Broken Arrow
Page 1
Suncoast Society
Broken Arrow
Brooke is a wounded vet who took over her father’s classic car repair business when tragedy forced his early retirement. She’s great at her job. But fixing herself? Not so much. She’s shut herself off from life as a form of penance and a survival mechanism, until her friend Eliza decides Brooke needs a night out.
Cody and Justin are lovers and partners. They’re Doms, but not to each other. They’ve also fallen into a relationship rut. When Eliza introduces them to Brooke, they discover they have more than classic cars and The Walking Dead in common.
Brooke knows life is meant for the living, but in many ways she feels she’s forgotten how. As she grows closer to the men, she realizes maybe it’s time to try something different and look for happiness somewhere other than TV shows and her cat.
And that, maybe, it’s time to let the hunky Doms show her how they want to love her.
Genre: BDSM, Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre
Length: 41,607 words
BROKEN ARROW
Suncoast Society
Tymber Dalton
SIREN SENSATIONS
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Siren Sensations
BROKEN ARROW
Copyright © 2015 by Tymber Dalton
E-book ISBN: 978-1-63259-306-1
First E-book Publication: April 2015
Cover design by Harris Channing
All art and logo copyright © 2015 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
Dear Readers,
If you have purchased this copy of Broken Arrow by Tymber Dalton from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.
Regarding E-book Piracy
This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.
The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.
This is Tymber Dalton’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Tymber Dalton’s right to earn a living from her work.
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www.SirenPublishing.com
www.BookStrand.com
DEDICATION
For Hubby, as always, because without him, I wouldn’t even be able to do this. Love you, sweetheart.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
While all the books in the Suncoast Society series are standalone works which may be read independently of each other, the recommended reading order to avoid spoilers is as follows:
1. Safe Harbor
2. Cardinal’s Rule
3. Domme by Default
4. The Reluctant Dom
5. The Denim Dom
6. Pinch Me
7. Broken Toy
8. A Clean Sweep
9. A Roll of the Dice
10. His Canvas
11. A Lovely Shade of Ouch
12. Crafty Bastards
13. A Merry Little Kinkmas
14. Sapiosexual
15. A Very Kinky Valentine’s Day
16. Things Made Right
17. Click
18. Spank or Treat
19. A Turn of the Screwed
20. Chains
21. Kinko de Mayo
22. Broken Arrow
Many of the characters in this book appear in previous books in the Suncoast Society series. Eliza and Rusty first appeared in A Roll of the Dice. All titles available from Siren-BookStrand.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Author's Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
About the Author
BROKEN ARROW
Suncoast Society
TYMBER DALTON
Copyright © 2015
Chapter One
Brooke Wallace eyed her opponent with extreme suspicion. According to the owner, she wasn’t the first person to go up against the beast.
She intended to be the last.
The pony had gorgeous lines, lots of power, a perfect, flawless coat.
But the damned carburetor just absolutely refused to cooperate, no matter how many times it’d been rebuilt in the past.
She stared down into the 1964-1/2 Mustang’s engine compartment. The owner, a retiree from Michigan, stood next to her and nervously rocked back and forth from one foot to another.
“I mean,” he said, a nervous talker, “the last guy said I needed to just pull it and put on an Edelbrock, or a Holley, or something, but I really don’t want to. It’s not about the money. I want to keep it original. That’s kind of the whole point of having a pristine, original show car.”
“I agree,” Brooke said. “It’s not like you’re racing it.”
“Oh, hell no,” the guy said. “Are you kidding me? Do you know how much that paint job cost to have it match the original? And the interior? My wife wanted to kill me when I bought the enclosed car hauler for it. I told her no way in hell am I towing it on a dolly or an open trailer.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“She’s like, ‘It’s a car. Drive it.’ I’m like, ‘No, it’s a cherry and very rare Ford Mustang that is worth a whole lot of money. No way in hell am I driving it any more than I have to. Damn sure not from Michigan to Florida.”
She turned to him. “Mr. Keller, I p
romise we’ll take good care of it. We store all our cars inside. That’s why we work by appointment only.”
“Your shop came highly recommended by the local car club,” he said. “I’ll admit I was a little skeptical at first when I realized you’re a woman. No offense. But everyone said I’d be a fool to bring it anywhere but to you. Take as long as you need with it, and whatever it costs.”
“If I can’t rebuild it, I’ll find you a carb with matching numbers,” she said. “That might take a while, but I agree in your case you want to keep it all original. If you already had mods, then an aftermarket carb would be the easy and cheaper fix.”
She led him inside the office and filled out a work order estimate, giving her a dollar range to work within before needing further confirmation from him.
In Rick Keller’s case, no further authorization was needed. He didn’t care what it cost, as long as he got it back running perfectly and with an original carburetor that matched his car’s VIN number.
I guess retired hedge fund CEOs can afford that.
As he signed the work order, he glanced up, finally noticing the wall behind the counter, including some of the pictures hanging there. “Oh, were you in the service?”
She realized what picture he must be looking at. “Yes,” she answered without looking up from where she was entering his info into the computer. “Army.” Her dad had put up the pics, and she hadn’t yet had the heart to remove them.
“I was in the Marines,” he said. “Did a tour in Iraq. Senior’s war,” he added. “Then went to college. Wow, archery, huh? When did you do that?”
“Started in middle school. I was in SCA in high school, did some competing.”
“That’s cool. Is that your dad in those?” He pointed.
Now she did glance over. “Yes, that’s him.”
“One of the guys in the car club said he had a stroke or something. How’s he doing?”
She wished “the guys” wouldn’t talk quite so much about her personal business. Or that Keller would stop asking so many questions. “He’s okay. Has good days and bad ones. Mostly good now, fortunately.”
It had nearly broken her heart when her father had voluntarily decided he wanted to move into an ALF community two years earlier. There, he had his own apartment, including a kitchen. The community offered lots of activities, outings, and provided both a shuttle bus to local stores as well as a private car service for residents for things like doctor appointments, or if they needed to go someplace else.
And some of the residents still drove, and took her father places when she needed to be at the shop. Plus his retired friends were always happy to pick him up and drive him places.
It left her with an empty house and an empty heart, but her father had insisted he didn’t want to saddle her with him and his care. That maybe, one day, he’d heal up enough to move back home.
She suspected he wanted his independence away from her. That he thought his presence in the house was keeping her from her own life, which couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Especially since during the six months before he’d moved out, he’d kept talking about how if he wasn’t living there she could get out more, go meet people. Get involved in archery or SCA again.
The truth was, she didn’t have the heart to. Not anymore. She needed to work, for obvious reasons. Needed to pay the bills. Wanted to keep the shop open since he couldn’t work there anymore.
The insurance settlement from the car accident that had killed her mother and caused her father’s injuries, which had eventually led to his stroke a few years later, had paid for her father’s apartment with plenty to pay off the house and his continuing care. Plus he now received Social Security disability payments, and his long-term disability insurance helped, too.
She had her monthly benefits from the Army, thanks to the IED which had blown up the vehicle she’d been riding in.
Unfortunately, she’d been the only one in her vehicle to escape with her life. It had also ended her military career eight weeks after arriving in-country in Afghanistan, two years into her service.
Her parents had been on their way, driving up from Florida to pick her up from her final discharge from Walter Reed, when they’d had their car accident.
After she finally got Keller out the office door, she closed and locked it behind him. Standing there for a moment, she watched him pull out through the gate with his large truck and car hauler trailer. Then she walked out back, rolled down the bay door, and locked it, securing the Mustang inside.
She had three long-term projects right now, including this pony. And a long-term waiting list a mile long. She classified jobs by the estimated time needed to finish them.
Quickies could be knocked out in a day or less and were worked in around other jobs. Detailed meant it would take a few days to a week to complete if there were no unexpected issues. Long-term meant a week or more, usually more, and with expected complications.
Keller had first contacted her four months earlier, and she’d had to relegate him to the long-term waiting list since she didn’t expect the repair to be a quick fix based on what he’d told her about it. There would be four quickie jobs coming in tomorrow morning. Brooke had two part-timers who worked three to four days a week each, retirees who did it for the love of the work more than the money. They each had their specialties, and she didn’t need them there full-time.
It kept her busy, and kept them busy, too.
Much to the appreciation of their wives, it also kept their retired husbands out of the house more often, and out of their hair.
But Brooke didn’t want to do anything else. It was her life, it was her work, and most importantly of all, it was her sanity.
* * * *
After completing the day’s paperwork, Brooke made one last patrol of the shop and grounds, checking the bay doors were all locked and secured, and everything was shut off that needed to be shut off. She set the alarm system before locking the office and getting in her Jeep Cherokee. Then she pulled through the gate and rolled it shut behind her, locking that, too.
Twenty minutes later, a little after seven in the evening, she arrived home. Just east of I-75 and south of Bee Ridge Road, she’d been born and raised in this house in Sarasota. She didn’t want to live anywhere else. Built in the late 70s, it had been her parents’ first home after they got married.
Her cat, Dixon, lay sprawled out on the couch, the TV on.
“You little bastard,” she lightly joked. “You did it again, didn’t you?”
The orange tabby let out a maow she knew meant he was mocking her. This was the third time in two weeks she’d come home to find the TV on. It was now an interesting experiment. Several times, he’d accidentally turned the TV on, or changed the channel, by stepping on the remote while she was at home, so she knew it was him.
Plus she had an alarm system. It wasn’t like someone broke into her house just to turn on her TV and not steal anything.
He stood, stretched, and jumped off the couch to follow her down the hallway to her bedroom, where he jumped up on the bed. The cat had adopted her two years earlier when he was barely six weeks old, showing up on her front porch one stormy Sunday night just before The Walking Dead aired.
Hence his name. He was one badass little mofo. She had no clue where he’d come from, but she’d heard his plaintive mewling and brought him in, drying him off and cleaning him up, locking him in the bathroom while she hit record on the cable DVR box and ran to Walmart for kitten supplies.
She did not miss The Walking Dead for just anyone.
So she and her badass little mofo kitten had watched that and The Talking Dead an hour later than usual, with him curled up, warm and dry and with a tummy full of canned food, on her tummy on the couch.
That had happened two weeks after her father had moved into his apartment, and her loneliness had been stifling. She’d named him Daryl Dixon, or Dixon, for short. Sometimes he was DD, or D2. Or D-bag on occasion, when he did
something like yak a hairball up in the middle of her bed.
Which was a rare event, fortunately. Her badass little mofo kitten was a gentleman, if a bit scruffy, like his namesake.
It was just her and Dixon, together, against the world.
I’m pitiful.
She’d stepped out of the shower and had her freshly washed long, brown hair wrapped in a towel when her cell phone rang.
“If you tell me you and Dixon are staying home and watching TV tonight, I’m coming over and spanking your ass myself.”
Brooke sank onto the bed, Dixon shoving his head against her hand and looking for affection. “I’m sorry, Eliza. I’m just not in the mood for company.”
Her friend had been bugging her for weeks to join her and her husband, Rusty, and some of their friends for dinner.
“That’s what you say every time I ask you to go out. I’m done with your excuses. We’ll be there in twenty minutes. If I have to have the barbarian haul you out of there butt-naked and dripping wet from the shower, I will. Which will really make for an interesting scene at the restaurant, but will at least get you out of that damn house for a few hours.”
She closed her eyes. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Look at me. Do I not look serious? Well, okay, you can’t look at me. Hey, Rusty! Tell her what I look like!”
It sounded like she must have held the phone up. She heard Rusty’s voice call back, “She’s serious, Brooke. I’d listen to her, if I were you.”
Dammit. “If I go tonight, will you get off my case for a while?”
“I’ll get off your damn case for a whole week, yes. Please?” Eliza’s voice changed, her tone sobering, gentling. “Sweetie, I’m worried about you. Please come to dinner with us tonight. Our treat, just for you having to put up with the aggravation of me bugging you.”