Her heart was expanding, large and full in her chest. “I love you, Zane Redmond. But you’re a damn pussy-blocker.”
He smiled and it felt like her heart couldn’t get any larger, pressing against the cage of her ribs. “All part of the plan, baby. All part of the plan.”
“What plan?”
His smile softened, but the blue flame burned even brighter. “What plan do you think? The plan to love you better than anyone ever has, Iris Callahan.”
TWO MONTHS LATER…
Zane stood in the foyer of the Lone Star hotel, watching as a small eleven-year-old girl dashed up the stairs to the upper floors, shrieking happily, closely followed by a radiant and laughing Iris.
“This is a mistake,” Quinn said, scowling after them. “Kids in the hotel is not a good idea.”
“Oh, relax.” Zane grinned at the grumpy expression on his brother’s face. “Jamie’s only going to be here a week or so, just until Iris and I get our place sorted out.”
Which wouldn’t be long. God, he couldn’t wait. He and Iris had spent at least a month or so trying to find the perfect place for Jamie, because Quinn was right, living at Lone Star with a kid wasn’t ideal. But a couple of weeks ago, they’d finally found the perfect house, kid friendly, close to a good school, and with a massive yard.
It had been expensive, but he could afford it. Hell, after one look on Iris’s face as the real estate agent had showed them around, he would have moved heaven and earth to get it for her even if he couldn’t. In fact, he was finding that over the last month or two, there was very little he wouldn’t do for that one woman. Staying in Austin hadn’t caused him one shred of regret, not a single one.
After Shaw and the rest of the cartel goons had been taken into custody, some real wrangling had had to be done in order to get a deal with the DA about Iris’s charges. But they’d managed to come to an agreement that suited everyone. They were willing to drop the charges if Iris identified Shaw as her contact, plus give her name suppression. Which wasn’t much when the cartel knew about her already, but Rush had put the word out to his criminal contacts that if anyone so much as touched her, there would be a price on their head.
As a threat, it was pretty effective since no one wanted half the criminal underworld hunting them down, and most especially not for some minor revenge on a pretty unimportant drug mule. The cartel had bigger fish to fry.
Once the legal loose ends had been tied up, then had come Jamie.
Meeting her for the first time had been a little nerve-wracking, he had to admit, but there had been a series of visits before Jamie had finally been released into their care, which had helped. She was a cool kid, very accepting in the way kids were and quite obviously thrilled to see her sister.
Quinn’s scowl remained. “Keep her upstairs. No need for her to see all the shit that goes on down here.”
“Sure. She can stay in my room, play with my old guitar.” Zane glanced at his brother. “Speaking of, I’m surprised all my stuff wasn’t put into storage. Know anything about that?”
“Nope. It was like that when I came back after Dad died.” There was a flash of green as Quinn glanced back. “All of our rooms were like that. I think he kept them in case we came back.”
There was a familiar twist in Zane’s heart, a ghost of old anger, old pain. He’d talked to Iris a lot about his father, about his mother too, and for some reason that had helped the intensity of those feelings to fade, healing the wounds of betrayal and anger.
“The old bastard,” he said without heat. “I can’t think why he thought we would.”
“I can.” His brother’s voice was hard, certain. “I promised him. And I did.”
A silence fell.
Zane let out a breath, conscious of the tension in Quinn’s posture. He didn’t know what his brother’s problem was, but there was one, that was obvious. It was also obvious that Quinn was not interested in talking about it.
Still, there was one thing Zane had been meaning to say for a long time, and it was only now that he felt he could say it. “I don’t blame you, you know,” he said into the silence. “For Charlie. I don’t blame any of you, not even Rush. Not even Dad.”
Quinn said nothing, but Zane could sense his tension all the same. So the guy didn’t want to hear it? Too bad. He was going to say it because he needed to. Because he was staying, not leaving, and some things had to be said whether Quinn liked it or not.
“I blamed myself,” he went on. “For not protecting her, for not holding the family together after Mom died.” He paused. “I don’t know if I ever told you, but one night I emptied all the bourbon in the house down the sink. Dad…was not happy about it.”
His brother stared at him. “What did he do?”
“He beat the shit out of me.”
Quinn looked away quite suddenly. “I’m not talking about this shit,” he growled. “I think I might go have a beer with Rush at Jack’s.”
There was a time when he might have gotten angry with Quinn’s refusal to deal with the past, but that time had passed. Being with Iris, loving her, had given him a perspective he’d lacked, and now he felt more at peace with it than he had in years.
“You do that.” Zane turned and began to move toward the stairs, then stopped. “Oh, and one more thing.”
“What?”
“Thanks for backing me up. At the warehouse, with Iris.”
“Yeah, well. That’s what we do, okay?” Quinn’s jaw tightened and he shifted on his feet, glancing away again. “I’m…glad you’re back, man.”
It was the equivalent of a full-on brotherly hug, and a tightness in Zane’s chest that he hadn’t realized was there abruptly released.
It was a start.
Epilogue
Zane leaned against the dark oak of the bar top and stared at the box that sat wedged between two empty liquor bottles on the mirrored shelves behind the bar.
The last earthly remains of Joseph Redmond, God rest his soul.
He didn’t raise the glass of bourbon he was holding—an after-work drink Quinn had thrust at him as his older brother had left to do something or other—only took a sip, wondering why the hell his brothers still hadn’t done anything about scattering their father’s ashes.
A small hand settled in the small of his back and he turned, glancing down to see Iris coming up beside him. He smiled, bending to kiss her delicious mouth. “Hey, how did it go?”
She’d just had her first day of college, having scored a scholarship some months back and subsequently enrolled to do a degree in social work. And it was clear from the light dancing in her dark eyes that her day had been pretty damn good.
“Fantastic. Though I think my study schedule might kill me.”
“I’m more worried about it killing me. And when I mean me, I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” she interrupted, laughing. “Don’t worry. I’ll always have time for you. And when I mean you, I mean—”
“My cock,” he finished. “Naturally.” Putting down his bourbon, he turned and swept her up in his arms before depositing her down on the bar in front of him.
“Men.” She rolled her eyes, spreading her thighs wide so he could stand between them. “Do you ever think of anything but getting off?”
“No.” He slid his hands up her denim-clad legs, settling his palms on her hips. “At least not while you’re around.”
She darted a glance toward the bar entrance, then leaned forward, her mouth brushing his ear, her voice soft and full of amusement. “What do you think, Mr. Uptight? Shall we do it on the bar?”
“Are you kidding?” He grinned, his hands tightening on her thighs. “With my dad right behind you?”
She laughed, then nipped at his earlobe. “Come on. We don’t have to get Jamie for another hour. And I just saw Quinn leaving and he said he was going out for the rest of the day.”
The feel of her breath on his skin and the soft heat of her thighs on either side of him were starting to wor
k their usual magic. Well, hell, why not? He had some paperwork Quinn had lumbered him with, but nothing that couldn’t wait. Anyway, resisting her had always been impossible and, he suspected, always would be.
Zane lifted a hand and slid his fingers into her silky hair, holding her still a moment. “What about Rush? Did you see him?”
“Oh, yeah, he was with Quinn.” Iris reached for the zipper on his jeans. “He said something about going to Jack’s for the afternoon and that you should make the most of an empty office.”
Zane snorted. Sneaky bastards, his brothers. “Did he now?”
“Yeah.” She tugged on the zipper, making his breath catch hard. “Oh, and he said one other thing.”
“What?” It was getting difficult to think as her fingers slid inside his jeans, stroking over the aching ridge of his already-hardening cock.
“He said to remind you that Redmonds stick together.”
Zane grinned. Yeah, definitely sneaky bastards.
But he didn’t want to think about his brothers, not when the woman he loved was closing her fingers around a very important part of his anatomy.
A woman he may not have wanted when he’d first come back to Lone Star, but a woman he’d ended up with all the same.
A woman he was never going to let go.
BY JACKIE ASHENDEN
Hold Me Down
Take Me Deeper
Make It Hurt (coming soon)
JACKIE ASHENDEN has been writing fiction since she was eleven years old. Mild-mannered fantasy/SF/pseudo-literary writer by day, obsessive romance writer by night, she used to balance her writing with the more serious job of librarianship until a chance meeting with another romance writer prompted her to throw off the shackles of her day job and devote herself to the true love of her heart—writing romance. She particularly likes to write dark, emotional stories with alpha heroes who’ve just got the world to their liking only to have it blown wide apart by their kick-ass heroines.
She lives in Auckland, New Zealand, with her husband, the inimitable Dr. Jax, two kids, two cats, and two rats. When she’s not torturing alpha males and their stroppy heroines, she can be found drinking chocolate martinis, reading anything she can lay her hands on, posting random crap on her blog, or being forced to go mountain biking with her husband.
To keep up to date with Jackie’s new releases and other news, sign up for her newsletter at
jackieashenden.com
Facebook.com/jackie.ashenden
@JackieAshenden
If you loved Take Me Deeper, you won’t want to miss the connected novella from Jackie Ashenden, introducing a sexy group of rival bounty hunters who will…
Make It Hurt
…so good.
Coming soon from
Loveswept
Continue reading for a sneak peek
Chapter 1
“Fuck,” Nora Sutcliffe muttered, staring out through the front windshield of her Mazda.
Ahead of her, the hubcaps adorning the front wall of the Rusty Nail Bar and Grill glittered balefully in the Texas summer sun, looking like huge scratched sequins sewn onto an old, stained horse blanket.
She’d never been into the Rusty Nail, but she knew exactly what it was: a biker bar. And if its scruffy, run-down appearance hadn’t given it away, then the line of Harleys currently parked outside it certainly did.
“It’ll be easy.” Duchess, AKA Lily Hammond, AKA her boss and owner of Duchess Bail Bonds, had said when she’d given Nora the job. “Nothing a woman of your skills couldn’t handle.”
A woman of her skills…
Nora leaned forward and popped open the glove compartment, taking out her trusty Colt 9mm, then she sat back in the seat and reflexively checked it over. The familiar routine settled her somewhat. Not that she needed settling, of course. Like Duchess had said, this was going to be an easy job. Nothing she couldn’t handle and there wasn’t much Nora couldn’t handle, especially when it came to picking up people who’d skipped bail. She was one of the best fugitive recovery agents in the business and she always got her man.
So why she was feeling all unsettled about this particular pickup she didn’t know. And she was feeling unsettled. The same kind of churning she used to get when she was first starting out sat in her gut, a nervous tension that had taken her years to overcome.
Jesus Christ, she wasn’t a spoiled little rich girl who didn’t know how to take care of herself anymore so there shouldn’t be a problem. Rhys and West, also part of the Duchess fugitive recovery team, had offered to come along and play backup but she’d refused. Men always seem to screw things up and besides, she liked going it alone. She could handle herself. She knew what she was doing. Duchess wouldn’t have given her the job otherwise.
Irritated with the way she was second-guessing herself, Nora holstered her Colt and opened the door of the Mazda, the intense midday heat rolling over her like the backdraft from a massive forest fire. Ignoring it, she reached for her black cowboy hat that sat on the passenger seat and stuck it on her head; another familiar ritual that settled the churning in her gut. Then she locked the car and turned toward the entrance to the bar.
Okay, Garrett Brook, AKA Dust. Today you’re going down.
Giving her hat and the black bulletproof vest she wore one last tweak, she threw back her shoulders and crunched over the gravel, projecting her usual “don’t give a fuck” attitude all the way. The one that usually attracted attention from men while at the same time had them keeping their distance. Which was exactly where she liked to keep them.
Several dudes were hanging out by the doorway, young guys, motorcycle club prospects from the looks of things. Probably sent outside to keep an eye on the bikes. They gave her the once-over as she approached, their “Hey, baby” expressions fading as they took in her vest and the Fugitive Recovery Agent badge she wore at her hip.
She almost laughed. Men tended to lose their hard-ons when they figured out what she did for a living, because it made her tougher than they were. Being a female in the bail bond business wasn’t easy and played merry hell with her love life—not that Nora had a love life these days, or minded that she didn’t have one. In fact, that was partly why she liked bounty hunting. Bringing men to justice was number one on her list of “favorite things to do with the opposite sex,” not sleeping with them.
The prospects studiously ignored her, turning away and chatting like she wasn’t even there.
“Relax boys,” she murmured as she passed. “I’m not after you.”
They glanced at her.
She put her hand on the bar door and gave them a grin over her shoulder. “At least, not today.” Then, without waiting for a response, she pushed open the door and stepped inside.
It was loud in the bar, the sounds of conversation competing with the hard rock blasting from the jukebox and the rattle of old air-conditioning. There were lots of large, tattooed men in leather vests standing around drinking beer, plus a few others who were obviously not part of the MC. There were also a few scantily clad women scattered here and there, most of them hanging off the large, tattooed men.
So far, so biker.
In one corner was a pool table with a rickety fan turning the air slowly above it, while in the other corner were a whole lot of empty tables. Empty because most of the men were either at the bar right in front of her or clustered around the pool table.
A silence fell as the door slammed shut behind her and heads turned to see who the newcomer was. Motorhead blared from the speakers, the smell of spilled beer, cigarettes and sweat making the air feel even hotter than it actually was.
Duchess Bail Bonds hadn’t had much to do with the Austin chapter of the Graveyard Ministry MC, since the club mostly flew beneath the radar and kept to themselves—the best kind of bikers in Nora’s humble opinion. But she knew enough to understand that coming in to one of their known hangouts to bring in one of their own—the vice president no less—by herself, was pushing things in terms of safet
y. Then again, handling herself in a tricky situation was one of her specialties and the trickier the better. Nora didn’t like to compromise and she liked to do things her way, and if that meant challenging a bunch of dicks in leather vests, then that’s what she’d do.
Besides, in her experience being one small blond woman by herself tended to be far more successful than when she came in with her male colleagues. When she was alone, people underestimated her, which could come in very, very handy on occasion.
She pushed her hat back on her head and gave the combined gazes of all the men in the room a cocky grin. Putting her hand on her gun would be way too obvious so she didn’t. They could see it anyway, along with her vest and the badge that proclaimed who she was, a heads-up on what she was doing here. Rhys often told her she was inviting trouble with her going-in-guns-blazing approach, that sometimes stealth was in order.
But Nora wasn’t a stealthy kind of girl and guns blazing was what she preferred. You could always spot a skip better if you didn’t hide your badge anyway, since they were the ones who instantly ran from the room the moment you walked into it.
You just had to be faster when it came to chasing them.
Luckily Nora was fast.
She waited there for a second, letting everyone in the place get a good long look at her, scanning the crowd to see if anyone was moving toward an exit. But no one did and pretty soon everyone went back to what they were doing.
How annoying. So, either her skip wasn’t here or she was going to have to ask around.
Letting out a quiet breath, Nora sauntered over to the bar and leaned her elbows on it, giving the barman a nod. “Hey, you know a guy called Garrett Brook?”
The barman’s gaze was wary. “Nope.”
Typical nonresponse. She really needed to stop expecting that one day, someone was going to tell her everything she wanted to know. “Otherwise known as Dust?”
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