Road Warriors (Motorcycle Club Romance Collection) (Bad Boy Collections Book 4)

by Faye, Amy

  It had no charge, and beeped at her angrily that it was going to shut itself off any moment. Her headache threatened to come back if she didn't shut it up five minutes ago. Her eyes shut and she hurried herself across the room, plugged it in. There was a message from Shannen.

  It told her that he'd be home in an hour, if she wanted to talk about dinner. It also was sent two hours ago. She pressed the button to call him and waited while the phone rang in her hands.

  When he didn't pick up, she could have taken the hint, she knew. She could have waited for him to call her back, since he was probably absolutely fine and had been held back for something. That was the reasonable part of her brain talking, but the reasonable part of her brain had been beaten on by a screaming headache that lasted until she was past ready for dinner. She pressed the button to redial.

  The phone went to voicemail again, and at that point, right or wrong, Caroline could feel herself upgrading the entire issue from 'nothing to worry about' to 'quite a bit of worry on the menu.'

  Her stomach twisted up and she forced herself to take a breath. She looked outside, as if that were going to change something. Sure enough, his car hadn't pulled up to its usual spot, in the street in front of the house. She pinched her face into a frown, went back over to the phone and typed out a message with her hands.

  'Where are you?'

  She didn't know why she thought there was any chance of getting a response, but she forced herself to believe it in spite of everything. There wasn't any other choice.

  A minute passed in excruciatingly slowness, and she knew that in a minute she was going to start to panic again. She held that part of her back. He was delayed by something, and she was worrying for no reason. She called the phone again.

  The first ring was nothing. He wouldn't answer before the phone rang, she knew, but even then she ticked it off on her fingers as if it represented something to worry about, and she knew that in spite of herself it did worry her that he hadn't picked up the phone.

  The second ring was nothing, as well. It was rare that someone picked up the phone on the second ring. She ticked it off. Only someone sitting by the phone waiting for the call could pick up after one ring, and two meant that they were unusually prepared.

  The third ring had her worrying again. She ticked it off and rapped her fingernails against the counter hard, the loud 'click' resounding through the kitchen. It stung but she ignored the pain. It was nothing compared to the worry that was starting to build up in her stomach, after all.

  When the phone rang a fourth time she tried to swallow her worries, but it didn't work. She ticked off number four on her hand. In two more rings the phone would transfer to voicemail and she'd have to accept that whatever was holding him up, it was also preventing her tenant, her roommate, and very nearly the man she'd falling into bed with from answering.

  "Answer, God damn it," she said out loud. The phone clicked and the sound of a phone being shuffled around answered her.

  "Shannen?"

  If he were there, he didn't respond. She said his name again, and waited for a response.

  "Hey," he said finally. He sounded wrong, in so many ways that she couldn't begin to start counting them off. "I'm almost home."

  The attempt he made, however feeble, to pretend that he was fine, didn't work. Not even a little bit. Caroline's jaw set and she rapped her fingernail against the counter top again.

  "What happened?"

  "I don't really want to talk about it," he answered. That sounded less wrong, at least. He never wanted to talk about anything, and the more important that it was that he tell her what was going on, the less likely it was that he would talk to her about it.

  But his voice still sounded wrong. He sounded tired, he sounded distance, and worst of all, he sounded hurt. She forced herself into work mode as she heard the sound of his car growling loudly down the street. She hung up the phone and was out the door in time to see him pull up at a crawl, ease the car into its place, and draw up to a stop.

  The car cut off pathetically, and he eased himself off the seat and out of the car. Caroline made her way across the lawn in time to see him stumble and fall forward towards the street. His eyes failed to focus on her as he turned to regard her coming towards him, but he did manage to catch himself on the hood and slump forward.

  The black opalescent paint job failed to show whatever it was that he was leaving behind with his hand prints. His skin, on the other hand, didn't have any problem showing the bright red that covered his hands.

  Everything with Shannen, she thought, was hard. He made it hard for her, apparently savoring the entire hunt with her. This, on the other hand, was easy. She'd been practicing for a scenario like this since she got out of high school. Finally, Shannen had found something that was easy for her, and he'd only had to lose a quart of blood to do it.

  21

  Shannen laid up on the couch and Caroline stared at him warily.

  "You should be in a hospital."

  He shook his head. "I'm not going to a hospital," he told her. His voice was hard. "I'm fine."

  She took a deep breath and reminded herself that he wasn't entirely wrong. There was blood, no doubt, and he had to have been in a lot of pain. But he was at least managing it alright, and she couldn't tell if there was any breakage in his bones.

  He swallowed hard and she could see the pain shoot through him as he did it.

  "Do you want to talk about what happened?"

  "No," he answered. "I want to get something to eat. I haven't eaten all day. Can you get me something to eat?"

  She looked at him with an exasperated expression that she knew she should have already been past. It was entirely in his character, she knew, and it shouldn't have been any kind of surprise. It wasn't, but she couldn't deny the frustration that had build up in her.

  "I can get you something to eat if you'll go to the hospital."

  "Why? I've got the best nurse in the world right here."

  "I can't get you a blood transfusion, for one."

  He shrugged and smiled. The blood that had dried in his mouth made it a ghoulish sight, but compared to how he'd looked twenty minutes ago he looked as healthy as a newborn baby. "Doesn't the body do that all on its own?"

  "You want to keep training, right?"

  He shrugged. "That's not going to be a problem."

  She took a deep breath and shut her eyes. The headache that had been plaguing her the entire day, it seemed, was nothing more than preparation for the much greater, much more worrying headaches that were to come.

  "You shouldn't be doing anything at all, Shannen. I should have you tied down to a bed for two weeks."

  He waggled his eyebrows at her. "I can think of circumstances where I wouldn't be remotely upset about that."

  "I'm not joking. You were stabbed."

  "That's not true," he lied. She knew he was lying, and the look on his face said that he knew she knew, but hoped she was going to believe him. It was almost endearing.

  "You absolutely were stabbed, so don't you try to lie to me, Shannen. Now if you're not going to tell me what you were stabbed over, I'm not going to push it, but…"

  "But what?"

  "But I don't think a home suture kit is going to get the job done, is what! And if you start moving around, no matter how good the stitching is, and it isn't very good, it's going to tear right open again!"

  He looked down at his chest. He'd been lucky, not to have taken the point of the blade in his lung. But somehow, that luck seemed to fit with every other part of him. He was a lucky sort of man, it seemed, and there was just no way around it.

  "Don't be so hard on yourself," he told her after a second. "The stitches are great. Some of the best I've ever had."

  Caroline rolled her eyes and stalked out of the room, then thought better of it and stalked right back in. "Don't try to flatter me, Mister. I'm not going to bend over for you like you want."

  "I don't think I'd be very good if you just be
nt over. You'd probably have to be on top, just this once."

  Caroline rolled her eyes, but the thought was strangely intriguing, in spite of the fact that she knew, and he knew, he was in no shape at all.

  "I'm not going to indulge your little fantasies, Shannen. Just lay there and think about how to be a good patient, for once in your life."

  He barked a laugh. "Good patient? You're kidding yourself."

  "I know I am, but I have to pretend to keep my sanity intact," she answered, her voice caught up in frustration she hadn't realized was even there.

  "Oh, don't be like that," he offered. "I won't cause any trouble."

  Caroline scoffed. "No? You expect me to believe that?"

  "I don't expect you to believe anything. I was hoping you'd order some pizza or something, though, if we're not going out. I'm really starved. Come on, just a little?"

  She closed her eyes and then opened them again. "Really. Pizza, at a time like this. Aren't you supposed to be on a taper or something?"

  Shannen shrugged. "I can burn a little thing like that, no problem."

  "Without training?"

  "Who said anything about not training?" The smile on his face told her that he thought he was being a perfectly cute rascal, and she hated to admit that she agreed with him. He ought to have been smarter, he ought to have been a little more concerned about his own health. But apparently that wasn't in the cards.

  "What do you want on it? I'm serious about not training, but if you really want a pizza…"

  "Oh, everything," he said, as if it were the most perfectly normal thing in the world. As if he'd said 'whatever you want.'

  "Everything?"

  "Yeah. Trash can or something. I forget what they called it."

  A line formed itself between her eyebrows. "Anything else?"

  "Depends. They have good bread sticks wherever you're calling?"

  "Do you want them or not?"

  "Sure," he said. His voice was mild, but no doubt in an effort to please her he settled down into the couch a little further, leaning his head against the pillow behind it and crossing his legs at the ankle where they hung off the other arm of the couch.

  "If I call, you've got to behave yourself."

  He smiled at her and nodded. "Of course, Master. I'll be good, you'll see."

  Some part of her thought of a children's book she'd read once, about giving a mouse a cookie. He was an awfully sweet mouse, Shannon. She ought to have turned him away, slapped that sarcastic grin off his face and let him know who was boss. Instead, she added cookies to the end of the order.

  22

  Caroline watched her roommate, a man who was decidedly not her lover in spite of how she thought of him. In spite of her best efforts and his, as well, as far as she could tell. He shouldn't have been drinking, but then again, she wasn't about to give him anything for the pain, either, aside from aspirin.

  And besides that, as he continually reminded her, she was right there in case something went wrong. She could take him to the hospital, induce vomiting, whatever was necessary to make sure he didn't die right there in front of her.

  Like everything that he did he seemed to think it was some kind of terribly entertaining game. She didn't find the game nearly as funny as he seemed to, but she wasn't about to scream at him any more than was absolutely necessary. So instead she took another sip from the long-neck bottle in her hand and tried to let it take the edge of the day off.

  Tomorrow, of course, she'd be regretting it. Like she regretted most decisions that she made as the result of a particularly long and hard day. There was one that she managed to avoid, at least for now. He was too injured to make a move on her for at least another twenty minutes.

  "So tell me," she said. "I saved your life, I'd say you owe me."

  "Owe you what exactly?"

  "An explanation," she said. He shrugged and shook his head.

  "There's nothing to explain. This little thing is nothing. A simple misunderstanding, nothing more to tell."

  "Not about that," she said. She chewed on the words for a minute before she continued. "I don't get you, you know that?"

  "Who says there's anything to get?"

  She snorted. "I'm sure there isn't. It's better to be dumb, remember? Well, I don't imagine you ever had trouble with that!"

  He smiled. "Nope. Never the least bit. But what don't you understand?"

  "You. You're a fighter, right?"

  "Sure."

  "Legally, right?"

  He shrugged. "I mean most of the time, sure."

  "Most of the time?" She raised an eyebrow and tried to give him a look that suggested that he should continue with that train of thought, but if he noticed it, he was also ignoring her. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "It means whatever it means. I don't know. Don't ask me questions you don't want to know the answer to."

  "Don't try to be mysterious, it doesn't suit you."

  "Oh no?"

  "Not at all," she said. Another drink. It wasn't her preferred beverage by any stretch, but she had to admit that the local micro-brews had their charm. Something about being made locally made them taste better than the sensations on her tongue.

  "What would you say suits me?"

  "I'm pretty sure you'd tear your stitches if I told you."

  "That good, huh?"

  "That's how it is," she told him, took another drink, and gave a wink. He snorted and then let out a groan and his hand moved towards his stomach. She let him do it, conscious of the fact that if things started getting worse, he would let her know. "You alright?"

  "I'm fine."

  "If you hurt yourself acting like an idiot…" she waited a moment for the words to sink in. "So why do you do it anyways?"

  He looked over at her with a strange, distant, almost vacant expression. "Do what?"

  "Fight." She rolled her eyes and when they settled back on him, she was looking harder and had to admit, perhaps a bit meaner as well. "Why do you fight?"

  "I don't know," he answered. "Just born this way, I guess."

  "There are a thousand other things you could be doing so don't try to pull some 'just the way I am' crap. You've got to have a reason, now just, I don't know, tell me. It's not like you're in a hurry to get out of here."

  He let out a long breath and looked far away. There was something strange in his voice when he started to finally speak. "Alright, fine. You know when you're in school, and they hand out those surveys? What do you want to be when you grow up?"

  "Sure," she said. They'd never given her such a survey, but if they had then she'd have known, so there was that, at least. "Why, you've always wanted to be Mike Tyson?"

  "No," he said. His voice was flat and not nearly as amused as she had hoped he would be, but there was nothing that she could do about that but to let him get all sour. "Not really."

  "And yet, here you are."

  "I wanted to be a lion, specifically. But my second choice was police and firefighter."

  "It's the uniform that gets 'em," she said. "You wouldn't believe what it does to a girl."

  "I could stop by a costume shop some time," he offered.

  "I don't think it would do much."

  "No? Anyways, so where was I?"

  "You didn't grow up to be a firefighter," she said. "Nor, I'd stake my reputation as a medical practitioner on this, did you become a lion."

  "No, I guess I didn't. So I was about sixteen when things turned south a little."

  "What's that mean?"

  "Well, my Dad died, and my Mom…" He let out a long breath. "I don't know. Shouldn't speak ill of the dead and all that."

  "What happened?"

  "Long story much, much shorter than absolutely necessary? I dropped out."

  "Oh."

  "It happens. There was a lot going on and I needed to be home more than I needed to be in school."

  "And then what?"

  "I fell in with the wrong crowd, they got me involved in the fighting game,
first helping them pass messages organizing underground stuff, then I stuck my big ol' hands into the ring and made some money there."

  "I see." Caroline was starting to see why maybe he hadn't really wanted to get into the story, but it was too late now. She was already invested and had already put him on the spot. She'd already opened up Pandora's box, there wasn't going to be any closing it again.

  "My Mom spent it. So I kept making more, and before I knew it, I had people coming along asking if I wanted to turn things straight."

  "And you did?"

  "Damn right I did. I've got no interest in having to worry about the damn cops showing up every time I try to go out and make a buck."

  She pinched her lips together. There was a second part to the question, and the more that she thought about it the more she didn't really want to ask. The more that she didn't want to ask, though, the more that she started to realize that it wasn't going to be clear until she did.

  "So… I don't think most professional fighters are getting stabbed on the regular."

  "No," he agreed. "They're generally not."

  "Wanna tell me what really happened tonight?"

  "If we're in the middle of story time, then I guess we'll start from the beginning. What do you remember about last night?"

  She blinked. "Remember? Last night?"

  The look in his eyes shifted in the space of a heartbeat. No more flatness, no more bored expression. No more vacant look. He was angry, and he didn't seem to be afraid that she would see it in his eyes.

  "Nothing at all?"

  "I remember you came in and got me."

  "Just a big blank space?"

  "Uhh," she said. "It didn't have to be anything like that," she offered. "There are all sorts of reasons that I could be forgetting the night before. It's really not a big deal."

  He cursed. "Not a big deal, my ass. If I ever get my hands on that guy, I'll–"

  She took a drink, and was surprised to find the bottle empty. "You want another?"

  He drank deeply and handed her the now-empty bottle from beside his hip. "Yes, please."