Steal The CEO's Daughter - A Carny Bad Boy Romance

by Layla Valentine

  Hardy was silent for a few moments. He took a drag of the cigarette and exhaled once, then twice.

  “Okay,” he said, apparently coming to a decision. “We’re going to my friend Riley’s place.”

  “Hold on a second—why would a friend frame you for murder?”

  Hardy scowled at her from the back seat. “It’s a long story,” he said curtly.

  “Well, according to you we’ve got nothing but time, right?”

  Cassandra felt a mixture of genuine curiosity—the same curiosity that had led to her becoming a journalist in the first place—and lingering fear at the fact that she had a convicted murderer in her back seat. The evidence had seemed so clear, and the jury had deliberated for such a long time that she’d had no question about the verdict once it was announced.

  “Riley…” Hardy sighed. He took another drag of his cigarette and continued. “Riley and I grew up in the same town. Tiny place, no one’s ever heard of it. Our fathers worked for the same company, and we were mostly in the same classes in school.”

  “Okay, so you were close,” Cassandra said. She glanced around, unable to shake the feeling that they might currently have someone on their tail. It was still too early for all but the road trippers and the early-shift workers to be on the road. She was ninety percent certain that the person behind her in the lane hadn’t been there an hour before, but she couldn’t be entirely sure.

  “More than close,” Hardy said. “Brothers.”

  “Brothers?” Cassandra wanted to keep him talking. She remembered the flat, stoic gaze that Hardy had turned on her in the courtroom; the way he’d looked in her kitchen over an hour earlier.

  If someone is tailing me, why wouldn’t they just pull us over? Wouldn’t that make sense? Put an end to his escape quickly? But maybe—if someone was pursuing them—they wanted to see where Hardy was going. Would I be considered an accessory? He doesn’t have a weapon. But then again, his whole body is a damn weapon.

  “We lost our virginity the same night,” Hardy said, and Cassandra could almost hear him smile at the memory. “We did everything together—even enlisting in the Navy.”

  Cassandra nodded; in the course of her research for the articles she had written about the Laura Granger case, she’d learned that before his career as a bounty hunter, Jack Hardy had been a Navy SEAL. He’d put his skills to good use after getting out—he was checked out on multiple firearms, had concealed carry permits and marksmanship awards, and knew multiple nonlethal ways to take a person down.

  “Okay, so you grew up together, you were best friends—brothers,” Cassandra corrected herself before Hardy had the chance. “So what happened? Why would he be the one to frame you for a murder? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Everything was good for a long time,” Hardy explained. “We looked out for each other, you know? We had each other’s back.”

  “That makes sense,” Cassandra agreed.

  She glanced at her mirrors and saw the car still behind them. If you’re tailing us, why can’t you just pull us over and have done with it? She wasn’t sure why she felt so paranoid; she wanted her ordeal to be over, but at the same time, the idea of it ending without her finding out anything more than that Hardy had a list of people who he thought might have framed him was frustrating. If she was going to be awake for twenty-four hours or more, Cassandra wanted a good story to tell.

  “So all was well,” she said, glancing over her shoulder.

  “When we were out on deployment, after we got out of basic, we were in the same unit. He saved my life once,” Hardy said, almost absently. “We were on a training exercise out in the desert. Some asshole was doing the wrong thing, totally fucking everything up, and ended up severing an artery in my leg. I was going to bleed out, but Riley was right there. He managed to keep me alive, and keep pressure on the artery, until they could get me stitched up.”

  “He sounds like a good guy.”

  Cassandra pressed her lips together. She had been skeptical all of her life about the “brothers in arms” narrative that she’d heard so many times from members of the military, but it seemed like, in Hardy’s case at least, there might be something to it.

  “He got engaged to his high school sweetheart while we were still in the Navy,” Hardy said.

  He reached around the seat and snagged another cigarette, and Cassandra snatched up her pack to take one for herself. She waved off Hardy’s offer of the lighter and pushed in the electric button-lighter in its socket on her center console. She lit the cigarette when the button popped out, rolling her window down an inch before putting the lighter back into its spot.

  “Okay, I’m still not understanding how your best friend ended up framing you for murder,” Cassandra said.

  “You wanted the story,” Hardy said irritably. “Let me tell it.”

  Images from the coroner’s reports swam up into Cassandra’s memory and she felt her heart beating faster.

  “Fine, go ahead,” she said as calmly as she could.

  “So Riley got engaged,” Hardy told her. “He was totally gone on her—thought the sun shone out of her ass.”

  Cassandra nodded, unsure of whether or not Hardy could see her.

  “I was going to be his best man, of course. Everything was great, Riley had never been happier, all of that.”

  “Honeymoon phase,” Cassandra said quietly. In the corner of her eye, she saw Hardy nodding.

  “Exactly. Well, once he started being on night duty, getting deployed and stuff like that, their situation got more difficult. She had to stay home, of course…” Hardy paused to take a drag of the cigarette. “About six months after they got engaged, things started to go south between them.”

  Cassandra still couldn’t see where the story was heading, but she knew better than to try and hurry Hardy along. She glanced in her mirrors; the car that had been behind her was moving off of the highway, heading to an exit. Cassandra felt a strange wave of relief at its departure.

  “So, what happened then?”

  “Riley stayed in longer than I did,” Hardy explained. “He needed the money and benefits more; he was saving up so he’d have somewhere to take Adrianna once he was out, you know?”

  “That makes sense,” Cassandra said, nodding. She finished off her cigarette and flicked the butt out through the opening in the window.

  “I got out, but obviously we stayed in touch.” Hardy finished his own cigarette and tossed it out of the window. “I was back home, and Adrianna was talking to me on a pretty regular basis. She figured that since I was Riley’s best bud, I was the person to vent to.”

  Cassandra raised an eyebrow at that reasoning; if she were dating someone, she definitely wouldn’t complain to his best friend about anything he was doing. But this was Hardy’s story, and Cassandra decided not to contest his version of the events—not yet at least.

  “About a month after I got out, I was out at a bar,” Hardy said. His words slowed, and Cassandra thought that she could detect the sound of guilt in his voice. “Adrianna comes in, angrier than I’d ever seen her.”

  “Okay, what was she so mad about?” Cassandra checked her mirrors once more. They were on an almost deserted stretch of the highway, coming up on the interchange. “Am I staying on, or changing to one of the other highways?”

  “Keep going straight on,” Hardy said. He paused for a moment before resuming his story. “Adrianna was pissed because she’d found out Riley had slept with a prostitute the weekend before,” he told her.

  “That’s pretty understandable; I’d be pissed, too,” Cassandra said.

  “Well, yeah,” Hardy agreed, and Cassandra could almost hear a smile in his voice. “I figured he might be picking up the occasional escort—he never got as lucky as me when our unit was on shore leave.”

  “Have you used prostitutes before?”

  “No, I never had the need—but I don’t have a problem with the idea, either. The guys in the Navy used to say that one night with a working g
irl is cheaper taking a girl out on three dates,” Hardy countered. “And there’s no guarantee she’ll put out after that.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Cassandra said, blushing without knowing why.

  What should I care about what he thinks? What does it matter? He’s a murderer and a kidnapper—I shouldn’t give a damn about what he thinks.

  Regretting having started the conversation, Cassandra changed the subject. “So Riley had sex with a prostitute and Adrianna found out.”

  “Yeah.” Hardy went silent for a moment. “If I hadn’t been there in the bar, she would just have picked someone else. That was the state of mind she was in. She wanted to get even with Riley, to make him feel shitty the way he’d made her feel.”

  “I can see that,” Cassandra said.

  Somehow, even in the strange situation she was in, she found herself falling back on her usual journalistic manners: prompting, encouraging, coaxing answers, getting her subject to say more if she could. She shouldn’t be interviewing Hardy, and yet she was intrigued by his story. She wanted to know just how delusional he was, or figure out the truth behind his accusations.

  “Hey—why did you tattoo those names on your hip?”

  “What?” Hardy sat up slightly in the back seat.

  “You know, the people you want to—talk to, I guess—about this whole thing, right? So why tattoo it on your body?”

  “It’s complicated,” Hardy said.

  Cassandra saw him sink down once more. It was starting to get lighter on the horizon, but actual dawn was a good hour and a half away. Cassandra wondered just how long they would be driving. She glanced at her gas gauge and saw that it was edging towards empty. She’d have to tell him in a few more miles, and then they’d have to figure out what they were going to do about getting gas.

  “So Adrianna went into the bar and started complaining about Riley cheating on her,” Cassandra said. She still wanted to know why Hardy would think his best friend had framed him for murder.

  Do I believe he’s innocent? What if he’s just spinning me a yarn, and this is all just an excuse for him to deal with some unfinished business?

  “She and I started drinking while she ranted about what a piece of shit Riley was, and how she wanted to leave him,” Hardy said quietly. Cassandra cringed to herself at the thought of what she knew, suddenly, the outcome of the drinking was. “I got pretty plastered—not that it’s any excuse, and so did she.”

  “Let me guess what ended up happening,” Cassandra said blandly.

  “Yeah, you’ve probably got it right,” Hardy said, and Cassandra heard the grimness in his voice. “We ended up sleeping together. It was stupid as shit, obviously, but at the time I didn’t even really think about it. She was hot, and she’d spent the whole night complaining to me about Riley, convincing me that she deserved some kind of revenge on him.”

  “Just because she deserved revenge doesn’t mean you had to help her with it,” Cassandra said mildly.

  “I was horny, I was drunk,” Hardy said, defensive. “I can’t tell you how hot she was.” He paused for a few moments and when he spoke again Cassandra heard the regret in his voice. “The thing is, she wasn’t even that great in bed. I mean—yeah, hot, sure, whatever. But she was just doing it for the hell of it, you know? I was nothing more than a walk on the wild side for her; she just kept telling me I was bigger than Riley.”

  Cassandra pressed her lips together firmly, resisting a sudden impulse to ask if Hardy thought Adrianne had been accurate in her assessment. She knew she shouldn’t be curious about what Hardy’s cock looked like—she should be trying to think of ways to get out of this adventure in one piece instead of in fifty pieces, blown to smithereens by pursuing police officers.

  “So you had sex with your best friend’s fiancée,” Cassandra said, once the urge to ask for more prurient details had passed.

  “Yeah,” Hardy said quietly.

  Cassandra shook her head. Part of her wanted to ask him why he would do something so stupid; the other part of her mind countered that Hardy was—to the best of her knowledge—a convicted killer, and even if she believed him about being framed, he was a desperate man with a history of violence.

  “I know, it was stupid as shit,” Hardy said, as if reading her mind. “I told you—I was horny and drunk, and I wasn’t thinking.”

  “So that was what made your friend hate you.”

  “Not…it wasn’t not just that,” Hardy said with a sigh. “I think Riley could have forgiven me for sleeping with Adrianna. I mean after all, he’d been cheating on her.”

  “Okay, so if it wasn’t sleeping with his girl…” Cassandra glanced in the rearview mirror.

  “The fights got worse when he found out,” Hardy said with a shrug. “Adrianna threw it in his face that I was better in bed than Riley was.” Hardy laughed, almost a cough in the darkness of the back seat. “They broke up eventually, but not before Riley got into it with another guy on base. He was so frustrated at the situation with Adrianne that he lashed out; he barely managed to get out with his benefits.”

  “Yeah, I can see why he would hate you for that,” Cassandra said, trying to keep her voice mild.

  “When he got back into town, he made some threats—that he’d kill me.” Hardy shifted in the seat. “I wasn’t living there anymore, so I didn’t think anything of it at the time—and besides, I kind of deserved it.”

  “Kind of?” Cassandra bit back the rest of her retort.

  “Yeah, I really deserved it,” Hardy admitted. “I was a shitty friend to him. I betrayed him.” He sighed. “I don’t know how he’s feeling about me now; it’s been years. But…” he sat up slightly, and Cassandra felt his gaze on the back of her head. “I figured maybe he got caught up in something, and framing me would be an easy decision.”

  “If it’s been that long,” Cassandra said, pressing her lips together as she considered what she wanted to say, “why would he throw you under the bus now?”

  “I don’t know that he has,” Hardy replied. “But considering how shitty I left things with him, if he got tangled up in something—gambling, or something that might make life tough—and someone wanted him to like, kill somebody… If pinning it on me meant he’d get off, I don’t think he’d lose much sleep over it.”

  Cassandra considered that possibility. If it was as far back in time as Hardy was saying, it was difficult to believe that someone who had been his friend for so long would maintain a grudge. She didn’t think it was likely that Riley could have gone from being practically a brother to Hardy, only to stop caring about him altogether. Sure—when his engagement to Adrianna had fallen apart, Cassandra could see the guy being angry enough to want to kill his best friend. But years later?

  She held her peace as they continued down the Interstate. It’s not like you really have a choice in this, she reminded herself, glancing at the huge form of Hardy’s body stretched out in the back seat.

  Cassandra could feel his gaze on her, and wondered what he was thinking about. He’s been in prison for three months, she remembered, and a spurt of excitement—not fear, not apprehension, but something that sent a tingle through her—crackled along her nerves.

  More than once, alone in her room, Cassandra had teased herself to fantasies of being at a man’s mercy—of being not quite forced, but compelled into giving into a strong, demanding man. The setup had varied, but the constant was the way that she resisted at first, only to gradually, slowly give in—to submit to the man touching her all over, kissing her hungrily, telling her that he knew she wanted it, he could feel it.

  In one of them—a fantasy that had come to her after writing a piece about another prisoner—she had imagined waking up in her bedroom to find a fugitive watching her. The faceless man in her fantasy came in through her window, telling her to be quiet—he wasn’t about to get caught because of some screaming woman.

  Cassandra licked her dry lips, wishing she hadn’t already drunk the last of he
r water. Heat simmered in her body at the memory of her fantasy, and as she drove she remembered the phantom touches she’d imagined—only now, in place of the faceless fugitive in a prison jumpsuit, her mind substituted Hardy.

  She pictured him pinning her to the wall in her kitchen, telling her not to scream; Hardy’s hands beginning to move slowly over her body, his knee between her legs, pressed up against her crotch—not in a sexual way at first, but as she reacted to the feeling of his body against hers, unable to help herself, the tension between them would shift. Instead of covering her mouth with his hand, he would lean in and seal her lips with his own. His weight would shift against her, and she would feel the hard ridge of his cock pressing into her hip. He’s been in prison for three months; he hasn’t been with a woman in all that time… Cassandra swallowed against the dry feeling in her throat as her heart began to beat faster, her body heating up bit by bit. She felt the warmth spreading down from her stomach, through her hips, and shifted in the driver’s seat at the sensation of her fluids beginning to flow.

  What would she have done if Hardy had had a different reason for breaking into her apartment—not to convince her to go on some bizarre errand, but instead wanting to wreak some kind of revenge on her for her part in getting him locked up? Cassandra shuddered, imagining the hungry way that he would paw at her clothes, almost ripping them in his need to get her naked and have his way with her. Her breasts ached at the thought, her nipples hardening into firm little nubs, straining at the thin lace of her bra for a touch that wouldn’t come.

  Cassandra tried not to squirm as she imagined that phantom caress moving down, a hand sliding up between her legs to feel her through the fabric of her pants, rubbing her slowly until she moaned. “You want this, I can feel it.”

  She took a slow breath, no longer able to resist imagining what Hardy would look like naked. She pictured him throwing her onto the couch in her living room, his fingers hooking into the waistband of her panties and tugging them down over her hips, revealing her body to his starved gaze.

  Stop! You have to stop this, right now.