the entire door would cave in, except no one in Fallow, Montana, was going to kick this particular door.
The lock shouldn’t have bugged me except for the stupid little pieces of fake brass on the carpet. Oh, and I couldn’t get my keys out of it.
“Need some help?” Brad’s smile was in his voice.
“Darlin’, I haven’t needed help since I was twelve.”
I did that around him—dropped the g’s off my words—because he’d wince, and it was funny. I also pronounced creek crik, picture pitcher, and sometimes even threw in the occasional ain’t. It made him twitchy. Brad never had fit in in Fallow.
That didn’t stop him from being a smart-ass. “Yeah, you’re right. You have the situation firmly in hand.”
“Thanks for noticing.” I tried my keys again, this time tugging as hard as I could. Nothing. They didn’t move a millimeter. “It’s not me,” I whined. “This lock is crap.”
“You need to twerk it a bit.”
“You need to twerk a bit.”
“Frankly I don’t have the ass for it.”
He didn’t. The guy was rangy. Not short, just wiry. I could see all the bones in his wrist. The skin seemed to pull too hard over the round bump at the bottom of his hand. Sometimes I wanted to run my teeth over it to see how taut it was. It wasn’t a sexual thing; I only wanted to gnaw on him.
“Well, I don’t know,” I said slowly. “How about you demonstrate for me and I can give you some pointers?”
His eyes moved from the lock—my key was never coming out of it—to me. First to my hips, then up my middle before landing on my breasts. And landing was the right word, because I felt his gaze.
Men looked at me. They did. I didn’t understand why. I was totally ordinary looking. I’d always suspected my mother must have been able to sense my ordinariness and that’s why she’d named me Wren, except she’d died of breast cancer when I was twelve, and I hadn’t thought to ask her before then. Nothing was more usual than a wren. Little, brown, abundant: that was me.
But I had a small waist and big tits and men liked that. When they looked at me like Brad was doing now, I thought of them as tits. They weren’t good for anything other than making otherwise nice guys stupid. They made the mean ones stupid too, but then again, everything did.
“Hey now! My key removing muscles are over here.” I waved at him for emphasis and he turned so red he was almost purple.
I probably shouldn’t tease Brad about noticing my breasts, but I’d known him my whole life and I was certain he didn’t mean anything by it. I’d been sort of a late bloomer; he probably wasn’t used to them yet. Besides, we spent about ten hours a week together holed up in this damned stinking office with no AC in summer, and only minimal heat in the winter, and without a working lock. A girl needed to entertain herself somehow.
“Ah-ha!” I pulled the key out triumphantly. “Your services weren’t needed.”
He muttered something I couldn’t make out, but I ignored him and went to my desk. A pile of invoices was waiting for me.
My grandfather had started Masters and Sons Car Sales and Auto Repair right after getting back from World War II. Back then, Fallow had been a thriving town of nearly three thousand people. It had shrunk to less than half that, and they said we were in the middle of an energy boom. Not even fracking could save this town.
My dad and uncle had inherited Masters, but between them, they hadn’t managed any sons—at least none with their last name, because the boys my uncle had had with Charlene while he’d been married to Deb were bastards in every sense. That was probably why they’d gotten into motorcycles. A roaring engine between a man’s legs went a long way toward shoring up his manhood. It gave a girl a hell of a buzz too.
“Did you finish with the paperwork for . . .” Brad shuffled some papers around. “The Larsson job?”
�
��I was working on it all night.” I spooned sugar onto my voice.
Brad made a noise of disapproval.
“I just got in. Give me five minutes, won’t ya?”
“Babe, for you I’ll make it ten.”
The morning passed like that: he nagged me, I teased him, and together we kept Masters running. Well, I guess my dad and uncle did, but we kept the money moving.
“I don’t see why you keep me around,” Brad said when we took our coffee break.
We sat on the steps of the office, some hulking wood things that had been meant to be temporary more than a decade earlier. I peeled a long strip of paint off and tossed it into the wind. It fluttered for a second and then caught between the strands of long grass fringing the road.
“Because you’re a CPA, and I’m not,” I answered him.
“There’s no reason you couldn’t be.”
This was probably true. In high school, I’d been every bit as smart as Brad—and it wasn’t only that my father was intimidating as fuck that made teachers say so. I didn’t have much use for English, history, or civics, but numbers made sense to me. I could line them up any way I wanted to.
I’d ditched Fallow for a few years and burned up the college savings my parents had put by and gotten an associate’s degree in accounting, but then I’d been out of money and didn’t have the inclination to go into debt—not when I knew what the future held. Being a CPA wouldn’t make me a better wife, it wouldn’t help me run Masters someday, and it wouldn’t help anyone in town.
I shrugged. “Things are fine the way they are.”
Brad opened his mouth, closed it, and finally shook his head. He could be a weirdo. We sipped our coffee in silence for a while.
As I drained mine, the rumbling started. I felt it in my feet first. Just a buzz, an itch. It spread to my chest. Then the steps themselves vibrated. I could see the guys now, five of them swallowed by the dust, heading down the road toward us.
Brad stood and tossed the rest of his coffee into the grass. “Things aren’t fine.” He said it quietly, so quietly I wasn’t sure I was supposed to hear, but he was back in the office before I could ask what he’d meant.
My dad, my uncle, my not-cousins Larry and Ed, and, of course, my ex, Zack, pulled into the lot. Except they didn’t call my ex Zack, they called him Zebra because he was hung like a horse. I knew this because after I’d gifted him my virginity the night of senior prom, I’d asked around to see if that large was normal. It was not.
Big dicks might be—scratch that, were—good, but they weren’t the ideal place to start. Not that it mattered. Despite the awkwardness of that first night, Z and I had been lovers off and on ever since. It wasn’t some great star-crossed thing. He was hot and it was a small town. I’d gotten used to his . . . endowment. He’d learned about the necessity of foreplay.
We were off at the moment. Oral was good, but Zack remained confused about fidelity. But I knew our break up was temporary. My dad liked him. He approved of the idea of the two of us carrying on the family legacy—such as it was. I had my doubts. Maybe the difference was that Zack had never screwed around on my dad.
The guys were pulling off their gear. They’d spend the next few hours fixing cars, maybe trying to sell one if anybody stopped by to look, and then the rest of the day drinking and watching TV. Basically, they were like boys with motorcycles, tools, and a better treehouse.
“Birdie!” Zack whipped his helmet off. He never called me Wren. None of the guys did. Ordinary wasn’t good enough for them I guess.
“Hey, Z.” I crossed the lot, trying to put space between him and me. But before I could get to my dad for a hug, Zack had hooked an arm around my waist and pulled me into him. He kissed the top of my head.
I shoved at him. Hard. “Don’t touch me. We’re not together.”
“Aw, I know you’re pissed but—”
“Stop talking.”
My dad chuckled and sauntered over. He gave me a squeeze. “I guess you’d better shut up,” he said to Zack.
“I guess I better buy some fucking roses.” There wasn’t any heat in Zack’s words. He thought this was all hilarious.
“That’s still talking,” I shouted at Zack.
I gave my Uncle Paul a hug too. He was tall, though not so much as Dad, and without Dad’s swagger. I suspected that as a middle child in a big family, Paul had always felt a bit like an afterthought, which was probably why he’d had two families and then ignored them both, good riddance and all that.
Zack wasn’t thinking about Paul’s psychology, however; he was still shouting at me about roses he’d never buy. “Real big red ones with the long stems and everything.”
“For who?”
“You.”
I marched up the stairs and turned before going inside. “Oh, I assumed for Jessica. Or Angel. Or both maybe? You’re not usually so nice to the girls you screw.”
I could hear the guys hooting when I closed the door behind me.
Brad’s shoulders were set. The clang of the keyboard sounded like little thunderclaps. He typed fast when he was mad.
“What did you mean out there? Are you quittin’?”
I dropped my g and he didn’t so much as shudder. He was furious.
He ground out a single word: “No.”
“Then why aren’t things fine?”
He didn’t say anything. He only kept working. I watched him: that patch of skin on his wrist and all the tight energy of him. He’d always been like this, even at age seven. At some point the energy was going to come unleashed and level everything around him.
“Why aren’t things fine?” I asked again.
Stillness came over him bit by bit. First his foot stopped tapping. His wrists dropped. The typing clatter ended. Then he looked at me. In the eyes. Straight on.
I rocked back on my heels.
His eyes were so pale blue they were almost icy. When he was wearing his contacts, like he was now, the effect was even stronger. I needed his glasses to lessen it. How could a color be washed out yet so intense at the same time?
“Everything’s fine, Wren. Everything’s coming up roses. But someday, the DEA is going to come through the door. Or the ATF. Or the FBI. Or some other acronym I don’t even know. And nothing will be fine ever again.”
He spat the words at me and they pinged like hail off the walls. I understood each one individually, but not as a group. He thought . . . what?
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Do you? Is that true?”
I crossed my arms over my chest to hide that my hands had started to tremble. “Use your words, Bradley.”
He got to his feet and walked to the door. Our bodies brushed as he did and the skin on my arms went to curlicues. I needed to get laid.
Brad flipped the lock. What the hell was going on? I shifted as he walked back. He propped himself against the desk and mimicked my posture.
Several beats went by. Then he said, “The drugs.”
“What drugs?”
“The ones Lone Gun is selling.”
I laughed. Threw my head back and guffawed. “You had me spooked for a half a second. There are no drugs. Lone Gun is a bunch of guys who like motorcycles and fix cars and drink large amounts of grain alcohol.”
Brad watched me. I wasn’t sure how much time went by, but it was the longest look I’d ever exchanged with Brad. Perhaps the longest look I’d ever exchanged with anyone. It made me self-conscious, aware of my feet pressing into the floor and the heavy air in the room. It made me want to pant and I wasn’t a panter.
“Okay,” he said at last.
“Okay you’re ridiculous?”
“No. Okay you don’t know.”
“There’s nothing to know.”
He pushed off the desk, up to his full height, and looked down at me. He was stupidly tall. “There is. Please don’t repeat this conversation. And don’t do anything dumb. Don’t ask your dad or Zack—”
“I wo
uldn’t do that. I’m not with him anymore.”
Something like a smile ticked over his mouth.
I ignored it. “But Lone Gun isn’t selling drugs.”
“Don’t be dumb. You’re wrong.”
“No, you’re delusional.”
He set his hand lightly on my arm. “Wren, I’m not.”
He was. He had to be.
I shrugged off his touch, stalked over to my desk, and picked up a book of receipts. “I’m going to deal with accounts payable.”
A beat passed. “Your mom is payable.” Brad’s tone was flat. Unfunny. Wrong. Not because his joke was about my dead mom, but because of what had come before it.
It changed the subject, though. We returned to work, back to the invoices and the bickering, but when I looked back later, I knew that was the day when everything had changed.
Chapter 2
Brad
We’d reached the gap in the homecoming parade where the kids got to the end of Central Avenue, then ran around and circled back for a second go-round. Without the repeat, the parade would clock in at less than ten minutes. This more than doubled it.
Next to me, my parents chatted pleasantly with Kathy Krol, who worked in the Post Office. Well, more specifically, my parents thought they were chatting pleasantly; Kathy was trying to extricate herself from the conversation.
Dad and Mom were in the middle of their “why you should grow hydroponic tomatoes” speech. It was a routine they’d perfected all spring and summer. They were only a few recitations away from adding jazz hands.
“I mean we tried those inverted pots,” Dad was saying.
“We ordered them from Amazon.”
“You know, you saw the boxes.”
Kathy made a noncommittal noise and eyed the street, clearly trying to decide if she could make a break for it.
Mom pressed on, undeterred. “But they blew clean off the porch. Twice.”
“And the second time, we had chains on them.”