by Paula Cox
Then Dawn, in a clear, high voice, speaks out over the scene: “Ladies and gentleman, esteemed guests, we are gathered here today to witness the marriage of Hope Warren and Killian O’Connor, two people who have come together in true love and true commitment.”
Dawn speaks with a confidence she never could have mustered last year. But, in truth, I barely hear her. My eyes are locked on Killian, and his are locked on mine. He can’t stop smiling, either. Not his smirk, but a full-on smile. A happier-than-ever-before smile.
“ . . . If anyone has reasons why these two should not wed, please, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
Birds tweet in the woods; everyone is silent.
Dawn nods and turns to Killian. “Killian O’Connor, repeat after me. I, Killian, take you, Hope, for my lawful wife.”
Killian’s smile spreads even wider, somehow. And when his smile gets wider, mine can’t help but get wider in response. “I, Killian, take you, Hope, for my lawful wife.”
“To have and to hold, from this day forward.”
“To have and to hold, from this day forward.”
“For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer . . .”
We speak the vows, both of us smiling like fools, smiling like people in love. And then Alex comes forward with the rings. Killian holds my hand in his, his hand as strong as ever, making me feel safe, secure, making me think: This is my man. This is my husband!
Dawn turns to me. “Do you, Hope Warren, take Killian O’Connor to be your lawful husband?”
I can’t help it. Emotions rush into me, assail me. I begin to cry, tears so happy, so overjoyed, that I can’t contain them.
“I do,” I say. Killian slides the solid silver wedding band onto my finger, where it rests above my engagement ring.
Then Alex hands me Killian’s ring, and I take his hand. When I look into his eyes, I’m shocked to see that he’s crying, too. Tears slide silently down his cheeks, slide down and into his smile.
“Do you, Killian O’Connor, take Hope Warren to be your lawful wife?”
Sniffing back a tear, Killian says, “I do!”
I slide the ring onto his finger.
“You may now kiss the—”
But Killian doesn’t wait. He cradles my face and brings me close to him, so close that his tears are warm on my cheeks.
He kisses me deeply, passionately, as Declan snaps the camera and dozens of bikers let out a roaring cheer.
THE END
Read on for a sneak peak of SMOKE
Preview of SMOKE
Chapter One
Darla
I look into the reflection of the espresso machine, using the gap after the frantic pace of the lunchtime rush, and try to fix my appearance.
I overslept this morning, something I rarely do. Usually, I’m all in when it comes to my work. Sure, people—ahem, my parents—can tell me that it’s just a barista job, I should try harder, I should have more ambition, etc., but I do things on my own terms. And right now, I love my job. I’m good at it . . . even if Tracey is the golden child and always gets the best shifts and I know she’s being considered for a raise. In fact, the only reason I overslept was because I was on the super-late shift while Tracey got to dance into the sunset at five o’clock, bobbing her pixie-cut head and grinning girlishly at me.
I hear my father’s voice now: You’re twenty years old. You should be at college. Don’t you want to be a doctor? A veterinarian? It’s strange, because at no point in my life have I mentioned that I want to be a doctor or a vet. It seems my dad, who up until now has been perfectly fine letting me make my own way, has suddenly realized that he has not paid enough attention to my hopes and dreams. Now he’s scrambling. I’ve been offered up too many ideas to count. Perhaps I want to be a pilot? Perhaps I want to go into the military? Fine, fine . . . but don’t I want to be a politician? What Mom and Dad don’t understand is that working here gives me something I want more than any of that. Independence. I get to live alone. I get to do my own thing. I get to be a grownup.
I come out of my brief reverie and look closer at the reflective metal. I had no time to put on makeup today and my face, while probably looking fine, seems strange to me. When you’ve put on my makeup almost every morning for the past decade, staring at yourself naked and bare is a disorienting experience. My shoulder length blonde hair, with a natural kink at the bottom, is unchanged. And so are my wide-set green eyes, but even they look odd when they’re not ringed in eye-liner.
I quickly apply as much product as I can, but I rush it as I hear Carl approaching. Shuffling, more like. Carl is thin, balding, with thick horn-rimmed glasses that would look more fitting on porn actor from the ’eighties than a thirty-something barista. I place my little makeup bag in the pouch of my apron and turn to him. The Coffee Joint, my fifty-hour-a-week home, is empty apart from a couple of students who sit in the corner, their laptops open, typing furiously. My age, I note. How angry that would make Dad.
Carl stops a few inches from me, too close, so close I can hear the rumbling in his chest from his strained breathing. “Darla,” he says. His voice is a whisper. But I don’t lean in. I don’t like thinking of Carl as a creep, but the fact remains that he stands too close to the girls, sometimes breathes on them, often makes inappropriate comments, and once at a work party tried to wrap his arms around Tracey’s midriff. Still, after everything, he’s just a guy, and sometimes guys can be odd.
“Yes,” I respond. I take a step back, showing him as kindly and gently as I can that standing so unbearably close to somebody isn’t normal.
He doesn’t get the message; he takes another step forward, closing the gap, perhaps thinking I’ve made a mistake by stepping backwards and he’s doing me a favor. “I just wanted to say . . .” He wheezes, licks his lips. I’m reminded of the time I caught him watching pornography on his phone in the storage cupboard. Not touching himself, thank God, but staring with dead, glassy eyes at the rutting figures onscreen.
“Yes?” I reply, suddenly aware that it’s just me and him until evening.
“I just wanted to . . . say . . . that . . .” He wheezes again, sucking in desperate breaths. And then he throws his words out in a great jumble, eager just to be done with them: “I just wanted to say that you look as pretty as a flower, a nice pretty flower and your makeup is perfect and you have a very athletic body.”
The words themselves are nice, kind, innocent enough. But his eyes are beady, naturally small, but magnified in his glasses so that he looks like a giant insect. He licks his lips when he’s done and his insectoid eyes roam down to my shirt, lingering on my breasts. Slowly, his eyes begin to glass over as they did when I caught him watching the movie.
“Uh, thanks,” I grunt.
And then I spin around and hurry to the opposite end of the counter.
Carl is about to follow when the Californian-sunbaked parking spot outside the Coffee Joint is filled in a mess of sirens, beeps, and hoots. I glance through the giant glass walls and watch as the firemen exit the truck, laughing and joking. My breath catches. There are two reasons for the tightening of my throat. The first is that the firemen usually come in on Tuesdays, not Fridays, and I haven’t prepared. Usually I pre-fill the coffee machines, arranges the cakes and pastries they like, make sure there’s enough ice and cokes.
And the second reason swaggers through the doors right now.
Brody Ellison, twenty-four years and two-hundred pounds of pure muscles, heartbreak, heat, passion, cockiness and arrogance. Look up Arrogant Prick in the dictionary and Brody’s face will appear. Tall, with a handsome face, the kind of face that draws a girl in without even trying to, short, sandy-brown hair and stubble on his strong jaw that looks almost red. His eyes are dark, hazel, and gorgeous.
My heartbeat scatters in my chest.
Why didn’t I put on that last smidge of lipstick!
Chapter Two
Brody
“Hey, look,” Marco says, as we climb down from t
he truck, “it’s that girl. What’s her name? Lila?”
“Darla,” I reply.
Immediately, the guys let out a cheer. Marco, Jonny, Steve, and Cliff hold their arms in the air and start whooping. “He knows her name!” Steve laughs. “He’s in love! He wants to marry the girl!”
“Can it,” I grunt, with a small smile on my face.
Marco sidles up next to me as we enter the coffee shop. The place is empty, but for a couple of kids in the corner, the thick-glasses man who always hides behind the coffee machine when we come by, and Darla. Darla is a hot chick, make no mistake. With her cute green eyes and smoking body, she’s the sort of girl any guy would be drawn to. She also has a way of holding herself that’s interesting. She’s a barista, but she holds herself like a princess. The general message she communicates is: Don’t mess with me. I’m tougher than I look.
It’s attractive, I’ve got to admit.
The guys babble on all around me, the usual fireman talk. This and that girl, this and that conquest, locker room talk transported from the locker into the Coffee Joint.
Maybe it’s time to make a connection with this girl, I think.
But that’s making it sound way more romantic than it is and I know it. Truth is, I’m an arrogant, cocky sort of guy. I’m not one of those assholes who go around being arrogant and cocky without realizing it. I know I’m arrogant and cocky. And, what’s more, women love it. No clue why. Maybe they just like my body and so let the rest slip. But I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s got more to do with me being so different from the needy, oh-so-gentle guys they usually come into contact with.
So I swagger up to the counter as the boys find a table.
“Afternoon, beautiful,” I grin.
She nods shortly, not giving anything away.
“Good afternoon, sir,” she says, staring down at her notepad. “What can I get for you?”
“How about a kiss?” I smile.
She doesn’t laugh, but her lips, set in a stern line, twitch, as though she wants to smile but forces herself not to. “I’m afraid we don’t sell those,” she says. “Can I help you with something else.”
I give her my order, coffees and cake and cokes, and then, on a sudden burst of inspiration, I reach into my jacket pocket. I have two-hundred dollars in cash from overtime. Perfect. I take it out and slide it along the counter, smiling all the while.
“What’s this?” Darla says, eyeing the envelope.
“That’s a tip, gorgeous. Maybe use it to buy some sexier clothes. Maybe some makeup. You know, make an effort.”
I say this in my jokey voice. It’s meant to come off as cocky, charming, but I see it fall flat on her face. Finally, she turns her eyes up at me. Her bright green eyes. They’re not so bright anymore. They’re as cold and hard as steel.
Chapter Three
Darla
Is he kidding me? My heartbeat was rapid before; now it’s positively racing. It bounces around my chest as though searching for an exit, bumping up against my ribcage and then rebounding. Is this a joke? Maybe it is a joke. Maybe he is trying to be funny.
But the truth is, if every person has at least one Sore Spot, a spot so sore you capitalize it in your mind, this is my Sore Spot. I had a boyfriend, once, called Charles (pretentious ass wouldn’t let you call him Charley) who criticized my appearance almost endlessly. My foundation was too dark, too light, I was wearing too much or too little eyeliner, my body was too thin, too childish, but then I was too fat. The straw that broke this camel’s too-thin too-fat too-pale too-dark back was when Charley (let’s see him stop me now) flirted with Tracey right in front of me.
I broke it off with him, but the damage had been done. My self-esteem, never my strongest feature, took a hard, brutal hit and now I’m in a constant state of near-paranoia when it comes to my appearance.
I look down at the envelope, which is actually stuffed with cash and labelled conveniently with $200, and then I turn away from it and look up into his face. He must see something in my eyes; his cocky smile falters, but only for a moment. It’s like a shield being lowered—and then lifted again. The smile returns.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see his friends watching. I know one. Marco Rodriquez. Bronze-skinned with dark opal eyes and the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen, a self-proclaimed ladies’ man who hits on everybody indiscriminately. He’s loving this, if his snow-white smirk is anything to go by.
Slowly, I push the envelope back across the counter, never letting my gaze leave his. “Why don’t you take this back?” I say, hoping my anxiety doesn’t show on my face. “I think it’d be better spent buying you some flirting lessons.”
Brody’s eyes widen and he looks at me as though seeing me for the first time. From his friends’ table, everybody laughs. Marco claps his hands. “She got you, my man! She got you good!”
Brody watches me for a long moment, and then shrugs as though it’s no big deal.
He turns on his heels and swaggers away, thumping Marco in the arm and dropping into his seat like a man without a care in the world.
I go about making their order, setting out the cakes and pouring the coffees, and I tell myself that I wasn’t, in the least, excited by that exchange.
But one thought keeps recurring, no matter how much I fight it: At least he’s actually seeing me now.
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More Books by Paula Cox
Why bargain when I can buy her outright.
I’m a professional killer. Rescuing helpless women isn’t what I do. But when the daughter of my next target gets kidnapped and auctioned off, it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.
I’ll buy her and make her talk.
That was before I saw her. One look and I can’t tear my eyes away—can’t stop imagining her body pinned underneath mine.
One look and I know it’ll be impossible to keep my hands off her.
She thinks I’m here to save her.
She could not be more wrong.
I’m going to break my code. Then I’ll break her.
And show her what it means to be owned.
***
I was supposed to save his daughter, not keep her for myself.
When you kill for money, you know that your story probably doesn’t have a happy ending. But when I met Stella, I knew I might have a shot.
She’s everything I’m not… pure, innocent, and without a glimpse of how evil the world can be.
Her ex wanted her dead, her father wanted her safe.
Me?
I want her legs wrapped around me while she screams my name.
I want to save her so I can keep her for myself.
But all I did was put her in more danger.
Now I’m doing everything to keep her alive.
And when the dust settles, I’m going to make her mine…or die trying.
***
She was marked for someone else, but I’m taking her for myself.
I need a relationship like I need a bullet in the head—especially with a high-maintenance brat like Ana. The kind who’s got their head in the clouds instead of down here with the rest of us in the real world.
She thinks she can tell me what to do. She thinks she’s in charge.
I’ll tame her body, her mouth, her mind—and make her beg me for more.
One problem--her ex is a crazy bastard who thinks he can get her back by taking me out.
He thinks that I’ll give up what’s mine.
He couldn’t be more wrong.
***
I had every reason not to trust him
I should’ve known better than to let a brute like him into my life.
He turned my life upside down in the worst way possible: spread me open and took what he wanted—what I needed.
He wasn’t supposed to stay.
I wasn’t supposed to scream for mor
e.
But when he holds me down and grinds his hard body into mine.
Makes me his possession and obsession.
Makes me forget who I am and what he is.
I can’t tell if this is all a dream come true.
Or if I’m trapped in living nightmare.
But as long as he’s by my side, I don’t ever want to wake up.
