by M. O'Keefe
Blake had fire in his eyes and a visible red handprint on his face because of the light falling into the foyer from the kitchen.
“I didn’t know there was a party. I’m just…” Tiffany swallowed. “I’m just looking for Annie. She said I could come here if I needed help.”
“You need help?” Blake asked.
“Not from you,” she sneered.
“You should come in,” Olivia said, putting her arm around Tiffany, but she only shrugged away.
“I’m fine,” she said, in what was a painfully obvious lie. So much so, it made my gut clench. “I shouldn’t have come.”
Tiffany shrugged off Olivia’s hands and headed out the second door into the dark night. Blake started after her, but both Olivia and I got in his way.
“That’s probably not a good idea, you going after her,” Olivia said.
“It’s not really your business, is it?”
Oh man, I did not want to go toe to toe with a guy at my brother’s Christmas party, but he could not talk to Olivia that way. “I think we’re making it our business.”
“For fuck’s sake, Max. Can we tone down the junkyard dog routine? Tiffany is getting in her car. She’s upset and she’s going to drive away. I’m not going to hurt her. I’m going to stop her from getting hurt.”
Olivia and I glanced back and saw her getting in her car, the POS Ford in the shadows.
“I’ll get Annie,” Olivia said. “But you hurt her and I’ll sick my junkyard dog on you.”
I grinned at Blake with all my teeth. But Olivia went in and I let Blake go. I kept an eye on him, but he was only doing what he said he would do, stopping her from driving away.
Annie came out, blew a kiss at my cheek and ran into the fray, shutting the door to the outside behind her, leaving me and Olivia in the shadows, the party at our back.
“Junkyard dog,” she said. “I should punch his lights out for calling you that.”
“I’m your junkyard dog,” I said, pulling her into my arms. “I don’t mind that. You know that woman?”
“Yeah, she lived at the trailer park with all of us. She has three kids and an asshole husband. Shitty sense of self-preservation.”
“Taking on Blake isn’t smart. You think she’s okay?”
“Annie asked me to stay out of it. Said she had it handled.”
That seemed to cement it, but she still didn’t move. “I think maybe you’re the junkyard dog,” I whispered into her ear.
That made her laugh. “But I’m your junkyard dog, right?”
“That’s right. Let’s go in.”
Arm and arm, we left the shadows of the foyer and stepped into the bright lights and heat and noise of the party.
I found Dylan right away, leaning against the edge of the counter, a beer in his hand. He wasn’t self-conscious about his scars, not with this crowd. Everyone here had long since stopped seeing them when they looked at him.
And like we were tuned to the same frequency, a moment after I saw him, he straightened up from the counter and looked toward the doorway.
His happiness projected out of him, a high beam in fog. And mine probably did the same because Olivia laughed and stroked my chest.
Dylan made his excuses to the guys he was talking with and crossed the room to meet us.
“Max,” he said, with a smile that pulled the scars that covered one side of his face taut.
“Dylan. You’re not wearing a jacket.”
“Fuck no, Annie tried.”
I shot Olivia a disgruntled look and shrugged out of my coat.
“Glad you could make it,” Dylan said.
“Like we’d miss it,” I said, curling my arm around Olivia’s shoulder. Annie was there. So was Pops and Jennifer.
It was our second chance made real. Filled with love and people and a future we were working on, side by side.
Dylan went to get us a few drinks and Olivia hugged me, burying her face against my chest like she felt it, too.
We’d burned down the night and our old lives with it.
But we’d built something so much better in its place.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you, too.”
For all of you out there figuring out your Plan B
Acknowledgments
Never has a book treated me like this one. Max and Joan dragged me to some wild and dark places. I—as ever—owe a huge debt of gratitude to the writers in my corner. The numbers seem to grow every year and for that I am so grateful. Thank you to: Ripley Vaughn, Maureen McGowan, Simone St. James, Stephanie Doyle, Shari Slade, Carolyn Crane, Megan Mulry, and Skye Warren.
Pam Hopkins, who is a calm voice of reason in the face of my Howler Monkey impression.
Shauna Summers, Gina Wachtel, Ashleigh Heaton, Erika Seyfried, and the entire team at Loveswept. Thank you for your excitement and fabulous ideas.
My family—Adam and the kids. You fill my heart and my life. Everything works because of you guys.
And finally—the reviewers, bloggers, and readers who have loved this series and talked about this series. Your enthusiasm means the world to me. Thank you.
BY M. O’KEEFE
Everything I Left Unsaid
The Truth About Him
Burn Down the Night
The Boys of Bishop Novels
Wild Child
Never Been Kissed
Between the Sheets
Indecent Proposal
Crooked Creek Ranch Novels
Can’t Buy Me Love
Can’t Hurry Love
Crazy Thing Called Love
About the Author
M. O’KEEFE can remember the exact moment her love of romance began: in seventh grade, when Mrs. Nelson handed her the worn paperback copy of The Thorn Birds. It wasn’t long before she was filling up notebooks with her own story ideas, featuring girls with glasses and talking cats. Writing as Molly O’Keefe, she has won two RITA awards and three RT Reviewers’ Choice Awards. She lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband, two kids, and the largest heap of dirty laundry in North America. When she’s not writing, she’s imagining what she would say if she ever got stuck in an elevator with Bruce Springsteen.
molly-okeefe.com
Facebook.com/MollyOKeefeBooks
@MollyOKwrites
The Editor’s Corner
Look no further, we’ve got all of your one-click ebooks right here.
Sensual and sexy reads from award-winning and bestselling authors abound, beginning with M. O’Keefe’s Burn Down the Night. Sawyer Bennett’s Sugar Bowl revenge series continues with Sugar Rush, and Stacia Kane’s latest is the urban fantasy Made for Sin. Then we have alpha-hero bad boy books sure to please romance readers everywhere, especially Annie Rains’s Welcoming the Bad Boy, where fantasy and reality meet, and Christi Barth’s latest Naked Men book, Wanting It All; and the last in Marquita Valentine’s Take the Fall series, Hard to Fall, where a hard-partying firefighter can’t stay single forever. Tracy Wolff is back with Flawed, introducing a tantalizing new hero—and the broken woman only he can save. The dynamic bestselling duo MJ Fields and Chelsea Camaron do it again in Visibly Broken, delivering the most tortured romance hero ever.
Then it’s off to the West Coast beaches for Body Shot, the first in Kelly Jamieson’s Last Shot series. And look for HelenKay Dimon’s suspenseful, provocative series of double agents, beginning with The Talented Mr. Rivers.
For a taste of the past, travel back in time to Regency England through Bronwen Evans’s vividly descriptive Disgraced Lords series and her latest release, A Taste of Seduction. Or if you prefer a Scotsman in a kilt, Jennifer Haymore releases the third book in her Highland Knights series, Highland Temptation.
Until next time ~Happy Romance!
Gina Wachtel
Associate Publisher
Don’t miss the next edgy, seductive novel by M. O’Keefe
Worth It
Coming soon from Loveswept
Continue reading for a sneak peek
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Chapter 1
SEPTEMBER
There’s a sound people make when they break.
Not the gut-twisting snap of a bone or ligament. But the hiccupping sigh that escapes when the person realizes they are not who they thought they were. They are not as tough. Or as smart. Or as strong or powerful or rich as they wanted to believe.
I know how to break a person. I’m not proud of it, but it’s a skill. And a useful one in a fight and a business negotiation.
It’s a pretty simple science; find the place hidden and secret, where they hoard all their weaknesses, and then you find the right pressure to apply to that sensitive spot.
But then—and this is the hard part—you can’t flinch. You can’t back down. You can’t ease up in the face of their pain. You have to be right there while you break them. Staring into their eyes as you rob them of the comforting lies they tell themselves.
It’s fine. That’s what I tell people across boardroom tables, when I’ve taken their money and their plans and bent them to my will.
It’s okay, I whisper to the men whose noses I’ve shattered as I walk them back to their corner of the ring, blinded by blood and tears.
Breaking shows people where they belong in the world. It can be comforting. It should be comforting.
Hierarchy works.
Survival of the fittest works.
And that sounds awful. I understand that.
But know—I am not a hard man. I’m a busy one.
And very—very—wealthy.
Outside the Porsche, the world is wet and green and I can practically feel the humidity through my suit despite the air-conditioning. I’m heading down into a trailer park to meet my brother Phil’s “wife” and “kids.”
Tiffany is her name and she says she’s been with Phil for over five years and has three children with him.
My family—Mom and Christina and I—didn’t know anything about her. Tiffany claims she didn’t know anything about us, either—but that’s pretty fucking dubious.
Phil—my brother—was always really good at secrets. He was like a pack rat, keeping everything that mattered hidden away, stored in some dark hole. It was the only thing he was good at. And I smell Phil all over this thing with his “wife.” He wants money. Again. And access to Mom. Again.
And I’m not putting her through that again.
So, wife or not, Tiffany will not be getting close to my family. I was going to this godforsaken corner of the world to break her.
Because the first time I heard the sigh of a person breaking—it was my mom. And the person breaking her was my little brother Phil.
Dad and I had been out back fishing, or nursing hangovers, or both, and we heard Phil yelling at Mom in the kitchen. Phil was fourteen at the time, but we already knew. We didn’t talk about it, but my sister Christine and I…we knew. Mom and Dad might still be in denial. But Tina and me, we understood something was off with Phil. Something bad. He was born mean and small and entitled. Like at birth, oxygen didn’t get to his brain or his heart.
He was vicious and irredeemable.
Anyway, that day Dad and I were out back, and we heard Phil yelling. Phil hadn’t hit Mom, yet. That would come a year later. But that kind of violence was in the air around him, like a stink. Again, no one talked about it, but it followed Phil around like a shadow.
A threat.
I got into the kitchen first.
Phil was laying into Mom, swearing at her, saying stupid, shitty things. I told Phil to get lost—shoved him for good measure. He took a swing at me, so I swung back and split his lip. Swung again and then again, each time, feeling the satisfying pop and crunch of cartilage and skin breaking beneath my knuckles.
Dad finally broke us up.
“Fuck you,” Phil said to me. And then he looked over my shoulder at Mom and Dad. “Fuck all y’all.”
And then he left.
Fourteen years old.
In the silence after the door slammed, I heard that hiccupping sigh from Mom. The soft, sad sound of her breaking.
It remains to this day, the worst sound I’ve ever heard.
Phil came back, tail between his legs a week later. But the cycle was in place. Fight. Leave. Return. Fight. Leave. Return.
Every time he came back, Mom hoped he was different.
That’s what broke her. Hope.
Hope and her youngest son.
Again and again. Over and over, the same sobbing sigh until it filled the house even when Phil wasn’t there.
The day we put Dad in the ground, I made sure Phil didn’t come back. I found that weak spot of his and applied money and force, and Phil vanished.
We had about six years of not hearing from him. Six years of no Phil drama. And Mom was good. I hadn’t found her crying over Phil’s baby pictures or calling around to his deadbeat friends trying to find him.
She smiled more. Laughed more.
Phil was gone.
And then, a few months ago he showed up at my company, 989 Engines, looking for a job. Singing a song about being different. Stable. Solid. Mom, eyes bright with hope, begged me to give him that job.
Hope. One more time. And, truthfully, I had it a little, too. For Mom’s sake.
Phil lasted all of a week before throwing a tantrum and launching a ratchet set against the wall.
My business partner, Dylan, had to fire his ass.
Mom tried to hide her tears, but I saw them. I saw her slumped shoulder and her downcast eyes. I saw her perceived failure and wanted to tear shit up.
Fucking Phil.
And now this—a wife and kids hidden away in a trailer park. A secret or a lie. I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t care.
They were not getting close to my mother.
If I had to break this woman into a thousand pieces—I would.
I pulled into the trailer park and drove up the dirt track until I saw Dylan standing next to a shit-box Toyota.
Dylan was a former driver, had bowed out of the life after a crash and fire during a race. He was my business partner, the gearhead behind 989 Engines.
And maybe the closest thing I had to a friend. Which wasn’t saying much.
He’d recently fallen in lust for some woman out here and was now thinking with his dick and not his formidable brain.
Unfortunate.
Unfortunate on several fronts, not the least of which was we’d built a new transmission for race cars. And the transmission had some serious applications outside of NASCAR. It was a game-changing kind of situation.
But Dylan couldn’t see past this girl.
I parked the Porsche and got out, buttoning the button of my suit as I rounded the front of the car. Dylan watched me, the scars on his face pulling tight as he squinted into the sun.
“You’re not going to be a dick, are you?” he asked.
“No. Where is she?”
“In the trailer with Annie.” He pointed to the old RV that had been put up on blocks. I had never seen anything quite so ugly.
“Just,” Dylan said, “try and—”
“What?”
“Be…kind.”
I laughed. Right. Kind.
The ground was spongy from a recent rain, and I dodged a puddle walking up to the metal steps of the RV. I didn’t bother to knock, just opened the aluminum door and ducked my head so I could step inside the dim trailer.
One woman, white-blonde and thin, stood up to greet me like this was a dinner party she was hosting.
I’d put money on this being Annie.
“Hi,” she said, sounding far too chipper. The girl was nervous. I tucked that little ace up my sleeve.
“You must be Annie,” I said with a soft voice and plenty of charm. “You are as lovely as Dylan said.”
She blushed and ducked her head, an awkward Disney princess. I wanted to tell her to be careful. To stop showing me quite so much, her nerves and her self-doubt.
“Would you like some tea?” she asked.
“No, tha
nk you.”
“I’m Tiffany.” The other woman came to her feet.
Shit. She was young. Twenty-five, maybe. She was tall, nearly to my shoulders, which was not insignificant. She wasn’t as thin as Annie, but she had a hard look about her, which wasn’t at all surprising. Any time with Phil would file you down to an edge.
She wore a little makeup, blush that stood out on her very pale cheeks. A pink T-shirt tucked into a pair of khaki shorts made her seem young. Not childish. She wasn’t a child. She was just…young.
Her eyes were surprising, though. They were the color of a storm. And sharp enough to pierce metal.
Tiffany of the sharp eyes and brass balls held out her hand for me to shake.
I took my time but finally slipped my hand over hers and shook it.
Her palm was damp with sweat.
“My brother’s secret wife.” I made it a joke, like we were all in on this together but Tiffany’s eyes narrowed.
“And you are my husband’s secret brother,” she said back. “Well, my soon-to-be ex, I suppose.”
“Right.” I nodded like she’d gotten the test right. “Where are your kids?”
“Don’t worry about my kids,” she said.
“You don’t trust me?”
Interesting. If she was really after money or access to Mom, she’d trot those kids out fast. They were her best bargaining chip.
But, Tiffany didn’t even hesitate. “Nope.”
My guess was that there were no kids. They weren’t hers. Or maybe they weren’t Phil’s. This was a shitty con. A bait and switch.
“That seems about right,” I said, stepping in closer. Tiffany of the sharp eyes was surprising, but I didn’t have time for this. “I don’t trust you much, either.” I glanced over at Annie, including her in that sentiment. And Annie, the lost little lamb, had the good sense to shrink back against that wall, putting as much room between her and me as she could.
Annie had been broken before. It was written all over her face.
