Risk It All (Risqué #2)

by Scarlett Finn

  Risqué had become his life and he loved spending time here. He hired men to take care of things at Warner Autos and with Ivy answering phones, ordering parts, and doing paperwork, he had less to do with the garage these days, meaning he could devote his time to Risqué.

  Content that the club was secure, he exited through the rear staff door and locked it up too. He zipped his leather jacket, dug his hands into his pockets and began to mentally list the things he had to do tomorrow as he trudged down the alley behind the club. Two paces beyond the dumpster, he heard a sharp inhale that made him pause.

  ‘Quiet, you fucking ‘ho,’ a low male voice grumbled.

  Blaser glimpsed the movement of a shadow further down the alley to his left. Peering closer, all he could make out was the shape of a large guy, dressed in dark clothes that made his form difficult to decipher. The shadowy guy raised his arm, there was a slap and then a female exclamation of pain before a body collapsed to the ground between the shadowy guy and the club wall.

  ‘Rafe wants you taught about disrespect,’ the shadow snarled and dropped out of view behind another dumpster that was further down.

  Stalking forth to see what was going on, the scuffling sounds got louder the nearer that Blaser got and were soon joined by muffled female objections. More definition grew in the shadow man who was sprawled on top of a body, hiding its identity, all Blaser could make out were naked female arms and legs.

  ‘Hey!’ Blaser said, storming over to haul the shadow up from the ground by the back of his neck.

  The guy swore and lashed out to loosen Blaser’s grip from his jacket, then he spun around to try and land a punch, but Blaser blocked it and got in one of his own. The shadow staggered back, giving Blaser his first real chance at interpreting a physical description. He noted blonde hair, angry eyes, and a scar intersecting the perpetrator’s brow. Bloody scratches on his neck and face joined the blood now seeping from his lip, which had been split by Blaser’s punch.

  Widening his stance, Blaser prepared to get into a brawl, but the blonde male shadow spun around and bolted off. Giving chase briefly entered Blaser’s mind, but around here you never knew what you were dealing with. Drugs were rife, prostitution and gangs too, this was a shady part of town. So even if he caught up with the guy, Blaser wasn’t going to call the cops, that just wasn’t how things went down in this neighbourhood and he wasn’t going to visit trouble on the club.

  When the attacker vanished out the end of the alley, Blaser turned his attention to the woman on the ground and immediately wished that he’d done more than just split the perp’s lip. At five-five, with streaks of blonde in mousy brown hair, Blaser knew just who this woman sitting on the cold asphalt outside of his club in the wee hours was. She kept her face down, giving him a view of the jagged parting in her hair. Her reluctance to lift her attention only betrayed that she recognised him too.

  ‘What I should really do is ask if you’re ok and then take you to the hospital,’ he said, putting his hands on his hips and looking down at the woman still sprawled on the tarmac. ‘What I’m actually going to do is ask you if you’re fucking insane.’

  She twisted her legs to look at a scrape on her calf then lifted her rear from the ground to try and wriggle her skirt down. Her hand rose, indicating that she wanted help up, so he took it and pulled her to her feet.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, smoothing the skirt that barely covered her ass. The flash of her midriff carried on up to her breasts which were covered by a red halter top.

  ‘What are you doing here, Bri?’ he asked while reminding himself that she was no longer his to scoop up off the ground and into his arms.

  ‘I need your help,’ she said.

  Tossing her hair back, she revealed the bruising on her cheek, the blood on her chin and the fullest, softest lips he’d ever known. She still didn’t look at him, she twisted her body to examine a cut on the back of her upper arm: doing everything she could to put off the moment that she’d have to meet his eyes.

  ‘You don’t need my help,’ he said. Being near her again was still surreal. He still hadn’t quite worked out how to act around her now that their relationship wasn’t sexual, as it always had been before. ‘You never need my help. Does Gary know that you’re here?’

  That question vanquished her delay, and she chose this moment to blink her long-lashed eyes at him. ‘Blaser,’ she said. ‘You know that my brother is in jail, exactly where you put him.’

  ‘I didn’t put anyone in jail,’ Blaser said. ‘Your brother mouthed off to an undercover cop, that’s how he got himself into the slammer this time. Let’s not kid ourselves that Gary is an upstanding member of society. He had this coming.’

  ‘You don’t know everything, Love. You don’t know what’s going on or why I’m here.’

  ‘Don’t call me that,’ he said, backing away and taking his hand out of hers. If she opened those floodgates and got him thinking that this was just like the old days, he didn’t trust himself to act like an ex without full privileges should. ‘And don’t do that…’ He lifted his hand toward her face then thought better of touching her again. ‘Thing.’

  ‘What thing?’ she asked. Her step in his direction only made him take another backwards.

  He ignored the question because she already knew the answer; she knew exactly what she could do to him with a flutter of those lashes. ‘What are you doing behind my club at three in the morning, who was that fucker who had you pinned? What did he want?’

  Bri took in a short breath and panted it out. ‘It’s a long story, I was waiting. I didn’t want to come in because… I didn’t know if Colt would be there. I thought I would catch you out here, and we could talk.’

  ‘What do you want to talk about at three in the morning?’

  ‘I need a job.’

  ‘You need a job?’

  ‘I need money,’ she said. ‘So yeah, I need a job.’

  ‘What kind of job do you think I’ve got for you?’ he asked, sorry that his first thought made his eyes fall onto her legs.

  ‘I don’t screw people for money,’ she said, folding her arms under those pert little tits that he remembered too well. ‘That’s your department.’

  And the spite in her tone was enough to cool his desire. ‘Oh, ho,’ he said, exhaling his own frustration and turning on his heels to begin moving away. ‘I’m not having this fight with you, Dollface. It’s late and I’ve had a long day.’

  ‘You’ve always had a long day,’ she said, snatching something up from the ground then scurrying up at his side. ‘You’ve always been a workaholic, even since before you actually had a legit job.’

  Brianna and he had a history that was Shakespeare meets Tarantino. As many tragic episodes as there were comedic ones, they’d seen bloodshed together, been at drug crazed parties, had wild sex in crazy locations, and been arrested together.

  The criminal underworld was his stomping ground when he hung with his own team, and at the head of that team, at Blase’s side, was Brianna’s older brother Gary, his once upon a time best friend. But all of that had changed when Blaser went to prison.

  ‘That’s a different fight,’ Blaser said, striding out of the alley to head towards home. ‘Can you pick one fight and stick with it? I’m not in the mood to flip back and forth between them. I’m not sure I’d be able to keep up.’

  ‘You saw what that guy did to me, Blase, what he was going to do to me. You stopped to help me because you didn’t want him to hurt me.’

  ‘I didn’t know it was you.’

  ‘Are you saying that if you had, you wouldn’t have helped me?’

  He stopped, struck to the very core at that implication. ‘If I had known it was you, I would’ve gone back into the club for my gun.’ Protecting her was the first goal he’d ever set in his life.

  ‘That’s because you love me.’

  Her smile begat his, because as much as she was teasing him and trying to win him over, he feared that her declaration might actuall
y be true. ‘How much money do you need?’

  ‘No,’ she said, losing her smile and shaking her head.

  The bag that she had slung over her body shifted, so she pushed it away from her hip and rested it on her spine. It was then that he noticed she was carrying another bag over her shoulder. Two bags might not be much, but he took the larger of the two – the one that she had across her body – and lengthened the strap to fling it over his own torso.

  ‘No?’ he asked.

  ‘I will only let you give me money if I earn it. You know how I feel about something for nothing.’

  As far as he knew, Bri had never owed anyone a real debt in her life. ‘I’ll call it in later when I need something,’ he said, knowing it was unlikely that he ever would.

  ‘By which time I might be married with kids. I don’t think that my husband will like the idea of an ex-boyfriend calling me up and demanding sex.’

  ‘Since when do you make me pay for sex,’ he said. ‘I thought that all I had to do was ask.’

  ‘Those days are long gone, and you know it,’ she said then lowered her lashes. ‘I don’t do sex anymore.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, with a half-smile. Brushing a finger down her cheek, he thought about all of the times that they had been together, and everything that had happened to tear them apart.

  ‘I heard that Ruger left town,’ she said. Changing the subject was her way of retreating from an awkward subject. No matter how many times he tried to bring up the incident which happened a year ago, she always closed the door in his face.

  ‘Again,’ Blaser said, carrying on his journey with her walking at his side. ‘He’ll be back eventually, he always is.’

  ‘I heard that he moved a woman into his apartment.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Blaser said. ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Ruger the cohabiter, who would’ve thought… I never figured out what I did to that guy to make him hate me so much.’

  ‘He doesn’t hate you,’ Blaser said, his younger brother didn’t trust Bri and made no secret about it. Colt, Blaser’s twin, didn’t trust her either, but he at least made his reasons clear – Colt thought that Bri was trouble, full stop. ‘And Suzette isn’t his girlfriend, she’s Lyssa’s best friend.’

  ‘Lyssa? Doctor Cutler?’

  ‘Yeah, you know, Colt’s fiancée. Suzette needed a place to stay and Ruger knew he was leaving town, so he said she could use his place.’

  ‘I thought he had a trillion secrets.’

  ‘He does,’ Blaser said. ‘But I don’t think he keeps them all in his apartment.’

  ‘I can’t believe that Colt is really getting hitched.’

  ‘He says so, he just moved into her townhouse this week,’ Blaser said. ‘Lyssa’s alright, she’s a doctor, a therapist, you know that… I’ve told you that already, a bunch of times. She said if you ever wanted to talk or, you know, or we wanted to talk together that—‘

  Brianna stopped. ‘You never told me what made you tell her, about what happened to me.’

  Turning to see the curious vulnerability spread across her face, guilt seeped into him. When he had first brought up Bri talking to a doctor, she had been horrified that he’d shared her secret. Now she seemed more accepting and he hoped that was a sign that she was ready to move on from the trauma.

  ‘I didn’t tell her all the details, just… Don’t you think it’s time that you talk about what happened to you?’

  ‘I talked,’ she said and he recognised those defensive hackles firing from her eyes. ‘I talked to cops and lawyers and doctors. I talked to them all. I talked and I talked. This is something that happened to me and I don’t like the idea that you think I’m broken because of it. Why can’t you just forget it? Forget that you know it at all and think of me like you used to.’

  ‘You haven’t forgotten it. You said it yourself, you haven’t had sex since it happened, have you?’

  ‘I get along just fine without sex, Blaser… Sex isn’t everything. A person can live a long and happy life without ever—oh to hell with you, I don’t even know why I came here. I should’ve listened to Gary.’

  She spun around, but he snagged her arm and brought her back to him. Bri wasn’t usually so short tempered, her reaction betrayed that she hadn’t dealt with issues from her past that desperately needed to be dealt with. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up, not out here like this.’

  ‘You didn’t say that you shouldn’t have brought it up at all, which means you’re not finished harassing me about it.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be finished harassing you about anything,’ he said, managing a smile and silently praying that she would relax and forgive him for bringing it up.

  Fingering a rip on the strap of her top, she moved her eyes away from his. She was practically naked in the revealing outfit and he couldn’t handle seeing that much of her skin without his body reacting. So Blaser unzipped his jacket and draped it around her. She stumbled back, blinking up at him with round eyes. He held his hands up to show he had no intention of hurting her.

  ‘You shouldn’t be out like that. You’ll give guys ideas.’

  ‘Guys like you?’

  Now that he had her up close again, he wished that he didn’t have a rule against messing around with subordinates. But he was brought back to considering her original request because he couldn’t act on the impulses he had around her, not anymore. ‘I’ll let you wait tables.’

  ‘If you let me dance I’ll make more money,’ she said, but he shook his head. ‘I can work in the garage for you too, just like I used to. I can answer phones and do your inventory and—‘

  ‘I’ve got a new girl,’ he said. Back in the day, Bri would come to Warner’s autos when it was a chop shop and do what admin needed to be done. Things were definitely different now that he was legitimate.

  ‘You replaced me?’ she asked, but her mock indignation was enough to make him smile, which was something she’d always had a knack for doing: making him smile even when others failed.

  ‘I’ve replaced you a couple of times, but the girls never seem to stick around for long. They’re intimidated by the guys or they date them and things get awkward.’

  ‘So if I hang around long enough, your new girl will quit and I can take over again.’

  ‘I don’t think that Ivy is the type to be easily intimidated,’ Blaser said.

  ‘Sounds like you like her. Is she pretty?’

  ‘Jealousy?’ he said and had to laugh because Bri had never been the jealous type.

  Never in all of the years that they were together did she even accuse him of so much as looking at another woman. But that might have been because he never did. Bri kept him enraptured, he’d been besotted since they were teenagers and looking at her now he didn’t think that enchantment had ever gone away.

  ‘I can be jealous of other women sharing your bed,’ she said, toying with his pinkie finger that hung at his side. She always fiddled with his digits when flirting with him or playing coy. He had never seen her do it with another soul, but she was entitled to his body in a unique way.

  ‘You could be, but she’s not sharing my bed. Her husband is working security for me at the club.’

  ‘She’s married? What’s her husband like?’

  ‘I haven’t figured him out yet,’ Blaser said, narrowing his eyes as he once again considered what Dax Harrow’s story might be. ‘So far he’s doing his job and that’s all that I care about, the rest isn’t my business.’

  ‘You’re too trusting,’ she said. ‘You hire people that no one else would touch.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean I trust them. I know how to handle things if they go wrong.’ She still wouldn’t look at him, so he took the opportunity to scope out the figure he still dreamt about at night.

  ‘I know you do,’ she whispered and clicked her nail under his.

  She was stronger than she gave herself credit for, which was good because Risqué didn’t employ many wallflowers, meaning he was u
sed to being around women with gumption in spades. Risqué women had to be tough enough to deal with wandering hands and savvy enough to retort to mouthy patrons without causing an altercation.

  ‘Thank you for stopping in the alley and helping me out,’ she said, gratitude was another way she had of repaying debts. Sometimes she wasn’t strong enough to save herself, but in the times he’d done it for her, she had always been generous with her appreciation afterwards.

  When he resumed walking, he was pleased that she remained at his side. ‘Who was the guy?’

  ‘He works for a guy called Rafe. I didn’t realise that he was following me. I was coming to the club to ask you for a job, I thought it was best to talk to you outside, so I waited. Rafe will be pissed that you stepped in, but he’s not going to start a war with your family. I don’t think that he’s that dumb.’

  ‘We’re not the mafia,’ he said. ‘My family can deal with shit. We’ve been dealing with lowlifes and scumbags for years. Do you need help with this Rafe guy?’

  She exhaled what sounded like a laugh and slipped her arms into his jacket sleeves. ‘I wouldn’t even know where to start.’

  ‘At the beginning,’ he said.

  They kept walking, then turned away from the main drag, and continued on. ‘I saw Crystal last week,’ Brianna said and he didn’t think this was the beginning of an explanation for what was going on with Rafe. ‘She practically took my head off.’

  Crystal was the head dancer in Risqué, she had worked there since day one. She had helped him design the uniforms and come up with the ground rules. She was probably his best friend in the world, after his two brothers. Though he didn’t always get along with them because his path through life hadn’t been as kosher as theirs.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘She heard that we… that we’d been seeing each other.’

  ‘No one was happy about that,’ he said. ‘Ruger and Colt have been giving me shit for getting involved again. I still can’t believe that Gary called in a raid at the club and showed up to cause shit with the girls. I think he’d be happier if I had backed off quietly.’