To my readers—
You make it possible.
Betrayed
(Whiskey Nights #4)
Paxton and Jessica’s story
by
Suzannah Daniels
Copyright © 2016 by Suzannah Daniels
Cover Art by Louisa Maggio @ LM CREATIONS
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to any person, living or dead, events, businesses, or places are coincidental and not intended by the author. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are used fictitiously or are conceived from the author’s imagination.
First Electronic Edition: February 2016
Betrayed (Whiskey Nights #4) / by Suzannah Daniels
www.SuzannahDaniels.com
To my valued readers:
Thank you for purchasing BETRAYED, Whiskey Nights #4!
I hope you enjoy the WHISKEY NIGHTS series, and I hope you’ll come back to the small town of Creekview, Tennessee, with me in Whiskey Nights #5 (title and release date to be announced).
To keep updated with my new releases, please join my email list.
With much love,
Suz
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Plateau
Chapter 2 Spot
Chapter 3 Lifting Weights
Chapter 4 Sit-ups
Chapter 5 Endurance
Chapter 6 Massage
Chapter 7 Guns
Chapter 8 Kettlebell
Chapter 9 Resistance Training
Chapter 10 Push-ups
Chapter 11 Cool-down
Chapter 12 Ripped
Chapter 13 Traps
Chapter 14 Cardiovascular
Chapter 15 Pumped
Chapter 16 Energy
Chapter 17 Aerobic
Chapter 18 Burn
Chapter 19 Exercise
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Books by Suzannah Daniels
About the Author
Chapter 1
Plateau
Paxton
“What the hell is she doing here?” Cade pinned me with a glare as he tilted his head toward the front door, an unspoken request to look in that direction.
Glancing over my shoulder, I scanned the patrons of Whiskey Nights until she came into view.
Rachel Cambridge.
Evan let out a low whistle. “She looks pretty hot.”
Cade scoffed. “That’s fine and dandy if you don’t mind a big side of crazy.”
Frowning, I watched her tug down the hem of her fitted top as she gracefully sashayed down the main aisle as if it were a runway. “She’s not crazy.” Something about her forced people to take notice when she entered the room, and I watched as several people, men and women alike, turned to watch her, her allure causing them to lose their discretion as they openly stared. One woman snapped her fingers in front of her date’s face, forcing him to tear his eyes away from her shapely body.
“Are you still going out with her?” Cade asked, his face scrunched up in distaste.
I smacked him on the shoulder. “Lighten up, bro. You look like an eighty-year-old grandmother who forgot to take her Metamucil.”
He didn’t smile, but his facial muscles relaxed as he continued, “Excuse the hell out of me if I think your girlfriend showing up at her ex-husband’s bar is a really bad idea—especially since his current girlfriend owns half of it and she’s here somewhere, too.”
I couldn’t disagree with his logic. Mason Cambridge and I were friends, and while he couldn’t care less that I had dated his ex-wife, I would never intentionally bring her to Whiskey Nights, the bar that he owned with his current girlfriend, Lexi Swafford.
In fact, I, myself, had only started frequenting Whiskey Nights in the last few months since my younger brother, Cade, and I had finally called a truce after a longstanding feud between us regarding another woman—a woman to which we had both been attracted.
My brother’s marriage to Seren Flanagan four months ago put an end to that problem. Luckily, I didn’t have the same difficulty with our youngest sibling, Evan.
I turned back around and took a long pull of my beer as I watched Haley Cambridge pour a draft into a frosty mug. Not only was she the bartender, but she was also Mason’s little sister. She would definitely recognize Rachel.
My brothers, Cade and Evan, turned their attention back to the bar. Since Cade and I had reconciled our differences, we’d decided that the Mayfield brothers would spend a little time together every Thursday afternoon drinking a beer and shooting the breeze. We only had one rule. No women.
“I haven’t been out with her in weeks,” I said, answering Cade’s question from earlier. “Maybe her being here has nothing to do with me.” Why would it? Even though she knew I met my brothers here every Thursday, she also knew the no women rule.
Cade turned to look at me, discreetly glancing in her direction with his peripheral vision. “If I were you, I wouldn’t take that bet. She’s heading this way.”
I smelled her perfume before I felt her hands covering my eyes.
“Guess who?” she cooed, her soft voice drifting over my shoulder as her hair tickled my jaw.
Her hands were cool as they pressed against my face. I lifted my arms, taking her hands in my palms. “Rachel,” I greeted, “what brings you here?”
She dropped into the empty barstool beside me, crossing her long legs as she propped her heel on the footrest. “It’s been a while. I’m going to be in Creekview a few days. Thought I’d stop by and see what you’ve been up to.”
“Working mostly.”
“Sounds like you could use a little fun.” A manicured nail trailed along the edge of her face, smoothing back her long blonde hair.
I took the bait. “Maybe we could get together tomorrow night. You free?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I promised, trying to keep our conversation to the point, so her interruption would be minimal.
She tilted her chin. “Tomorrow then.” She peered around me, waving to Cade and Evan. “Bye, guys.”
“Bye, Rachel,” they said in unison.
Rachel pushed herself off the stool, swept her palm across my shoulder, and left.
“So what’s the story with her?” Evan asked.
“She’s looking for a husband,” Cade responded.
“She is not,” I corrected him. “Just a little companionship. Try to remember what it was like before you were married.”
“I’m just keeping it real, Pax,” Cade said. “If she gets half a chance, she’ll have a ring on your finger.” He took a swig of his beer. “You do know she wants kids, right?”
Cade was well aware that I had no desire to have kids. “Not gonna happen.”
“Yeah, well, you might want to tell her that,” he urged, “before she gets her hopes up.”
I rubbed my fingers across the amber glass of the beer bottle sitting on the coaster in front of me. “You have a valid point,” I agreed. “I’ll let her down easy tomorrow.” The truth was, while I enjoyed Rachel’s company from time to time, she and I would never be anything more than what we were at this moment. She was a gorgeous girl, but something was missing from our relationship. There was no spark, no aching desire to spend copious amounts of time with her. And the fact that she was desperate to be a mother was just one more reason why we would never work.
“Okay,” Evan called from the other side of Cade
, bringing me out of my reverie. “She’s gone. Where were we?”
“I was talking about Gulf Shores,” Cade said, pulling off his camouflage cap and putting it on backwards, the bill covering his nape.
“You’re leaving in the morning?” I asked, remembering that I would have to work late at the gym tomorrow to cover his absence until Evan came in for the evening shift.
Cade nodded. “Yeah, and Flanagan’s pretty damn excited.”
For some reason, he called his wife by her maiden name, not that it mattered to me. Hell, I once had a girlfriend who called me Max from time to time.
Making love to her had been the pinnacle of all my relationships with women. It still was.
But the higher one climbs, the greater the risk of death and destruction when he falls.
And in the end, I fell hard. The very love that had raised me to that pinnacle in the clouds had just as quickly trampled me into the ground.
I shook my head, willing myself to think of something else—anything else.
“Me and Flanagan plan on getting a lot of R&R while we’re there, so if you need me, don’t call,” Cade said, a grin cracking the serious expression on his face.
I wasn’t surprised by how much marriage agreed with him. Seren was a great girl, one that I wouldn’t have minded capturing myself, and believe me, I tried. But a man had to know when to throw in the towel, and it hadn’t taken me long once I’d seen the two of them together to know that I didn’t have a snowball’s chance with her.
A short time later, I started dating Rachel. We were both alone, and she was kind and attentive. I suspected Cade wasn’t far from the truth when he said she was hunting a husband.
Working in the gym I owned with my brothers, I’d seen plenty of bodybuilders hit plateaus, unable to see any physical changes despite the fact they worked out regularly.
My relationship with Rachel had hit a plateau, too. I liked her. I liked spending time with her. But she wasn’t the one, and I needed to let her go, so she didn’t waste any time thinking I might be the one for her.
“How long are you going to be gone?” Evan asked.
Cade shrugged. “At least a week, but who knows? Once we get down there, we might decide we don’t want to leave.”
The corners of Evan’s mouth tilted upward. “You do kinda look like a beach bum.”
Cade rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “I can’t think of a downside to sleeping on the beach. Especially since I’ll have a hot beach bunny by my side.”
“You better not let her talk you into skinny dipping,” I warned him. “You never know when you might find yourself wearing nothing but a towel and a cool breeze.”
Evan barked out a laugh, and Cade groaned. “Y’all are never going to let me live that one down, are you?”
“Not a chance,” I assured him.
Jessica
“Do you have someone you can call to pick up your son?”
I shrugged, emotion closing my throat and making it difficult to breathe, let alone speak.
“His father?”
I quickly shook my head. His father wasn’t in the picture and never would be.
“Your mother maybe?”
Pressing my mouth closed, I swallowed and sucked in a ragged breath. “My mother’s dead.”
“If you can’t find someone to pick him up, we’ll have no choice but to turn him over to protective services.”
Nausea welled in the pit of my stomach as I bounced Joseph on my hip, my hand clinging to his chubby thigh. He was only six months old, so I desperately hoped he couldn’t detect the depth of my distress. He reached up and grabbed a handful of my hair, tugging as he tried to put it in his mouth. I gently opened his hand, removed my hair from his grasp, and pushed it over my shoulder, out of reach from his tiny moist fingers.
I swiped my tears away with my free hand as shame burned bright on my face. “Can’t you just let me go? I promise I’ll never do it again.”
The cop was an older man, his top lip disappearing under a thick salt-and-pepper mustache as he frowned. “The merchant wants to press charges.”
Embarrassed, I moved my eyes away from him, looking over the top of his police car and scanning the parking lot of the small corner market. At least he didn’t have his lights flashing.
“Is there someone else you can call?”
What had I been thinking? I should have come up with a better way to rectify my problem. “I have a friend, but it might take him a couple of hours to get here.” I felt like dying on the spot, melting into a puddle, and seeping into the asphalt—anything to spare myself the humiliation of having to tell someone what I had done.
“Look, Ms. Beacham, that’s more time than we generally give, but if you can get your friend on his way, I’ll try to cut you a break.”
Giving him a weak smile, I rubbed the heel of my palm across my cheek, trying to remove the wet remnants of my tears. “Thank you.”
I pulled my cell phone from my back pocket and called one of my few friends, Cade Mayfield. Cade was a sweetheart, and I knew if anybody would help me, it would be he. His kindness was the only thing that had kept me from being totally alone throughout my pregnancy. Not only had he given me financial help, but he had also been supportive, even driving here to be with me during my labor and caring for me after I’d been released from the hospital.
We had talked of marriage, not because we were in love, more like a marriage of convenience between friends. But it wasn’t meant to be.
He had since married someone else, a woman who had been kind to me even when I hadn’t deserved it. I decided the least I could do for them was to leave them in peace, refusing anymore help, even though they offered it often.
I’d led him to believe that I’d been doing fine financially.
But that was far from the truth.
As the phone rang, I closed my eyes, silently begging him to pick up. When he didn’t, I quickly hung up and called back.
No answer.
“I’ve got another number to try,” I explained to the police officer. Standing with his hands clutching his belt, he nodded, the kindness in his eyes telling me it was fine.
I tried calling Cade’s wife, Seren.
She didn’t answer, either.
I hung up and exhaled, adjusting Joseph’s weight on my hip.
“Do I need to call CPS?” the cop asked quietly.
My breath caught in my lungs as fresh tears filled my eyes. “Let me try one more time,” I begged, my words muffled with emotion.
He stood stock still, his hands still gripping his belt, and nodded. “I reckon one more call won’t hurt.”
There was only one person left, and he definitely wouldn’t want to hear from me. I knew him well enough to know his response to my phone call would not be positive, but I was running out of options. Maybe if nothing else, he would be able to reach Cade.
I kissed Joseph’s temple, the smell of baby lotion filling my nostrils. If it were just for my benefit, I wouldn’t ask. But since it was for Joseph, I could do it. I could force myself to call Paxton, Cade’s brother.
He hated me.
But what choice did I have? I would do anything for my baby. The mess in which I now found myself was proof of that.
Joseph gurgled and reached for my face, his fingernails scraping my flesh, and I made a mental note to trim them, so he wouldn’t hurt himself.
I kissed his outstretched fingers and made the call.
Chapter 2
Spot
Paxton
I couldn’t believe I was sitting here in an elegant restaurant, ready to tell a woman as beautiful as Rachel Cambridge that it would never work between us. I wondered if I would rethink my decision if, like me, she didn’t want children.
I knew it wouldn’t make a difference.
While I enjoyed spending time with her, I didn’t really miss her when she wasn’t in town. We provided each other a little companionship, sharing a few laughs and temporarily relieving lone
liness.
But that was it, and I had a sinking feeling that I was becoming more to her than she was to me. My conscience wouldn’t allow me to continue the relationship.
“Rachel, there’s something I need to say.”
Her soft blue eyes peered at me over the edge of her wineglass. After taking a dainty sip, she lowered the glass and cast a dazzling smile in my direction. “What’s that, baby?”
Damn, she looked so happy, and knowing what I was about to say, I felt like a prick. How could I soften the blow? “I’ve really enjoyed spending time with you.”
Her manicured nails threaded through her long blonde locks. “Me, too. I was thinking maybe I should move back to Creekview.”
Shit. She hadn’t realized there was a but coming at the end of that sentence. I needed to just say it as kindly and as respectfully as I could. “Before you make that decision, you need to hear me out.”
The smile fell from her face, and she blinked, long dark lashes framing wide eyes.
“I think you’re a great girl. I really do.”
“You don’t want to see me anymore,” she said softly.
I frowned, hating the awkwardness of the moment. “I think we want different things out of life, and you deserve to be happy. I don’t want you to waste your time on me because I’ll never be the man you need.”
“And how do you know what kind of man I need?” she asked, her daintily plucked eyebrows drawn together.
“I know you want children.”
“More children,” she whispered.
Rachel had lost her firstborn child, a daughter named Madison that she’d had when she was married to Mason. Not that she had ever spoken of Madison to me. I knew because I’d been to the funeral, and on rare occasions, I’d heard Mason mention her.
“More children,” I repeated.
“And that’s why you’re breaking it off? Because I want children? We’re just dating casually, Paxton. It’s not like I’m asking you to father my kids.”
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