Hail No (Hail Raisers Book 1)

by Lani Lynn Vale

  “That happen often?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “People are assholes and retaliate. Most of the time, it’s not that big of a deal. The cars I repossess are sometimes for banks, sometimes for bail bondsmen who didn’t get their money back because the guy didn’t show for his court hearing. I even helped the local bondsman repossess a house before I went to jail.”

  She hummed. “That seems like a pain in the ass. Why would you ever put your house up as collateral?”

  I shook my head. “This case was more complex than that. Apparently, a man bailed his sister out who’d been forging checks. But what he didn’t know was that she’d been doing it for so long that he probably shouldn’t have bothered bailing her out. Chick was headed straight to jail, and the brother didn’t even know it. So he bails her out, puts his house up as collateral, and the moment she’s out, she runs. Doesn’t show up for the court appearance. Doesn’t even say thanks to the brother. Just up and leaves and never comes back.”

  She moaned. “That’s so terrible.”

  I agreed.

  “Do you feel bad when you do this?”

  The question, though innocent, was like a sour spot in my stomach.

  “I don’t enjoy doing anything of that nature,” I offered. “But someone has to do it, and it pays good. I don’t enjoy being the bad guy.”

  She nodded. “Do you want to take a shower at my place?”

  I was about to reply with an affirmative when someone knocked on the door.

  I walked that way, not stopping until I had the door open wide.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I just had a call from the woman at the water company saying that you were harassing her.”

  I growled. “They turned my water off. You can say that is harassment, but it’s not. I called to see why, since I paid this month and next month’s payments, not to mention a fucking whack of a deposit, in cash mind you. So no, I wasn’t harassing her. I was trying to figure out why the fuck my water is off when I’m paid up.”

  He stared at me, I guessed to gauge my seriousness in the matter, and then went for the mic on his shoulder.

  “Call the water company back and tell them that they have less than thirty minutes to get the water to this place back on, or this’ll become a police matter,” Walter said into the mic.

  The dispatcher at the other end said something to affirm that she would and then he stared at me almost as if he were waiting for something more.

  Something more that I wasn’t willing to give him.

  I knew what he wanted to ask. Was I okay? Would I ever forgive him? Would he be okay with what had transpired while I was gone?

  But some movement at my back had him glancing behind me, and then he muttered something short and abrasive before saying his goodbyes.

  “Who was that?” Kennedy asked as my brother made his way down the driveway.

  I turned to find her standing there, surrounded by my shit, in my fuckin’ house, and felt my belly get tight at the pleasure of having her there.

  “My brother,” I said. “He’s hoping I’ll forgive him.”

  Her brows furrowed. “What did he do that he needs to be forgiven for?”

  I shrugged, but resigned myself to telling her the whole truth.

  “My brother was the arresting officer on the charges that were thrown at me,” I said. “And while I was in prison, he shacked up with my ex-girlfriend and got married. Then divorced her within a year.”

  Her mouth fell open.

  “Your brother did that?” She pursed her lips. “He doesn’t look like you.”

  I grunted. “Different moms.”

  “Oh,” she looked down and her eyes widened.

  I couldn’t help the way my cock was getting hard. Having her in my house was doing things to me that I hadn’t felt for another woman in a very long time.

  She ignored it, though, so I did, too.

  “It wasn’t that he got together with my ex. It was that he did it within a month of me being put in jail that pissed me off. He didn’t even wait for the grass to grow back where I used to park my truck in her yard before he made his move.”

  She winced.

  “That’s terrible,” she admitted. “I don’t even know what to say.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t either.”

  Then I walked to my bedroom. “To answer your question, yes, I’d love to take a shower at your place.”

  And that’s what I did.

  Two hours later, we were back at my place, and she was sitting on my couch with a glass of wine in one hand and a slice of pizza in the other.

  “I just don’t know why she would’ve been on the tractor…”

  She continued to talk, and I continued to listen, but what she was saying sounded just as suspicious to me as it did to her with the way she was describing it.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “To be honest…maybe she did it knowing that she was going to hurt herself. Maybe she didn’t want to face cancer. Maybe it genuinely was an accident. Maybe he had a part in it. I don’t think we’ll ever know unless you can get your sister to tell you and that doesn’t sound like something she can do at this point.”

  She moaned and took a bite of her pizza, tearing it viciously with her teeth.

  “Fuck.”

  She looked up at that muttered curse that blasted from my lips and raised her brows at me in silent question.

  “Nothing,” I muttered, shifting on the kitchen chair. “You want another piece?”

  She picked up the last piece that was in the box and set it carefully on her plate, eyeing my hands as if I’d grab it from her.

  “I’m not going to take it from you,” I muttered to her. “Done with the ranch?”

  She nodded, taking another bite of her pizza.

  I stood and gathered up my trash, as well as the pizza box and ranch, before putting it all where it belonged—the pizza box on the back porch, the trash in the trashcan, and the ranch in the fridge.

  By the time I was done, she was already working on her last bite, but she was watching me as I moved around the kitchen.

  “What?” I asked, leaning against the counter and crossing my legs to hide my discomfort down below.

  Her mouth turned up slightly on the edge, and I saw that she had something green between her teeth.

  “You have something in between your teeth,” I told her. “Right here.”

  I gestured to the spot with my finger, and she reached forward and removed it before saying, “Well, since you were so nice, I think I might need to tell you that you have a ton of food in your beard.”

  I grinned. “How long has it been there?”

  I didn’t bother to lift my hand to remove it. I had Cinna Stix from Dominos that I was about to devour. It would be counterproductive to wipe my face clean at this juncture when I was about to stuff it full again.

  “You’re not going to get it even after I told you?” she asked with incredulity.

  I shrugged. “Why bother?”

  Then I showed her why when I reached for the box of Cinna Stix, ripped open the plastic covering on the icing, and then dunked the stick into the icing, coating it three quarters of the way up with the ooey, gooey goodness.

  “You have a bottomless pit for a stomach,” she pointed out as she started to lick her fingers clean.

  I eyed her.

  “I was in jail for four years. I was told what to eat. When to eat. How much I was allowed to eat. And that only had to do with eating. Don’t even get me started on the sleeping shit.”

  Before she could reply, though, the windows started to rattle with the sound of an oncoming storm.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I hate storms.”

  My brows furrowed.

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “Scary, I guess.”

  She was lying, but there was no reason for me to press the issue. That would only solidify
the ‘I care’ feeling she was likely already getting from me, and I didn’t need that.

  She didn’t need it either.

  Chapter 13

  I speak three languages. English, profanity, and bullshit.

  -Evander to an unsatisfied customer

  Evander

  After I finished my food, not stopping until every last piece of cinnamon was cleaned off of my plate, I gestured toward the door.

  “Are you ready to go?”

  She was shifting from foot-to-foot, I’m sure wondering what exactly I would want her to do now that she was finished eating and that she had calmed down.

  At my words, she stiffened and then nodded.

  “Yeah, I’m ready.” She stared at me for a few long seconds, then started heading toward the door. “I need to check on the animals, anyway. With storms, they sometimes get confused and do stuff they wouldn’t normally do.”

  “Like what?”

  “Drown themselves,” she muttered.

  I stopped when she said that. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, chickens aren’t the smartest animals in the barn,” she pointed out. “For instance, if a chicken was watching his other chicken friends get attacked, he’ll just stand there and watch once he gets himself a safe distance away. Me, I’d run the fuck away and not stop until my legs either fell off or gave out. My chickens? Every last feather was found in the main yard, meaning that not one of them ran any further away than their usual hunting grounds.”

  I understood what she meant.

  “They’re a little slow, I’ll give you that,” I amended.

  She smiled up at me and walked out the door when I opened it for her, not stopping until she was beside my truck waiting for me to deal with the unlocked door.

  I locked it, then headed toward her side of the truck.

  Once there, I opened it, but stopped when I bumped her with the door due to the closeness of my body to her back.

  She chuckled, and I cursed silently as her backside made contact with my still hard-as-a-rock shaft.

  She didn’t shrink away from it, though, so maybe it went undetected.

  It didn’t.

  When I finally stepped back and allowed her entrance to the truck, her face was tinged with pink, and she was no longer meeting my eyes.

  Wonderful.

  The sky overhead rumbled again with thunder, and I offered her my hand to help her along.

  She took it gratefully and hefted herself into the seat, then pulled her feet in tight to allow me to close the door.

  I tried not to find the blush on her cheeks fascinating, but once I was back in the driver’s side, I realized that that was futile.

  I couldn’t keep my eyes off the woman, even when I tried.

  She was magnetic, and I wanted nothing more than to have her stay at my place and force her to hang out with me the rest of the night.

  I was a lonely man! Surely, I deserved the company of a woman.

  But then my brother’s shock at seeing me with Kennedy earlier in the evening played through my mind, and I wondered if I could get away with threatening everyone’s life that questioned why I was with her.

  And I was again reminded that I wasn’t good for her.

  She was a good girl. She had a lot on her plate, and she didn’t need my shit piled onto it.

  We drove in silence back to her place, and by the time I pulled into the driveway of her house, I decided that I would walk her to the front door and then leave.

  I should’ve known it wouldn’t work out like that.

  By the time I’d gotten out, opened her door, and then led her up to her front stoop, the bottom dropped out of the sky and rain started to pour down.

  Though, that wasn’t the problem.

  What was the problem, was the way something ungodly loud crashed from somewhere inside her house.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  She ignored me and my question, then threw open her front door just to come to a stop when she saw the way her roof sagged by the front door.

  “Oh, no,” she moaned. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  She snatched up some papers off the table directly under where a board had obviously broken through the roof due to something—maybe extra weight from the rain on the roof—whatever the reason, it wasn’t going to be fixed tonight.

  And it likely would need a professional.

  “Damn,” I murmured, checking out the damage.

  She mumbled something under her breath, and I turned my head down to study her.

  “What?”

  She sighed. “Karma.”

  “Why Karma?” I questioned.

  She pursed her lips in disgust.

  “That cop whose truck you repossessed?” she murmured, her eyes flicking to mine and away. “He asked me if I wanted help with my roof a few weeks back when I went for some new shingles. I told him no, that I would be able to handle it. Obviously, I was wrong.”

  I looked back up at the damage, and just then noticed the rotting wood that was exposed due to the ceiling collapsing. Then winced.

  “I’ll get this checked out tomorrow,” I told her. “Anything we can do tonight will be just reserved for in here. The roof ain’t happening in the rain, and the damage is already done.”

  I tried to close the door, and growled when it wouldn’t close due to the shift of the house around it.

  “And it looks like I’m staying here for the night,” I said. “You got a couch?”

  I looked at where a couch would normally be, and she made an aggravated sound.

  “My sister needed one and couldn’t afford one, so I gave her mine,” she murmured, looking at where a couch might sit. “Dammit.”

  Then her eyes started to fill with tears, and I knew that I couldn’t leave her.

  And likely never would’ve been able to.

  Not tonight…and likely not for a while after that.

  She was under my skin.

  I didn’t know who I was kidding. It sure as fuck wasn’t myself.

  The moment the first tear hit the skin underneath her eye, I had her in my arms. When the second tear fell, it was against my chest. The material of my t-shirt soaked it up, then another, and another.

  All I could do was hold her as a fresh wave of tears took her over, and I felt, once again, helpless.

  I wasn’t used to feeling helpless.

  When I felt helpless, I tended to use my fists.

  But, at this point, I wasn’t sure I could use my fists again.

  I couldn’t take it out on Kennedy’s brother-in-law, and I sure as fuck couldn’t take it out on the dying sister.

  I did the absolute only thing I could, which was gather her in my arms and pull her into my chest as I carried her down the hall to what I assumed was her room.

  I wasn’t wrong.

  When I arrived at her bedroom door, I didn’t bother to flip on the lights. Instead, I kicked off my boots and headed to the bed, holding her close the entire way down to the softest mattress I’d ever slept on.

  We stayed like that for what felt like forever.

  Then she fell asleep and still I stayed.

  ***

  I laid in her bed for most of the night, her tucked up to my side, and listened to her breathe.

  I should’ve left hours ago.

  In fact, I would’ve left hours ago…had she not been wrapped around me like a second skin.

  She’d slept for over four hours before she slowly woke, and even then, I stayed where I was.

  The storm continued to rage around us, and I winced every time something sounded like it was creaking in the living room.

  When I felt her bring a piece of her hair up to her hand and twirl it against my t-shirt covered chest, I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

  I had to talk to her.

  “I have a military friend,” I said to the ceiling. “He calls this weather baby making weather.”<
br />
  “It was one of his favorite sayings. ‘It’s baby making weather.’ Every time it stormed. It couldn’t be just regular rain, though. It had to be thunder and lightning.”

  “That’s kind of funny,” she giggled, and her hand started moving down the length of my chest, stopping just above my belly button before it moved back up again.

  “I should go.”

  The abrupt declaration had her tightening her arms on me, holding me there as if that would actually stop me from leaving if I’d really wanted to go.

  But since I didn’t want to go, I allowed her to stay my muscles, and continued to stare at the ceiling.

  “I’m a bad bet, Kennedy.”

  She snorted. “Everyone’s a bad bet.”

  “You’re not a bad bet,” I countered.

  She laughed humorlessly, her entire body shaking against my side. “Everyone in my family has had cancer at some point in their life. I’m the only one left standing that hasn’t been affected.”

  She had a point.

  “But you don’t know that you won’t ever get it. You’re just assuming.”

  She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Who wants to date a woman that has a seventy percent chance of getting cancer and dying before the age of fifty?”

  I didn’t know the answer to that question.

  “You find that right person, and it won’t matter to them,” I told her bluntly.

  Like it didn’t matter to me.

  If I’d been a different person…a better person…I’d take hold of her hand and never let go.

  But I wasn’t a better person. I was a criminal. Though I didn’t commit the crimes I’d been sent to jail for, I’d done a lot of bad shit in my life. Killed a lot of people—sanctioned by the US government, sure. But still.

  I had blood on my hands and that wasn’t going to change.

  “We don’t have to actually make the babies,” she told me, startling the shit out of me with her words. “Just practice. I don’t want forever with you, Evander. Forever means a whole lot of shit, and I don’t want to leave my family. My kids. My husband. Because I may not have cancer yet, but it’s inevitable. It’s gonna happen. And I just want someone to be with me in the meantime. When you’re ready for it to end, we’ll end it.”

  I was making a mistake.

  A huge, hulking, I’m about to make the worst decision of my life—and maybe hers, too—mistake.