by Jayne Blue
“Doug’s cell phone records. And I’ve written down the places he usually hangs out. Also a few people I’ve heard him talk about. Maybe some of them will mean something to you.”
I gritted my teeth. “What’s his problem? Drugs? Gambling?”
“I don’t know. Probably both.”
“He’s been stealing from you?”
She nodded. “A little. And I haven’t seen him in four days. He won’t answer his phone. He’s never not checked in with me for that long. He got angry with me. I said no when he asked me for a loan. It was a lot of money he wanted. Ten grand. The police don’t seem to be as concerned as I am.”
I couldn’t help the smirk that came into my face. “I can’t imagine they would . . . look . . .”
“I need you,” she said, cutting me off before I could finish. “I don’t have anyone else who can help me. And I always pay my debts.”
Fuck. There it was. Her offer. Bold and simple. Help her and she’d let me take my payment any way I wanted. So it circled right back to where I started. Did I want it from her bad enough? Was she worth the trouble?
I moved toward her. She trembled but held her ground. Her eyes traveled up the length of me as I towered over her by almost a foot. I slid my hand back to the nape of her neck and angled her best for kissing. Again, she gave me that little gasp and parted her lips, as if I’d trained her to do it. God. That’s exactly what I wanted from her.
She groaned when I brought my lips down to hers. I pulled away but kept my forehead pressed against hers. “Are you sure you’re ready for that?”
Her eyes searched mine as she nodded. “Yes,” she gasped. “Anything, I’ll do anything. Just help me.” Yeah. She needed my help, but she needed more than that. The little flash in her eyes betrayed her truth. This wasn’t just about her brother. I think it shocked her how bad she ended up wanting me when I put my hands on her.
“Good,” I said as I let her go and took the folded paper from her hands. “Because I always collect.”
Chapter Two
Nicole
Fuck.
I tried to be smooth. Tried to be cool. My fingers shook as I tried to stab the key into the ignition. The neon Great Wolf logo blinked in my rearview mirror in time with my hammering pulse. I pressed my forehead against the steering wheel as my Jeep Wrangler fired to life.
I knew it wouldn’t be easy, walking into that bar, but I hadn’t expected to remember what Brax felt like all those years ago. Hadn’t expected him to stir up what had, up until that point, been both the best and worst nights of my life.
“God damn you, Doug!” I said to no one as I jammed the car into reverse and pulled out of the bar parking lot. He’d left me no choice. I hadn’t lied to Brax about any of it. Doug had been in trouble plenty over the years, but this time was different. I’d seen the bruises and the fear in his eyes. Doug might be the world’s biggest fuck-up, but I couldn’t give up on him. Not yet. He was the only family I had left. But I hadn’t planned on responding like I did to Brax. It was like he’d flipped some switch inside of me. One touch and I was all quivering, primal need. I couldn’t afford to lose control like that again.
I made the ten-mile drive back to downtown Lincolnshire without even really knowing how I got there. After nine o’clock now, the shop was dark and quiet.
Ridley’s Olde Time Ice Cream & Soda Shop had been in my family for over eighty years. My great-something-times grandfather had started it with his brother. They’d made a go of the place and survived the Great Depression, WWII and everything in between. Ridley’s was a staple of Lincolnshire. We went in and out of fashion over the years, but never out of business.
I parked the car in the back and fumbled with my keychain, letting myself in the back way off the alley. I flipped the wall switch and the harsh fluorescent bulbs flared to life. I always liked the shop after hours like this when it was empty. The gleaming black-and-white-checkered floors, the art deco counters with polished metal trim. We even had three vintage jukeboxes lined along the wall and a dance floor that no one ever used. But it worked great for large groups and kids’ birthday parties.
People came for the atmosphere, but they also came for the homemade parlor ice cream. Ninety-seven flavors. I’d always asked my grandpa why we didn’t round it to an even hundred, and he’d say, “That’s the gimmick, kiddo!” Of course, we never had more than forty flavors ready to go at any given time. We didn’t have the cooler space or the ingredients. But some of my best memories as a kid were spent at Grandpa Ridley’s knee coming up with new flavors like Peanut Butter Hopscotch (my five-year-old brain meant butterscotch but the name stuck) and Double Cake Brownie.
These days, I was the only Ridley left to run the place. Well, me and Doug. Twenty years ago, my dad had gotten a sizeable offer from a corporate chain to sell. He’d said no because he knew it might be Doug’s only chance to have something of his own. When he told me that, I did exactly what you’d expect an indignant thirteen-year-old girl to do. I stomped my foot, put my hands on my hips, and told him I could run the business just as well or better than Doug. I think I also called him sexist.
My father had smiled, probably laughed a little, and told me something that stuck with me. “Nicole, Doug’s going to need it more than you will. You’re stronger than he is. Smarter. When the time comes, you’re going to get the hell out of Lincolnshire and never look back. They’re going to need you to run the country or Wall Street. I’m going to need Doug to run Ridley’s.”
He also threatened to ground me until Y2K if I ever repeated his speech to Doug.
Well, things never quite work out how you think they will. I felt a cold pit in my stomach as I ran my hand along the row of family pictures we kept on the back wall near the cash register. Great-something Grandpa Ridley and Great Uncle Joe with a shovel in their hands and beaming smiles as they broke ground on the place in 1937. My Grandma and Grandpa Ridley, standing behind the counter in aprons in the fifties. My one-year-old self perched on my father’s shoulders as Ronald Reagan made a campaign stop here for his reelection bid. My father invented Jelly Bean Sundae just for the occasion.
Of all the people in the pictures on the wall, I was the only one left. I choked back the anger, tears, and the love that always bubbled up when I looked at those pictures. Dad was right and horribly wrong. It turned out he needed me to run Ridley’s after all.
I slid onto one of the red leather stools at the counter and buried my face in my hands. “God dammit, Doug. And fuck you too, Daddy.”
But that was all the wallowing I could afford to do for one day. I turned the lights back off and headed up the stairs to the apartment I kept over the shop. I’d have a few hours of peace before I needed to go back downstairs and get everything ready for the morning shift. We served waffles and ice cream by seven a.m. That was part of Grandpa Ridley’s expansion back in the seventies.
I checked my phone for the dozenth time this evening but Doug hadn’t called. I wondered what I’d do if he did. Would it be relief or dread this time? It wasn’t just Doug’s number I looked for. I slid my finger across the screen and held my breath.
Brax.
I sank to the couch and rested my head on the back of the cushion. Brax’s hands. Broad and strong as he spanned my waist with them and lifted me onto the back of his bike. I hadn’t been brave enough to take a ride with him that night and always wondered what would have happened if I had. He was leather and sin and wild heat. He awakened a fire in me that night under the bleachers that I’d spent the last fifteen years trying to douse. It was there though, a tiny kindling just under the surface. A reminder of how terribly wrong everything can go if I ever got reckless like that again. And yet here I was, offering myself to him all over again.
God. He’d felt so good. He touched me in all the right places. He was strong and dangerous. Skilled and raw all at once. Just the fevered memory of his lips against my most sensitive flesh still kept me awake some nights, groaning his name in the da
rkness.
But I knew what he was. He’d been more honest with me that night than any man I’d been with before or since. It’s the reason I went to him all those years ago. For revenge. To prove something to myself. I wanted to break free from everyone’s expectations of me just for one lust-filled, wild, incredible moment. I’d gotten more than I bargained for that night.
Now though, could I do it again? We weren’t teenagers anymore and things like that came with a price. And I’d just offered myself to a man I knew was dangerous. A killer, if I believed some of the rumors I’d heard. Did the ends justify my means?
“Goddammit, Doug,” I whispered as a sob tore from my throat.
It had taken everything in me to stop Brax tonight. I wanted him, just enough to be dangerous. Except now, I couldn’t afford any mistakes. I could trace the crumbling of everything I believed about myself and the people I counted on to that one, reckless night I spent with Brax. Maybe the price I’d offered to pay him was way too high.
I curled up on the couch and felt the first heavy weight of sleep settle over my shoulders. I could call Brax tomorrow and tell him the deal was off. I’d come to my senses and wanted to do what the cops told me I should. Wait. Stay out of it. Let Doug reach out when he was ready.
No sooner had I thought it when my phone vibrated on the coffee table in front of me and skittered toward me. My heart jumped into my throat as I picked it up. Then it sank to my feet as I saw the caller ID.
“Doug?” I sat up. The air went from my lungs. “Doug, where are you? Are you all right?”
“Nic? Thank God. Nic? Can you hear me?” His voice sounded a million miles away and desperate. I think I aged a decade in that span of a few seconds and Doug got a decade younger. He sounded like he did when he was little.
“I can hear you. Where are you? Are you okay?”
I heard street sounds behind him. A car horn honking. “Nic. I need your help. It’s bad this time. It’s not my fault.”
When I spoke again, my voice went flat. “How much, Doug? What is it this time?”
“Fifteen grand, Nic. Please. And you can’t say no. I swear to God I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Will you just come home? Or tell me where you are. I’ve been worried sick.”
“Nicole, they’re going to kill me. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Doug choked back a sob and the blood in my veins turned to ice. I believed him. Something in his voice was different, more desperate. I clawed at the couch. It felt like the ground might open up beneath my feet and pull me into a dark, bottomless pit. I took a steadying breath and tried to remember what the cops told me to do if he called again.
“I’m trying to help you. But I need to know where you are. Doug, if someone’s trying to hurt you, we can call the police.”
“No! I told you. No police. Just. Please. Can you put the money in my bank account? If you don’t, I’ll be dead. They’re not messing around this time. I swear I’ll never ask you for anything like this again. It’s the last time.”
He’d said that to me so many times before. I sighed and shut my eyes tight. “Doug, I don’t know.”
He started to cry and the bottom dropped out of my heart.
“Jesus, Doug. Calm down. Please tell me where you are. If you’re in real trouble, we’ve got to call the police. I don’t care if you get arrested, Doug. I just want you safe.”
Then Doug yelled something I couldn’t understand. I tried to get him to slow down, but the line went dead. My heart hammered behind my ribcage as I screamed his name into the phone even though I knew he was long gone.
With shaky fingers, I tried to redial Doug’s number, but I got an automated message that his mailbox was full. Pulling my knees against my chest, I shivered. It was as if the temperature in the apartment just dropped twenty degrees.
Doug was in trouble. And he was running out of time.
Chapter Three
Brax
“You going to let us in on who that skirt was last night or are you keeping that one a secret?”
I sat with my booted feet up on the conference room table in Colt’s office. Joker, E.J., Mac, Tate, and the rest of the crew sat further down the table. The guys had been more interested in what I did with my dick lately. I had a bad break-up with a good woman last year. As a result, we still hadn’t been able to find a decent hostess for the bar. They needn’t have worried though. I learned my lesson. I wasn’t going near anyone whose paychecks we signed anytime soon.
“She was nobody,” I said, not sure why I wanted to keep Nicole to myself. She’d been conspicuous as fuck when she walked in here last night and these guys were nosier than a bunch of old ladies. “Old friend from high school. She wanted a favor. One I can’t provide.”
Joker said something that earned him a bottle cap right between the eyes. It wasn’t anything worse than shit I’d said a million times, but for some reason, I didn’t want the topic of Nicole at the table anymore.
“Any word from Colt or Kellan how the Florida trip is going?” E.J. asked. Colt and Kellan, our prez and veep, had taken their wives down to the Emerald Coast charter to scout out a new location for the gym franchise we owned. A huge chunk of club income came from the membership and the world-class MMA fighters we trained and sponsored through the Great Wolves Gym. After a rocky couple of years, our wallets were fat and Lincolnshire itself had finally turned the corner.
“Things are good,” I said. “And it looks like they might bring back a few prospects with them. Emerald Coast’s numbers are starting to swell. And everyone at this table knows we still need new blood.”
Regime change when Colt took over hadn’t come without a price. It had been my job to exact it by putting two dirty members in the ground. I felt my jaw go hard when I thought about it. It had been necessary, justified. They’d been ready to kill me first and Colt right after. But I still had to put bullets in the heads of two men I’d once called friends. The rest of the guys went silent around the table. I didn’t have to say anything. Just the mention of our dwindling numbers conjured up all that past shit for them as well. Though no one judged or faulted me for what I had to do, it set me apart from them now and forever. Justified or not, I’d violated club code. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do about that. But we’d rewritten the rules.
“Good to hear,” Joker said as he rapped his knuckles on the table. “I’m sick of looking at the same sorry faces across this table.”
“I’m sick as shit of doing all the grunt work,” E.J. said, earning him groans around the table.
“You’ve gotta be the laziest son of a bitch I know, E.J,” Tate said. “What’d you do? Break a nail on the way to your fucking massage appointment?”
E.J. leaped over the table and tried to punch Tate. Tate caught his fist and shoved him backward. They laughed and shuffled, but with the table between them, neither of them could do much damage. Except to the table if the fuckers kept at it. I smashed the gavel down hard enough I thought I might have broken the handle for a second. But it got their attention. Tate straightened his shirt under his leather cut and sat back down.
“Do we have anything else important to talk about yet or do you two just wanna keep on finger fucking each other?” Tate flipped me off and E.J. stifled a laugh.
With everyone sorted out and settled, we went over the night’s receipts and doled out jobs for the next week. Tate wasn’t wrong, E.J. was a lazy son of a bitch. He bitched and moaned when he realized with Colt and Kellan out for at least another two weeks, he’d still be on floor management for the bar at night, and supply runs for the gym. When everyone else was clear on what they had to do, the room cleared out leaving just Tate and me at the table.
“You sure you don’t want to tell me about that Ridley girl?” Tate said, leaning back in his chair until the back of it rested against the wall.
I shrugged then shook my head. It was in me to blow him off again. For the second time, I felt a little protective of
her and I didn’t quite know why. But Tate wasn’t buying it. Of everyone in the club, he’d known me the longest. I’d actually brought him around for the first time when we were just seventeen. He’d already dropped out of school and would have been headed for prison if he hadn’t gotten his shit straight when he did.
I reached into the back pocket of my jeans and pulled out the wad of paper Nicole had given me. “She’s an old friend, like I said. She was just hoping I could help her out with a problem involving her brother.”
Tate rolled his eyes. “Shee-it. Bad news, man. You tell her that’s not our gig anymore?”
Chewing the side of my mouth, I nodded. “Yep. She was just . . . uh . . . a little more persuasive than most people.”
Tate laughed and whistled low. “I kinda figured. You let her down easy or did she find your soft spot?”
Shrugging, I laid my hands flat on the table. Then I flipped the picture of Doug Ridley. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy. A little skinny with a dopey grin on his face as he posed against a shiny red Corvette.
“Pretty boy,” Tate said, leaning over to get a better look. “Drugs? Horses?”
“Who fucking knows. I told her I’d see what I could find out but that she shouldn’t get her hopes up.”
“Yeah. Be careful. Our luck he’s mixed up with assholes we don’t need to be around right now.”
I tapped my fingers on the table and nodded. Tate was right. We’d gotten out of the shakedown business when Colt took over. Ever since we’d faced threats from other clubs who wanted to fill the void in Lincolnshire. Sometimes, it felt like the only difference between our legit interests and what we used to be was a detailed tax return. But yeah, if Doug Ridley was mixed up with someone hostile to the club, all bets were off.
“Well, a phone call or two won’t do any harm,” Tate said. “And maybe earning a little gratitude for your trouble might not be the worst way to spend your time.”
