by Dani Wyatt
Reed smacks his tongue in his cheek and spins his cane up to point at me.
“Me? You’re the one that told me last night you want to be the youngest professional rider to ever win four Grand Prix Championships. So, let’s keep it real here. Seems you’re the one that’s developed a killer instinct.” He walks toward me, slipping one hand around the back of my neck and kisses my cheek. “I think you just enjoy showing that other trainer you used to have...hmm, what is his name?” Reed looks up into the rafters of the barn rubbing his chin.
“Uh huh. Well, you two can have your little argument without me. I’ve got a fiery red head sitting at home I can argue with anytime I like.”
“Thanks, Doc.” I smile and give Reed a little jab in his belly as he pulls me next to him, one arm draped over my shoulder.
It’s been just over a year since we walked out of my parent’s barn that night. Travis is no longer in the industry. Seems his greed overshadowed his intelligence. Once word got around, he was laughed out of town.
We got married a month after that night here at the farm in his house. Just a few of the staff as witnesses and a local preacher who Reed’s known for years. I didn’t want much. But Reed managed to make it an amazing day.
First of all, he didn’t actually propose to me. He told me we were getting married, told me I could pick the date as long as it was within the next thirty days, then he put a ring on my finger that nearly snapped my wrist it weighed so much.
Then, he said, “I love you.”
I, of course, said, “I love you too.”
Then, my sweet, arrogant Reed replied with, “You better.”
Swoon.
We negotiated on that monster ring though. I’m just not the big diamond kind of girl. So we save the Tiffany five karat solitaire for nights out. We settled on a simple platinum band for every day.
A bit after that, we found out I was pregnant. I considered quitting my riding career, but I really didn’t want to and Reed supported me whatever my choice. So, I’m about to embark on my first major show since Mallory was born.
I’ve managed to mend the fences with Mom and Dad as well. In fact, with Reed’s encouragement, when my father speaks to me in any manner other than I think I deserve, I turn it right around on him and let him know the days of his beating up on me are over.
Turns out, he’s just a big bully. And with some help from Reed backing me up, for the first time in my life, I can have a normal adult conversation with my dad. Both my parents actually.
I do think there is a bit more to it than just me finding my backbone. Reed took my parents out to dinner a couple nights after that blow up in the barn with Travis. He never told me the specifics of what they’d talked about that night, but after that they both seemed a lot different with me.
Never again did they tell me what to do, nor speak to me like I was a child. In fact, at first, when my father would start to fall back into his old ways, I would watch him look at Reed. Then he would stop, re-group and with much effort, change his tone.
It’s a beautiful thing when your man has your back like that.
“Ready, beautiful?” Reed’s lips swoop down for a lingering soft kiss and my knees nearly buckle. He’s still got that something. I hope it never wears off.
“Ready. Mallory’s all set with Jessica and the car is packed.”
“Are you okay?” His voice softens and he cups my chin forcing our eyes together.
“Yes. It’s just a few hours.”
We’re going out on our first date since Mallory was born. She’s three months today and that was the agreement. When she turned three months, we would start going out without her. Reed loves to take me out and I love to be on his arm. I’m not sure which of us is prouder to be with the other. It makes my heart swell thinking of how he beams whenever we are together.
“One thing first.” He turns my shoulders toward the back of the barn.
“What’s that?”
“I have a surprise for you.” His usual rumbling tone turns playful.
“What have you done?” I lean in next to him as he walks us toward the back of the barn. Ruby’s here at his farm, our farm I mean, as well as my two other retired horses that were at my parents.
When we reach the end of long hallway flanked with stalls filled with million-dollar horses as well as the few rescues we’ve picked up in the last year, Reed stops.
“Close your eyes.”
“Are you kidding me? What is this? You’re not going to scare me, are you?”
“Just close your eyes and stop giving me grief. Your ass is still red from this morning. You’d be crying like Mallory if I turned you over my knee again today.”
“Fine,” I grunt but I secretly love it all. Even the spankings. Who would have thought?
I squeeze my eyes shut and Reed bellows out the open doors to someone who must be waiting. “Bring it around.”
The next thing I hear is the deep rumble of an engine.
“Open your eyes, beautiful.”
When I look, there is the biggest, most beautiful black and silver motor home I’ve ever seen. Complete with a bright blue bow on top. The color of a winning show ribbon. Only this isn’t your average motor home – towed behind it is a four horse trailer. Sleek and as cutting edge as the motorhome.
“Oh my God.” My hands go to cover my mouth.
“When we go to your next show, we’re going in style. We’re all going to be together. You, Mallory, me and Ruby. I don’t want us apart for even a day. We have a professional driver and everything we could want or need in there.”
It’s been a struggle figuring out how I’m going to manage my riding career and family. But leave it to my husband to do whatever is in his power to make me happy.
“Thank you.” I hug him so tightly around his middle I hear him groan.
“You’re welcome. But, I think there is a better way for you to thank me, Mrs. Sawyer.”
Reed’s hand comes down to smack on my ass, stinging the still sensitive spot where he lit me up this morning.
I break away into a teasing run toward the giant mobile condominium’s open side door. The driver has already taken leave because I’m sure Reed told everyone to clear out as soon as they delivered the gift. He’s as horny for me as that first night we were together and honestly, I am as well.
“Get ready, beautiful, we’re about to christen your new home on the road.”
Reed speeds up his walk coming after me. The click of his cane next to him. I don’t think that there is one thing about him I don’t find sexy. I even love his cane. And his crooked walk.
“You have to catch me first.” I dart inside the motor home. It’s like a New York penthouse inside. All sleek wood and comfortable soft fabrics. He hits the door right behind me, fire in his eyes.
“You best be ready. I’m hungry and there’s a lot of surfaces in here where you are about to be fucked my sweet beauty. So get your ass in that king-sized bed, because I’m about to have a pussy feast. Knees wide, beautiful, you know the drill.”
He’s an amazing lover. He’s a good man. A great father. An attentive and caring husband. A wonderful provider for everything I need. Including some well-deserved discipline from my trainer now and then.
And one more thing.
He’s hung like a horse.
And that makes for a special kind of happily ever after.
SWEET RIDE
PROLOGUE
Eight Years Earlier
THORNE
“I’m out.” My words are met with a wall of silence from the other end of the phone. A long pause and then muffled, labored breathing. “You hear me? Done. Fuck!”
My eyelid twitches as I stare at the evening news on the television. It’s unusual for me to turn on the electronic teat, but today, I got word I might want to take a look. No one knows when shit like this is going to hit home. In my world, for most, it never does. But for me, today is my day. My epiphany.
The low static on the
phone clears and I roll my eyes when I hear the voice on the other end. “You don’t get to tell me fuck-all about being done.” The man I know only as ‘Black’ is as pretentious as his pretentious code name.
In my imagination, he holds court behind an enormous desk carved from some dark hardwood, pinching a Cuban cigar in his teeth while minions nod in agreement to whatever pontifications fall from his lips. But, truth be told, I have no idea what he looks like. In this business it’s better not to know too much about your associates. We have phone numbers on disposable phones, keeping things detached keeps you safe. As safe as possible I suppose.
He takes a deep, raspy breath before he speaks. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” The gravelly voice twists with humor and my gut churns. The phone connection crackles, all I know is he’s on an island somewhere, which island I don’t want to know. Less is more. “And why the fuck do you care? People die. Fuck-all happens. It’s not like you pulled the trigger.”
‘Fuck-all’...his signature phrase. Jesus, get some new material. He’s a poorly written pulp-fiction character.
There’s a pfft sound like he’s shrugging his shoulders. “Life is shit, Thorne. You do what you can to make yours a little less shit than everyone else’s.”
“This is different. I did the drop. I delivered. But it went fucking sideways. Two civilians down. One’s DOA and the other in intensive care.” I steel myself to say what I have to. Let him know that I’m serious. I blink against the tears. Jesus, what the fuck is this? I’m soft in all the wrong places? “I’m fucking out. This is it. My name’s all over this. You and me, we don’t exist anymore.”
This is no fucking way to live. And for some inexplicable reason, I decide I don’t just want to live.
I want a fucking life.
Something more. I don’t know that will be, but I’m damn sure going to live to find out.
There is a rustling then a clunk on the other end of the phone and a distant chuckle. He does this shit as well. Sets the phone down in the middle of a conversation, just like that.
How did my fucking life get here? How did I slide into this swamp of piss and filth?
Somehow I’d convinced myself I wasn’t the bad guy.
People kill people. Not guns, right?
That’s what I’ve always told myself. I’m just an entrepreneur.
They will get them from someone if not me, so why not? I needed to make a living. No education besides what living on the streets had taught me, I convinced myself that the gun trade was somehow a step above the low life of drugs or the multitude of other crimes that to my rationalization were fucking below me. What a crock of steaming shit that turned out to be.
The lights came on for me today. Watching the news and finding out two people just died because they got caught up in the crossfire from guns I delivered not three hours ago. Why does this bother me now? I’d pushed away the reality of the facts for too long. Had people died before from guns that passed through my hands? Hell yes.
Fuck. I should be the one lying in a hospital bed or worse. Whatever he decides to do to me, I’ll take it, because I’m not doing this again. I can’t.
I hear Black barking orders to someone in the background, telling them to bring him a drink. The irony is I know nothing about him, and yet I know all the little details. I even know his goddamn drink. Always the same, he likes to call for it whenever we talk no matter the time of day. Fucker has some weirdness about him.
Dry vodka martini, two orange twists, in a rocks glass.
There’s other weird shit I hear, too. He’s an attention whore, likes to tell me shit I shouldn’t, and do not want to know. Thinks he’s impressing me by spouting off about fucked up shit I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. I swear to Christ, during one phone call he was fucking bragging about taking kidneys out of people. Not willing people either. That’s some next level evil there.
I pull the phone from my ear, hold it out at arm’s length and stare at it for a long minute.
Finally, the faint voice of Mr.‘Fuck-all-Vodka-Martini’ broadcasts out of the tiny speaker talking about doing a new deal but I’ve stopped listening.
Let the shit hit the fucking fan. He can find another gun runner. Someone will gladly step in to replace me. I get he might not like it, but I sure don’t think he’d take it so hard that he’d send me off the radar permanently but you never know.
I hit the ‘end call’ button and gently place the cheap pre-paid phone on the floor. I bring the heel of my boot over the screen and listen to the steady crunching noise as I grind it into the faded linoleum floor.
I’m out.
Whatever that means, I’ll die a man not a pawn. I’m good with that.
I sit there dead still for a long time. Long enough for the shadows on the tabletop to grow a few inches as the sun drops outside the window of my shit hole apartment.
I set my elbows on my knees. Looking at my hands and the ink that decorates them. Then I bring them to my head and rub back and forth, the friction heating my palms. There is a faint scratching of something that has taken up residence in the cabinet under my sink.
Truth is, I don’t have the heart to do anything about it. I don’t want to kill it, rodent or not, the damn thing just needs to eat and I remember scratching around for the same more than once in my life.
The pounding on my apartment door hits me, making my body jerk and turn.
Fuck. Maybe Black took it harder than I thought. Sent someone for me. A dark laugh comes out of me thinking he’s pissed that I broke up our little felonious romance.
I wipe the back of a hand over my cheek and it comes away damp. Tears blur my vision and I look like a fucking pussy, but it’s not because I’m scared. I’m not afraid to die.
After all these years, I accepted that risk. But now it’s just all hitting home: I never actually did anything with my life.
I could run, but fuck that shit.
The pounding comes again, harder.
“Open up. Police.”
ONE
Present Day
THORNE
God, it smells so fucking good. I’ll never get enough of that smell.
The backroom of the shop is clocking in at ninety-one degrees and it’s already cooled down a good bit from its highest point during the early morning baking hours. It’s also spotless, the steel and glass thermometer glinting in the sunlight through the window, and I make a mental note to thank the staff for keeping up on my standards.
“Hey, boss man! I thought I heard your beast pull up. You ride that bike dressed like that? You are one of a kind, man.” Christopher Ward shakes his head and his eyes light up as I stride through the back hall. He’s in the prep area where he’s wiping down a gleaming, stainless steel table. “Guess it’s our undercover boss Friday, huh? How many stores we got now? Sixty? Sixty-three? I quit counting.”
I straighten my suit jacket and run a hand through my hair, a little smirk pulling at the corner of my mouth. “Sixty-two opened last week in Times Square. But it’s your lucky day, man.” I slap him on the shoulder and he turns in for a quick bro hug. “Place looks great, as always. You run a tight ship. Don’t need to even come here, never anything to put on my report except ‘fucking outstanding.’”
“That right?” He’s trying to hide the grin of pride, but I can see it. “Then why do you come here? Don’t you have investors to meet or something?”
“Sure. But they don’t have your fucking personality, man.” I glance around. “Seriously, good job. I mean that. The place is safe in your hands.”
I work at one of my stores every Friday. Always have, always will. I enjoy it; it reminds me of how lucky I’ve been. More than that, it lets the staff know that they’re not working for some faceless corporation. We’re in this together.
“Awww, shucks, boss. Guess you raised me right. From thug to this.” He chuckles and spins his head, looking around the back room. “Who’da thought?”
Tattoos cover his neck
and hands, the only ink that’s currently on show, but I know from our time at Jackson State he’s almost eighty percent covered in color. I kid you not, and I have the community showers to thank for that information.
My body isn’t far off from his ink coverage, either. But I’m a waist-up kind of guy when it comes to my body art. My ink is a kaleidoscope of color and covers me from hip bones up until it swirls up my neck under my crisp, tailored dress shirts. Yeah, my contradictions turn heads.
I look up to the ceiling, thanking whatever higher power took a hand in my life. “Do you remember years ago when we opened that door, took a knee and prayed?” I set my legs wide and cross my arms as he nods back. “Fucking crazy ass ride it’s been, right?”
“Fucking sweet ride. Here we are. Two felons selling three dollar donuts.” He throws his head back letting out a deep breath. “From making fucking glazed donuts for a thousand inmates in that hell kitchen. Now this. Some days, I still wake up and think it’s a dream.” He looks around the room, gleaming with stainless steel and racks and racks of decorated donuts in twenty-four flavors.
Not just any flavors either. Try a Cappuccino and Coconut. Or our white chocolate truffle. My newest is a dark salted chocolate and mango. We name them all, too, with these chicken shit names that would have the old Thorne shaking his head.
Names like: Mango Bango. CappoNut, 101 Dalmatians.
I look through the window of a glassed cool room at the rear of the baking area, where two smiling women are chatting and working to apply the icing and decorative toppings that have become our trademark at The Sweet Spot.
“You know you can come up to corporate anytime. Get out of the store. I told you.” I twist my head, trying to work out the kink that settled in from falling asleep at my computer last night. All work and no play makes Thadeus a rich, but lonely boy.
Which suits me fine right now. I love to work. Dating and getting laid for the sake of getting laid are not in my wheelhouse. Just doesn’t make me tick.
