Erin watched Xavier as he laughed, collecting more pebbles from the bank. She had news to give him.
“What are you looking at?” he asked her when he caught her staring. He jiggled his butt in front of her to tease her into breaking into giggles. He came over to give her a hug, but when he started pulling away, he caught sight of a serious look on her face.
“Wanna tell me what’s going on?” he chucked one of the pebbles toward the lake but didn’t look to see where it had landed.
“I have to get back to work, Xavier. I can’t stay cooped up here with you forever.” Erin bit down on her lip as she spoke, already detecting annoyance in him. He had been trying to avoid this conversation for the past few days.
“You promised we won’t speak about it till the end of the week, Erin. Can we just enjoy the day?” Like a child, he was digging the ground with his shoes. She almost wanted to forget about the important decisions, hug him and stroke his head.
“I have to be back at work by the end of the week. I need to make arrangements now. I can’t keep postponing it.” She tried to remain as calm and collected as possible. He looked up at her sharply.
“You don’t need my permission, Erin. Leave if you want to leave. I can’t stop you.”
“It’s not a question of wanting to leave. I have to. For my work. Just like you should go back to Los Angeles and stop trying to run away. It’s time you took charge of what you want to do.” She reached for him and held onto his arm, but his muscles were tensed. Even though his voice remained steady, it was easy for her to tell that he was now upset.
“So what you’re saying is that we’ll never see each other again?” he spoke after several minutes of silence. He had turned away from her so that she could see him in profile now. His shaggy blue-black beard illuminated in outline by the orange light of the setting sun.
“What do you want, Xavier? You’re the celebrity here. I’m just a simple math teacher.” She let go of his arm and he turned to look at her. They held each other’s gaze for a few seconds till he looked away.
“I don’t want to go back to LA. I don’t want you to go back to Seattle and I most definitely don’t want us to be apart.” When he said it, she smiled. She would never have admitted it, but this is what she wanted to hear from him. Despite having spent three intimate weeks with him, Xavier Cowen was still an enigma to her. She knew he was fond of her, found her irresistible in bed, but she could never be sure what she meant to him, seriously. Now she was convinced. She could see it in his eyes, and the way he refused to look at him.
“I’m glad you say that because I have some news that I believe you should know about,” she said and he looked at her with a worried expression. Erin didn’t want too much time to elapse, to give him a chance to prepare himself. “I think I’m pregnant. In fact, I’m sure of it,” she said, keeping her gaze steady on him. She watched as his expression changed from surprise to disbelief to panic and then a struggle to calm himself.
“When did you realize?” Those were his first words. Erin wasn’t so sure if it was the right decision anymore.
“A few days ago?” She hung her head down as if embarrassed. He took a few seconds, and then came forward, hooking his forefinger under her chin. He lifted up her head gently and craned her neck backward so that she could look up at him.
“All the more reason to not go,” he said.
“What am I going to do then?” She was seriously asking him. She didn’t want a hypothetical answer.
“Quit your job. Move in with me in LA.” He was smiling now, a glimmer of excitement in his eyes.
“So you do want to go back? You don’t want to live in the wilderness alone forever?” she was only joking when she said it, but he answered in all seriousness.
“I’m going to be a father now. It’s time I called my agent and have him sign me up for a few casting calls.” He was serious but smiling now, almost speaking to himself.
“Are you serious? What kind of films are these?” She was excited too. She hadn’t seen him seriously consider or talk about his work.
“Some films that won’t pay much but are the kind that I’ve always wanted to do. If I’m going to be a dad, I might as well start building my legacy.”
THE END
MC Romance
What the Outlaw Demands
Samantha Leal
Copyright ©2015 by Samantha Leal. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Thank you so much for your interest in my work!
1.
Kristin watched the hands of the clock ticking opposite her. Every second seemed to drag and she bit the edge of her pen as she turned to look out of the office window. After working so hard to get there, now all she wanted to do was run. The thought of spending another week in that place was making her skin crawl.
Outside, in the corridor, she could see the male partners all patting each other on the back and boosting each other’s egos. She was never invited into their little office chats, ones where she could be a part of the boys club. In the center of it was Pete, grinning from ear to ear, taking the odd glance back to her office because he knew she would be watching.
Fucking Pete, she thought.
She knew at home later he would be full of it. He’d swagger in, puffing his chest and try to make her feel inferior. It was how it always went… She got ignored and he made her feel like crap about it. She knew she needed to change firms…and boyfriends…but she had wanted to be a partner at Anderson and Coleridge Law so much that she just didn’t think she had it in her to walk away.
She realized she was holding the pen so tight, it was almost snapping in her hand.
“Shit,” she breathed out and dropped it on the desk. She was going to have to calm down. She didn’t need to work herself up like this… She was bigger than them and she wasn’t going to rise to it. Instead, she got to her feet, walked over to the door and lowered the blind so the pane of glass allowing her to see the little boys club grooming each other in the hallway was blocked out. She went back to her desk, sat down and closed her eyes.
She was reaching her limit. She and Pete had been together for almost a year, and while it had started out really well, it had rapidly declined into something rather sinister. Pete was a control freak. He loved making her feel inferior, and even though she was a strong woman who could see right through him, there were times when she was afraid of what he was capable of. She could hear him out in the hallway, laughing and joking with the other male partners. She was the only female partner at the firm and was regularly left out, and although she was used to it, she was still struggling to accept it. Deep down she knew it was time to move on.
Her phone rang and made her jump. “Hello?” she answered.
“Hi, Kristin,” her PA Sally said from the other end. “Did you finish with the paperwork for the Green Case?”
“Just give me five more minutes and I’ll bring it out to you,” she said with a sigh. She hated to admit it, but her work really was starting to suffer. She could never seem to keep her mind on the job.
She looked down and scanned the explosion of files on the desk in front of her and wanted to scream. She rubbed her eyes and massaged her temples with her fingers.
“I need to get out of here,” she whispered.
She got to her feet and looked out across the skyline. It was almost five and the sun looked like it was already on its way down, which was impossible for summer, but she felt it all the same.
“I guess it’s always night somewhere,” she said to herself.
Her telephone rang again and she jumped. She turned around and grabbed the receiver. “Just five more minutes, Sally,” she snapped.
“No,” Sally said quietly, clearly taken aback by her boss’s tone. “It’s a cal
l from the police department. They have someone in custody who wants to talk to you.”
“What?” she said rubbing her temples again. “Can’t it wait? We have a duty lawyer who could deal with that.”
“They asked for you specifically,” she said nervously. “The cop said his name was Dan Lockhart.”
Kristin paused for a moment, her heart rising into her throat at the sound of the name… A name she hadn’t heard for years.
“Did you say Dan Lockhart?” she repeated as she sat back down at her desk.
“That’s what the cop told me, yeah,” Sally confirmed.
“Okay,” Kristin said quietly, “Put him on.”
The line beeped, and there was a click before Kristin could hear shallow breathing on the other end of the line.
“Dan?” she whispered, still unsure of whether she believed it.
“Kristin?” he replied.
Her skin went cold when she heard his voice, but she instantly found herself smiling.
“How the heck are you?” he asked, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“I’m wonderful,” she smiled. “I take it things aren’t so great for you?”
“Haha,” he chuckled. “They’re certainly not… I could do with your expertise.”
“Which station are you at?” she asked as she grabbed a pen.
“South,” he sounded as if he was smoking. “I would normally deal with this sort of thing myself, but I thought it might be a nice excuse to see you again after all these years.”
“Just stay put and don’t say anything. You can explain to me when I get there.” She hung up the phone and grabbed her jacket.
The Green case file would have to wait…
2.
Dan Lockhart… she hadn’t heard a word from him in over ten years, and here he was calling her as if it were only yesterday. She was a fool for going down there. She should have told him she was busy, or that she didn’t deal with criminal cases anymore… He was probably in hot water, after all. Hell, she should have told him anything. But there was something drawing her to him. Just hearing his voice again after all that time had instantly struck a chord.
She slid into the driver’s seat of her Mercedes and fastened her seat belt. It was dark in the firm’s underground parking lot, and the summer heat was intense and stuffy. She started the engine and put the AC on full blast before she looked at herself in the review mirror. Her heart was pounding and her pupils were dilated. In a rush of memory she recalled the last time she had seen him… She remembered it all…
***
Growing up, Kristin had fallen hard and fast for Dan. He was her next-door neighbor and one of the hottest guys at her high school. He was a few years older than her and she had watched him from afar while she matured. She had seen him go from being the boy next door to something else entirely…something frightening. She had heard the arguments. She had watched him come home tattooed and liquored up, and saw the bruises and the scars. Whatever he was doing, it was bad. And what surprised her even more than the fact that he kept doing it…was the fact that she liked it.
He never seemed to really realize that she existed until one afternoon when she came home from school when she was about seventeen and he was out on the driveway having a screaming match with his parents. She pulled up in her car and parked it down the street before meekly walking up the path to her front door. He was screaming, spitting hate and anger at them. He had a red raw scar right down his face from the corner of his eye to his chin, and she knew she was gawping but she couldn’t stop.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” he spat as she tried to reach her front door and pretend like none of it was happening.
His parents rounded on him, his mother trying to pull him back from the truck that was waiting for him. Inside, a man tipped his hat and smoked a cigarette while laughing and cranking up the heavy rock he was listening to.
“Please, Dan!” his mother called. “Don’t do this!”
He stuck his middle finger up at her and strode down to the truck before pulling open the door and jumping inside. The driver pulled out of the driveway with a wheel spin and they shouted something at Kristin that sounded like “Show us your pussy!” and then they were gone.
Kristin went inside, flushed red and turned on. She had no idea what had just happened, but it had woken something inside of her. From that moment on, Dan Lockhart, the dangerous boy from next door, was all she could think about.
He came back a week later, black and blue and miserable. She watched him from her bedroom window as he lay in the backyard sunbathing with his shirt off, exposing his rippling abs and tanned chest. His tattoos were fierce and they covered him from neck to waist. Kristin bit her lip as she watched him and wondered what it would feel like to be swept up in his arms. When he caught her looking, she was so embarrassed she didn’t know how she would ever face him. But luckily for her, Dan wasn’t as shy.
The following evening, she was down in her own backyard and he stuck his head over the fence and dangled a bottle of beer.
“Care to join?” he asked her.
Kristin was a mess of nerves and excitement inside, and although she knew she should stay away and go back inside, she just couldn’t. She had to get to know him some more.
She went to his yard, and they sat on deck chairs and drank straight from the bottle. He barely spoke to her, but he eyed her continuously and kept flashing her a mischievous smile. She knew it was the start of something, but she also knew she couldn’t let it happen. She was a good girl. She was on course for bigger and better things than her dumb small town, and she couldn’t let a bad boy hold her back… No matter how much she wanted it.
She went to leave, but he pushed her up against the wall of his garage. “You’re all I’ve thought about since the moment we moved here, did you know that?” he said. His knuckles were skinned raw and the smell of stale smoke clung to him, oozing out of his pores. Instead of turning her off, it made her even hotter for him.
“I’m going to get you one day,” he grinned. “Little Miss Good Girl… you’re not even going to know what’s hit you.”
Kristin’s heart pounded as she ran back home and locked herself in her bedroom. She stripped naked and ran a cold shower before jumping in and cooling off. Dan Lockhart was such bad news, the worst kind…
She didn’t seen him again after that night. Her mother told her that he had been arrested and that he’d got involved with a gang. Kristin left for college a year later and trained to be a lawyer. She heard snippets of information from her family and his about what he was up to, and it was never anything good. Their mothers had become good friends, and they regularly chatted about both Kristin and Dan, but the last she had heard, he was heavily involved with bikers and organized crime. When she got the call from him, she was more surprised it hadn’t happened sooner. She was pretty sure she would be the only lawyer he knew.
***
As she pulled up outside of the station, she looked into the mirror again and reapplied her lipstick. It had been over ten years since the night in the yard that summer, but after hearing his voice again, it felt like only ten days. She was excited to see him but also apprehensive. He’d been her first crush and completely forbidden because of his edge and criminal ways. She had no idea what to expect. He could be anyone now. He could be married for all she knew. But there was something deep inside her that had the feeling he was about to make good on his promise.
I’m going to get you one day… Little Miss Good Girl…
3.
Kristin walked into the station and buttoned up the middle of her jacket. She groomed her hair behind her ears with her long, manicured nails and clipped down the hallway in her stiletto heels. There were cops swarming the reception area, and as she placed her briefcase down and announced who she was, a few of them turned to look at her up and down and check her out. She was used to being stared at. Kristin was petite but curvy and had incredibly large breasts. They were
like a bull’s-eye for leery men.
“I thought you were off criminal cases?” a familiar voice chimed in behind her.
Kristin spun around to see Jonny, a cop she was used to dealing with when she had represented the majority of the city’s criminals.
“This is a one-time thing,” she raised her eyebrows. “Take me to Dan Lockhart?”
“Yikes,” Jonny whistled. “Locke, huh?” He shook his head and nodded reluctantly. “If you say so….”
He turned and motioned for her to follow him. She swiped her visitor’s badge from the reception desk and pinned it to the side of her skirt. Jonny slowed down and said discreetly over her shoulder, “What you getting mixed up in that for?”
“Excuse me?” she demanded.
“I know it’s none of my business, but… Well, I mean… Lockhart… you know who he is right?”
Kristin pushed her tongue up under her front teeth.
“Yes,” she said irritated. “He’s my old neighbor.”
“No,” Jonny laughed and pulled her by the forearm to one side. “He’s more than a bit dangerous, Kristin…”
“I’m sure I can handle him.”
“Well, I’m not,” he said seriously.
“Jonny… He’s a client, I’m just doing my job.” She tried to move past him, but he kept his grip on her arm.
“All I’m saying is guys like him don’t need lawyers… even when they are up for murder… Keep your wits about you.”
Kristin stopped and took in what he had said.
Murder.
She took a few deep breaths and nodded her head.
“Like I said, he’s a client… This is business… I’m just here to advise him today.”
BRICK (Forsaken Riders MC Romance Book 17) Page 72
