Saint Jude: Los Angeles Bad Boys
Page 1
Sain Jude
Los Angeles Bad Boys
Frankie Love
Contents
SAINT JUDE: LOS ANGELES BAD BOYS
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
CLAIMED BY THE MOUNTAIN MAN
WILD & TRUE: A Frankie Love Escape…
SAINT JUDE: LOS ANGELES BAD BOYS
“I need her in a way that won’t take no for answer.”
When Catalina walks in the door, my heart stops.
She’s my best friend’s little sister, Etta’s babysitter,
and hot as hell.
The timing is all wrong.
She’s too young, lost, and doesn’t know what she wants.
I have a baby and don’t need another person to take care of.
But then I take her against the wall and she finds her way into my motherf*cking heart.
The truth is, I’m the lost cause, and Catalina might be the one person who can save me.
I came to LA needing to escape an a-hole who was using me.
Six months later I end up at Jude’s house.
I’m a hot mess … but Jude? He’s hotter.
And walking into his home, seeing that Etta’s mother skipped town,
I realize I’m not the only mess around.
It starts as a one-afternoon stand— two people craving connection.
But quickly becomes more.
Trouble is, my past is catching up with me.
We might not have forever — but we have today.
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Edited by Larks and Katydids
Cover by Mayhem Cover Creations
Copyright © 2016 by Frankie Love
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or 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.
Chapter One
Falling in love fucking sucks.
No one tells you that. Or at least, no one I listen to told me that.
But damn, it’s the truth.
And standing in my driveway, watching Rachel throw her tote bags into the car with a man I don’t know—not even stopping to think about her daughter—I realize that I never loved this woman.
It was Etta who taught me about love.
When Etta was born, I knew I was a goner. She was small and precious, and would sleep in my arms. It was a love that I could contain, that I could manage. That I could literally hold in my hands.
But there’s a lot of pressure with that amount of responsibility. Etta needs me. I can’t fuck it up. Her life is on the line.
And that terrifies me. That is what sucks.
Especially now.
Now, I’m all this six-month old girl has got—because her mother is determined to go, and God knows Rachel is not a force that can be stopped.
“I’m done with this life, Jude,” Rachel shouts, apparently having determined that I’m the root of her problems. Me, the guy who’s fucking taken care of her for the past eighteen months without asking for a single thing in return.
Me, the guy who would take care of her forever because I don’t quit on people, even when I should.
Especially not when that person is my daughter’s mother.
“Why today, of all days, do you choose to go?” I ask, wanting to understand how she could just up and leave on a random Tuesday morning while Etta is asleep in her crib.
“Because Conrad here promised to take me on a road trip.” Rachel is high, her glassy eyes and stringy hair the epitome of a mess, her mind already made up. She hasn’t wanted to be here for weeks. She never came home last night, and now, at six a.m., she shows up, strung out and packing her clothes.
“Etta needs her mother,” I try. “You need help, Rachel. Let me help you.” I’m already thinking about the rehab centers I’ve called, the ones who are willing to take her any time she will admit herself.
I’m guessing that now, with Conrad behind his wheel, smoking his damn cigarette, smirking at our domestic exchange, she must think she has better prospects.
Fuck this shit. I know Etta and I are the best things that have ever happened to Rachel, but she’s so hell bent on fucking up every good thing she has going.
“Etta doesn’t need me,” Rachel says, frowning, not having any of it. “She has you. Saint Jude. You fucking think you can save every lost cause in the world. But I’m done, I’m out. I don’t need your saving.”
I want to scream, punch something. Fucking show her that she’s being unreasonable. Crazy.
I don’t want her to stay for me … I want her to stay for Etta. I want her to get cleaned up and learn what truly matters.
Instead, Rachel opens the passenger door, slides inside. She offers me a small noncommittal wave, before letting Conrad drive her away.
“Fuck!” I scream to the sky.
How the hell did I get here, to today? My life is a joke, a fucking dick tease where I’m the one left with blue balls.
Left wanting.
I’m here, in a fancy-ass house in Los Angeles, with more on my plate than I can fucking handle.
Watching her leave down the road in another man’s car, I swear it: I’m over women. Over the drama and the fucking bullshit and the games and the disappearing and the falling in and out. And the falling apart.
I am over women.
And I swear: besides Etta, I’ll never have one for longer than a single night ever again.
Going back into the house, I hear Etta stirring. It’s a solid hour before she usually wakes, but maybe somehow she knows that her mom just left her. Left us.
Still, I can’t help wondering how my life got to this point. How did I start off owning this town, and end up here?
Eight months ago I made a film with Hollywood Holden and Oscar-nominated actress Bexley Madden. And now? Now I’m looking at a six-month-old baby girl, who looks nothing like me: different eyes, different nose, different hair.
And her mom is gone.
Getting tied up with Rachel changed everything. My friends thought I should have walked away in the first place, and never let a woman like Rachel into my life. Before Etta, Rachel was a model with a handful of high-end contracts, but every time she was close to making a real name for herself she sabotaged her opportunities. She was a messed up, beautiful wreck of a girl with more problems than I could handle.
But I wanted to help her, plain and simple. I don’t know if that makes me a fool or a saint.
Maybe I do have some complex about wanting to save people, take ca
re of people. But is that such a fucking bad thing? To want to fix things? Make things right? Better?
No one did that for me as a kid and growing up, always fending for myself, fucking sucked.
I can’t go back and change things for myself, but I can do my best to change things for the people around me. To step in. Step up.
But nothing’s better now than it was when Rachel and I met. All that effort, all that work to take care of her. For what?
Etta’s crying, ready for a diaper change and a bottle. I can give her that. I want to give her that. I swear I’ll give her that for now, forever. For as long as she needs me.
A few years back, I was such a different person. I spent my whole life being a so-called bad boy. I had it all: women, booze, and a cock that always got me what I wanted.
But now? As long as I have Etta, I’ll never be that man again.
Etta sees me through the rungs of the crib. She knows I’m watching her. She sees me.
I just hope I’m enough.
Because, hell—right now, I’m all she’s got.
Chapter 2
If I watch one more episode of Real Housewives of Atlanta I’m seriously going to … okay, I don’t know what I’m going to do, exactly. And I don’t want to be some melodramatic girl who’s tossing out ridiculous ultimatums, but the truth is I’m just bored out of my freaking mind.
It’s not a secret. I’ve been lying on this couch in my brother’s guesthouse for six months straight. Six months where I basically quit … everything.
Completely.
I didn’t apply to any film program. That was just a bullshit excuse to get out of Yuri’s clutches. I needed to get the eff out of Berkeley, and this seemed like the surest, quickest bet.
It was the right call. My mom moved to town a few months before I did, and my big brother Holden … well, what was he going to do? Not let me move into his empty, rent-free, gorgeous oceanfront guesthouse? I mean he’s a total douche, but he’s not that big of an asshole. He’s still my big brother.
The truth is, I’ve always been in Holden’s shadow. How could you not live there when your brother is a narcissistic, womanizing, demigod of a man?
And no, this is not some opening chapter about a girl who has some stepbrother fantasies—this is not romance novels circa 2015. I’m talking about the fact that my brother is basically the most sought-after bachelor in America.
At least, he was before he hooked up with Bexley—who, I might add, is really adorable and way too good for him, but I guess in some ways they are perfect for one another. The yin to his yang, the good to his bad. The sweet to his … salty?
But eww, that is getting way too personal.
I don’t even know why I’m thinking about them, but it’s a commercial break and I’m drinking warm Diet Coke, eating SmartPop, and wondering what the actual fuck is happening to my life.
The biggest issue here isn’t even that I need to do something. The biggest issue is that Holden is going to walk through the guesthouse doors in about one hour and stage an intervention.
How do I know this?
Mostly because yesterday he came here and said, “If I come into your room after I get off work tomorrow”—which, sidebar, get off work is code for hanging out with his personal trainer—“and you’re still in the same sweatpants as yesterday, and haven’t showered, I’m calling in backup.”
Backup means my mom will come here and try to drag out what happened to cause me to go into this spiral of self-destruction.
Maybe I am trying to sabotage my life. I mean, my mom coming over here should be enough of a threat. Instead, I’m still shoveling popcorn down my throat, as if the fact the bag says 100 cal per 100 cups makes it go anywhere besides my ass. Ignoring the fact that Diet Coke is basically the equivalent of guzzling GMOs. Ignoring the fact that coming face-to-face with my problems is the last thing I want to do.
I click off the TV and bury myself under the covers of my bed.
Anyone who was watching me at this exact moment would think This girl is an entitled brat. And they’d probably be right—except they don’t know my whole story.
My whole story equals an asshole of an ex-boyfriend who pretty much destroyed all of my confidence.
Which is fucking depressing, considering I’m a newly-minted twenty-two-year-old. The world is my horizon, or oysters in my hand, or whatever the hell it is people say; I could do anything.
Could being the operative word here, though, isn’t it? Could changes everything.
Right now I could get out of bed, take a shower, be presentable, and not have my brother moaning about me going back to school or getting a job. He says he won’t let me live off his riches forever. Which, I mean, I get on some level. But the dude is a freaking millionaire.
This house alone, right? Six thousand square feet of heaven on the coast of California.
But even with this inspirational backdrop, I feel stuck. I gave my heart to a man who had no clue what to do with it, who ripped it to shreds. He broke me down and broke me apart.
Yeah, getting mixed up with Yuri was pretty much the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, but you can’t exactly take back the things in your past, can you?
If you could, I’d obviously change a few things. I’d never go out with a crime lord and become his pseudo-sex-slave. I’d never let him use me for nine months when I could have been going to college like a proper undergrad.
Or, at the very least, I’d be honest with my family about what was actually going on. But I didn’t, because Yuri did one thing really well. He made me feel vital. Useful. Necessary.
And that was enough to keep me under his thumb. But then I wanted to go visit my brother, and Yuri did not like that idea.
In fact, he forbade me from leaving him.
That was the tipping point for me. Because feeling wanted is important, but feeling trapped? Not so much.
Knowing I needed to leave Yuri for good, I made an excuse to my brother, and moved down here without telling Yuri. But once I got here, I couldn’t shake the disappointment. I’d let myself get caught up with a man who hurt me.
At some point I must fall asleep under the duvet cover, because the next thing I know Holden is here, in my bedroom. Thank God I’m actually dressed, and don’t have like, you know, a vibrator between my legs or something. That would be pretty much mortifying.
To clarify, the mortifying thing would not be that I was taking care of things—that’s pretty much a given these days, considering no one is around to give me a lady boner. The mortifying thing would have been my brother catching me taking care of said things.
Okay. Side-tangent, point being: Holden is here looking at me with a scowl on his face and probably thinking the worst.
Okay, not probably. Now he’s screaming.
So definitely thinking the worst.
“Are you shitting me right now, Cat?” Holden yells.
“You’re not my mom.”
“Yeah, but I can call Mom to come over here. Is that what you want?”
“I don’t know what I want. If I did, this would all be a hell of a lot easier.”
“Cat,” Holden says. “I love you. And not just because you’re my sister. I love that you’re smart and talented—”
“Oh, come on,” I say, tossing my blanket to the floor as I stand. With my hands on my hips, I prepare to lay into him. “I’m doing everything I can to just, you know, keep myself together.”
“This is what you call keeping it together?” Holden points around the room, incredulous.
“Okay, not exactly keeping it together—but, Holden, of course you don’t get it. You have life all figured out. You’ve always had life all figured out. You knew what you wanted to do, and went and got it. Me? I’ve never had a freaking clue about anything. So yeah, I’m eating SmartPop in yesterday’s pajamas and drinking lukewarm soda. So sue me. So kick me out. So send me to live with Mom. I get it; I’m a drag. But it’s like, you’re asking me to be someone I don’t kn
ow how to be.”
“Cat,” Holden says. “I’m not trying to make you be anything. I just want you to be something. There’s a difference. I’m not asking the world of you.”
I groan. “You know, now that you mention it, I’ll just snap my fingers and have a brand-new life dropped into my lap.” I literally snap my fingers for dramatic effect. “Because, you know, life is that easy.”
Holden’s phone rings. He looks at the number and then answers it, holding up a finger as if I don’t understand the concept of him needing a sec.
“Let me think…. Damn, no, actually Bexley has a photo shoot this afternoon, that’s probably why you couldn’t get a hold of her.” Holden frowns. “What do you need exactly?” He listens, and then nods, eyes on me. “No problem, bro. Catalina is here and she was just asking me how she could help.”
Holden pockets his phone, smirking the way only an older brother can.
“What?” I ask.
“You said you wanted something to”—Holden snaps his fingers dramatically—“magically appear?”
I cross my arms, waiting for him to finish.
“Jude needs a babysitter,” he says. “This afternoon. He has a meeting. I told him you were free.”
“Really?” I swallow, knowing my priorities really are fucked up. The first thing I think when he mentions Jude’s name is not that he needs help with his six-month old daughter.
My first thought is that Jude is hot, and every time I see him I can’t help but think about ways he could work me over.
“Thanks, sis,” Holden says, grinning, as if he’s won this round. “I’ll text you his address. He needs you in an hour.”
I smile tightly, because what else am I supposed to do? I may be a self-indulgent loser, but I’m not a complete bitch.
“And where’s Rachel?” I ask.
“Jude didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”
“I guess I should take a shower,” I say, looking down at myself.
Holden just nods, waving me off. “That’s a good start,” he says, walking toward the door.