Dark and Deadly: Eight Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance

by Ashley Jennifer

  “Yeah, hon, I’m fine,” Mel said softly, touching his face.

  “And the baby?”

  “She’s fine, too.”

  Her husband straightened. The look of panic and terror was gone, replaced now by steely determination. “The guys have all your things, right? Anything else?”

  “Nope. I’m ready to go.” She turned to Olivia. “Thanks for your help, doll.”

  Olivia smiled. “Good luck.”

  Despite Mel’s protests that she was capable of walking on her own, her husband swept her into his arms and carried her out to the waiting car. A moment later, gravel was flying everywhere, pinging off the side of the metal building like shrapnel, as their car disappeared around the corner.

  CHAPTER 12

  David Fuller was many things to many people. Former MMA champion, ruthless businessman, ladies’ man. But among his associates, both professional and private, he was best known for being true to his word. After all, when you ran an illegal fight club not governed by signed contracts drawn up by fancy lawyers, your word—and your might—was your bond.

  The man who’d introduced himself as simply Carl the Fixer sat next to him ringside just as the bell sounded. David had seen some pretty fucked up looking dudes in this business, but this guy took the cake. Although he wore a knit cap and dark sunglasses, it didn’t completely cover the sinewy ropes of puckered scars that ran along one side of his head and neck.

  Two fighters came together and began a bare-knuckle brawl while their supporters yelled and cheered. It was no holds barred in this underground fight club and David loved every minute.

  “The last man standing will be included on next month’s fight card,” he explained to his guest. “Just to be on it is worth a grand, and what guy couldn’t use that kind of money regardless of whether he wins or loses?”

  Viper Jones took a hard blow to the face and blood spurted everywhere, including on the white tank of the ring girl, Britney. The crowd cheered as he staggered backward. His opponent, who called himself the Kingslayer, was on him like a bad smell. Pressing Viper against the ropes, Kingslayer threw punch after punch, trying to score a knockout. Blood continued to pump from a gaping gash above Viper’s left eye. The mat would soon look like the floor of a trauma center. Somehow, Viper managed to remain on his feet at the end of the round and stumbled back to his corner when the bell sounded.

  David turned to his guest, keeping his voice low. “Now if Olivia were still working for me, that bleeder would be healed. That is, if I wanted him to win or draw out the fight longer. My customers hate paying for fights that end in the first round. I want to keep them happy and coming back, so it’s in my best interest that the fights don’t end prematurely.”

  The guy didn’t seem impressed, but then maybe his ruined face made it difficult to show any emotion. “And you’ve seen her do this?”

  “Of course. Many times.”

  “I see,” the man said, nodding. “And how long did she work for you?”

  “A month or so. I’d been fucking her for a couple of weeks before I figured out she was a Healer-Talent. After that, she healed a number of fighters for me.”

  His guest stared at him through his dark glasses. “Do you need to be reminded that it’s an offense to knowingly harbor an unregistered Talent? It’s punishable by ten years in prison.”

  Was that a threat? David glared back. Taking a few pointers from his fighters during the stare down, he hoped to intimidate the ugly sonofabitch, but the guy’s ruined face remained impassive. “What do you thinking I’m doing now? Confessing to my priest?”

  “How did you meet her?” the Fixer asked.

  “She was the new girl at the front desk of the gym where I work out.”

  “Any pictures?”

  David shook his head. “She was camera-shy. Hated having her picture taken.”

  “And you knew her as Olivia Hoffman, right?”

  “Yep.”

  The man handed him a folded sheet of paper. “Is this her?”

  David grabbed it and opened it up. The picture was grainy and pixelated, but there was no mistake. “Where did you get this?”

  “News crews took the photo at the explosion site.”

  Olivia had been in New Seattle? “Sure as hell looks like her.”

  Although the man remained expressionless, there was a smugness in his tone that hadn’t been there before. “I’ll need to know everything you can tell me about her. Any and all mention of family and friends, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem. Previous places of employment, schools she may have attended, cities she lived in, et cetera. Think you’re capable of doing that?”

  David bristled. What a patronizing asshole. “The chick wasn’t the talkative type, you know?”

  “Maybe she wasn’t into you. Is there someone else in your employ she may have opened up to?”

  What the fuck? If this bastard didn’t outweigh him by fifty pounds, he’d clock him. “Try the other way around. Wasn’t good in the sack. Too vanilla. I’d have shown her the door if it hadn’t been for her ability. So you think you can find her and bring her back?”

  The Fixer smiled. “Oh, I can find her, all right.”

  CHAPTER 13

  At the birthday party the next day, Ash was interacting more with the nine-year-old girls than he was helping. Olivia and Rand agreed it was like having one more kid to deal with. A big one.

  He bounced in the jumpy house set up in Reckless’s parking lot as the girls shrieked with laughter. With his hood pulled up and his aviators on at a crazy angle, he chased them through the garage as Motorcycle Zombie, ignoring Rand’s plea to pour juice into the cups on the table.

  “I can do it,” Olivia told Rand, wiping the frosting from her fingers after cutting the last piece of cake. She took the juice from him and began pouring. “Is he always this good with kids?”

  “Good? Jesus.” Rand rolled his eyes and shook his head. “It’s like he’s one of them.”

  “No kidding,” she said, laughing. “How long have you guys known each other?”

  Rand paused. When he spoke, his voice was soft. “Since Caitlyn was four.”

  According to what Mel had said, that was right around the time his wife died. She wondered if there was a connection. “How did you meet?”

  With a faraway look, Rand watched as Caitlyn and her friends ran from Asher then circled back around to push him from behind. “She looks a lot like her mother. Same eyes. Same hair color. She even has some of the same facial expressions, which catches me off-guard sometimes. You’d think something like that would be learned, but Caitlyn was so little when…when Amanda died. She doesn’t remember her very well anymore.”

  “I’m sorry, Rand. That must’ve been so hard.”

  He nodded, his eyes still tracking his daughter. “He saved her, you know.”

  “Ash saved Caitlyn?”

  “There was an incident at a checkpoint—that’s what the army likes to call it. They tried to claim that Cascadians were firing on innocent civilians, but I saw the whole thing and it was the other way around. Some young army punk yanked an older civilian from a truck and pistol-whipped him right there on the pavement. A woman in the passenger seat came out screaming. Then there were shots.” Rand pinched the bridge of his nose as he recalled what happened. “Suddenly, a huge fireball exploded in front of us, sending our car backwards, over the guard rail and into the river below. I must’ve blacked out because when I came to, Amanda was gone and a man—” He pointed to Asher. “—was pulling Caitlyn from her car seat in the back.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Olivia was at a loss at what else she could say. She couldn’t imagine what he’d gone through.

  “I can still see those army soldiers standing at the bridge railing, looking down at us and not doing a damn thing to help.”

  “Asher jumped in the water to rescue strangers,” she said, almost to herself.

  “Without him, I’d have lost both Amanda and Caitlyn that day
.”

  “He’s a hero.”

  “Yes, but he doesn’t think so, because he hadn’t been able to save all of us.”

  After singing Happy Birthday, the girls sat at the table eating cake and drinking punch for maybe a total of ten minutes before Caitlyn wanted to do the piñata. As she and her friends took turns hitting the candy-filled pink motorcycle, Ash crawled on the floor like a horse or big dog (Olivia couldn’t figure out which—one moment he was neighing and the next he was barking) and the kids in line climbed all over him.

  Stacking the paper plates smeared with half-eaten cake, she laughed as she watched him. He had such crazy ideas and did things a normal person just wouldn’t think of. But she liked that about him. He was unpredictable and creative.

  “Caitlyn adores him. Always has.” Rand looked a little less harried now than he had before the party started, probably because it was almost over. “She’s going to be sad when he leaves again.”

  She wouldn’t be the only one.

  Olivia swallowed around the lump forming in her throat as she continued to clear the table. Just a few more days and it would be over. Not that she was looking for something more with him. Logically, she knew that a relationship between the two of them wouldn’t work. Sure, it was sad that something this good, this magical, was coming to an end, but that was the thing about reality—it was soberingly real, and what was happening between them right now was pure fantasy. A fun, sex-filled fantasy. And by definition, fantasies were not real.

  “What are your plans after this week?” Rand asked.

  She felt her cheeks heating. Did he know she was Ash’s sex slave?

  “I don’t know how much Ash has told you about my…situation,” she began tentatively.

  Rand shook his head. “He keeps things pretty close to the vest and I don’t ask. Your business is your business. Not mine.”

  Her shoulders slumped in relief. So he didn’t know about her Talent. Or their arrangement. Not that she thought Ash would say anything, but she wondered what Rand had guessed.

  “I’m going to be moving soon,” she said. “New Seattle wasn’t what I thought it would be.”

  It had been a mistake to move to the city. She’d thought she’d be able to hide better amongst all the people, that it would make her feel more anonymous, but in reality, the opposite was true. There were too many people who could notice that she wasn’t quite the same. First, there was the disaster with David and his fight club, and now the explosion. She felt like there was a big red arrow pointing at her head for all to see, announcing that she was different.

  “I’m glad I asked,” he said, opening a plastic garbage bag for her. She stuffed in the used paper plates she’d collected. “Any interest in working here?”

  She frowned, unsure if she’d heard him correctly. “At Reckless?”

  “I really need someone to fill in for Mel until she comes back from maternity leave. I was going to call a temp service, but I’d rather not bring in someone I don’t know or trust. I ran it past Asher and he’s fine with it. If you’re interested, the job is yours.”

  She looked around and thought about what it would be like to work here. From here she could see various parts and tools stacked neatly on shelves and hanging from wall hooks. Although the place seemed pretty clean and neat for a garage, it was still, well, a garage. She’d always worked in offices or restaurants and had once dreamed of working in a medical clinic, but never had she thought about working in a place like this. Vince would’ve loved it, and her father as well. They were always tinkering with small engines out in their garage when she was growing up. But not her.

  “I know nothing about dirt bikes, motorcycles, or cars, for that matter. And if I’m being perfectly honest, loud engine noises kind of freak me out.” Vince used to chase her around the backyard with the leaf blower.

  Rand smiled. “I’m not asking you to be a mechanic or take a bike for a test ride, darlin’, just do some office work. Answer the phone, schedule hours, make appointments, some light bookkeeping. It would really help me out. If Asher trusts you enough to bring you here, that’s good enough for me.”

  Trust was something she hadn’t had much experience with in her relationships lately.

  Rand rubbed the back of his neck, looking almost sheepish, like a kid who’d just been caught stealing cookies. “There is one thing you need to understand, though.”

  Okay, here it was. The bombshell to blow up an otherwise perfect situation.

  “My side business is parting out vehicles that have...uh…come into my possession.”

  “You mean a chop shop?”

  He shrugged, a hint of a smile on his lips. “More or less.”

  She tried not to look disappointed, but she couldn’t work for an outfit doing something so blatantly illegal. “Do you steal them, too?”

  “Not exactly. We acquire them from those who steal them from the army. Although that’s not to say I wouldn’t, if given the opportunity.”

  The vehicles he was parting out had been stolen from the army? She brightened. Now that might be something she’d be willing to discard her moral compass for.

  She considered her options. It would be awesome not to worry about finding a job right away. Reckless was far from the city and rent shouldn’t be any more expensive here than at her apartment on the peninsula, maybe even a little less. By the time Mel came back, Olivia would hopefully have found a new apartment and job. Besides, actively foiling the army, rather than being on the run from them, sounded pretty damn appealing.

  “Would I be able to look for another, more permanent job situation while I’m working here?”

  “Of course. In fact, if you want, you can stay in the RV out back till you find a new place.” He pointed over his shoulder with a frosting-coated plastic fork. She remembered seeing a white RV, the kind with slide-outs, parked near the dirt road into the motocross park. “Except for food, it’s pretty much ready to go. And just so you know, the guys who work here are tough but decent. I wouldn’t allow them to step foot on the premises and be around my daughter if they weren’t.”

  As she consolidated the leftover juice from all the cups, she thought about the guys she’d met so far. There was Shane and his unruly black hair. Tall Paul who had terrible posture, making it clear he didn’t like being so tall. Arlo chewed bubblegum like a waitress working in a fifties dinner, so she guessed he was probably trying to quit smoking. And then there was Camps, who’d shown her pictures of his grandkids. Except for James, who hadn’t said more than two words to her, they all seemed decent. Rough, sure, but that was okay. The fact that they didn’t ask prying questions was a plus.

  “They’ll leave you alone. They know you’re off-limits.”

  “Just so we’re clear, there is no us between Asher and me, but I can understand why they’d make that assumption. After this week is over, that’s it.” She tried to keep her tone even and unemotional, even though it was painful to say the words. “I just need to make sure he won’t think it’s weird if I’m working here.”

  “Weird? It’s obvious he’s crazy about you.” He turned away abruptly and shoved a paper plate into the garbage bag.

  A thrill ran down her spine at his assessment, but why did it seem as if he wasn’t happy about it. Had she missed something?

  She twirled her finger in front of her like she was stirring a bowl. “This thing going on between Ash and me? It’s just temporary. You know, for fun.”

  Rand shrugged and picked up a cup that had fallen under the table. “All I know is that he’s never brought a woman here before.”

  Never? “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Listen, Olivia. You know he’s not…from around here, right?” She nodded. “Did you know that where he’s from, just the act of living together—you know, as a couple—can be taken as a betrothal?”

  She nearly dropped the cups she was holding. “You can’t be serious.” Ash must’ve been laughing inside when she’d made that offhan
d comment to the army interrogators about living together.

  “In his culture, sharing the same living quarters means a lot more than it does to us here. He wouldn’t have invited you to stay for the week if he didn’t have feelings for you that were more than just—” He looked around to make sure there were no little ears listening in. “Sexual. He’d have found a motel. Gone to your place. That’s all I’m saying.”

  No way. They’d only just met when he offered up his proposal. How could it have meant anything more? “He didn’t tell me that.”

  He jammed a few more plates into the bag. It definitely seemed as if something about the situation was bothering him. “Maybe it hasn’t occurred to him yet.”

  “But it has to you?” she asked skeptically.

  “I don’t mean to get all up in your business, it’s just that I’m an observant sonofabitch and a damn good judge of character. Not much gets past me. How else could I run all this, employing the kind of people I do—the kind of people that society has thrown away—and succeed?”

  Obviously, there was something more going on here. Why wouldn’t he just come out and say it? He didn’t strike her as the kind of man who tiptoed around anything, and yet…

  She narrowed her eyes and looked at him again. Was his odd reaction because he was in love with Ash? She hadn’t gotten that vibe from him before, but then she hadn’t been looking.

  “If you want to know the truth,” she said, “we’re just doing it for the sex. There’s nothing emotional going on.” If only she believed that. “So if you…uh…have feelings for him, I won’t stand in your way.”

  Rand had just taken a drink and was now spitting it all over the table in a fine mist.

  “Daddy!” Caitlyn shrieked from across the room. “That was sick.” All the girls in the piñata line turned to look.

  “Sorry, honey,” he called. “Olivia just told me a funny joke.” He turned back to Olivia, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “You think I’m…that we’re…” He had to put his hands on his knees to keep from falling over as he laughed. “That is fucking hilarious.”