He sat back and smiled. “Fair enough. I was just checking that you were totally committed to the idea.”
She shrugged. “I’m committed to getting the show up for Rusty. I don’t necessarily have to be in the whole thing, but I enjoyed working on it. Dave thinks I should direct some episodes. Get a director’s credit.”
“Director’s credit, huh, good for you. Can you show it to me? Maybe I can help.”
“I have the trailer on my phone.”
“That’ll do it. Show me.”
This was good, wasn’t it? Having Grim pass his eye over their work. He might add something they’d missed. Something that would help make Rusty’s dream a reality. She pulled up the email from Dave, which had the two-minute trailer he’d roughed out from their pilot edit. The scene with her and Rusty wasn’t in it, but there were a few shots of them looking at each other like coconspirators. She suddenly felt nervous, and went to put the phone away. “It’s not polished. We worked on the pilot and the trailer was a bit of an afterthought.”
“No excuses. If it’s good, then it’s good. I should be able to see that.” He put out his hand. Good one, genius. If you don’t give it to him now you’ll look all kinds of rude. Pressing play, Beth handed the phone to Grim and watched him as he viewed it.
His face moved between a frown and laughter but he didn’t take his eyes off the screen. In fact, it looked like he was studying it a whole lot harder than she’d expect anyone to look at a trailer for a TV reality show. She heard the ending music but he pushed play and watched the whole thing over again. Was that weird? Beth took a sip of her coffee and tried to chill. He was just double-checking perhaps, looking out for his brother?
He handed the phone back to her and despite the flashing kaleidoscope of emotions she knew he was capable of, his face gave nothing away. In the end she had to ask, “So? Is the producer right? Is it good?”
Grim shrugged. “Not bad. Not bad at all. Can you email me the full pilot? To see if my agent can help with the sales deal.”
“I guess.”
“Great. Always good to come at these things from a couple of angles.” He took a sip of coffee. “How many guys work at the shop?”
“Six, and Lucy.”
“Lucy. Right. And they all work standard hours? Monday to Saturday? Seven a.m. ’til what, five p.m.?”
“I guess. I know Rusty has Sundays off.” This was weird. “What are you thinking?”
“Just, you know, getting a lay of the land. Glad he’s closed tomorrow, good for Rusty to have a day off. Are there always that many bikes in there? Looked like more than seven people could handle.”
Now she was confused. “They work on more than one bike at a time. Do you think there are too many? Are the shots crowded?” She started to pull up the trailer on her phone but Grim put a hand over hers.
“No. It’s fine. I’m just interested. Want to see my brother do well.”
“Right.” Beth felt better.
“Why don’t you and Rusty go out and celebrate finishing the pilot on Sunday? Whatever happens with it, it’s an achievement. Take him to breakfast. He works too hard. Make him take the day off properly. My treat.”
Something crackled over Beth’s skin. This didn’t seem like the sort of relationship the two brothers had. “I don’t know if he’ll accept it.”
“So don’t tell him it’s on me. I’ll book you a table at Mirabel’s. Ten o’clock. Make Rusty wear something other than leather.” Grim knocked back the rest of his coffee and stood, and Beth didn’t feel like she could do anything other than follow his lead.
* * *
Rusty had slept alone last night, afraid if he pushed too hard too fast it would all come tumbling down. Every part of him wanted to creep into her bed when he heard her come home from her auditioning and networking with Grim. To ask her what she was thinking, what she and Grim had talked about, but he held off. He wanted her, all of her. But he wanted her to come to him when she was ready, so he could wait.
Then this morning, Rusty had been surprised that Beth wanted to go out to breakfast with him. Surprised and pleased that she wanted to go out in public with him when she’d been spending so much time on Grim’s arm, but when they’d turned up at Mirabel’s he’d felt distinctly uncomfortable. It was a restaurant full of Hollywood hoi polloi. Actors, directors, people determined to be seen. Beth was animated, alive, pointing out the people she recognized: directors, producers, people behind the camera that he’d hardly even heard of.
But he was happy just watching her take it all in. He was happy sitting and watching her, period. Sure, the waiters looked down their noses at him—the neck tattoo poking out of his T-shirt was probably slightly more dirty ink than they were used to. And to be fair there wasn’t anyone else here in a T-shirt, with or without tattoos. But he was with Beth. His Beth.
The past couple weeks with her had been amazing. Earth-shattering. Life-changing. Seriously, all the trashy magazine headlines in the world couldn’t sum up how he’d felt knowing that he’d had Beth in his bed. Maybe tonight he’d have her back in there again. The thought of it warmed him, gave the snooty restaurant a golden glow it probably didn’t deserve.
“Grim thought the pilot looked good.”
Rusty swam back out of his rose-tinted haze and focused on the reason he was so fuzzy. It took him a second to register what she’d said. “He’s seen it?”
“Just the trailer. Watched it three times.” She gave him a big smile.
But before he could say anything one of the snooty waiters came and took their order.
“Don’t tell me. He was all worried about you. Told you to get out of the pilot and focus on being with him?”
“No. Actually . . .” She pursed her lips but her eyes were still cheerful. “He agreed that pretty much everyone has a bit of reality TV on their résumé these days. You should give him more credit. I think he genuinely wants what’s best for you.”
Rusty nodded warily, waiting for the punch line. Because with his brother, there was always a punch line. “My brother, protector of men.” He laughed, but quietly.
“I know you have had your differences, but you’re still brothers. I would have given anything to have had a brother,” Beth said, and he realized she’d gone very quiet.
This wasn’t good. He took a deep breath. “When Pop died, Grim was okay, but I took it hard. I was younger; Pop had been my hero my whole life. I guess Grim had moved past that, started to become his own person, all of that. I went into myself. Looked for meaning or some shit. But it was dark in there. Dark dark. Then when Mom died the year after, I kinda lost it for a while. I started picking fights, did a bit of petty theft. And then I started hanging around the Reapers. Just, you know, at parties and stuff. Around the edges. They had what looked like family.”
“I’ve never understood that,” Beth said carefully. “How can a group of men you don’t know be family?”
“If you have a group of people who don’t have anyone else, I guess they just fill the gap as best they can. We all knew about loyalty. I reckon it’s the one thing that everyone inside a club has missed out on in life and so when they find it, they cling to it like their life depends on it. Loyalty to the club above all.” He paused, and yes, it was a truth he’d never articulated, but it resonated with him on a deep level. “Anyway, when Grim got into trouble, it wasn’t that big of a leap for me to join up, take on his debt, be part of the Reapers’ family for real.”
“Sounds like it was as much your choice as his.”
“It was, to start. Until I got in and found out what a mess he’d left for me to inherit. And what a mission it would be to get out again. Grim sold me up the river and when I got out, he never even once said thanks.”
“Sounds like you still have a lot to work through.”
“Something like that.”
“He seems genuinely concerned about you now.”
Rusty felt, rather than heard, a cold edge slip into Beth’s voice and he p
ulled back. “Grim is worried about his investment. He lent me some money for my garage when I first got set up, only it turns out it wasn’t his money to lend. He owes a whole ton of cash and the guy he owes it to wants the garage. Grim’s worried this guy will take it all and then I’ll lose out on my garage and the TV show. Grim wants me to walk away now. Start over, and then do the show.”
“That’s hardly fair to you,” Beth said and Rusty could have kissed her.
“That’s what I told him. I’ve paid his debt already.”
“But what if he’s right?”
“The Hell’s boys have my back.”
“Because that’s what family does?” Her smile was light, and Rusty let go of the tension he’d hadn’t realized he’d been holding. She put a hand over his and as it always did, it sent sparks brighter than a sparkplug’s through his fingers. He forced himself to ask the question that had been hovering ever since she went out to meet Grim. She’d kept quiet about it except for perfunctory answers to his questions. “What about you? Will you raise a glass to me? To us?”
The smile was slow and warm and it filled Rusty up just looking at it creep across her face. “I keep trying to talk myself out of this . . .” She waved a hand between them.
“You want to be with my brother.” The words tasted bitter as they came out.
“It was my plan. I’ve had a crush on him for months; I told you that. And he’s more connected, in the right industry, and can take me places I’ve been struggling to get to on my own.”
He stayed sitting upright, but every part of Rusty slumped. This was it. It was over. She’d finally realized that he was just a biker with a knack for making motors sound pretty and chassis look hot. His brother had won. Of course he had.
“But I can’t deny how I feel about you, Rusty McKinley.”
His head snapped up. “What did you say?”
“Just that we don’t make sense. But I feel things with you I didn’t know I could feel. You make everything seem possible. Is it bad that I want my cake and to eat it too? Can you and your brother patch things up enough so that I can still work with him?”
“I can try.” For her, he’d try and move heaven and earth.
The waiter appeared with their food and as they ate, Beth became her usual bouncy self. This was good, Rusty thought. Her hesitation to start with had been concern about the Reapers coming after him. Damn Grim. If he hadn’t just promised Beth that he’d try and make an effort with his brother, he’d gladly never see him again.
But this was the start of something real. Beth, him, the garage—he was going to get his life back. If Beth needed him to make nice with Grim as part of it, then so be it. But if Grim’s backer started making trouble, Rusty had Rocco and the Hell’s boys’ assurance that they’d help out. It was his time. His time to start building something.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Back at the garage though, thoughts of building something, anything, fled.
The small workshop door swung open to reveal four guys with black-and-white bandanas wrapped around their mouths loading tools into bags in the gloom of the workshop. Rusty stopped dead in his tracks. “What the actual fuck?”
Their heads jerked up when Rusty called out and one of them ran toward Rusty, punching him hard in the stomach so he crumpled over just like Grim had done a few nights earlier.
Rusty watched, winded, as the guy pulled on the main door chains and opened the full roller door before he leaped onto a bike. Beth tried to pull him down but he pushed her hard, and she fell, sprawling across the concrete.
“Beth.” Dragging himself up, he went to check on her.
“I’m fine,” she said, but she had blood coming from a cut on her head.
“You’re bleeding.”
“It’s just a scratch. Go, stop them.”
Pulling her hand away to make sure it was just a scratch, Rusty satisfied himself and then ran toward the center of the workshop, dialing Rocco’s number as he went. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but I’m sweet with the Reapers. You’ve got no beef with me. Put everything back where you found it and this goes no further.”
The guy at the door finally had it open enough to drive a bike through. “Or what?”
“Or the Hell’s boys will fuck you into next week,” Rusty snarled.
“They can try.” All four men were astride bikes now. Custom bikes, Rusty realized, that his guys had just finished.
“Oh, no, you don’t, you fuckers,” he said and ran for the closest one. Too late. The guy, lean and long, revved the bike and pulled it into a wheelie as it headed straight for Rusty. It knocked him down.
“Rusty!” He heard Beth’s scream before he lost consciousness for a moment. Then, when he came to, it was to see the guy in black standing over him.
“Nice job. I’m going to enjoy my ride.” He threw something down on Rusty’s face, a bandana, Rusty realized, with the Reapers of Menace’s silver knight helmet logo with a long black lightning bolt through it.
When we came to again, Rocco was there and Martinez was interrogating Beth.
“She didn’t have anything to do with it. She was with me the whole time.”
Rocco nodded and Beth rushed over to Rusty. “Are you okay? I thought they’d killed you.”
He tried sitting up more but it hurt. Everywhere.
“You’ll have to go to hospital for that.” Rocco pointed at Rusty’s arm, the elbow pointing in the wrong direction.
Rusty waved him off. He looked around the workshop, taking it all in. The place was cleared out.
Every bike in the place was gone. The racks of tools stood empty, and the shelf of parts at the back of the shop was stripped bare.
“When you were out they backed a truck up to the door and drove everything in,” Beth said. “I tried to stop them . . .”
He looked at her properly and saw the black eye that was already starting to swell. “They hit you?”
“I’m fine. We should go. Get you to hospital,” she said.
“In a minute.” Struggling to get up, he walked over to the main roller door, cradling his arm. “It’s not broken,” he said.
“So they found another way in. Inside job?” Rocco asked.
Rusty shook his head vigorously and then regretted it. “My guys are solid. Let’s find out. There are cameras upstairs.”
He, Rocco, and Beth trudged up the stairs and Rusty pulled up the morning’s footage.
And there it was. At the back of the workshop was a small window, barely big enough for a grown man to get through. But on-screen, he saw a skinny figure dressed all in black shimmy through the window and then open the front doors wide. Men poured in. Men in leather. Black leather with the silver knight helmet logo with a long black lightning bolt emblazoned on the back. “What the actual fuck?” Rusty rewound the footage, but it was the same. “Recognize any of them?” he said to Rocco.
The older man shook his head but went to the door and yelled down the stairs. “Martinez!”
Martinez went through the footage. “Not from here,” was his verdict.
“But I had a deal with Mack,” Rusty muttered.
“Let me do some digging.” Rocco and Martinez went back downstairs and Rusty was left sitting in the apartment with Beth.
Beth put a hand on his shoulder. “So Grim was right? They came after you.”
“I don’t know how, or why.” Then the thought struck him and the rage flowed through him, hot and ice cold at the same time. “What else did you and Grim talk about yesterday?” He heard his voice. It was cold. Quiet. Brutal. “What did you tell him about my shop?”
Beth cowered under his angry glare but he couldn’t turn it off. Not until he knew what had happened between her and his brother. “I hardly said anything. He asked about how you ran it. The boys. And he watched the trailer like I said.”
“What’s in the trailer?” Rusty reached for his laptop and fired up the trailer. There . . . the shot of the back widow, and later, a view of ou
tside, of the unused alleyway that ran behind the workshop. His own brother had cased the joint via video. “The fucker sold me out.”
“Hang on. You can’t blame Grim for this.”
“Oh, really. And why is that?”
“He’s not the one in an MC.”
Rusty grimaced. So it did matter to her that he was patched. He should have known.
“And why on earth would he rob his own brother’s shop?” she asked.
Rusty was already flicking through the files on his laptop. He found what he was looking for and pulled it up. INSURANCE. His finger stabbed at the screen; he couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid.
“Your brother has been nothing but kind to me. Especially recently. He’s opened doors for me that have been shut for months.”
She was defending him. The woman he’d only moments ago been thinking about building a life with, was defending his fucktard brother even while the evidence that he was a complete shit was playing out in front of her. Had he gotten her all wrong? Had Grim really won again?
But Beth either hadn’t registered his incredulity or didn’t get it. “And even though he was worried about you doing the TV show because of something like this happening, he agreed to support you. He said he’d even shop the show around for us with his agent.”
The full magnitude of what his brother had done hit Rusty in the guts like a bike at full speed. “You sent him the full pilot?”
She nodded. “Just an emailed version. I told him that we already had a producer but he said it would be better to have a few options. You can’t argue with that. This town is fickle if nothing else. Having Grim on our side is good for this show.”
“He’s going to take it all.”
“Don’t be silly. He’s your brother. He’s the one that was worried about these Reaper guys coming after you. Looks like he was right. It seems he has both of our best interests at heart. Maybe it’s time for you two to let go of the past and start to build something new together.”
Rusty stood from where he’d been sitting and turned to face Beth properly. “My brother has no one’s interests but his own at heart and if you believe anything else, you’re a bigger fool than I took you for, Beth Ravens. I wanted you the moment I knew you wanted my brother.” He flinched as he said the words, knowing they weren’t true. Knowing that he wanted her, mind, body, and spirit, and had right from the start. It had nothing to do with his brother for a change. But right now he needed to lash out to stop the pain that was threatening to explode inside him. And she was the closest target. “I wanted to have a taste of what comes so easy for him. But it looks like I was the fool in that particular shit-sandwich.”
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