by Jory Strong
Shane caught himself playing with the nipple ring. Felt Madison’s gaze as it zeroed in on his hand.
The quick flash of her tongue had heat simmering between them.
He imagined her fingers replacing his, followed by her mouth, by a trail of kisses to his dick.
He forced his hand downward, realized where that’d lead Madison’s gaze and stopped rather than have the hard-on get more painful. Fuck. He needed to get his head in the game!
“So there was no lead-up? Just out of the blue, Bio-dad found you?”
“That about sums it up.”
She lifted the paper with the clue on it. “Thoughts?”
“Let me read it again.”
It’d buy him some time before putting Tyler and Madison together.
He looked at the clue. It hadn’t changed or become any clearer.
From low to high, four steps beneath oak trees meant to broaden, narrow instead. Dreams and desire are obliterated with rigid focus and a tenacious, dog-like climb toward a fifth step that heads toward an unwanted destination. Heart’s passion and blue-sky promise become lost in a clouded view as Days progress by the dozens, counting down like a shuffled dance 5-3-1.
Madison said, “The numbers sound like a combination lock with the shuffled dance meaning something like left five, right three, left one, or the same sequence, only starting to the right. Any place with a view famous for its oak trees? Though I guess that begs the question, do we assume San Francisco?”
“The Bay Area covers a lot of territory, but I’d put my money on the city. There are plenty of famous views. Nothing pops as far as an oak grove goes.”
She sucked on her bottom lip.
He suppressed a moan, shifted in his seat, trying to keep his thoughts from going where they naturally wanted to go—where part of him thought they were supposed to go.
Maybe he should swing by Cole’s place.
The poker game would still be going. He could introduce Madison… And what? Ask Lyric or Braden if Madison was the piece of his personal puzzle that’d been missing?
And if they said yes, wonder how much they’d seen when it came to his thing for Tyler?
Pass.
“Bulldog said this is about you getting to know your bio-dad, so a view isn’t important unless it tells you something about this guy, right?”
“Right.” She rubbed her bottom lip. “The lawyer in Richmond said the exact same thing, about Bio-dad wanting me to get to know him.”
“So what do you usually do when you meet someone?”
“Look for things in common.”
“Exactly. So what does Bio-dad think you have in common with him? Dreams and desires. What does that mean for you?”
“Music. Making it as a musician, as a songwriter.”
Until her mother’s call, and learning about her father’s cancer, the need had overshadowed everything else in her life since restoring Myrtle and getting over Elijah’s death. And even before then, music had dominated her life. That’s why she’d gone to a different high school than the majority of her friends, that’s where she’d met Elijah, because he’d done the same.
Her breath caught. “High school. That’s what this clue is about. That’s what he means when he says the rigid focus to climb onto a fifth step. My parents wanted me to go to college. I couldn’t put off the music, but that’s not even the main reason I think he wants us to go to his high school.”
She used her finger to underline a tenacious, dog-like climb. “When I saw your grandfather, I thought he probably got his nickname by being tenacious, but he also kind of resembles a Bulldog. That was our high-school mascot. A bulldog.”
Her finger moved along the clue. “Heart’s passion would be the color red. Then there’s blue-sky promise, followed by a clouded view, which would be white.”
Shane grinned. “Let me guess, your school colors were red, white and blue.”
“You got it. Beneath oak trees has to mean the campus. Or maybe it’s part of the school name.”
“On it.” Shane was already lifting his phone, Googling, feeling juiced a minute later. “How about Oakhurst Preparatory? Does that sound like a winner to you?”
“Yes.”
The huskiness in her voice had him nearly pitching forward, a dive that would have carried her down and put him on top.
He resisted the urge, but only because they weren’t alone.
Standing, he said, “The keycard will tell us if we’re right.”
He offered her a hand because he wanted at least that much contact.
She took it and he tugged, bringing her nearly flush against him. Close enough their breaths mingled and the heat from their bodies merged.
She was the perfect height. For him. For Tyler.
Don’t go there!
Only it was already too late, too easy to see them in a tangle of arms and legs and sweat-slick bodies.
He stepped back, releasing her.
She said, “If we’re looking for a combination lock, the most likely place is on a locker. There are probably going to be hundreds of them to choose from.”
“Could also be a locked cabinet in a classroom. Something with the letter D since he’s made a point of capitalizing it in days, when it normally wouldn’t be. He only provided the one cardkey. Doubt it’s going to open anything other than the front door.”
Shane stopped in Bulldog’s doorway. “We’re checking out a place called Oakhurst Prep. You know anything about it?”
Bulldog leaned back in his chair. “A lot of very rich, very powerful people send their kids there.”
Shane’s gut iced. Easy to think someone in Bio-dad’s family didn’t want Madison brought into the family fold. Easy to imagine someone hoping she’d be shaken badly enough by a hit-and-run to go straight back to the airport and catch a flight away from San Francisco.
Tough fucking luck for them. She had him now and he’d keep her safe the same way Cole had kept Renata safe. He’d help Madison see this thing through.
“Did whoever called in the favor go to Oakhurst?”
“I don’t know.”
Which wasn’t the same as I can’t know.
“You’ll check into it?”
A nod said yes.
“Okay. We’re gone.”
“Be careful, Shane.”
He flashed a grin at his grandfather. “Always.”
Chapter Three
Oakhurst Prep was ivy-covered red brick and what had to be a multi-million-dollar view of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Looking at it, it was easy for Madison to silently tell Bio-dad, you should have walked away at eighteen, lived your own life even if it meant waiting tables or tending bar instead of taking Mom and Dad’s money and dancing to their tune.
But even thinking it, her stomach roiled because wasn’t she doing the same, jumping through his hoops for money?
If her parents had pushed harder for her to go to college, used love as a weapon or the fear of disappointing and hurting them, if they hadn’t encouraged her music, believed in her…
I might have caved. But that doesn’t mean I’m like Bio-dad.
Shane’s hand covered hers.
She was grateful for the warmth, the support. She was glad he was with her.
“Ready?” he asked.
“As I’ll ever be.”
They got out of the Jeep, his hand recapturing hers for the walk to a front door engraved with a crest that included a pair of lions.
She took the folded envelope from her pocket and fished out the cardkey. “No guarantee that going in won’t set off an alarm.”
“True. But this was too well-orchestrated. Wouldn’t surprise me if the place has been cleared to keep some dedicated teacher or after-hours janitor from calling the cops if they caught us prowling the halls. Can’t see Bio-dad going to all this trouble just so he can play the hero and bail you out of jail.”
That brought a smile. She could picture Shane charging in and being the hero.
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br /> “Here goes,” she said, sliding the keycard into the entry system to the right of the front door.
A green light flashed.
A lock disengaged with a muted click.
She opened the door. Exhaled when they entered the building and the only sound to fill her ears was the banging of her heart.
Shane placed his hand at the base of her spine. “I called it. Am I good or am I good?”
She laughed, turned her head to look at him. “I wouldn’t have figured you for one of those insecure guys who needs feedback on his performance.”
His thumb stroked her back. “You could always try me and find out.”
It was getting harder to think about leaving California without doing just that. “I’ll take that under consideration.”
He sent her a bad-boy smile. “Let’s find what we came here for.”
The keycard didn’t open the school office.
“Onward,” Shane said.
They walked down a cream-colored hallway that held smaller offices, all needing keycards to enter and all with names engraved on small bronze plates.
Shane stroked her back. “Let’s make this more interesting. Last door on the right, fifty bucks says the name has a p in it.”
She had to smile. Being with Shane made her want to take chances.
“Okay, fifty bucks on there not being a p in the name.”
They got to the end of the hallway. The hand at her back slid to curl around her waist, halting her. It burned through shirt and skin, pouring crazy need straight into her bloodstream.
“Damn,” Shane muttered as they both read the name Blanchard on the plaque.
Shane’s hand left her waist and she felt the loss.
He pulled out a wallet, flipped it open and extracted a crisp fifty.
Handing it to her, he said, “Doubt it’ll stay in your possession long enough to spend.”
“We’ll see. I plan on doubling it.”
He grinned. “You can try. Right or left?”
The hallways were nearly identical. Each of them was lined with lockers and closed classroom doors.
“Left,” she said, looking at the lettering on the first locker, 001. Across from it, lettering above a doorway indicated A-1.
Ninth through twelfth grades, how many classrooms? How many lockers? If the hallways were lettered, then everyone would know locker one would be in the As, but further out, a kid would probably add a letter to their locker number as shorthand.
She tucked the money into her pocket. “Fifty dollars says we’re looking for a locker.”
“Too easy. How about, double that says were looking for locker one-eighty.”
“Done.”
He started jogging.
Locker 050 was the last locker in the hallway.
They turned the corner. The classrooms began at B-1. The lockers started at 051.
“Damn,” she muttered. If the pattern held, the lockers would be numbered one-fifty to two hundred where the classrooms became Ds.
He laughed. “Don’t worry, I’ll accept your IOU.”
She was pretty sure that particular IOU could be paid off with sex.
She sped up.
He easily matched her.
She stopped in front of locker 180. “Why this one?”
He gave her a slow smile. “The first numbers in the clue are four and five. Add them for nine or double forty-five for ninety, double it again for one-eighty. The second set of numbers, five, three, one, also add up to nine. Add both sets and get eighteen. Throw in the D in days…”
“Locker one-eighty.”
He caged her with his body and her natural inclination was to move into him, grind against him.
“Moment of truth,” he said, warm breath striking her neck, making her wish his mouth was about to follow. “If this is the right locker, you’re going to owe me a hundred. Want a chance to wipe out that debt by doing a substitution bet? A right-left-right sequence, you win. A left-right-left and I do. What do you say?”
“I lose and I’m out one-fifty of my own money, plus the fifty I just took off you.”
“There is that. But like I said, I’ll take your IOU.”
With his sulky, bad-boy mouth so close to her neck and ear, it was hard to care whether she won or lost. “Deal.”
“You do the honors then.”
The five, three, one in the clue was too small a movement. But fifty, thirty, ten…
She twirled the combination lock.
Right.
Left.
Right.
Click.
The lock opened.
“You owe me,” she said.
“For now.”
She removed the lock.
Shane jacked the handle upward, opening the door.
It’d been cleaned out except for a few items left at the bottom.
Madison’s eyes locked onto the pair of broken drum sticks.
“Dreams and desire obliterated,” she said, crouching, picking up the sticks.
Unwillingly she cared, maybe because she understood this dream, this desire. “Why not contact me if he already knows we have things in common? Why not have some go-between set up a meeting if he didn’t want to do it himself?”
“Got me.”
Shane crouched, his chest touched to her back.
He reached around her and lifted the check that’d been beneath the sticks. He flipped it so they both saw the amount. Fifteen thousand dollars, written on a San Francisco law firm’s account.
Her heart bounded. She said, “The lawyer in Richmond gave me one for five thousand. He said it was a small portion of what I’ll get if I continue the quest to get to know Bio-dad.”
Shane whistled softly. “So Bio-dad either feels guilty about not stepping forward to raise you, a stretch unless Bio-mom lied about not knowing who’d gotten her pregnant, or he’s afraid you won’t want to have anything to do with him unless you get to know him this way first.”
“I asked if the money was dirty.”
Shane rubbed his cheek against her hair. “Smart. What’d the lawyer say?”
“No. And I believe him.”
Only a single, folded sheet of paper remained in the locker. She lifted it, thumbed it open and held it so Shane could read their next clue.
From coast to coast, 2903 miles mark the distance. By air, by train, or on asphalt highways, the bounty of the San Joaquin travels. Two thirds of it is hidden from sight, but offer the first and the rest is revealed.
“Any thoughts?” Madison asked.
Shane suppressed a laugh. The feel of her against him was enough to short-circuit brain activity. Not that the big head had ever done its best thinking while in school.
He grinned. A lot of people would say it still didn’t outthink the little one.
“My only thought, let’s get out of here.”
They stood. He slammed the locker shut, the same way he used to do in high school.
She snapped the lock in place and turned, breasts touched to his chest, eyes connecting with his.
He stopped fighting.
What was the point?
He wanted this. She wanted this.
He’d almost bet money Bulldog expected this. Otherwise why pull him out of a standing poker game when there were other Montgomerys and Maguires who could have been assigned the case?
He trapped her with palms braced against metal, heat thrumming through him with the parting of her lips.
Her eyes dilated and her hands went to his chest, fingertips finding the nipple ring.
He moaned. “No fair.”
“Weren’t you the one who said all’s fair?”
“True.” He leaned in, mouth brushing her cheek, her ear, returning to her lips.
Pleasure and hunger swept through him like an eraser, wiping away the memory of all the girls he’d ever kissed in high school and replacing them with Madison.
Since that night in Vegas, and those hours spent at Brian’s bedside, he’d
been on tilt. But now it felt as if the rub and twine of her tongue was clearing his head of all the confusion.
She felt good. Right. Meant for him.
He deepened the kiss, thrust and retreat, thrust and retreat.
His hips mimicked the motion, streaks of ecstasy going from his nipple to his dick as she rubbed and tugged and twisted the ring.
His hand left the locker.
It went to her side, stroking.
Up. Down.
Up, her moan inviting him to keep going, to cover a breast and rub the hardened nipple with his thumb.
Fantasy gripped him, of hoisting her up and fucking her against the locker, of her sliding downward, unzipping him, taking his cock between her lips.
Need shuddered through him. The temptation to take her back to his place instead of Tyler’s swept in. Only as soon as it did his gut went tight, warning him that taking this where it would go before she met Tyler would be the same as dealing himself a bad hand.
He lifted his mouth off hers, cupped her neck and hip.
Her breath came as fast as his.
The sight of her lips, slick and swollen and reddened, had his hips doing a quick jerk.
“It’s been a while since I’ve made out in front of a high-school locker,” he said.
A small tremor went through her. She released his nipple, her hand flattening on his chest, a quick sadness in her eyes.
“Me too.”
Wanting an answer, not wanting one, Shane brushed his mouth against hers. “Who was he?”
“A boyfriend. Someone who died before the music world knew what it lost.”
His lips settled on hers, parting them, his tongue sliding into her mouth, not to eradicate the memory of someone who’d obviously meant something to her, but to siphon away the remembered pain.
Her arms slid around his waist. She deepened the kiss, accepting his comfort and making him feel like a prince, not the man-whore he’d been accused of being more than once.
His fingers speared through her hair, holding her, the exchange becoming a round-robin of give and take that he never wanted to end—though it had to. He didn’t want to put his good intentions to the ultimate test, not when the press and rub of her body against his cock was making it scream to get inside her.