Red Eyes MC: Books 1 - 3

by Grey, Blair

  “Hey, Leila?” one of the other nurses asked from the doorway. “I know you’re still on your break, but there’s a patient here who’s refusing help from any nurse other than you.” She rolled her eyes to let me know what she thought of that, and I had to laugh.

  “No problem,” I said, dumping the rest of my coffee down the sink. “I was just about done anyway.” I scooped up the pamphlets and put them back on the wall where they belonged. I thought about taking them with me, but I knew all the information, and they were right there if I ever needed them.

  Should I do it? I just wasn’t sure.

  I followed the other nurse out of the break room and down the hall, wondering who could possibly asking for me. Usually, we rotated through, even with the regular clients. It wasn’t like we were doctors, who had to know all the specifics of a case.

  “What’s wrong with the guy anyway?” I asked. Maybe that would give me some sort of clue.

  “He’s complaining about chest pain, but he won’t let any of us put leads on him,” she said. “For all I know, he could just be making it up.” She pushed open the door to a room, and I walked in.

  Of course. Marcus.

  I rolled my eyes, unable to stop myself. “Seriously?”

  Marcus widened his eyes innocently. “Is that any way to greet a patient?” he asked. “I could be dying, for all you know.”

  “I sincerely doubt that,” I muttered, shutting the door behind us. The last thing I needed was one of the other nurses thinking that this was something I’d planned. Like I had asked my boyfriend to come visit me at work and take up some of my valuable time.

  I quickly got down to business, snapping my gloves on. “I heard you’re complaining about chest pains?”

  “Yeah,” Marcus said.

  “Take your shirt off,” I sighed, even though I could tell that obviously wasn’t the case. He was just here to see me. I tried to decide how I felt about that. Even though I knew I could never go out with him, I was kind of pleased to see him. But I was way too busy to date anyone, and he wasn’t my type anyway.

  Of course, then he took his shirt off, and all my reasoning for why I couldn’t date him went straight out the window. Fuck, he had nice abs. Nice pecs. Nice everything.

  A sudden thought struck me: if I had just a one-night stand and happened to get pregnant off it, wouldn’t that be almost the same as artificial insemination, just less… clinical? But I banished the thought immediately afterward. I couldn’t just go around sleeping with random dudes and hoping to get pregnant. It would be messy and complicated, and even if I finally managed to achieve the end result that I wanted, I would feel obligated to tell the father about it and deal with all of those consequences.

  I busied myself with putting some leads on his chest and going through a checklist of all his vitals. There was absolutely nothing wrong with him. He was doing perfectly fine. “I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be able to walk right out that door right now,” I sniffed.

  “I’m not sure I can do that,” Marcus said, catching my wrist and drawing me in close to him. He reached up to lightly brush back a stray lock of hair, and I couldn’t help but shiver as his fingertips lingered against the shell of my ear. I was glad I wasn’t the one hooked up to the machines, or else he’d be able to hear just how fast my heart was beating.

  His own heart was beating at a maddeningly slow rhythm, the same as it had been the whole time I’d examined him. Damn it.

  “If I go to dinner with you, will you leave?” I asked. “We need this room for patients who actually need it.” My voice was breathless, and it was clear how badly I wanted him to agree.

  Marcus grinned like the cat that got the cream. “That might make me feel good enough to leave,” he agreed. “I’ll also need your number, just in case.”

  “Of course.” I hurriedly scribbled it down on a Post-it note and handed it over to him. “I’m only agreeing to one dinner, though. On Saturday night. And I’ll meet you at the restaurant; I don’t need you coming to my house to pick me up.”

  “Sure thing, sweetheart,” Marcus said, his eyes twinkling as he put my number carefully into his wallet, like it was some great treasure. “Seven o’clock on Saturday. I’ll text you the address.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Just one more thing, though.”

  “I’m waiting,” Marcus said, raising an eyebrow at me. “Although let me guess: this is the point where you tell me not to take you to too nice of a place. You don’t want this to feel like a date-date; it’s just two friends getting dinner together. No dice on that one.”

  “So you want to take me somewhere nice?” I asked, surprised at how coy I sounded. God, I wasn’t that type of girl. But something about Marcus made me almost want to be. I wanted to go out on a nice date, to end up back at his place, to kiss my way all along those tattoos that covered his chest and arms.

  But that wasn’t what this was about. I’d let myself go out on one date. Mainly to get Rachel off my back, nothing more. I was not going to sleep with him.

  Marcus slid off the examining table, his hands hot against my hips. His fingertips snuck beneath the bottom of my shirt, playing across the soft skin there. “I’d love to take you somewhere nice,” he purred. “Not least of which is because I’d love to get you out of these scrubs and into something more flattering.”

  My mind felt like it was short-circuiting. I’d love to get you out of these scrubs… It kept replaying over and over as his fingernails dragged sensuously along the skin of my lower back. I swallowed hard, hardly able to breathe. But I wasn’t that type of girl. I was here, at work, and Marcus was taking up my time. Even if he had called me off my break, it was time for me to get back to my job.

  I reluctantly stepped away from him, folding my arms across my chest. “One dinner,” I repeated. “And nothing after the dinner. I’ll go back home, and you’ll do whatever you would normally do on a Saturday night.”

  Marcus laughed. “Can I at least walk you home?” he asked, all boyish charm.

  “No,” I said shortly, already knowing full well that if he walked me home, I was going to invite him up to my apartment and we were going to do it. I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off him. And as much as I wanted to cave to my desires, to let him have me, I just wasn’t that type of girl.

  The last thing I needed was for him to take it as an invitation to keep showing up here at work. And I didn’t want to get involved in whatever business he was involved in which had ended with a knife cut the previous Friday night.

  Marcus was still smiling, though. “All right,” he said. “One dinner, no chauffeur service, and no sex at the end of the night.” He paused like he was thinking hard. “Does that mean that during the dinner, I can still drag you off to the bathroom and have my way with you?”

  I gave a full-body shiver at the thought of that, and then I blushed, knowing from the way he smirked at me that he had definitely seen that. “Of course you can’t,” I said primly. “I’m not that type of girl.”

  Marcus nodded seriously at me. “I know,” he said. “Just teasing.” He caught my hand and brought it up to his lips, lightly kissing my palm, and I continued to stare at him.

  “What year is this anyway?” I asked, shaking my head to clear it of all those stupid, fuzzy, romantic feelings. I tried to remember what an arrogant ass he’d been when he first walked in there on Friday night. Hell, he was just as arrogant now, demanding that I be the nurse to help him out when there wasn’t even anything wrong with him! I should hate this guy. He should be the last kind of guy I would ever go out with.

  But for some reason, I couldn’t seem to ignore my interest in him.

  “I’ll see you Saturday,” I said, already heading toward the door.

  “See you Saturday,” Marcus agreed, leaning back against the examining table, still smirking at me.

  As I walked out, I could feel his eyes on me, watching me. I knew he couldn’t see much of my shape since I was still in my scrubs, b
ut there was something intimate about it all the same. And I couldn’t help feeling turned-on by how interested he was in me, even though I didn’t fully understand it.

  I shook my head, wishing I could forget all about him. But part of me was definitely excited for Saturday night, already trying to figure out what I would wear. I wanted something that would impress him, even though I couldn’t for the life of me say why.

  I needed to talk to Rachel. She was the only person who would be able to sort me out, both mentally in terms of my feelings for this guy and physically in terms of my date appearance.

  11

  Marcus

  Friday

  On Friday, Cameron called and asked to meet me for lunch. I had still been racking my brain trying to figure out the next step, and I hoped this meant that Cameron was onto something. Even if his idea wasn’t perfect, it would at least be more than I had been able to come up with.

  I headed over to the restaurant he wanted to meet at and found him already sitting at a corner table, his hands folded over his menu as he watched people walk by outside. He nodded at me as I slipped into a seat opposite him.

  “What’s going on?” I asked immediately, sensing that this wasn’t just a social planning call. He seemed nervous, almost. And even though Cameron wasn’t too involved in Red Eyes outside of his bookkeeping duties, it was strange to see him this on edge.

  But he waved a hand carelessly. “Let’s get our food first,” he said.

  I stared at him for a long moment, but if that was how he wanted to play things, then so be it. Inwardly, though, I was thinking of all the other reasons he might have asked me to meet him here. Had one of the Unknowns gone after him? He had been with me that day at Pete’s place when we had made those stupid kids pay their bill. Maybe one of them had recognized him and decided that he’d make an easy target.

  It wouldn’t have surprised me, but Cameron didn’t show any signs of having been roughed up. And besides, he would probably go to Ray if that was the case, rather than coming to me. Ray might be keeping the peace vow at the moment, but if he found out that one of the Unknowns had jumped Cameron, of all people, he would be livid. That could be the match that finally ignited his fury and turned his careful planning into calls for action.

  But I couldn’t think of anything else that could have him so edgy. I hoped I was just reading him wrong, that there was nothing abnormal about the way he was acting. Maybe I was reading too much into his body language.

  I knew that was wishful thinking, though.

  “What have you been up to this week?” Cameron asked once we had placed our orders.

  “You mean with the Unknowns?” I asked. I grimaced. “Nothing since last Friday night, and I didn’t exactly get much out of them then, either.”

  “Yeah, Ray mentioned that,” Cameron said.

  “I just can’t think of where to go from here,” I complained. “It would be easy enough if it was the whole club taking a stand against them, but when it’s just me, it limits what I can do. I’m not suicidal.”

  “Didn’t Ray tell you to take the twins with you?” Cameron asked.

  “I’m not suicidal,” I repeated. “I’m not walking into their hideout with just the twins to guard my back. Will, maybe. Or Ray. But not the twins.”

  Cameron snorted. “How’s your arm?” he asked, gesturing at the bandages I still had wrapped around it.

  “Healing,” I told him. I thought about telling him about my date the following evening, but I decided against it. Cameron and I didn’t exactly have that kind of relationship. We were friendly enough, sure. And I knew he wouldn’t make it all about sex like the twins would. But there was just something strange about telling him that I was headed out on a date with the sexiest woman in the city.

  Especially since she had made it very clear that this was only a date, no hanky-panky included. I was still hoping I could change her mind on that, but if I couldn’t, I actually didn’t really care. I liked spending time with her, and I was looking forward to our date as much for the conversation as for other things.

  It was weird. I pushed those thoughts aside as our food arrived, fresh and hot.

  “We’ve got a problem,” Cameron finally said as the waitress retreated behind the counter.

  “Oh?” I asked. “You mean something other than the Unknowns.”

  Cameron grimaced. “Well, it’s all part and parcel of the same problem,” he admitted.

  “What have they done now?” I asked, on edge again. Maybe they really had gone after Cameron.

  “Relax,” Cameron said. “It’s nothing new. I just finally figured out the reason Ray has been so cautious when it comes to making a move on them.”

  “Because he’s too gentrified to think that violence is the answer?” I suggested.

  Cameron snorted. “I know I don’t know him as well as you do, but Ray hardly seems gentrified to me.” He shook his head. “I think Ray is really worried that the wrong move could be the end of Red Eyes.”

  “Because of the new sheriff?” I asked in confusion.

  “No, because of the way that the Unknowns are coming after us,” Cameron said. He shook his head. “They’re not coming after us with their fists. They’re not trying to fight us off our territory. What they’re doing is a lot subtler than that.”

  “Ransacking our clubhouse wasn’t exactly subtle,” I said, not understanding what Cameron was getting at.

  “Right, but that wasn’t an attempt to get us off our territory,” Cameron said, his eyes gleaming. “We knew when they did that that what they were really trying to do was discredit us in the eyes of local businesses. They wanted to embarrass us. They wanted to make things awkward for us.”

  He lowered his voice and leaned in closer. “There are local businesses that are threatening to stop paying because of the pressure being applied from the Unknowns and the new sheriff.”

  I blinked at him in surprise. “This is news to me,” I said. I paused. “What kind of pressure are the Unknowns putting on them anyway?”

  “Remember when you and Will went to that new mercantile to make sure the new owner knew that he had to pay up?” Cameron said. “Only when you got there, the guy told you that the Unknowns had already been through there and demanded that the guy pay them instead? Apparently, they’re doing more of the same of that, only they’re swinging through businesses that have already been paying us for years, telling them that there’s a new top dog in town and that there’ll be consequences if they don’t change who they’re paying.”

  “Fuck,” I muttered under my breath. It made a lot of sense, really. They didn’t just want to lay claim to the city; they wanted all the perks that came along with having Las Cruces in their pockets. I shook my head. “But surely no one is going to buy that. They know what we can do. There’s loyalty to us.”

  “I don’t know,” Cameron said flatly. He paused. “If things keep going the way that they have been, Red Eyes will be out of money by the end of the year.”

  “What?” I asked in surprise. “Didn’t Ray just say on Monday that we’re doing better than ever? He wasn’t lying to us, was he?”

  Cameron grimaced. “He doesn’t want you guys to think this is a sinking ship, and I can’t blame him for that. And part of me thinks that he doesn’t want to think of it that way either. The truth is we’re barely scraping by at the moment. We’re paying salaries, and we’re paying back a little bit of the debt to Will every month, but that’s it. We’re not making a profit.”

  “Shit,” I murmured, thinking about that. Of course, if Ray was trying to hide how much trouble we were in, he wasn’t going to quit paying Will back. That would only worry everyone. But it felt like he was driving things into the ground. “Doesn’t that mean that now, more than ever, we need to act?”

  “The trouble is, I don’t think Ray knows how to act,” Cameron said, shaking his head. “If we go after the Unknowns with our fists, the sheriff will get involved, and that’ll be the end of Red Eyes
. He’s already made it clear he’s not on our side. If we go after our businesses to try to convince them to keep paying up, we’re going to make other enemies around town. They’ll start to resent us, and then it’ll be an easy matter for some other MC to sweep them all into their protection.”

  “But if we don’t do anything, we’re bankrupt within the year,” I said. “That has to count for something.”

  “It does,” Cameron agreed. “It means that Ray wants to make sure he makes the perfect move when the time is right. Whatever it might be.”

  I shook my head. “That’s bullshit,” I said.

  Cameron shrugged. “Be that as it may, that’s the way things are.”

  I shook my head. “I’m going to take care of this,” I growled, my hand clenching on the table. “I’m going to make sure those Unknowns stop fucking around with our business. Once and for all.”

  I didn’t have a plan, not yet, but this made me positive that I needed to form one. Now. Even if it meant I ended up injured, I couldn’t turn my back on my family, on the MC that had practically raised me. I had to take action.

  “Hey,” Cameron said. “Just don’t do anything too stupid, okay? The last thing we need is the sheriff locking you up while the Unknowns are still a threat to us.”

  I grinned at him, showing all my teeth. “You underestimate me,” I told him.

  “Good,” Cameron said, and I could hear the challenge in his voice. There was a reason he had brought this information to me. He trusted me to do something about it. And I was going to do something about it. There was no other way.

  12

  Leila

  Friday

  I went over to Rachel’s house for dinner on Friday night and kept Gavin occupied while Rachel put the finishing touches on the meal. “All right, you two, go wash up,” Rachel finally said, putting her hands on her hips with mock sternness, even as she was smiling down at us.