by Casey Hagen
“I think we know what you’d do,” Cain said with a laugh.
“Good,” Patti said with a nod. “Now listen up. I’ve had a few hours to think and that never happens. Anyway, the doctor’s suggesting a few changes and that got me to thinking. How would you girls feel about becoming the next generation of Banked Track?”
I glanced around at my team and back down at Patti. “What exactly do you mean?”
“Take over the bar. Ownership and all. I’ll stick around and show you the ropes, but you girls are the future of the sport here in Galloway Bay. Flat track or banked track. WRDF or on your own, I can’t see handing a piece of history as important as Banked Track to anyone else. Can you?”
Epilogue
“Toast, toast, toast,” my team chanted, their glasses raised in the air as we celebrated Patti’s release from the hospital…and secretly celebrated our plans to take Patti up on her offer.
“To banked tracks, exceeding expectations, second place, and that straight piece in Priest’s pants,” I said, shooting a smile over my shoulder at the man himself.
“Immortalized in a toast, I don’t know if I should be honored or horrified,” he said as he started to stroll by, cupped the back of my neck, and pulled me in for a hot kiss before letting me go and continuing on over to where Jordan and Sheriff Chase watched the latest football game on the TV screen mounted in the corner.
“Be honored and reward me hard later,” I called out to his retreating back. “Oh…and with skates on.”
“Anything you want, Mayhem,” he said with a wink as he sat back and tipped his beer to his lips, his hot gaze running over every inch of me.
“You guys suck, man,” Sean said.
“Right,” Rory added. “It’s bad enough we’re not getting any at the moment, but to have these two sex fiends fucking each other with their eyes and making us watch? Total and utter betrayal.”
“You guys are happy for me and you know it,” I said, tipping my glass back, that root beer flavor hitting the back of my tongue followed by that sharp bite.
“Holy shit, look at that guy,” Marty said, her drink clunking against the table, making liquor spill down her hand.
Not that she cared. Her mouth had fallen open and she’d gone nips up for whatever fine piece walked through the door.
“My God, he’s just—well, damn. Damn,” Rory said as she pulled out her cell.
“Way to be stealth,” I said, knowing damn well she was going to snap his picture.
“Aren’t you going to look at him?” Eve asked. “I mean, shit, even I’m looking at him.”
“Patti’s feeling okay, right? I don’t want her to see him and have another heart attack,” Zara said.
“She’s feeling great—doh, here she comes,” Rory said, craning her neck.
“And she’s sending him over here.”
Tall, dark, and absolutely every woman’s type, the guy stepped up and smiled. “Sorry to interrupt, ladies. Maisy Flynn?” he said, glancing down at me.
I turned in my chair and glanced up at him and they weren’t fucking kidding. He towered over our table with wide shoulders, dark and thick wavy hair brushed back, and black intense eyes all wrapped up in a power suit.
And he did absolutely nothing for me.
No buzz, no zing, nada.
His scent was positively edible, but turns out, I wasn’t hungry.
But then, the only man I’d ever want sat just ten feet away, watching me with amusement in his eyes as my entire table went through some sort of mass ovary explosion.
Well, my ovaries had a very specific trigger these days, and that was Priest telling derby stories to his nephew, Cain. “I’m Maisy. What can I do for you?”
“You’re a hard woman to get ahold of,” he said, his full mouth curving in a smile.
“I don’t go far. Who are you?”
His eyebrow lifted and a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Micah Alessi…your brother.”
My drink caught in my throat, where it lodged, then came spewing back out across the table, spraying Rory and Sean in the process. Priest brought over a stack of napkins and started helping us get cleaned up.
I scrubbed at my leg and glared up at the nut. “What the hell are you talking about?”
He reached over to the empty table next to us and pulled up a chair.
Nice of the psycho to think he was invited.
“I’ve been trying to call you,” he said as he reached into his jacket.
“I don’t answer numbers I don’t recognize.”
He snorted, and even that sounded elegant. Must have been the tie.
“More proof we’re related.”
“What makes you think I’m your sister? We look absolutely nothing alike.”
“Because I look like my father,” he said, sliding a picture from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “And you look just like your mother,” he said as he flipped the picture around toward me.
I stared down at the image, my mother’s smiling face, her arms around me, holding me on her hip, standing intimately close to a man with dark skin, thick dark hair, and the same full mouth as the man sitting with me now—with a young boy sitting on his shoulders.
“I’m sure you don’t remember me, but I remember you.”
I held the picture between my fingers, every nerve ending humming. “How, I mean, what—how is this possible?”
He interlocked his fingers and propped his elbows on his hands. “Well, when a man and a woman are attracted to one another…”
“Ha! He’s a smart-ass just like you, Maisy. Another identifier,” Rory said.
“Do you have any other proof beyond the picture?” Priest asked, his fingers kneading the back of my neck and shoulders.
“We’d need to get tested to know for sure, but I remember her and after our father died, he left behind a mountain of confessions. Seventeen kids in all. I’ve had investigators digging up what they can and there’s more of course. Sightings, people who met Daisy and my dad together. And of course, the two of us playing.”
He short-circuited my brain. I had nothing. Not. One. Damn. Thing.
“Then there was the exhibition,” Micah said quietly. “Imagine my surprise when my own sister who doesn’t answer her cell phone ends up in my arena and on my bank.”
“Whoa,” Eve said in a whoosh of breath next to me.
“Yeah,” Marty said quietly.
“The exhibition in Philly was you?”
“Ascend is one of several of my projects. It’s a long story that we can get into another time, but my executive assistant came up with the idea, a way to spark interest in women’s sports and working with charities. Imagine my surprise when I found out you were there…and you guys were the underdog team. Another thing we have in common.”
“You don’t look much like an underdog,” Marty said.
“Not anymore, no. Underground fighting kept me alive. I took every last dime I made from it and with some help, grew it into what you see today. It’s still just money.”
“Look at her. She’s stunned. Like zapped-with-a-taser stunned,” Marty said as she poked me in the arm.
“Stop poking me, dammit. I just—I have a brother. I—we need to do a DNA test, right?”
“As soon as you’re ready. I’m going to be in the area for another week,” he said as he took out a business card embossed in gold with his personal cell number on the back. “Call me and we’ll make the arrangements. Once it’s confirmed, we’ll talk. Sound good?” He stood and slid the chair back to the table he took it from and began his retreat, but after a couple steps, he stopped. “Maisy?”
“Yeah,” I said, glancing up at him.
“I haven’t had a family in a long time. I’m hoping when we find out what I’m pretty sure we both know is true, maybe we can change that.”
I had no concrete evidence. He was a total stranger, but that look in his eyes, that loneliness lurking there, I recognized that to my very core. He had mon
ey and power and despite it, he was here at Banked Track looking for his missing pieces.
I scraped back and walked over, catching the way his eyes widened right before I wrapped my arms around him and closed my eyes. “I hope you mean that because I hold on to my people, and once I do, I don’t let go.”
***
So guys, did you love it?
I mean, sex on skates. That totally happened.
And I made you wait so freaking long for it…oops.
I had no clue these two were going to be a slow burn turned raging inferno bathed in tears. I had them all plotted out, but both of them jumped right off the page and bitch slapped me into submission. Kind of like Maisy bitch slapped Cain, lol.
And Maisy’s the nice one…
* * *
Imagine what happens when I try to bend Eve to my will!
* * *
Wanna find out?
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She’s ready to slide in like a fucking boss and land on your ereaders March 30th!
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Preorder HIP WHIP now!
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Ohhhh…and don’t think I’ve forgotten about getting Patti a little. She’s got a certain someone in her past that she needs to reckon with too!
* * *
And, are you curious about Remy, Dom, and Linc???
Start with Remy and Parker’s story in BALLS TO THE WALL!
AND THE BLURB FOR…
HIP WHIP
There’s more to me than the punk on skates.
I’m easy to dismiss as a rebel with my piercings, tattoos, and spiked hair.
But I’m also the one with the head for business.
Rough beginnings taught me to count on myself.
So I made sure I was ready to go it alone.
Or so I thought.
Until I found my family on the flat track. My derby sisters.
And I became the one who won’t let them fail, their hip to whip so they can surge ahead.
The one they can count on for a boost when it’s their time to shine.
We’ve stumbled on an opportunity, an unexpected dream, one I know how to bring it to life.
At least I did, until Mack Henry showed up with his accusations dripping with derision.
I’m not perfect, but I’m not a liar or a cheat… and I’m definitely not a thief.
With Banked Track hanging in the balance, I’ll fight with everything I have.
And like so many times in my past, I’ll claw my way to victory.
* * *
I knew I shouldn’t have left my aunt alone.
She’s the strongest woman I’ve ever known, but she’s easy to fool.
I thought I did her a favor leaving town.
Making my mistakes at a distance where they couldn’t hurt her.
But leaving meant opening her doors to predators, waiting to take advantage.
And this derby team, they’re so much more clever than I could have imagined.
Convincing her to sell Banked Track was unbelievable enough, but convincing her to hold the mortgage?
Next level manipulation.
This was my fault.
I didn’t protect her from vultures looking to take advantage of a lonely, old woman.
But I’m here now and they won’t get Banked Track without a fight.
Eve McAllister thinks they have an ironclad contract.
But there’s nothing I won’t do to see it disintegrate into a pile of ashes at Eve’s roller skate covered feet.
CONNECT WITH ME
You can find me online at:
www.CaseyHagenBooks.com
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BOOKS SERIES BY CASEY HAGEN
BEAUTIFULLY BRUTAL
TALLULAH COVE
FIERCE PROTECTORS
SO WRONG IT’S RIGHT
ABOUT CASEY HAGEN
Casey Hagen pens her snarky, passionate stories from the salty air of Kennebunk, Maine. She’s a born and raised Vermont native, a New England girl to the core, with Ben & Jerry’s in her heart and real Vermont maple syrup pumping through her veins.
She’s the proud mother of three girls and a new, first-time grandma with an insatiable addiction to Fall Out Boy, and a new, rather concerning obsession with tattoos and piercings. Can you say “cool grandma?”
The inked and pierced grandma spends her time tucked away in her office, coated in cat hair, alternating between tearing her hair out trying to find the perfect words and being one step ahead of her three scheming fur babies she is positive are plotting her demise with every swirl around her ankles at the top of her office stairs.
She loves writing stories about real people, with complicated histories, relatable everyday problems, and giving them the hard-won happily-ever-afters they deserve.
And she thanks every last one of you who picks up one of her stories.
Casey is done talking about herself in the third person.
*Casey out*
Casey in the wild…
