by Jc Emery
I’ll have to remind myself that Jeremy Whelan has such a big mouth. It’s curious that he saw fit to tell Grady of my whereabouts. Little asshole.
“Is your ass trying to clean the door of my Jeep, or are you trying to make a point?” I ask. In an odd reaction, he smiles. He almost looks friendly, and if I didn’t know better, it might relax me some. But I do know better. Grady smiling is never a good thing. I’m tempted to scan the parking lot to see if he ran someone over or maybe he sliced my tires. The paranoia is getting to me. I tell myself that I’m just being dramatic.
“What? I can’t just stop and say hi to my favorite secretary?” he asks. I raise an eyebrow and check my tires real quick. They all look fine, but there’s so many things he could do to damage the functionality of my Jeep. Brake wires can get cut, power steering fluid can mysteriously leak all over the pavement, and if he’s feeling particularly evil, he could even rig the thing with explosives.
“What did you do?” I ask suspiciously.
His smile widens, and a chuckle rumbles in his chest. I almost think he looks happy, but then I remember who I'm talking to. He shrugs and looks around as innocently as I imagine he can. I don't want him to know how much his being here actually bothers me. I mean, this entire situation is getting out of hand. Sure, I have kind of done it to myself. But why should I have to compromise my beliefs just because he has something to prove?
I shouldn't.
Mr. Beck is not someone that I want to be agreeing with right now, but I have to wonder if this kind of intimidation is standard behavior for the club. And if this is par for the course, then what kind of town am I living in? Maybe I'm just naïve, and totally out of touch, but in all my years living here in Fort Bragg, I never really considered that the awful rumors that circle about could be true. Yeah, I never imagined that the Forsaken Motorcycle Club were a bunch of choirboys, but I never really believed the rumors that they were thugs, either. Maybe I'm completely off base about Jeremy Whelan if he's tipping Grady off to my whereabouts.
"You're kind of paranoid, aren't you?"
Duh.
"No, of course not. Our meetings have gone so well in the past, Sterling. I'm thrilled you could pay me a visit," I say. More sarcasm falls off my tongue in those few sentences than I think I doled out during my entire adolescence.
"Told you, babe. Don't call me Sterling."
Now I'm the one with the huge smile on my face. It's true, he has asked me not to call him Sterling. It's almost funny that he thinks I would care after the way he's treated me. And what the hell is up with him calling me babe all of a sudden? While it is much preferred to bitch, it still makes me uncomfortable.
"There a reason my kid likes you so much?"
"I can only imagine that Cheyenne enjoys having a conversation with somebody who doesn't refer to every woman as either bitch or babe," I say. I'm not sure where this conversation is going, especially since he's being so…human. "Well, this has been fun, but I really must be going now," I say. I must be having horrible luck with the male species today, because he doesn't move. Not only is this conversation awkward and strange, but it's actually not progressed anywhere, nor has it served a purpose. At this point, we’re just standing here like a couple of idiots. We might as well be chatting about the weather and our expectations for the upcoming baseball season.
He waits another moment before he finally pushes off the car and strides right up to me. I order my brain to shut down any and all thoughts about the way he carries his large frame as he moves toward me. He's still an asshole, I remind myself. Even assholes, I suppose, are entitled to look good. I consider myself to be a woman of self-respect, and decent self-esteem, so the fact that he's able to get my mind racing about the build of his body really just pisses me off. Men with so little respect for other people shouldn't be allowed to look this good. Ever.
"Oh, and Holly," he says as he leans down. He's invading my space, and if I wasn't overwhelmed by being in such close proximity to him, I might be able to think clearly enough to be annoyed by it. "You're avoiding me. I don't fucking like it. Eventually, you're going to run out of steam, and you’ll be tired out. Just do yourself a favor and take the money. Because, make no mistake about it, baby, I have stamina to go for days." Arrogant jerk.
“You’re bipolar,” I say. My blood pressure is rising. I have to hold my hands down firmly at my sides so I don’t reach out and slap the smirk right off his face. His perfectly strong jaw is mostly covered with facial hair. It doesn’t look like he’s really shaved since I last saw him.
One moment, he’s practically standing over me, and the next, he’s walking away across the parking lot. I blink back my surprise and try to clear my head as I walk back to my Jeep. With my head in a daze, I grab at the driver’s door handle. Just as I think I’m an idiot for trying to open the locked door without the use of the key, the handle gives way under my grip and the door opens.
“Great, now you’re imagining things,” I mutter to myself as I climb in and shut the door behind me. My purse and plastic bag from the pharmacy fall onto the seat beside me. I could have sworn I locked the doors before going inside, but I guess not. All my frustration and paranoia are clearly having a considerable effect on my ability to think clearly. I pull the Jeep out of the parking lot and get stuck at the first light on the way back to work. The loud roar of an idling motorcycle engine sounds behind me. Lifting my head, I find Grady on his Harley in my rear view mirror. The longer I sit at the red light, the more I consider the validity of “accidentally” putting the Jeep in reverse and backing over him. But murder is wrong—it’s even one of those pesky Ten Commandments. I’ve been trying to live my life in a way that I can be proud of and not cut corners like I used to, but the man behind me it making that commitment more difficult than it needs to be.
Hunger gets the best of me, and I reach over into the plastic bag in search of one of those bags of peanuts. The rustling of the bag almost distracts me from the odd crunch that sounds every time I hit the bottom of the plastic bag. Feeling more than a little off my game, I pat the bottom of the bag a few more times. Something isn’t right. I give the bag a shove and, sure enough, there is something underneath it. A large manila envelope sits on the passenger seat, half covered by my purse and shopping bag. I’d know that envelope anywhere. It’s the same envelope, right now to the nasty little note I wrote on it, that Grady and his friends have tried to give me several times over the last few weeks.
That asshole.
No really, that asshole.
I knew something about that entire conversation was off, and I knew my car door wasn’t unlocked when I went into the pharmacy. Here I thought I was losing my mind, but no. Sterling Grady hoodwinked me in order to drop an envelope with twenty-five grand into my car without my knowledge. Just as the light changes to green, I grab hold of the window crank and roll it down. The two cars in front of me take their time to get moving, and I take advantage of this by grabbing the envelope from the seat beside me. With my left hand full of twenty-five grand, I lift it out the open window and wave it at Grady behind me. My eyes are intently focused on the rear view mirror. I can’t see the look on his face, but he’s definitely paying attention. His mouth opens, and he’s shouting something over his ridiculously loud engine. It takes me a moment to realize he’s screaming, “Don’t do it!”
Don’t do what? Oh, he thinks I’m going to drop it out of the window. I shake the package at him as I start to roll away. His eyes dart around nervously as he changes gears and follows me. He’s still shouting and occasionally using one of his hands to point menacingly at me. He must actually think I’m going to just toss the money out the window. But I couldn’t do that, could I?
My fingers loosen and, before I can stop myself, I’ve let it fall onto the pavement. I can barely see Grady holding up traffic in my rear view as I drive away from the scene of the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I’m a block away before I can breathe again, but I haven’t calmed down. By t
he time I get into the staff parking lot, I’m having a mild panic attack, my chest heaving and my lungs straining for air. I haphazardly park the Jeep and turn her off, but I don’t move.
“I dropped,” I mutter aloud in a dumbfounded whisper, “twenty-five… twenty-five…twenty-five-fucking-thousand dollars out of my moving vehicle.” Before I know it, I’m slapping at my steering wheel and cursing myself for my own stupidity. I don’t regret getting rid of the cash, no, I’d made that conviction already. Lisa Grady told me weeks ago that arguing was going to invite trouble, and now I’m afraid I just invited more trouble that I can handle. But I can’t just sit in my car and think about that all day. I have a low-paying job to get back to, and a life to resume living, holed-up at my desk and in my own home because I’m avoiding everything Forsaken. I just don’t know how much longer this can go on for—the following, the fighting, the chasing, and the total departure from sanity.
Maybe I should just take the money and be done with it. I can figure out a way to get right with that somehow. I’ve contemplated telling Grady why I’m not comfortable taking the cash, in full detail, but he wouldn’t care anyway, so what good would it do? It wouldn’t.
I grab my shopping bag and my purse and head inside the office. Margot immediately notices my arrival and looks up from her homemade sandwich. I must look awful—she pouts at the sight of me. I wave her off and don’t even try to explain. No good comes from her thinking about Grady or my possible relationship with him. She tries, she really does, but curiosity gets the better of her. We live in a small town, and gossip is what small towns do best.
The first time Margot brought Grady up was when I’d returned to work after the whole shoot-out thing. It was a necessary conversation that I hated to have. The second time she brought him up, it was after Cheyenne and her friends made a trip into the office. Margot zeroed in on how Cheyenne had come over to my desk, asked how I was feeling, and then asked why she hadn’t seen me at her house again. I told her it hadn’t worked out with her dad, and that was when she informed me that he told her we were still seeing each other. Cheyenne left all confused, and Margot asked if it was serious between Grady and me. The best response I could muster was that the only thing Sterling Grady is ever serious about is his daughter and his club. That pacified her for a while, but when Cheyenne’s visits to the office became more frequent and her excuses for visiting less and less plausible, Margot started doing this thing with her eyeballs that tells me she’s holding back a million questions that are killing her to keep inside.
I toss the bag and my purse down on my desk and pull out my chair. A door slams with such force that I jump in place. I don’t even have to look to know who it is. Had I given myself even a moment to consider the consequences for tossing the money out the window, I could have talked myself out of it. Grady may not be the heartless monster I once assumed him to be, but that doesn’t mean he’s not angry with me. It just means he probably won’t hack me into tiny bits. Anything else, though, is a distinct possibility.
He takes his helmet off as he storms through the door then plops it on my desk. I try to straighten my back and force myself to look him in the eye. Everything about him, from his wild eyes to his heaving chest, displays an intensity I didn’t know possible. I’ve made him mad before, and I’ve even pissed him off so bad that he’s kicked walls and threatened me; but this is a different kind of intensity. His eyes slide over mine, back and forth, back and forth, almost as if he’s trying to figure something out. Maybe some rationale behind my behavior, or the truth as to why I refuse to take the money. If he figures out what possessed to me toss such an ungodly amount of cash out of my old, beat-up Jeep’s window, I’d like for him to explain it to me, because I can’t manufacture any kind of explanation. The best I can say is that the man is so infuriating that he makes me lose my faculties when he’s around and I end up doing the stupidest stuff.
It happens so fast that I almost miss the movement. He lifts his arm and wraps his hand around the back of my neck. Fear strikes at my heart in expectation of a pain that doesn’t come. I stumble forward as he pulls me so close to his body that we’re practically flush from my chest all the way down to my knees.
“We need to have a talk,” he says in the quietest way possible. I try to nod, but his grip kind of immobilizes my head.
“Okay,” I whisper. He turns us just slightly and slowly walks me backward. It’s awkward, walking like this, with his feet practically stepping all over mine, and me being unable to see where I’m going, much less the path we’re taking. A shadow falls over as we enter the small nook around the corner from the hall that leads down to Mr. Beck’s office. I hit a hard surface that I recognize as the door to the janitor’s closet, and Grady stops, now absolutely flush against me. I breathe slightly easier knowing that Margot can’t see us from her desk, because whatever is happening here is plenty embarrassing without having to re-live it via the gossip chain He’s much larger in such close proximity, with his entire body resting against mine and his hand cradling my neck. Slowly, he tilts my neck so that I’m forced to face him.
“You threw twenty-five grand out of a moving vehicle,” he says.
“I’m crazy,” I say immediately. He smashes his lips together, which distracts me from the whole intense eyeball thing he’s got going on. His lips part and he pulls in a deep, shuttered breath. I try to form a coherent sentence, but it’s difficult. He’s kind of intoxicating in this small space. “You make me crazy.”
“Why don’t we just get this out of the way, huh?” he says quietly. “I want to taste your pussy.” My face heats at the thought of him putting his tongue to a good use for once. Pressure builds in my head, and it’s only then that I realize I’ve stopped breathing.
“You see that—that nervous excitement you’re feeling? I’m under your skin. You don’t have to like it, but I’m there,” he says so quietly it comes out as a whisper. He reaches out with his free hand and strokes my arm with a single finger. His touch is light, but it sends chills down my spine. “Something you should know about me, babe. I don’t go into shit blind. You think I don’t know you, but I do. I know every asshole who’s been inside of you, I know every place you’ve called home—even the places you don’t want me to know about. I know the way you like your coffee, and I know how you think. The shit I don’t know, you’ll tell me. Eventually, I’m going to know every dirty little part of you, and if you think I make you crazy now, just wait until I bury my dick inside you.”
I think I’m stunned into silence, because my brain isn’t functioning in the least, but then my mouth starts moving and I realize, in horror, that I’m talking. “We’re making each other insane. I’ve heard about this before—meeting someone who actually drives you to develop a mental health disorder. What else could possibly explain the fact that I’m not completely disgusted by you?”
“You want my dick,” he says quietly. I clamp my mouth shut to stop myself from protesting. At some point I’m going to admit to myself that the lady doth protest too much, and that possibility scares me.
His free hand travels down my arm and then over to my belly. My muscles tighten nervously as he places his hand on my hip where the bullet grazed my flesh. His thumb rubs small circles over the small scar that doesn’t look like it’s going to disappear anytime soon.
“How’s the nick?” he asks. The room is heating up quickly, and I think the only thing I could do about it would be to put some distance between him and me.
“Fine,” I say. My lungs barely have enough oxygen in them to get the word out.
“No more avoiding me,” he says. I’m an idiot—I nod in agreement. Somewhere in the back of my brain, I want to argue with him about it, but not avoiding him gets muscled, taut man parts pressed up against me, and even if it is at work, and it is embarrassing, it’s been a while.
“No more being an asshole,” I say. If he’s going to give orders, I’m going to at least bargain for a fair deal.
�
�I’ll try,” he says. It’s something, and I should take it, but I don’t.
“I won’t avoid you so long as you’re not an asshole,” I say. My eyes catch sight of his lips, and I’m distracted all over again.
“Don’t avoid me and I won’t be an asshole,” he says. The intensity of the conversation is broken just slightly by the small smile that appears on his lips.
“I doubt you’re capable of that,” I murmur. He bends down and presses his forehead to mine.
“Take the money.”
“You’re being an asshole.”
“Money.“
“Asshole,” I say.
“You can try to fight me, but I got you,” he says and takes a step back. His hands fall from my neck and hip. As he backs away, he licks his lips and looks me up and down. I push off the door to the janitor’s closet and follow him out into the open office. He grabs his helmet from my desk and turns to leave. Still in a daze, I turn at the wrong time, and his hand slams down against my backside.
My eyes are so big, and my skin from head to toe darkens to a crimson red that feels uncomfortably hot. I barely get my head turned in time to see him open the side door and disappear.
Margot’s eyes are intently focused on the paper in front of her, but it’s obvious that she’s about to die from shock and curiosity, perhaps both.
I plop into my seat and try to ignore the subtle stinging of both my ego and flesh at the fact that I was spanked. At work. In front of my boss. By an outlaw biker.
Chapter 11
I LOOK DOWN at my store-bought, pre-made salad with disdain. It’s one of those salads that looks yummy enough in the store, but when you start eating it, you realize why it was so cheap. I guess that’s what I get for buying a pre-made drugstore food product. The lettuce has been shredded, and the cheese tastes waxy. And to boot, I made the mistake of checking out the expiration date and realizing that today’s the last day for recommended freshness. Call me crazy, but ever since I saw that, I’m basically convinced that my lunch is going to kill me. After what just happened, I might be okay with that.