CRASH (A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance)

by Daphne Loveling

  “Jesus! Oh, Jesus!” he wailed, scrambling away from me in a frantic crab-walk toward the door. His eyes were wide and half-crazy with terror. “Jesus, I shot him!”

  “Oh my God!” one of the women began to scream. “Oh my God! Look at the blood!”

  “We have to get out of here!” the other one cried. They were babbling and freaking out so much I couldn’t really tell which one was saying what. Whoever this one was ran toward the man. “Billy, we have to go! NOW! What if someone calls the cops?”

  I lay there in a near-stupor as the three of them, suddenly unified in purpose, flew around the room grabbing the women’s belongings, then raced to the door. Bill flung it open with a loud bang. Then the three of them, the women still half-dressed, ran outside and disappeared into the night.

  “Goddamn. Goddamn,” I muttered. Well, at least it was finally fucking quiet in here. With difficulty, I raised my head to look at the damage. The bullet had entered my left thigh close to the groin. There was blood, plenty of it, and I was already starting to go woozy. This wasn’t good. Not good at all.

  I lifted myself painfully into a sitting position and pulled myself over to my clothes. Pulling them down, I grabbed my T-shirt and ripped, working as fast as I could to make a tourniquet to tie around my leg above the wound as best I could. Then I fumbled in the pockets of my jeans until I found my phone. I managed to unlock the screen and punch in the contact I was looking for.

  “Repo,” I groaned when he answered. “I need you to bring a cage to the Hi-Lo Motel on Highway Five. Room Number Twelve. And bring Patch with you. I’m shot.”

  Chapter 2

  Eva

  The only thing more awkward than having a disastrous first date, is having a disastrous first date with someone you have to see at work the next day.

  And the day after that. And the day after that.

  I knew I should never have let Vanessa talk me in to accepting a date with Dr. Kevin Larkin. He was hot, yes. He had the perfectly sculpted body of a male model, and just-messy-enough dirty-blond hair that could make a woman want to run her fingers through it. He was also, as my best friend and colleague Vanessa so bluntly put it, “making serious coin.” If the fact that he was an emergency room doc wasn’t clue enough that his salary was well into the six figures, the late-model Jaguar he drove would tell you all you needed to know. And, as Vanessa had also been so helpful at to point out, “he’s been following you around like he’s a starving man and you’re a piece of meat.”

  What more could a girl ask for, right?

  Dr. Larkin had asked me out four times in the last two months, and every time, I had found an excuse to refuse. And every time Vanessa found out I’d refused again, she went ballistic.

  “Eva, are you freaking crazy?” she would say. “He is hot! He is rich! He is into you! Good God, girlfriend, what more do you want?”

  I sighed. “I’m just not comfortable dating someone I work with, Van.” Or dating at all, actually. I hadn’t been on an actual date, with an actual man, since my marriage had ended three years ago. The closest I’d come were late night encounters with Frank, my vibrator. And I was pretty sure that didn’t count.

  “Well, you won’t be working with him anymore when you marry him and become a wealthy doctor’s wife who spends her time doing volunteer work and hobnobbing with other wealthy doctors’ wives.” She cocked a brow at me.

  “Ugh. That actually sounds awful.” I loved my job as a physical therapist at St. Luke’s Hospital. I couldn’t imagine giving it up, even if I could afford not to work. “You are not selling this very well.”

  “Well, okay, then,” she shrugged. “So, you’ll still work. Give back to the community, and all that. How about you can set up your own clinic somewhere with all that cash? You gotta think of the big picture.”

  I laughed. “If and when I get my own clinic, it will be with my own money. I’m not interested in having a sugar daddy.”

  “It’s not a sugar daddy if you’re married, girl. Or if he’s as hot as Kevin Larkin is.”

  I tried as hard as I could to get Vanessa to drop the subject, but my best friend was nothing short of relentless when she had a goal in mind. Eventually, she wore me down. The fifth time Dr. Kevin Larkin asked me out, I said yes, mostly to get her off my back.

  That date had been three days ago.

  It had not gone well.

  Actually, for a lot of women, it might have been a dream date. But I guess I’m not a lot of women. Dr. Larkin — Kevin — had picked me up in the infamous Jaguar, and taken me, predictably, to the most expensive and most exclusive restaurant in town. I had to admit, he looked absolutely gorgeous. Emergency room docs generally spend most of their time in the same scrubs or white coat, so I didn’t often see him in much else. For the date, he was wearing a clearly expensive charcoal suit that fit him perfectly, and a crisp light gray shirt that matched the color of his eyes. I caught other women glancing toward us as we walked into the restaurant, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t me they were looking at. Even the hostess who sat us seemed flustered, and she was bound to see tons of rich, good-looking guys every day.

  The hostess sat us at one of the nicest tables in the restaurant. “First off, champagne,” Kevin announced. “This is a special occasion.” He locked eyes with me, raising one brow seductively. Without looking at the menu, he nodded at the hostess. “A bottle of the Veuve Clicquot. Unless you have the Dom Perignon? Last time I was here, you were out,” he said with a slight frown.

  The hostess looked chastised. “Oh, no!” she said quickly. “We definitely have the Dom. I’m so sorry you were inconvenienced last time.”

  He flashed her a dazzling smile. “Oh, that’s excellent. The Dom, then,” he said with a wink.

  The hostess flushed with pleasure. “Right away, sir.” She hurried away, and he watched her go, clearly assessing her figure from behind.

  Kevin made a big show of knowing the menu. “Their beef carpaccio is absolutely out of this world,” he said smoothly. “Do you like carpaccio?”

  I felt a little like this was some sort of test. “I’ve never had it,” I admitted. I knew what it was, though: raw beef. Cut in thin slices, and drizzled with olive oil, and some other stuff.

  “Well, it’s a bit sophisticated for the normal palate,” he replied. “But when done right, with the highest quality beef, it truly melts in your mouth. Would you like to try it?”

  I shrugged. “Sure.” Hell, I’d try anything once. And I liked sushi. That was raw, too, right? So maybe I’d like this.

  A waiter appeared and brought our champagne. “To us,” Kevin said, raising his glass.

  I resisted the urge to tell him that technically, there was no “us,” and simply touched my flute to his. The champagne was absolutely delicious. I was no connoisseur, but wow, if I could afford this stuff, I would definitely keep a bottle on hand for special occasions.

  When the waiter came back, Kevin proceeded to order for me. I was sure he thought it made him look masterful and in control. But mostly, it just pissed me off that he would presume to know what I wanted. When the food came, everything was excellent, and I was almost disappointed to like it so much. Even the carpaccio was good, once I got over the fact that I was basically just eating overpriced raw meat.

  Kevin basically asked me no questions for the entire first hour of our date. He told me all about his family’s cottage on “the Cape,” how he was at the top of his class in med school, and how he was only working at St. Luke’s, which he called, “a podunk hospital in a podunk town” until he had enough of a reputation to apply to Mass General in Boston.

  When he finally did get around to asking me anything about myself, things went south pretty quickly.

  All because I said the “C” word.

  Child.

  “You have a daughter?” he asked, his nose involuntarily wrinkling. “I see.”

  “She’s five,” I told him. “Just getting ready to start kindergarten. Her name is Zoe.�
��

  “Well,” he mused, looking down at his plate. “That certainly doesn’t mean we can’t still see one another casually. No strings attached, I mean.”

  That was the end of the conversation about my daughter.

  And pretty much the end of the date for me.

  On the way home, he continued his monologue, and I got to find out all about his investment portfolio, how much his downtown condominium cost, and his upcoming trips to prestigious medical conferences. (“I’m going to Las Vegas next month. I’ll be staying at the Palazzo. You could spend your day luxuriating by the pool if you’d like to come with me. Oh, that’s right, you’d need a sitter. Well, think about it, anyway.”) He leaned in for a kiss when he stopped in front of my house, but I was out of the car before he could manage it, and thankfully, he did not emerge to walk me up the sidewalk.

  I had never been so happy to be home in my life. I paid the teenage neighbor girl who sometimes babysat for me, and watched out the window to make sure she’d gotten back across the street to her house. Then I turned off the porch light, took off my heels, and padded upstairs to Zoe’s room. Tiptoeing in, I leaned over the bed and kissed her softly on the forehead.

  “Thank you for being an excellent creep repellant,” I whispered to her sleeping form.

  I was never going on another date again, I told myself firmly as I tiptoed back out of the room and shut the door. At least, not until Zoe was grown up and out of the house. That gave me at least thirteen more years to avoid men completely. Hell, maybe by then I’d be almost to menopause and I wouldn’t even want a man anymore.

  I just had to keep good old Frank in batteries until then.

  Unfortunately, even though my play-by-play of my disastrous evening had managed to get Vanessa off my back, Dr. Kevin Larkin was less easily deterred than I had assumed. After the way he reacted to the fact that I had a child, I expected him to avoid me like the plague the next day. Instead, he came up behind me as I was talking to my colleague Sue about a patient evaluation, and whispered in my ear:

  “Playing hard to get drives me wild, you naughty girl!”

  “Whoa, what was that?” Sue’s eyes were wide as he sauntered away. “I didn’t know you and Dr. Sexy were an item.”

  “We’re not,” I said firmly. “I don’t know what that was.” Besides creepy.

  It became clear that Dr. Kevin Larkin and I had very different reactions to how our date had gone down. Normally, as a physical therapist, I could have mostly avoided him, but in the past three days I had seen him on every shift I’d had, sometimes multiple times. He hadn’t asked me out again — yet — but it was becoming clear to me he was under the impression that he was making me crazy with anticipation. I dreaded the moment that he actually approach me for another date. I couldn’t imagine it was going to go well.

  I thought the time had finally arrived three days later, when I was chatting with Vanessa over a cup of bad cafeteria coffee. We were standing by one of the nurses stations when suddenly, her eyes went wide at something happening just past my shoulder. She raised her eyebrows and gave me a warning look. I turned toward the sound of footsteps approaching us, to see Kevin with his white coat on over his scrubs. His expression was serious.

  I sighed and squared my shoulders, mentally rehearsing the little speech I’d prepared to let him down gently. But instead of asking me out, his tone was strictly professional this time.

  “Eva, I’d like you to come with me,” he said, completely ignoring Vanessa. “There’s a patient who’ll need to begin therapy to rehabilitate a femoral neuropathy. And I’m assigning him to you.”

  More information about RIDE

  RIDE comes out on Amazon on September 19, 2016!

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  Books by Daphne Loveling

  Motorcycle Club Romance

  Los Perdidos MC

  Fugitives MC

  Throttle: A Stepbrother Romance

  Rush: A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance

  Paranormal Romance

  Untamed Moon

  About Daphne Loveling

  Daphne Loveling is a small-town girl who moved to the big city as a young adult in search of adventure. She lives in the American Midwest with her fabulous husband and the two cats who own them.

  Someday, she hopes to retire to a sandy beach and continue writing with sand between her toes.