Repeat Offender

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  “I just witnessed Brighton Peet break up with her.” He paused. “He called her Linda, as if he knew her. But the girl said her name wasn’t Linda, it was Six Broussard.”

  “Shit,” Bruno said upon hearing the last name, again acting as if he didn’t know her at all. “The mayor of Dallas’s kid? Really?”

  The mayor of Dallas was a piece of shit.

  He was also at my table where his ‘station’ said he should be. Yet I couldn’t fuckin’ stand him.

  “Apparently,” I said. “Not that she looks like she really wants to be here.”

  Bruno looked at her, too, as he took a sip of his beer.

  He was drinking it out of a mug, unlike the woman across the table who was drinking it straight out of the bottle.

  “Sure doesn’t, does she?” Bruno chuckled underneath of his breath. “What the fuck is she wearing?”

  “No idea,” I admitted. But some part of me wanted to strip it right off before I fucked her.

  “Is that a bag of potato chips?” he asked.

  Sure enough, when the first course of our meal was set down in front of us, Six waved the woman away and pulled out a bag of Lay’s potato chips, my absolute favorite, from her purse.

  “Looks like it,” I answered with amusement lacing my voice.

  I looked down at the first-course meal in front of me and played the part, making myself seem more knowledgeable than I actually was.

  See, I grew up in a family that was wealthy, but not wealthy in the sense that we attended frivolous dinner parties and ate five-course meals.

  After the death of my sister, Lacy, I started to immerse myself into a world that I didn’t quite fit into. Yet I played a damn good game, which happened to be how and why I was now the mayor of Kilgore, Texas.

  “Why are you doing this again?” Bruno mumbled as he trailed his finger through the broth on the plate in front of him.

  He, like me, was more of a burger and fries guy. This bullshit that we were dealing with today was hopefully a ‘one and done’ thing.

  Hopefully.

  “Because we didn’t like how this city is turning out after the last mayor had his claws in it,” I explained.

  Bruno knew this, though.

  I was a lot of things, had played a lot of parts in my life from king pin to bookie to FBI consultant. What I had not done before was dabble in government politics.

  But after witnessing the old mayor take advantage of a few decent men, one of those being a good friend, and trying to kill his career by using his power to force him into compliance or else, I’d had enough.

  Upon researching the old mayor, Dave Jackson, I’d not only found out that he was dirty, but I’d found out that he was a sick bastard, too. The sick bastard liked to force women to do things that they didn’t want to do—like marry him. Have his children. Fuck him on the side to keep a job here. Give him head to grease some palms for a house loan there.

  But that’d only been the tip of the iceberg with Jackson.

  The first step of digging out his corruption had commenced—beat him at a race for mayor.

  Today I was officially the new mayor and I would start fixing the things that Jackson had broken.

  But first I had to find a way out of jail for those broken things.

  The second course was brought out, and our broth was taken away, neither Bruno nor I having done much more than play with it.

  When the salad was placed in front of our plates, I instinctively glanced at the girl across from me.

  She now had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in her hands, and her father was looking at her with murder in his eyes.

  “Oh, boy.” Bruno chuckled under his breath. “I think I like this girl.”

  I did, too.

  If she could elicit that kind of reaction out of Ivan Broussard, then she was already leaps and bounds ahead of about ninety percent of our table.

  Feeling my eyes on her, she looked up, and I was captured by her violet gaze.

  She blinked, took a bite of her sandwich, and then continued to chew as she stared.

  After she was done with her bite, she took a swig of her beer, then grimaced when she came up empty.

  When she set the bottle down onto the table, she wasn’t quiet about it.

  My lips twitched.

  Instead of continuing to stare, however, I looked away and went back to the semi-conversation that was going on with the men beside me, playing my part and donning the mask even though I didn’t want to.

  CHAPTER 3

  I have neither the time nor the crayons to explain this to you.

  -Six’s secret thoughts

  SIX

  Twelve months later

  The next time I saw Lynnwood Thatcher Windsor, was at a board meeting of all places.

  My father forced me to come to them because I, and I quote, needed to learn how to handle the ship if I wanted to board it.

  I didn’t want to board shit.

  I wanted to do what I loved, and what I loved did not have anything to do with four confining walls.

  Yet, there I was, because I knew that if I didn’t come, my father would hold up the meeting indefinitely.

  He was that asshole.

  The one that waited for everyone to get there, no matter what.

  And I’d found out the hard way over the years because I’d been forced to attend them all. One time I planned to skip a meeting, and I found out later that my father had, apparently, held that meeting up for three hours while they waited for me to arrive. Only, I’d never arrived. I’d been hiking the Grand Canyon at the time.

  Only after waiting that long did he think to call me. And when he did call me, I was in the middle of a hike. I’d answered, told him I wasn’t coming, and had hung up.

  He’d postponed the meeting until I flew home and held the meeting at the airport in two Lincoln Town Cars.

  It was only after the meeting had concluded that I’d learned that they’d all had to give up their Saturdays, twice, because of me.

  And I wasn’t willing to be the asshole in this situation.

  I’d be here, but not be here, if that made any sense at all.

  Slumping down in my seat, picking at the ratty torn knee of my jeans, I wondered if I could get away with a small snooze.

  My father wasn’t due to get here until at least twelve, and I’d shown up thirty minutes early to eat my burrito. I’d finished five minutes in, leaving me twenty-five minutes to snooze.

  Eyeing the table itself, I pushed back the padded chair and scooted it back, glancing underneath the table.

  Grinning, I left my purse and phone in my chair, then crawled underneath the table and stretched out on the carpet, belly first, pillowing my head onto my arms.

  I was out within a minute.

  I’d always been like that—able to sleep anytime, anywhere. It was something I’d been able to do since I was a young child.

  Wyett hated it.

  Car trip to the convenience store? Asleep.

  Running to the next town over to go to Target? You guessed it, sleeping like a baby.

  It was a great skill to have.

  But, also, probably not all that safe when I went to sleep it meant that I kind of lost focus on my surroundings.

  Which was why, twenty-three minutes later when I heard my father’s voice, I cracked an eye open.

  “Nancy, find my damn daughter,” Dad growled.

  “Yes, yes, sir,” Nancy, his intimidated assistant, cried.

  I moaned and pushed out my seat while crawling out from underneath of the table. “I’m freakin’ here, Dad. Jesus. It’s not even time yet. I have an alarm set.”

  Everyone in the room paused, surprised to see me there.

  Everyone but one, that was.

  Him.

  Lynn.

  The mayor.

  He knew I was down there, there was no doubt about it.

  “Do you have any manners whatsoever?” Dad grumbled, pinching the bridge of hi
s nose.

  “If I don’t, it’s because you didn’t instill them in me,” I growled as I stood up, turned, and planted my ass in my seat. “Kind of hard to teach your kid something when you’d rather send them to boarding school than deal with them.”

  Only, I sat on my phone, so it wasn’t very graceful seeing as I had to lean over in what looked to be a fart maneuver to get the phone from beneath me.

  Dad narrowed his eyes.

  “Can we get on with this?” I asked. “I have shit to do this afternoon, and none of that includes sitting here listening to you moan about my sleeping habits.”

  There was a choked sound coming from somewhere in front of me, but I didn’t take my eyes off of my father to know if it was the mayor or not.

  But it sounded like it’d come from his direction.

  However, when my dad did finally sit down and started the meeting, and I had a chance to look at Mr. Mayor, he wasn’t looking at me.

  He had some sexy as hell glasses perched on the tip of his nose, his eyes were on the papers in front of him, and he looked like he was listening intently.

  What he did not do was look at me even once.

  “Any objections?” I heard my father ask.

  Someone kicked me so hard underneath the table that I squawked.

  “What’s your problem with this?” my father fumed.

  I looked over at him, pissed now that he was pissed that I’d interrupted.

  And, just because I liked to argue with my father, I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “You know what my problem with this is.”

  I really had no clue.

  Honestly, I didn’t even know what we were talking about today.

  “So, you’re not happy with only giving the eligible employees of the company a half percent raise?” he asked.

  What the fuck was he even talking about?

  “Umm,” I hesitated. “Do you really think that’s all they’re worth?”

  That was a good question, right?

  That would show that I ‘cared’ even if I didn’t know what I was caring about.

  “So, what do you want? More?” he asked. “With you holding a little under half, you have to agree with this, or they won’t get a raise at all.”

  I narrowed my eyes.

  I knew that I was the majority shareholder in the company.

  My mother had left her shares to me when she died instead of my father—they’d been going through a divorce at the time, and she’d been very sure to leave her half to me so that my father didn’t get to use that big head of his for evil—meaning that I was just as much my father’s equal as he was mine.

  He was right. Without me, none of them would get shitty raises.

  “I think you should give them more,” I found myself saying, even though I had no clue how much this actually equaled out to be. “What I do know is that whatever bullshit number you decided on isn’t nearly enough. These employees are our frontline. Our heroes. We have to treat them well or they’ll leave.”

  “We do treat them well,” my father lied.

  We owned a hospital, my dad, me and four other board members. My dad treated it like a business… and technically, it was. But it also wasn’t.

  This was a place where people came to feel safe. To get healthy. If they didn’t have happy medical staff working on them, would that continue? Or would they find another hospital.

  I was betting they’d find another hospital. At least, that was my professional opinion anyway.

  “How much are you suggesting then?” Dad asked.

  “Ummm,” I had no clue.

  My phone binged, though, and I didn’t bother to fake that I wasn’t looking at it.

  I pulled it out and saw an unknown number say ‘one full percent.’

  I shrugged and said, “One percent. Not point one.”

  My dad’s face went utterly red, and he looked like he was about to blow a gasket.

  “I’m not…”

  The mayor spoke up then. “That’s not a bad idea.”

  Then the mayor went on to tell everyone why the hospital staff deserved the full raise, why they would benefit, and pretty much convinced my father to sign some of his wealth away while he was at it.

  I was grinning like a madman when I finally left that meeting an hour later.

  Getting into the elevator, I worked my way through the escape room game I was playing, utterly ignoring everyone that got on with me.

  That was until I felt someone brush up against my side when the elevator stopped at the second to last floor to let even more people on.

  “Sorry,” the mayor’s deep, velvety smooth voice said above my head.

  I looked over and up only to have my gaze snag on the man’s Adam’s apple.

  I swallowed hard.

  I wasn’t aware that an Adam’s apple could be such a complete turn-on, but there I was, looking at one and thinking ‘holy shit I could totally slide my vagina against that when he was talking and come.’

  “No worries,” I squeaked.

  The mayor shifted beside me, and I got a whiff of his cologne.

  And nearly melted into a puddle of goo at his feet.

  There was this one time when I was seventeen or so that I’d stolen a magazine from my stepmother. In the magazine had been a couple of samples of men’s cologne, and one of them had been my go-to smell for as long as I could remember now.

  When I smelled that smell, it reminded me of a man that would be so totally in control of himself. He would be hot, tall, sexy as fuck and appetizing. He’d know how to treat me, and he’d kick my dad’s ass if I asked him to.

  It was called ‘Fucking Fabulous’ by Tom Ford.

  I’d actually bought a bottle of it when I was nineteen because every once in a while, I liked to smell it. Liked to remind myself that one day I’d find a man that could afford a bottle of it and wasn’t a total douche.

  And a man that could wear it and not give a single flying fuck what the name on the bottle was.

  What utterly surprised me was that Mr. Stuck-Up Suit would wear something called ‘Fucking Fabulous.’

  Honestly, it was a shocker.

  The man dressed like someone that wasn’t the mayor of po-dunk Kilgore, Texas. He looked like a man that would step right out of a magazine.

  Or a man that could rival his lookalike model, David Gandy.

  “I like your cologne,” I said softly.

  His eyes flared and he looked at me.

  “You know it?” he asked.

  I nodded, my tongue dry and sticking to the roof of my mouth. “I do.”

  His lips tipped up at the corner. “Interesting.”

  He didn’t say anything more, and neither did I.

  Together we exited the elevator.

  His stride was longer than mine, however, and he beat me to the door. When he got there, though, he held it for me and waited until I was outside to let it go.

  I smiled at him, but he wasn’t even looking at me anymore as he unhurriedly walked to the parking lot.

  I expected him to get into a Lincoln Town Car, but he surprised the ever-loving fuck out of me all over again when he walked straight up to a black Harley and mounted it.

  Then, without a helmet in sight, he started it up and rode away without a backward glance.

  I was left there gaping after him.

  CHAPTER 4

  Drink the booze and light the fuse.

  -T-shirt

  LYNN

  “You really expect me to do that?”

  I looked at Bayou, the warden of the prison in Bear Bottom, Texas.

  “Yes,” I answered Bayou. “Because I’m going to need them here in a bit, and you’re going to be able to help me with that, too.”

  “How is that?” he asked inquisitively.

  “The president will start pardoning them,” I said matter-of-factly.

  It was a good damn thing that I’d met a man that was about to become President of the United States in a few short
months.

  In the meantime, I wanted them kept safe.

  I also wanted them to know that the only reason they were getting out was because of me.

  Not that I would hold that over their heads. These men weren’t the type to be blackmailed.

  I just wanted them to know not to bite the hand that feeds them, so to speak.

  “They’re not even in my prison yet,” Bayou grumbled.

  “No,” I said. “But they will be. I’m having them all transferred here as we speak.”

  One of them was at Leavenworth, two were at Huntsville, and the other three were scattered around the country.

  There were more I was looking at, too, but I’d have to wait on them.

  The first six were the ones that were going to make this team what it was, anyway.

  A doctor, a hacker, a security master, a warfare specialist, and a few other random odd balls that had specialized skills, I was going to make the perfect team that would be able to fight anything.

  And, to disguise them, I was going to form them into a motorcycle club that would be their front for why they were in places where they didn’t belong.

  The only hitch in my plan was that they were all currently in prison.

  “I know what you’re saying,” Bayou grumbled. “But that’s not how I work.”

  I looked at him then.

  “The first man I’m having transferred over here was sent to prison because he stopped a sex trafficking ring that targeted young women that lived right here in your very own back yard.” I leaned back in my chair and stared at the man.

  Bayou’s eyes narrowed.

  “The second I’m having transferred is in prison because he decided to funnel a couple of billion dollars out of a mutual fund run by a couple of people that liked to swindle the helpless.” I tilted my head. “These men are good men. They went down for the crimes they committed. They did it willingly. But they did it because they didn’t want to see any innocents suffer.” I tilted my head again slightly. “You ever beat the shit out of someone that hurt a girl?”

  Bayou’s jaw tightened.

  “A doctor that I’m having sent here was sent to prison for killing a kid that hit his girlfriend with his truck and fled the scene,” I said. “One that nearly killed another woman days after that. His girlfriend won’t even look at him anymore.”