Vote Then Read: Volume III

by Aleatha Romig

  It was a routine call—task force was already at the house on Galvez Street, setting up the perimeter and clearing out the block. By the time Gage and his brothers showed up, they’d have only one job: clean out the house and get their guy—a thirty-eight-year-old male who was wanted for homicide.

  Unfortunately, nothing about Gage’s job was routine.

  The unknown lurked around every corner, and there was always the chance that everything they’d planned for would go straight to hell. “Routine” was a word that went only so far in his life, but if he wanted to make sure he wasn’t the one to make everything FUBAR tonight, then he needed to get his head on straight.

  Stop thinking about Lizzie Danvers.

  What the hell had come over him today? Seriously, the way that he’d pressed against her at Inked? That sort of aggressive behavior wasn’t him. When it came to women, Gage always held the opinion that there were more fish in the sea.

  Why slap cocks with another dude, trying to prove ownership, when the next woman would do just as well?

  But then Lizzie had brought up going to Owen with her ridiculous proposition, and he’d seen red.

  That sure as hell wasn’t happening.

  For one, Owen was hung up on a chick he’d had a one night stand with the month before. No amount of persuasion was going to get him off the bandwagon that was Savannah Rose.

  Second, even if Owen wasn’t suffering from a case of unrequited love, he wouldn’t go for a girl like Lizzie Danvers—Gage wouldn’t have let him.

  “You okay, man?”

  Gage jerked at the sound of Luke O’Connor’s voice. A former army sergeant, the man was the closest thing Gage had to a best friend outside of Owen. Which was, aside from the fact that he saw Nathan Danvers frequently in the field, how Lizzie’s name had rung a bell.

  Luke’s wife, Anna, was besties with Danvers’ wife, who was, in turn, besties with Lizzie. That whole group was practically incestuous, and Gage made an effort to avoid joining the festivities when the women were included into the mix.

  Nothing against them, but the last time he’d gone out with a few of them, the outing had turned into one whole smorgasbord of marriages, kids, and mortgages.

  Gage preferred conversation that didn’t include any of the above—save the mortgages bit. His was a bitch-and-a-half, and he’d be paying off his damn house until the day he retired, no doubt about it.

  “I’m good,” he finally said.

  He wasn’t good. He’d just signed up to date a friend of a friend’s sister because he’d let his cock do the talking.

  “You sure?” Luke elbowed him. “Exorcise whatever thoughts you have, Harvey. We’ve got a job to do.”

  One job.

  They had one job.

  And, fortunately, it was a job Gage did very well.

  Hell, it was a job he’d wanted since he’d accompanied his father to work when he’d been seven, and he’d seen S.O.D. dressed in their riot gear, looking like modern-day avengers for those who couldn’t protect themselves.

  The bearcat slowed, then ground to a halt, and there was a collective inhale in the van. Gage’s fingers clenched down on the handle of his body shield.

  Training had beat a mentality of unison among them, as though they were a decked-out, armored school of fish.

  Routine conditioning of doing the same thing day in and day out for years had conditioned their brains to think as one.

  Gage wasn’t the oldest guy in the unit, but he’d been in S.O.D. the longest, and it fell to him to corral them all and set up their next move. At Gage’s signal, the guy closest to the door, Timms, unlatched the double doors and they filed out.

  Out of his periphery, he spotted task force positioned in place, their navy blue BDU’s blending into the night. A cruiser marked with “K-9” sat one house over, and Gage would bet his left nut that Nathan Danvers sat inside with his Belgian Malinois, waiting for the moment to strike.

  Like S.O.D., K-9 wasn’t relegated to a single district; the city of New Orleans was their oyster.

  Time to get this shit done.

  In pairs, sandwiched shoulder to shoulder, they moved up to the rotted house. Vines crawled up the wood panels, and the roof sagged like it might cave in at any moment. A lone light hung by the front door like a beacon.

  On his left, Luke muttered, “Hooah,” like the good soldier he once was.

  Gage had never served in the military, but after a year of working side by side with the guy, he echoed the call, “Hooah.”

  Their combat boots thudded up the rickety porch steps.

  Deep breath, man. Deep breath.

  He shifted his shield, unfurling his fist as he knocked heavily on the door. “Police with a warrant!” he bellowed, and then his boot connected with the door. The wood creaked, swinging wide open to reveal a dark room as the hinges gave way.

  Luke’s arm shot out.

  Pop!

  Light burst in the dark room, the flashbang brightening the hellhole up like Fourth of July.

  Gage scouted the space from behind the eye-shield of his helmet. Ratty furniture sat scattered around, and a rug carpeted the floor. “Let’s go, boys.”

  They moved in, tracking the space for their target. They checked each room thoroughly, and the high of the moment seeped like a drug into Gage’s veins. This was what he lived for, the high he craved: the push and pull of putting the bad guys in jail and doing everything in his power to protect his city, just the way the men in his family had done for generations.

  Except for Owen.

  Owen had opted out, quitting the police academy the day after their father was hit by a drunk driver up on the I-10 while handling a breakdown. Ben Harvey hadn’t stood a chance. By the time the ambulance arrived seven minutes and forty-six seconds later, his pulse had already dwindled to a crawl.

  So Owen had chosen ink, artwork, a life as an entrepreneur.

  And Gage had chosen this—

  Their target swung open the kitchen door, a clear attempt to escape into the house’s backyard . . . where more of their guys waited. S.O.D. and task force had the house on lockdown.

  “Stop!” His voice cracked through the room like a whip. “Get down on the ground, now.”

  The man didn’t stop—no surprise there.

  He fled out the door and Gage didn’t hesitate.

  He’d chosen this life, a life that wasn’t clear-cut.

  Black. White.

  Good. Evil.

  There were always shadows of gray.

  This was him, continuing the family legacy, doing more than just sitting on a stool and inking people’s skin.

  He’d never once stopped to wonder what if he didn’t come home. What if this was the end for him.

  Those hesitations spelled out certain death.

  But for the first time in his life, as he swept into the night with his brothers by choice, he wondered what if.

  And it all had to do with Lizzie Danvers.

  5

  “Caramel mocha iced coffee!”

  Lizzie glanced up at the front of the coffee shop—her favorite in the city—and immediately scoped out the front door. Again. Gage Harvey was late, although maybe she shouldn’t have been surprised.

  Maybe he’d come to his senses and had decided to blow her off.

  Maybe he’d caught on to her desperation, and realized that not even a night spent with her in bed could make up for it.

  She still couldn’t believe that’d been his bargaining chip, like something out of a rom-com or a steamy romance novel.

  Especially as she was trying to prove that real-life bad boys were nothing like their fictional counterparts.

  But she’d be lying if she said that the offer wasn’t intriguing. After months of bad sex with Scott (and the sex had been infrequent, at that, thanks to him living in Oregon), Gage’s proposition enticed her in more ways than one.

  And since Lizzie was fully aware that their dating was nothing but a front, it left her with t
he opportunity to sex the guy up and walk away unscathed. It was exactly what she needed. She was over giving her heart to men who had no intention of returning the favor.

  At least Gage’s request for a night in her bed lacked the awful stench of bullshit. He didn’t bother with a B.S. promise of forever. Instead the heated look in his black eyes had issued an altogether different sort of promise: he’d make her feel good, perhaps better than she’d ever felt in her life, and Lizzie was down for that.

  One-hundred percent.

  “Sorry I’m late.”

  The deep baritone startled her as the man of the hour slid into the seat opposite hers. He wore another white T-shirt, and the soft fabric stretched across his broad chest. On his head was a purple Louisiana State University baseball cap. The brim was curled, the edges frayed from age and use.

  Yeah, Lizzie pretty much had no qualms about jumping into bed with Gage Harvey. She wasn’t one for casual sex, always preferring the relationship route, but maybe that’s where she’d gone wrong in life.

  She always wanted more, whether it came to the ThatMakeupGirl brand or her lesser-known photography business. She never allowed herself the chance to enjoy the moment.

  This was her chance to do just that, and she couldn’t be luckier. Opportunities to climb onto the lap of a man like Gage Harvey didn’t come around every day.

  Tapping her mug, she tipped her head to study him. “I’ll grab you a coffee. What do you prefer?”

  His tattoos rippled as he leaned forward, forearms landing on the table. His shoulders bunched, the muscles beneath his shirt shifting and clenching and warming her up like the coffee she inhaled every morning. “I don’t drink coffee.”

  A flaw, thank God. “You don’t drink it at all?”

  “Nope.”

  “And you’re a cop?”

  “Have been for the last fourteen years.”

  A lifer then, just like her brother. “What about donuts?” she teased, wanting to erase the tired shadows from beneath his eyes. “Fancy a powdered one?”

  He grinned slowly, sexily. “Don’t eat ’em.”

  Another flaw. “Tell me, Gage”—she mimicked him and leaned in—“are you human under all that ink?”

  “Debatable.” He winked, and Lizzie pressed her knees together under the table. “Honestly, I’m just not a fan of shit that will screw with my performance on the job. Coffee keeps me wired, but I can do the same with an energy drink.”

  “And donuts?”

  “They’re on a mission to grow my waistband. It’d be hard as hell to climb over a chain-link fence if I can’t even lift myself off the ground.”

  The image of him scaling fences was hotter than she wanted to think about. “All right, fine. On behalf of womankind, I support this decision. But, I have to ask . . .”

  He pushed up the brim of his hat with one finger. “I might have an answer for you, princess.”

  She lowered her voice to a purr. “How do you feel about cheese?”

  “Is this a make or break moment for me?”

  His husky baritone curled her toes, even as she replied, “Absolutely.”

  “Then I should probably let you know that I’m not a diehard fan. If it’s on a sandwich or pizza, we’re good. Eating cubes of cheese on the other hand? Not my thing.”

  Lizzie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry—another cheese-hater. What had she done to deserve this? She placed her hands on the table and made an elaborate show of standing up. “Well, I guess we’re done here . . .”

  Twisting his ball cap around so that the bill shaded his neck, Gage stared up at her with a half-grin. “Quickest relationship I’ve ever had, fake or otherwise. Good thing we didn’t get to the marriage bit—we’d have a hard time splitting our assets.”

  His dark eyes dropped to her waist.

  Reaching across the small coffee table, Lizzie tapped his chin to command his attention. “One, my butt is doing just fine.”

  “Did I ask about it?”

  Her brows furrowed. “You mentioned assets. Pretty sure you were hinting at other things.”

  Gage folded his arms across his chest, his expression turning serious. “If we’re going to do this, you should probably know that I’m a straight-shooter. Beating around the bush in my line of work can get someone killed. So if you want to know exactly what I mean when I say something, just ask.”

  Lizzie’s butt collided with the seat.

  A bad boy who didn’t speak in riddles? Who knew such a magical unicorn existed?

  “All right,” she said, mimicking his pose and crossing her arms, “then I want to know why you agreed to date me. You accused me of trying to embarrass you, and then you mentioned that you would never cross my brother. Yeah, you mentioned the one night stand, but honestly?” Lizzie met his gaze unflinchingly. “I don’t trust it. You caved way too easily.”

  “You want honesty?”

  She nodded, and her heart cranked up its thumping tempo.

  Drawing off his ball cap, he tossed it on the table and ran his fingers through his thick hair. “It was the fear.”

  Her stomach dropped. “Excuse me?”

  He didn’t look away, and Lizzie didn’t either. “When she was still alive, my grandmother used to go on and on about airs. I had no fucking idea what she was talking about—not a single clue. I’d look out at the blue sky and think to myself, the sky don’t look a damn bit different than it did earlier. Drove me insane to think that she knew some secret language neither Owen or I could decipher.”

  The words wrapped around her, a soft rasp with that subtle not-quite-New Orleans drawl, and Lizzie was sucked in. Did his twin sound exactly the same? He hadn’t said much the other day at the tattoo parlor. Or had their life experiences individualized the cadence of their speech, turning Gage’s voice husky and seductive, though his phrasing was hard, jaded, like the handcuffs he locked around wrists and the gun she’d noticed under his shirt when he’d sat down.

  “When I finally got it,” he went on, “I felt like the biggest idiot. Airs—she meant the sort of uppity attitude a person shows to the world.”

  Lizzie’s shoulders twitched at the implication coating his words. “Are you saying that I’m uppity?”

  “I’m saying that you put on airs, princess. Bubbly airs, flirty airs. But when you talked of your business, of losing it all, I saw past all that to the fear. And that’s why I agreed, because your job is clearly who you are . . . and I’m the exact same way.”

  Well, hell.

  Lizzie blinked.

  And then blinked again.

  And then opened her mouth to say, “I don’t know what to—”

  “Doesn’t mean you won’t be filling your brother in about all of this.”

  Her mouth fell open, snapped shut, and then gaped again like a fish’s. “But you already said that . . .”

  Gage picked up his hat and settled it on his head, cutting his gaze from view. “You want my help? That’s my one stipulation. Your job means enough to you that you’ll agree, I know that. Well, my job is everything to me. It’s who I am. And I’m sure as hell not going to let your scheme interfere with everything I’ve worked toward during the last fourteen years. It’s your call.”

  Did she really have a choice? He’d verbally and mentally worked her into a corner, backing her so far in that there was little chance for escape.

  Shifting in her seat, she eyed Gage Harvey and plotted out her next step. He was too headstrong to browbeat into the direction she wanted to take, that was clear to her now. Still . . . “How well do you know Danny?”

  Gage didn’t bat an eye at hearing the nickname she’d given her brother as a kid, instead of his real name, Nathan. “I see him weekly. Last time I ran into him out in the field, his beloved dog tried to hump my leg.”

  Lizzie grinned at the hilarious visual. “Rocky is a little horny. It’s sort of his thing.”

  “Didn’t think he was going to let me go.” Gage shook his head, as though dispellin
g the memory. “Anyway, it’s up to you. Are you so desperate to go through with this that you’ll fess up to your brother?”

  Was she? Danny knew how much ThatMakeupGirl meant to her, and the fact that her phone had yet to quiet since the whole showdown had happened proved that her fans were rabid for more information. They wanted updates and, thus far, Lizzie had a whole lot of nada to give them.

  She eyed the man across the table, tracing his muscular arms and the way that his T-shirt dipped down into the smallest V to reveal more ink on his chest. “You’re not at all what I imagined,” she said.

  While he had the arrogant note down pat, it was very clear to her that he wasn’t the immoral playboy she’d expected when first meeting him.

  His smile was wry and a little self-deprecating. “Looks can be deceiving, wouldn’t you say?”

  The question struck a nerve.

  Airhead.

  Bimbo.

  Waste of space.

  She wasn’t any of those things, and yet she heard the words more frequently than she liked. Lizzie wondered what sort of things Gage Harvey heard—were the tattoos enough to lump him into a “bad boy” category all on its own?

  Didn’t you think the same thing about him?

  A flush swept over her chest as the shame set in. She’d stereotyped him the way thousands of people did to her each day, and that was a hard pill to swallow.

  She averted her gaze to the coffee mug clasped between her hands. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  Her chest expanded with a heavy breath. “I make a point to never look at someone and judge them based on their appearance, and yet I did that with you. I took one look at the tattoos and your flirty demeanor and I judged hard. That wasn’t fair.”

  Silence greeted her, as though he was absorbing her words and internally cataloguing them. Then he leaned back in his chair, his thumb drumming a beat on the table, all masculine ease, and said, “C’mere.”

  Shock slipped down her spine. “What?”

  Dipping his chin, Gage lifted his hand from the table and gestured at her. “Appearances are what you need for the next thirty days, princess, and I’m going to give that to you. Come here.”