by Josie Kerr
Em cackled. “Oh my Lord, Ashley, stop it. Hell, all of you Richardses look just alike.”
Ashley harrumphed at Em, and Charlotte let out a very unladylike snort of laughter, which made the girls laugh even harder. The women were practically crying when Tig and Dig walked through the door.
The bigger fighter rolled his eyes. “Every damn time this happens. Every. Damn. Time. It’s a good thing that ‘book club’ is only once a month. Good grief.”
Nanda pursed her lips at her boyfriend. “Mm-hmm. Keep that up, chulo, and you won’t reap any benefits of my loosened inhibitions.”
“Dear Lord, if your inhibitions got any looser . . . ,” Tig began but stopped when Charlotte gave him a pinch on the butt. He winked at Nanda, who rolled her eyes but gave him an air kiss.
Dig just shook his head. “Okay, ladies. Pack it up. I’ve got the van. I’ll take all your drunk asses home.” He stood and shook his head as the women gathered up their things. He looked at Annie. “I guess you’re an official DS Fight Club Lady now, Annie. Welcome to the craziness.”
Chapter Twelve
Pierce and Annie sat across from each other while they waited for a server to bring their orders to the table. Pierce shifted in the small seat while he watched Annie line up her plastic utensils in a perfectly straight line. She was wearing another plain button-down blouse, but instead of a boxy cut, this one hugged her figure, nipping in at the waist. When she returned to the drink stand for some lemon for her tea, Pierce found he had difficulty keeping his eyes off her shapely derriere. She made those khaki trousers look damn good.
“So.” Annie tapped her fingers along the edge of the table and then moved her fork half a millimeter up. “So.”
“Buttons.” Damn, Pierce. You’re an idiot.
But instead of a blank look or an eye roll, Annie treated Pierce with a huge grin. “On your underwear.” She giggled. “My granny used to say that.”
Pierce added his own chuckle. “The housemother at the group home I was in for a while said it when no one was willing to talk about their day.”
Annie’s pretty smile dimmed. “You were in a group home?”
Oh jeez, Pierce. Way to keep things light.
He cleared his throat. “Um, yeah. Yeah. My parents were killed in a car accident, and they didn’t have any living relatives, so . . .” He shrugged.
“I’m sorry. You mind if I ask how old you were?”
“Nah. I was fourteen.”
“Wow. That’s a rough time, period. At least, it was for me. I wouldn’t wish being in middle school again on my worst enemy. It was awful.”
“Yeah?”
Annie nodded. “I dreaded going to school. I was that weird girl who didn’t talk.”
“You didn’t talk? At all?”
She shook her head. “No. Not in class, not outside of class. Weird, huh?”
“Did you talk at home?”
“Only when asked a direct question. But that’s how my family was. My father was very strict. He liked a quiet, orderly home.”
Pierce snorted. “Wow. I can’t imagine. My parents were anything but orderly. People called them ‘free spirits,’ but they were just . . . chaotic. We lived in a pop-up trailer and traveled around from campground to campground.” Once the words started flowing, Pierce couldn’t seem to stop them, especially when Annie looked at him with such compassion and caring in those big green eyes of hers. “They were artists. They did sculpture and paintings. And a lot of drugs.” He shrugged off Annie’s shocked look. “Sometimes we’d crash with other families, mostly in the winter when the art fairs and music festivals weren’t happening. But Mom or Dad would invariably do something to someone, or they’d get offended by some little thing, and—poof!—usually in the middle of the night, we’d be gone and on to the next place.”
“That sounds so hard, Pierce. How’d you ever keep up with schoolwork?”
Pierce barked a laugh. “I didn’t. We were never really around long enough. About the time the truant officers would come around to see why I wasn’t in school, we’d pack up and head out.”
“So, you didn’t go to school? Ever?” Annie’s brow furrowed, and Pierce found he wanted to rub his thumb across the crease above her nose.
“I didn’t go to school until I was in the foster system. I mean, I could read and stuff, but math was a nightmare. Though, I can multiply four-digit numbers in my head.”
“Wow. I can’t imagine.”
“Doing math problems in your head?” He winked at her, and she giggled again.
“No, not going to school. I crammed four years of high school into two years. I graduated when I was sixteen. Or rather, I got my GED when I was sixteen, but I was only one class short of getting a real diploma.”
“Why didn’t you stay if you were that close?”
They stopped talking while a server placed their plates in front of them. Pierce grinned at Annie’s half rack of ribs, and she just shrugged. She continued to talk while she fussed with her meal, never meeting Pierce’s eyes.
“Oh, lots of reasons. But the main one was that I had to get married. Also, the class that I lacked was only offered during the second semester, and I’d finished up everything else in summer school.”
Pierce froze, pulled pork sandwich halfway to his mouth. “Had to get married?”
“Oh! No, nothing like that.” She blew out a breath. “This is going to sound super weird, okay? So, I have these . . . spells, you know, like I had at the gym, right? Well, they got so bad that I couldn’t go to class. I would panic and throw up. Sorry, this isn’t a good topic for lunch—”
“Hey, hey, Annie. It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about this. We can talk about . . . whatever you want to. We don’t have to talk at all. But I’d like to. I want to get to know you.”
Annie nodded, and Pierce saw the smallest of smiles play across her mouth. “I mean, you need to know what you’re getting, right? It wouldn’t be fair to you if you didn’t know what you were getting mixed up with. I mean, if we were to . . . you know . . .”
“Date?”
Annie nodded. “Date.”
“Please tell me, then. You’d get so upset that you couldn’t go to school . . .” Pierce smiled encouragingly at the anxious woman sitting across from him. “And?”
She shrugged a shoulder while picking at her food. “My father made a match. You know, for his weird daughter who didn’t talk.”
“Your dad married you off?”
She nodded.
“To that Jeff guy at the motel?”
Annie nodded again. She picked up a squeeze bottle of barbecue sauce and took off the cap. “And two months later, Jeff got a job here, so we moved. And then in another six months, both Mama and Daddy were dead, and . . . that’s my story.”
“Are you still married to him?”
“No. No, I’m not, thankfully. Ashley’s husband was able to pull some stuff together for me and got me a good lawyer.”
“Good. Good. I never liked the way he talked to you.”
Annie set the bottle down but still didn’t meet Pierce’s gaze. “What?”
“I didn’t like the way he talked to you, like you were . . . less than. I never said anything because I didn’t want to be homeless, and that motel was about the only place I could afford. I wish I’d said something.” Pierce reached out to touch Annie’s hand. “Annie, look at me.”
Annie raised her head and sucked in a breath at Pierce’s intense gaze boring into her. “From now on, Annie, if you need anything, anything at all, you can call on me and I’ll do anything you need me to do.”
“Oh . . . okay,” she whispered. And then one of those big smiles lit up her face. “Okay.” Her voice was surer, and her smile bigger.
Pierce leaned back in his seat and picked up his sandwich again. He gave her a wink, and she laughed and picked up the sauce bottle again and gave it a squeeze.
And the top flew off, spurting the entire contents of the bottle all over P
ierce’s white T-shirt.
“Oh no! Oh my goodness, Pierce! I am so sorry!” Annie began to frantically try to mop the sauce off his shirt but only succeeded in making a smeary mess.
“Annie. Annie, babe. It’s fine.” Pierce chuckled and flicked some sauce off his fingers. “I’m gonna go to the restroom. I’ll be right back.” He made his way across the small restaurant, and before he opened the door labeled “Dukes,” he called Annie’s name.
“Yes, Pierce?”
“You’ll be here when I get out, right?”
“Sure.”
“Good.”
Pierce ducked into the small restroom and grabbed a handful of paper towels. While he scrubbed the remains of the vinegary sauce from his shirt, he thought about the conversation he’d just had with Annie.
He was thankful that she’d opened up to him, but as much as she’d told him, Pierce knew that there was much more that she had not, and that made him angry. Not at Annie, but at what that jackhole had done to make her this skittish, this anxious. He could only imagine, and that made him mad all over again.
No, this time he definitely needed to take things slow. He’d had a tendency to rush into things, inside and outside the cage, and that never turned out well. And given Annie’s complicated background and recent divorce, he needed to go at a snail’s pace. He sure didn’t want to, though.
He shook his head at his reflection. This was going to be as good as it got. Huffing a laugh, Pierce smiled at his reflection and headed out of the small restroom, only to find an empty table.
“Son of a bitch. Did you see the woman I was eating with leave?” Pierce asked the man clearing the table.
“Pierce?”
“Oh. Uh, oh.” He grinned sheepishly when he saw Annie standing at the counter, a whole sweet potato pie in her hands.
“I was going to bring one of these pies back to the office. People bring in treats all the time—it’s my turn now.”
“Sorry, Annie. I . . .” Pierce shook his head. “Yeah, I got nothing.”
Annie shifted her weight from foot to foot, obviously uncomfortable. “You thought I’d take off?”
Did he? Maybe in the back of his mind, he did. But the crushed look on her pretty face told him that she’d never do such a thing.
“No.”
She laughed a little and dug her toe into a tiny chip in the linoleum floor. “Yeah, you did. It’s okay. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”
“Annie, honey, I’m sorry . . .”
She waved him off. “No, Pierce, you don’t have anything to be sorry for. I was the one who bit off more than I could chew and then backed out. Thank you for lunch, and thanks for sharing your story with me.”
She shrugged a shoulder and turned to leave.
“Annie, can I call you? You know, later?”
Pierce saw her inhale like she was getting ready to do something that took a lot of courage. “No, I don’t think so. Good-bye, Pierce.”
Pierce stood inside the restaurant and watched her little purple car pull out of the parking lot and onto the street.
“Son of a bitch.”
Chapter Thirteen
Annie looked in her rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of Pierce’s big body as he stepped out the front door of the restaurant. She couldn’t see his expression, but his body language told her plenty.
She sucked in a shuddering breath. She had never been so emotionally conflicted in her entire life. On the one hand, Pierce had been charming, but not too charming, during lunch, and he hadn’t even really blinked at her confession of being an almost child bride. And more—he had actually shared some of his background with her, though Annie got the impression that there was much more to his story than he was telling her.
And she wanted to know more. She wanted to know it all. Damon Pierce fascinated her, and she wasn’t sure if that was such a good thing. After the silly, booze-laden book club, she’d fired up her new laptop in her new apartment, and while eating macaroni and cheese straight out of the pan, she’d researched Damon Pierce, using every internet tool she had at her disposal. She knew where he’d lived and trained, and she saw photos of him, ranging from formal, in a suit and tie, to beaten and bloody and only wearing a tiny pair of tight shorts.
She didn’t care for the beaten and bloody, but she sure liked the tiny shorts.
The one thing she didn’t see was a girlfriend, though she knew he must have been involved with someone, sometime. A man as good-looking and successful as Pierce didn’t stay unattached for long.
On the flip side, there were the rumors and reports of his volatile temper and his bad behavior, even at official events, and not just one or two. But the last negative report was more than a year ago. Actually, the last report, period, was more than a year ago. It was like Pierce had simply dropped off the planet, which Annie knew was not the case because she saw him weekly during that time.
Annie took some deep breaths and reached for her purse to grab a tissue to mop the sweat from her face.
Of course, she’d left her purse in the restaurant. She’d taken her wallet up to the counter to pay for the pie, and then Pierce had come out of the restroom and she’d babbled at him and bolted. Heaving a big sigh, Annie turned around and headed back to the barbecue joint and hoped that Pierce hadn’t hung around to see if she was coming back.
She pulled into the parking lot, and after checking for Pierce’s truck, got out of her car and hurried into the restaurant. She hadn’t realized how late it was, and she had calls to make. But of course, her schedule and phone were in her purse.
Annie burst into the restaurant to find a woman with her purse on her lap, her wallet and planner spread out on the tabletop, and her phone in her hand.
“Excuse me?!” Annie blurted, possibly louder than she’d ever spoken before. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The blonde woman looked Annie up and down, coolly. She didn’t put Annie’s phone down, but Annie noticed that the phone was awake and the woman had been scrolling through her contacts.
“Excuse me,” Annie repeated in a softer tone of voice. “That is my handbag, and those are my things.” She stepped toward the woman, who still merely looked at her as if sizing Annie up for some secret assignment.
“Hm. You don’t really seem like Pierce’s type,” the woman said. “Let me guess: you’ve known each other, what, a couple of weeks?”
“Um, no. We’ve known each other a few mo—why is that your business? And give me my purse.” Annie plucked the phone from the woman’s hand, snatched the handbag from her lap, and began to hurriedly gather her things.
“Uh-huh, a couple of weeks, max. Let me guess—he approached you when you were having some sort of crisis, and he was caring and sensitive. And then you encountered him again, and he was sweet and shy and put the ball completely in your court. So you decided to have lunch with him, and he shared some things about his supposedly crappy childhood, and you felt all warm and fuzzy and special because a big fighter wouldn’t share something so personal like that unless he really liked you, right?”
Annie’s mouth dropped open, and the woman shook her head and rolled her eyes.
“Damn, it’s the same shtick every single time.” The woman looked at Annie from head to toe again. “You’re recently divorced, aren’t you?”
“Uh, yeh-yes,” Annie stammered. “Um, wh-who are you, again?”
“Not that it matters, but my name’s Tammy, and let’s just say that I know Damon Pierce intimately. And what I’m telling you is, if you know what’s good for you, you need to stay as far away from that ass as you can. He’s got some nasty habits and a nasty temper to go with them. Don’t let that schmoopy, misunderstood-brawler act fool you.”
Annie stood and gaped at the woman, still saying nothing.
Tammy continued, the color rising in her cheeks and her eyes growing wider and wilder. “Damon Pierce looks out for Damon Pierce, period. He’s a fucking menace—mean and small-minded. Just as
k Colin Carmichael about his last encounters with him. I mean, if he can talk again.”
Tammy stood up and began to walk to the door. She looked over her shoulder and shook her head, a pitying look on her face. “Honey, you are in so far over your head with Pierce. You just need to leave him be before he chews you up and spits you out. Believe me, because I was once you.”
With shaky hands, Annie put the rest of her belongings into her purse.
What in the world was that? Who was that woman? And how did she know that Annie had been at the restaurant with Pierce?
Annie’s phone buzzed in her purse, and she pulled it out, knowing she’d been gone way longer than her allotted lunch hour.
Oh. Her phone wallpaper was an older photo of Pierce in fighting stance with his fists up and wearing a pair of long shorts with sponsorship logos all over them. God, she felt like some idiotic fangirl, mooning over a famous athlete.
She slumped down into a chair. That Tammy woman was beautiful in a carefully curated, almost plastic sort of way: big, and probably fake, breasts, tanned, and what looked like professionally applied makeup. She looked like a fighter’s girlfriend. And really, what would Pierce want with a woman like Annie? She was really nothing more than an inexperienced teenager stuck in a thirty-three-year-old body that was absolutely nothing special.
Her phone buzzed again, and Annie sighed and answered.
“Hi, Ashley. I am on my way back.”
Chapter Fourteen
Pierce had been hanging out near the front door of the barbecue joint, watching Annie pull out of the parking lot, completely gobsmacked at how quickly she fled the restaurant, when his phone rang. After quickly answering it when he saw the caller ID, Pierce headed into the office of the private investigator Ryan had put him in touch with to help locate Andrea Michaels.
Kyle Richards shook Pierce’s hand and then motioned for him to be seated. “Thanks for stopping in, Pierce. We could have had this conversation on the telephone, but I’m glad we’re getting a chance to do this in person.”