Born Wild

by Julie Ann Walker

  Your loss, Dad, she thought savagely before turning away from him, from his frown of displeasure, and from any hope that they’d ever share the kind of love and understanding she’d always craved. Sucking in another deep breath, taking comfort in the smell of soap and soft leather that clung to Billy in a soothing cloud, she focused her mind and her gaze on Blake.

  It was time to face the music. For both of them…

  “Why did you try to have me killed?” she asked, surprised and gratified when her voice came out as steady as the Rock of Gibraltar. Not one ounce of the betrayal she was feeling was evident in her tone. And perhaps it was the feel of Billy standing so tall and strong beside her—a real-life knight in shining biker books—or maybe she’d finally grown that set of brass ladyballs, but in that instant she knew there was nothing Blake could say to hurt her, nothing he could do to make her back away from the truth, however unsavory that truth might be.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he insisted, his words garbled and nasally as he pinched the end of his nose, tilting his head back.

  Had she been expecting anything more? No, not really. But still she pressed, “Don’t play games, Blake. The only two people who knew where I was tonight were you and Dad.”

  “Eve,” her father cut in, “stop this nonsense. Blake wouldn’t—”

  “Shut up,” she commanded, turning to glare at him and his startled expression. Yep, you’re starting to get it, aren’t you? I’m not a scared little girl you can push around anymore. “You’ve done quite enough already.”

  “Wh-what?” he sputtered, nostril’s flaring before he realized his veneer of elegance was slipping. Sniffing, he said, “I can’t imagine what you mean, I—”

  “Save it, Dad,” she told him. “The fact remains you knew I was afraid. You knew Jeremy and I both believed there was something insidious behind all my accidents,” she made the quote marks with the fingers of one hand. “But you chose to ignore us, ignore my fear. And for that and for the fact that you’re still associating with my ex-husband when you know I’ve been trying for over a decade to distance myself from him, not to mention the way you pushed me at him twelve years ago, I’ll never forgive you.”

  “Eve,” he placated, reaching toward her. “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do,” she promised, nodding her head, meeting his gaze head-on. Read the truth in my eyes, Dad. “I mean every single word of it.”

  He dropped his hand, his face draining of blood until his cheeks looked sallow. And she’d be lying if she said she didn’t feel a pinch of regret at the harshness of her words. But she’d come too far to back down now. Sparing him one last pitying glance, she turned back to Blake.

  “Tell me, Blake,” she demanded, “what possible motive could you have for paying two thugs to come into Delilah’s bar to gun me down. Tell me,” a sharp note edged into her tone, but she couldn’t help it, “one good reason why you’d set fire to my condo, or cut my brake lines, or have someone try to shoot me outside the aquarium. I’d really, really like to know.”

  And that was an understatement. Because, even though they weren’t on great terms, neither had she thought they were mortal enemies. And, yes, if she wanted to keep riding the Honesty Train, she had to admit that it hurt to think of him hating her so much that he’d pay to see her dead. Dear God, haven’t I always tried to be nice to him? Even after I found out what he did? Haven’t I always treated him with kindness?

  “Is it because I refused to come back to you?” she asked, shaking her head, her voice thick with confusion. “Is it because you—”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he yelled, spitting blood onto the marble tiles.

  She snorted a laugh, but there was no humor in it, just bone-deep sadness and the type of weariness that reached right down to the soul. “And I guess I’m just supposed to believe you after what happened? I guess I’m just supposed to believe—”

  “What happened all those years ago is as much his fault as it is mine,” Blake snarled. He thrust his bloody chin toward her father.

  “Not another word, Blake,” her dad warned, his eyes boring into her ex-husband’s until she was surprised the back of Blake’s head didn’t blow out.

  She glanced back and forth between the men, frowning. She knew it was her father who’d pressured her unrelentingly until she finally, sullenly agreed to go out with Blake, but…but there was something more going on here…

  A deep sense of foreboding scratched at the back of her brain with sharp, broken nails, causing her to narrow her eyes. “What are you talking about?” she breathed, her heart crashing against her breastbone like hurricane-force waves against a rocky shore.

  “All these years,” Blake shook his head, his lips pulling into the kind of smile that was really more of a grimace. With the blood staining his teeth, the gesture was particularly macabre, “you thought it was my idea to call the press and have them waiting to snap pictures of the two of us that night.”

  Oh, yes. The infamous pictures…the ones that showed her laughing at Blake over a bottle of Chianti. The ones that showed her and Blake dancing in the moonlight, smiling up at each other, looking, for all the world, like two people madly in love. The ones that showed Blake kissing her passionately outside the front door of her dorm. The ones that had run with headlines like: A Love Affair Made in Real Estate Mogul Heaven. The ones that’d pushed Billy away and forced her to admit that her dreams were dead and buried after the letters she sent to him, begging him for forgiveness, went unanswered.

  Of course, what those pictures hadn’t shown was her checking her watch every five minutes, counting down the seconds until the date was over. What they hadn’t shown was her angrily pushing Blake away after he grabbed her and slammed his mouth down over hers. What they hadn’t shown was…the truth. Not that it mattered anyway, considering she’d betrayed Billy the second she agreed to that awful date, but still…

  “You divorced me six measly months after we said our vows because you thought it was me,” Blake shoved his thumb into his chest, “who called in the tip to the press.”

  “It was you,” she insisted, her foreboding morphing into the kind of dread that had her scalp tingling. But there was no reason for it. Because she knew for fact it’d been Blake. After they’d been married only a few weeks and her head had had time to clear from the heartache of losing Billy and the whirlwind of the rushed wedding, she’d started having misgivings. Misgivings about the way Blake had been a little too outspoken in his anger with the press. Misgivings about the fact that he’d been a little too willing to hold her close and dry her tears while she cried over another man. Misgivings about how he’d been just a little too quick to propose marriage after it became apparent Billy was out of the picture. She’d started to feel instinctively that something wasn’t right, that it all felt…planned somehow.

  It’d taken her a couple of months to work up the courage to hire a private investigator, but she finally did it. And what’d turned up after some digging? Well, the not-so-insignificant fact that the phone call to the local media had come directly from Blake’s cell phone that night. “You’d been hounding me to go out with you for months, just as much as my father had,” she insisted. “And when I finally agreed, you found a way to make sure I stayed with you. You found a way to ruin my only other option. The phone records don’t lie, Blake.”

  He shook his head, his expression derisive. “It’s true I wanted you since the first moment I saw you on campus. I still want you.” Ah, and now the real truth was coming out. Want. He wanted her. Which was a completely different song than the one he’d been singing for the last decade or so. The song of love. Like most spoiled rich boys, the one thing Blake Parish coveted more than anything was the one thing he couldn’t have. And, deep down, even while they’d been married, he must’ve known he couldn’t have her. Not in any way that mattered. “We’re perfe
ct together.”

  She barely resisted snorting and rolling her eyes. Perfect together? In what world? Certainly not hers.

  “And I would’ve gotten you eventually, fair and square,” he continued. Again, in what world? “had he,” he tilted his chin toward her father, “not gotten impatient and decided to…help things along.”

  Wait, what? The room did a slow tilt to the left, and she found herself eternally grateful Billy was beside her to steady her when she wobbled. What was Blake saying? That it was her…her father’s idea to call the press that night?

  She slowly turned to the man accused. And from the way the muscle ticked in his jaw, from the way he couldn’t quite hold her gaze, he didn’t need to affirm or deny Blake’s allegation.

  No…

  But the truth was written all over her father’s face, flashing at her as brightly as a neon sign. Good God, had she really thought there was nothing Blake could say that would hurt her? Had she really thought there was nothing he could tell her to make her want to back away from the truth?

  “How could you do that?” She meant to scream the words at her father, but they croaked out of her in a hoarse whisper.

  “Eve,” he began, lifting his chin at a defensive angle, even now refusing to give so much as an inch. “I did what I thought was best for you and for your future. I did what—”

  “And more than that,” Blake cut him off. “He paid the newspapers and tabloids to run those articles, to make sure they were publicized both far and wide. It was his idea for—”

  “Shut up, Blake!” her father yelled.

  “Fuck you, Patrick!” Blake shot back. “I’m done being your puppet! I could’ve won Eve all on my own if you’d just given me more time! If you’d kept your nose out of—”

  She stopped listening because suddenly it was all too much. Her entire world, everything she’d ever known to be true, everyone she’d ever known to be true was just one big, stinking lie.

  “G-get me out of h-here, Billy,” she whispered. “I can’t breathe in here.”

  “Done,” he said. Then to Mac and Delilah he called, “Come on. We’re getting the hell out of this snake pit.”

  Snake pit? Yep, that’s about right. And she’d been the field mouse, timidly waiting to be eaten alive by two vipers.

  Well, not anymore! She was finished with them. Finished with—

  She didn’t get to finish the thought because Billy started half carrying/half dragging her in a beeline toward the elevator. What the heck is wrong with my legs? It appeared they were only partially working. Well, she supposed that’s what happened when one found herself stabbed in the back by her own father. But she didn’t have time to worry about that now. Because Delilah, God bless her, had already punched the button for the elevator, and Eve could hear the car cables creaking behind the closed silver door.

  “Wait, Eve, I—” her father jogged over to them and reached for her. On instinct she pressed closer to Billy.

  “Retract that hand before I rip it off, fuckwad,” Billy snarled lowly, sounding more like a beast than a man.

  Her father snatched his fingers back like the air between them had turned into a gaping shark’s mouth. His eyes, his lying, double-crossing eyes pleaded with her when he said, “Please, Eve, I—”

  Bing-bong. No sound had ever been sweeter than that of the elevator arriving on the penthouse floor. Billy hustled her inside the car, and Mac and Delilah stepped in behind them, immediately turning around to create a wall of flesh and blood between her and her father. And when he tried to get into the elevator car with them, Mac stopped him with a straight-armed palm centered in the middle of his chest. “I’m not sure I understand exactly what just went down,” Mac drawled, shaking his head. “But if I were you, I believe I’d wait for the next car. I reckon you’re not very welcome in this one.”

  “But I haven’t finished speaking with my daughter,” her father announced, still trying to play the I’m-rich-and-entitled-and-you-don’t-scare-me card even though everyone in the elevator knew it was all just a show. Because even Eve, naïve, sheltered Eve could see the fear in her father’s face.

  “I believe you’ve said just about everything that needs sayin’,” Mac informed him. “Now, please be so kind as to step back.”

  The words might’ve been phrased as a request, but Mac’s tone was more in the line of do-as-I-say-or-find-yourself-eating-my-fist.

  Her father obeyed. But before the silver doors slid shut completely, Blake got in one final, parting shot.

  “And if someone’s trying to kill you,” he yelled, “start looking at your father! That business deal he got us involved in? Well, it’s sunk! We’re all bankrupt! And your inheritance and life-insurance policy are probably looking pretty sweet right now!”

  Okay, she couldn’t hold it in any longer. She tossed her head back and cried out with her all her fury and betrayal, all her grief and hurt. Billy raked her into his arms, pressing her face against his chest, whispering in her ear, “Shh, sweetheart. I’ve got you. I’ve got you, and nobody’s gonna hurt you again.”

  Oh, if only she could believe him…

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chicago Police Station, District 2, Second Floor, Homicide Division

  10:45 p.m.

  Bill stared down into his Styrofoam coffee cup. Its contents reflected his mood. Black. And bitter…

  “They still back there?” Mac asked after returning from the vending machine. He ripped open a box of raisins, dumped a handful into his palm and tossed the lot to the back of his mouth before slumping onto the bench beside Bill. Bench? Ha! That was a nice name for the mesh and metal ass-cheek-torture device that was pushed up against the drab, taupe-colored wall.

  Taking a quick swig from his cup, Bill winced at the acrid taste—as far as he could figure, the only people who liked their bean juice stronger than covert operators were cops—before glancing across the sea of messy desks that made up the bullpen of Chicago’s overworked homicide department. The place looked like an office supply store had thrown up. Post-its were stuck everywhere, white boards were covered with pictures and notes and magnets, and inboxes were overflowing with thick manila file folders. The air smelled like years of desperation, frustration, and sweat…and stale doughnuts.

  Yeah, doughnuts. Stereotypes were stereotypes because they were usually true.

  The late hour meant the floor was nearly deserted, though one detective still sat over in the corner wearing a half-undone tie and wilted suit jacket—apparently that was the standard uniform for Chicago’s murder-cop force—and henpecking his keyboard with the index fingers on each hand. The sharp, intermittent click-clack was setting Bill’s teeth on edge.

  Or maybe it was the fact that, for the last hour, Eve and Delilah had been MIA, sequestered in separate interrogation rooms, getting grilled over the details of the stick-up and murder at Delilah’s and that nasty scene up in her father’s condo. And his not being able to check on Eve to make sure she wasn’t having a nervous breakdown was making him…well…teeter on the edge of having a nervous breakdown.

  “Yeah.” He reached into his hip pocket to pull out his trusty bottle of Pepto. If anything deserved an antacid chaser it was that coffee. “They’re still being questioned.”

  And damn, but the thought of Eve having to relive this awful day was enough to have his ulcer doing hat tricks that had nothing to do with the strength and acidity of the police station java. Unscrewing the cap on the bottle of pink medicine, he tossed back a mouthful. The chalky liquid was a welcome relief to his burning stomach. Too bad there wasn’t a similar cure for his blistering thoughts or the hot ache in his heart.

  Poor Eve…

  She’d been through so much in less than twelve hours. Hell, more than that. She’d been through so much over the past three months. Wait, back up and rewind again. Because after that little exposé in her fa
ther’s penthouse, he realized she’d been the victim of years upon years of schemes and plots. And, to his utter shock and perhaps horror, he realized she hadn’t really thrown him over for Blake Parish as he’d always thought. At least not in the traditional sense. It’d been her father who pushed her at the man.

  Then again…she had ended up marrying Blake…

  So, yeah. There was still that.

  Why, Eve? Why? Even after today’s revelations it seemed it was the same ol’ question spinning through his cerebral cortex.

  Mac interrupted his dismayed musings. “Did you see those photos they were talkin’ about?”

  “Yeah.” He blew out a breath. It ruffled the hair that’d fallen over his forehead. “But not until months after they’d been published.” One of his teammates who’d been sick and tired of his hangdog face had shoved one of the articles under his nose in an attempt to snap him out of his funk. Unfortunately, it’d had the opposite effect. Because even though at the time he’d already known he’d lost Eve forever—she’d been married for two weeks by then—seeing her in another man’s arms, seeing her laughing and smiling had ground Bill’s already broken heart into a fine powder. “Apparently during the time those stories were running in the papers, I was cut off from the world.”

  Mac lifted a brow.

  “I was drowning—sometimes literally—in the third phase of SEAL training,” he explained. “And by the time I was able to come up for air, I discovered Eve’s phone had been disconnected, and her letters had stopped.” Of course, now Bill understood it was because she’d been caught red-handed out with another man, and she undoubtedly didn’t want to have to come face-to-face with his anger and betrayal. She’d likely thought it was easier just to cut off communication altogether. Make a clean break as opposed to dealing with the drama.