by K. R. Haynes
Mick knew he would be cutting it fine to be at the pub before last drinks was called, but he had to see Mary J tonight. There were no ifs, buts or maybes about it. He had to see her, end of story. Parking his truck in the pub’s parking lot, he sat there for a few minutes trying to get his head straight so he didn’t fuck it up when he saw her. Out of the corner of his eye, Mick spotted Christian walking a couple of the waitresses out to their cars and he knew then that he had missed last-drinks call completely. He won’t even be able to order a glass of water as the pub had closed up for the night. A little earlier than normal. Perhaps it had been a slow night for them or something.
Exiting his truck, Mick walked slowly around to the bed of the truck and leaned his hip against it while crossing his arms over the breadth of his chest. He decided it was best for him to wait his ass outside instead of going inside and hassling Mary J while she was trying to finish cleaning the pub up. He waved to Christian when the barman headed towards the staff back entrance and called out to him to let Mary J know he was waiting out front for her. Christian nodded his head and then ducked back inside.
After hanging around for another fifteen minutes with no sign of Christian or Mary J coming outside anytime soon, Mick was fed up with waiting and headed towards the front entrance. Just as he was about to open the front door, Mary J came stumbling out and ran straight into him. Her entire body trembled against his. Running his hand up and down her back in an effort to try and calm her down, he spoke quietly to her. “Shh, Mary J, it’s me, Mick. Take a deep breath for me, sugar, and tell me what’s wrong.”
What he received as an answer from her was like a blow to his guts. “He…there’s a man inside with a knife. The bastard cut me, Mick, he cut me.”
“Whoa, hold up there, sugar. Who had a knife and who cut you? Was it Christian? I’ll kill that son of a bitch if he hurt you.”
“Oh god, Christian, he’s still in there.” She pushed back from him then and ran a shaky hand through that tangled mane of hers. “You have to go in there and help him, Mick.”
“Now, wait a damn minute there, sugar. I’m not going to help anyone who hurt you.”
Her voice rose the more hysterical she became. What the hell had happened in there tonight to have her so worked up? He could barely see her face in the dimness of the parking lot. He wished then that he could see it so he could see for himself what was wrong with her. “No, no you don’t understand. There’s a man in there with a knife, shit he could have killed Christian by now. He nearly killed me for heaven’s sake. You have to go in there, Mick. You have to go inside and find Christian. You’ve got to help him.”
“Fine, I’ll go in there and take a look around for him. But I got to tell you, Mary J, none of this is making any lick of sense to me.”
She gave him an ultimatum then, one which both floored him and turned him on from hearing her say it to him. Who knew this little spitfire of his could throw him an ultimatum like that. With her hands on the soft curve of her hips she told him in no uncertain terms, “If you won’t go in there and help him, then I will.”
“I said I would help him, sugar, and I will. But first you need to calm the hell down and get somewhere safe.”
Placing a hand onto her lower back, Mick escorted her over to his truck. He still didn’t believe someone held a knife to her throat and figured her trembling was from pent-up frustration from working behind the bar tonight. That all changed when he unlocked and opened the door to his truck and glanced down at Mary J. The light from the dashboard shone onto her face, and that’s when he knew she had been telling him the truth all along. Her cheeks were stained with the mascara-ran tears and her skin was paler than normal. His gaze tracked downwards to the blood welling at the cut to her throat.
Gently he swiped away some of the blood oozing from the wound and rubbed the dark red dampness between his fingertips before wiping them clean on his jeans. Shit, she really had been hurt. Flicking his gaze back up to hers, Mick also noticed that she had a bump on her forehead. He had an urge to lean down and kiss it better, like his lips on her bump would somehow take the pain away from her.
Helping her get settled into the passenger seat of his truck, he leant in and kissed her lightly on the cheek while pushing some tear-damp curls back behind her ears. “Stay here and don’t even try and leave. If you even so much as think it I will smack that fine ass of yours, hard, Mary J.” When she stared up at him with defiance dancing in her eyes, Mick challenged her with his own glare. “I meant it, sugar.”
He felt her shiver slightly against him from hearing his words and he knew then that she would indeed stay put. Well, he hoped she would at least, figuring the last thing she would want would be his hand on her bare butt in the middle of the pub’s parking lot. Just as he was about to close the truck door, she reached out for his arm, gripping it with her hand and stopping him in his tracks. “Wait.”
“What, sugar?” he asked her, cupping a hand to her face and staring into those big sea-green eyes of hers.
“He said I had to give you a message.”
“And you have to give this message to me now?”
“Yes, otherwise I might forget and I can’t forget, Mick, please.”
“Fine, lay it on me, sugar.”
“He told me to tell you to check the northern paddock on the Macgregors’ farm. He said there was a present waiting out there for you. Do you know the Macgregors, Mick?” Hearing the fright in her voice did weird things to his heart and gave him this overwhelming need to protect her at all cost.
“No, sweetness, I don’t know them. Was there anything thing else he said?”
“Yeah, he said if I didn’t tell you his message word for word he would come back and finish off the job.”
“Finish off what job?”
She licked her lips in a nervous gesture then and stared up at him. The fear he could see shadowing her eyes had him on the verge of pulling her into his arms and keeping her there forever, or at least holding her until that same fear disappeared completely from his view. “The job of killing me, Mick, he said if I didn’t tell you his message he would come back and kill me.”
“Shit!” Mick knew he couldn’t stand there any longer to comfort her when Christian could be in grave danger if the bastard who threatened Mary J was still inside. “Stay here, and for god’s sake stay the hell out of sight until I get back and lock the damn door too.” Mick was more than aware that his gruff demand to her was harsher than he meant it to be and was nowhere near the reassurance she probably needed from him. Not after speaking about someone wanting to kill her. Nonetheless, if he didn’t leave her now he probably never would. Too many damn emotions were swimming inside of him and this only added to that overwhelming need to protect her. Christ, just hearing that someone had just threatened his girl’s life fired up all kinds of protective instincts, ones he never even knew he could even possess. There was no way this bastard was getting away with making threats to his girl. No fucking way.
Glancing over his shoulder one more time at Mary J, Mick then made his way toward the front entrance of the pub. With stealth-like movements, he slipped inside and was surprised to be greeted with a deathly silence. The front half of the pub was in total darkness while the back half was lit up like a fucking Christmas tree. Not a sound could be heard and that was something he definitely didn’t want to hear, not when someone’s life was at stake.
Reaching down to his left ankle, he pulled free the knife that was always strapped there. Slowly he made his way through the darkness of the pub until he stood behind the bar. In the darkness, he could make out that the cash from the night’s takings was still sitting in the open registers. So, if robbery wasn’t the motive for tonight’s attack, then what was? That was what Mick was trying to figure out as he moved from the bar and through to the kitchen looking for any signs of the knife-wielding man and Christian. However, the kitchen area was deserted.
Moving out of the kitchen, he headed toward the offices
at the back of the pub. Rounding the corner, Mick found Christian slumped down on the floor outside the office Mary J had been using the other night. Crouching down beside him, he checked the barman for a pulse and breathed a sigh of relief when he found a strong and steady beat. Thankfully, Christian had just been knocked out cold. Pulling his mobile phone free from the clip at his belt, Mick placed a call for an ambulance and then made another quick call to the station to get them to send a couple of patrol cars around. After making a thorough check of the building, he was pretty certain that the man who had hit Christian and held a knife to Mary J’s throat had gotten away.
Shit, Mary J, he needed to get back out to her before she worried herself sick about him and Christian and did something stupid to cause another injury to that delicate body of hers. Flicking on the lights to light up the other half of the pub, Mick made his way back out to his truck. He didn’t even make it halfway across the parking lot when Mary J jumped out of his truck and stumbled her way over to him. Man, he wished he had some sort of ownership on her, being that she blatantly ignored his direct order to stay inside his truck. Her disobedience would have resulted in him smacking that fine ass of hers, one he couldn’t wait to see blushing from the direct result of his own hand. However, there was just one tiny problem with that idea. He hadn’t made his claim on her yet so there was no punishment to be handed out to her.
“Where is he? Where’s Christian?” she yelled out to him while crossing the parking lot to close the distance between them. When she stood in front of him, Mick gripped her upper arms to stop her from heading inside to where Christian lay unconscious. “He’s inside, sugar,” he told her sternly to get her to listen to what he was saying to her. “He’ll be fine. I’ve called an ambulance for him and the police are on their way as we speak. They will want to speak to you about what happened tonight, okay.”
“Okay,” she said to him unconvincingly. Even he could see that she wasn’t anywhere near okay at all. She was trembling like a scared little kitten in need of comfort and reassurance. Her eyes kept on darting to the front entrance of the pub then back to him. Mick knew she was only partially listening to what he was telling her. Tightening his hold on her, to draw her attention back to him, he asked her once again, “Are you sure you’re up to talking to the police tonight? Or would you like me to run interference for you so you can make your statement to them tomorrow morning after you’ve rested?”
He watched her slowly shake her head “no” to answer his question. Stubborn woman.
“Fine.” Placing a hand on her lower back, he slowly guided her back to his truck and helped her inside. “Rest here, sugar, while we wait for the ambos and the cops to show up and do their thing. Once you’ve answered their questions and been fixed up I’ll take you home.” What Mary J didn’t know yet was Mick wasn’t planning on taking her back to her house. Nope he was planning on taking her back to his own place instead.
She just nodded her head at him then grimaced from the pain the action caused her. All that adrenaline running in her system had probably made her forget about the wound to her neck. “Rest now, sweetness, and when the ambos arrive I’ll send them right over to you so they can attend to that gash on your neck.”
“No,” she whispered quietly back to him. “Let them help Christian first please.”
She had a heart of gold in the way she wanted to help others out first, rather than taking care of herself first, even when she was injured. Mick just fell for her even more right then. Yep she might be a stubborn, feisty woman. She was his woman though, one he couldn’t wait to tame to submit to him and his needs.
“Fine,” he told her just as the ambulance and two patrol cars rolled up. He pressed a soft kiss to her forehead and stepped back from her. Closing the truck door behind him, Mick headed over to the ambulance first to advise them about Christian and Mary J’s injuries before checking in with the four cops that had turned up to investigate what happened tonight. It was going to be a long ass of a night after an even longer day.
Chapter Eight
It had been an extremely long night, longer than Mary J had expected it to be. Not that she would have ever dreamed of being held up by some crazy-arsed man who wanted her to deliver a message to Mick for him. The fact that this man knew she had been chasing after Mick made her feel sick to her stomach. It baffled her how much he knew about her and about her feelings toward Mick, when she hadn’t openly declared her feelings to anyone other than Chloe. She had barely even made Mick aware of how she felt about him. Yet this crazed lunatic knew enough about her to hold a knife to her throat and threaten to kill her if she didn’t deliver his message to Mick.
Mary J could still feel the coldness of the hard, steel blade pressing against her throat. Even though it had happened hours ago and her wound had been attended to by the paramedics, she could still feel the sharpness of the blade slicing into her flesh. Her skin still crawled at the memory of having that bastard rub his jeans-covered erection against her. She didn’t want those memories and she certainly didn’t want the gash she received at the hands of her attacker either. She just wanted to be able to stop thinking about everything that happened tonight altogether. Otherwise she was going to hurl all over the inside of Mick’s truck from the fear the memories provoked within her. And she knew Mick wouldn’t be too impressed with her if she did indeed throw up all over the inside of his precious truck.
Twirling the spare bandages and the sachets of ointment around in her hands, something the paramedic had given her for her neck wound, Mary J tried her best to stop thinking about the events of this evening, only it didn’t work. Not when the ambulance officer came back over to her to once again advise her that she had to keep her wound clean and covered to prevent any chance of infection.
Great, just what she didn’t want was a goddamn infection from a cut to her neck she neither wanted nor needed. How did tonight go straight to hell in less than sixty seconds flat so damn quickly? What concerned her most of all was how was she expected to walk back into the pub tomorrow afternoon to start her next shift without going into a full-blown panic attack? Her job was her livelihood. If she couldn’t work she didn’t get paid, which meant she would lose not only her job but the house she was renting and the car she still owed money on.
One night, that was all it took to screw up her life indefinitely.
Closing her eyes and resting the back of her head against the headrest, Mary J couldn’t help but compare tonight’s events to that dark night her ex-boyfriend had taken to her with his fists and she ended up in hospital. That night she had to make a tough choice to either leave him and her family and friends behind, or stay in what had become an abusive relationship. Now she wondered if she needed to make another similar decision tonight, a decision she didn’t want to be forced into making.
The township of Kingston may not be the town where she had grown up surrounded by her family and friends. However, the popular beachside suburb had quickly become the place her heart belonged to and where she learnt to put her trust back into people who seemed to care about her and her well-being. After having her trust broken by a man who had used her as his own personal punching bag, Mary J had struggled ever since then to put her faith back in the hands of anyone just in case they broke it too. She had been burnt one too many times, and couldn’t afford to have her trust destroyed again. However, Mick and Chloe, even Jake and Randall had all shown her that she could put her faith in their hands and they wouldn’t break it.
She just hoped that her friends would always honour their word and never let her down, especially Mick, because that man had single-handedly captured her heart with that brooding look of his. Plus, that silent promise glowing in the silver flecks of his eyes told her he could offer her the type of sexual discipline she had been craving for the longest time ever. A long sigh left her lips at the realisation that it may never happen if she or Mick didn’t take a chance on one another. One of them had to make the first move, but who would tak
e the chance to make the move first?
The only thing stopping her from making the initial move was the chance that Mick would reject her. If he told her no, she was sure she wouldn’t be able to cope with seeing him day in and day out. She would have to leave town, something she didn’t want to do nor contemplate even. If he refused her advances then she might not have a choice in the matter though. She couldn’t stop her heart from wanting the man who owned it so thoroughly and seeing him in town every damn day would be too much for her handle. The pain of wanting someone she couldn’t have would be too unbearable to tolerate.
Her chest ached and new tears threatened to fall at the thought of leaving all she held dear to her heart. She refused to let the tears fall though. Crying over something that may or may not happen was pointless. She knew that. But did it stop the tears from slowly spilling from her eyes and sliding down her cheeks to dampen them? No, it didn’t. And before too long, Mary J found herself crying quietly inside Mick’s truck. Of all the places to break down, this was not the right one to do it in. Not when there were cops from Mick’s station outside talking to him and definitely not the right place when she felt so alone in a world filled with millions of people.
She refused to acknowledge the wetness on her cheeks, refused to wipe away the tears and concede all hope that she was in a situation that could yield no happy ending for her. Her refusal only signified her need to show her stubborn side. Maybe it was the lingering effects of being held up tonight that brought out this need to be so hardheaded. Maybe it was hormonal. Or perhaps it was just the fact that she could smell Mick’s masculine scent lingering on the leather seats of his truck that brought it out in her.
Slowly opening her eyes, she glanced up into the rearview mirror and watched Mick talking to the officers in charge of the crime scene. Her eyes lingered on his taut frame for a moment before lifting back up in search of his gaze. He glanced her way and their gazes connected. Heat fired in her bloodstream and her pulse beat erratically from the way he stared straight at her. She couldn’t look away from him, not even when he shook all the cops’ hands and ambled back over to his truck. Her eyes remained solely fixated on him.