Red Hot Bikers, Rock Stars and Bad Boys

by Cassia Leo

  “Whoa, there,” Georgie said, blanking her screen and tucking it in her pocket. “Did you leave him?”

  Lizzy nodded and burst into tears.

  Georgie grabbed her more tightly. “Good God, Lizzy! What the fuck happened? Do we need to call the police?”

  Lizzy shook her head while she slobbered on Georgie’s shirt, soaking the fabric and chilling her skin underneath. She kept repeating, “I’m okay. I’m okay.”

  “You don’t look okay. What the hell happened?” Georgie wrapped her other arm around Lizzy’s shoulders and guided them both backward to the couch. She hoped Lizzy wouldn’t feel how she was quivering.

  “I’m okay, but I fucked everything up,” Lizzy said.

  This, Georgie could deal with. This was just another thing. “We’ll figure it out. The most important thing is that you’re back, now. We can get tutors to catch you up in your classes. I have some essays that we can edit for you to turn in if you need to. We’ll get you through this semester somehow.”

  “That’s not it,” Lizzy sobbed on her front, her blond hair bobbing just below Georgie’s chin. Her hair smelled like her usual strawberry shampoo that filled their bathroom when she showered because she used handfuls of it on her short hair.

  “Then what the hell is wrong? Your parents? I have all the phone numbers of the reporters who called. Most of them want you to tell your side of the story.” There was a lot going on in Lizzy’s life, and they would deal with all of it later, just as soon as Georgie stopped freaking and could figure it all out.

  Lizzy ran her hand through her short hair and ended up pulling it straight up in tiny platinum spikes. “I’ve just fucked everything up.”

  “If your version of fucking everything up involves getting away from Bonfils, then you didn’t fuck up. You finally got it right.”

  “That’s not it. That’s partly it, but just because I did it stupidly and now he’s after me. Crap.”

  “He’s after you?” Georgie glanced at her phone, but Rae hadn’t texted back yet. She dreaded it and was dying to know. “Yeah, I can see that happening.”

  “And I screwed everything up with Theo and it feels like I ripped my own heart out.”

  “At least you aren’t denying it. That’s a refreshing change.” Georgie typed Lizzy is here at dorm. Can’t leave her. on her phone to Rae.

  There. Now she couldn’t go to fucking Paris.

  Lizzy said, “And men were shooting at me. I’ve been shot at twice in the last week, and Theo thinks it’s this Santiago drug dealer guy but Mannix said that they were Russians, and shit! I forgot to tell Theo that I think it’s Russians, not his drug dealer.”

  Russians?

  Georgie looked up from her phone. “Why would Russians be shooting at you?”

  “My dad was in the Russian mob, and I think they’re trying to force me to go back to Pajari Gym, and I don’t know!”

  Oh, crap. Georgie was found. She was so found. Everything was crashing and burning around her.

  She raised one eyebrow, trying to look unruffled and like she wasn’t panicking-stupid inside. “Do you really think your parents would put a contract out on you to scare you back to work for them? That seems illogical. If they kill you, you can’t work for them.”

  “I don’t know! People shot at me! Twice!” Lizzy’s blue eyes rolled up in her head.

  Georgie’s phone buzzed again, and Rae had texted, Will be tix for her, too. Get her butt on that plane b4 she gets stupid again.

  Shit. If the Russian mob was after Lizzy, they would notice Georgie soon enough, too. She had to get out.

  Paris might be far enough away, even if it meant Georgie had to hide in a hotel room for a couple days. Or she could just get Lizzy someplace safe—away from Russians who were shooting at her and Mannix fucking Bonfils—and then she could melt into the night in Europe.

  She asked Lizzy, “Do you have a passport?”

  “Do I have a fucking what?” Lizzy’s hands curled into grasping fists.

  Georgie’s phone was hot in her hand from all her frantic texting. “A passport. If you think Bonfils is after you, let’s leave the country.”

  “But, class! You have class on Monday!”

  “We both have class on Monday, Lizzy. Evidently, we’ll be home Monday morning.”

  Lizzy cried out, “What the hell is going on?”

  Georgie pursed her lips. “While Rae didn’t actually say where she is, I know that she was in Paris a few hours ago, so I’m betting that she’s still somewhere in France.” She held the phone up. “Here is everything that I know.”

  Lizzy squinted at the tiny screen, reading the texts, and frowned. “I’m not stupid.”

  Georgie rolled her eyes. That was what Lizzy took away from this whole conversation? “Of course you’re not. Get your passport.”

  “What’s going on?” Lizzy still looked scared.

  Georgie sighed. “How am I supposed to know? Group Dom-date? Maybe that kinky fucker is into menage now.”

  Lizzy held up her tiny, squirrel-paw hands. “I am so not down for that. Not now. Not ever.”

  They had to leave now. If the Russian mob was coming, even if there was only a chance that it was one of the Russian bratvas, they had to get in a goddamn car and leave right the hell now. “So we’ll ask her when we get there. Get your damned passport and pack some clean underwear. If they’re buying last-minute plane tickets, we’re going to have to go through all kinds of ass-probe security before they’ll let us on that plane.”

  “I don’t have any clothes here,” Lizzy protested.

  Georgie pulled her to her feet and shoved her toward their bedroom a little. “So poach some of mine. We’ll just pin up the pants and waists. Let’s go.”

  Lizzy ran into the other room.

  Georgie held her head in her hands.

  Rae was somewhere with Flicka. The Russian mob was here, hunting either Lizzy or herself. Everything was going to shit.

  Georgie texted to Rae, her heart thumping hard the whole time: K. Wanna tell us WTF going on?

  She waited, staring at the phone and praying the whole time. She was whipping through a rosary in her head when Rae texted back: Tell you when you get here. Secret!

  Snarky little minx.

  Georgie went to tell Lizzy to get a move on because they needed to snag some clothes at The Devilhouse and get the hell out of Dodge.

  THE DEVILHOUSE

  Georgie

  Georgie drove her white Lexus down the long driveway to The Devilhouse, glancing at the wrought iron fence that contained the park-like waste area in the center of the long driveway. In the early spring, flowers bloomed in there, but now they were drooping and spent, their dying petals blowing in the hot spring breeze.

  Lizzy cowered in the passenger seat, peeking out her car’s windows.

  Damn, Bonfils had done a bang-up job of fucking up Lizzy’s head in just a few weeks. He was good at that, though. He was a goddamn natural.

  Maybe getting her to Paris would help her break free of him.

  But first, they needed to make a quick raid on The Devilhouse for clothes.

  You would think, from its name and its business description, that The Devilhouse should look like a dark and glowering Gothic castle, someplace with nine levels of torment and subjugation, maybe with sunshades blocking out the sun and forcing a perpetual gloom so that bats flew twenty-four hours a day.

  Instead, fluted Doric columns ringed the porch of the huge plantation-style house. Sunlight glared off the fresh white paint, nearly blinding anyone who came here during the day. At night, spotlights glowed on the pristine exterior and clean windows.

  After all, a business devoted to satisfying more extreme appetites, especially sexual appetites, had to look respectable in all other appearances. She had heard that they paid their taxes early and in full.

  Georgie had worked there for a few years and had eight regular clients. With paperwork and promo, she worked usually fifteen hours a week and had
been making more than enough money for room, board, and tuition, plus socking fat stacks away for law school expenses, plus beginning to make restitution.

  Her duties ranged from drinking games while watching baseball to high tea to cuddling during horror movies, with very little, occasionally, more. Her clients were all so grateful, so sweet, and so fragile.

  The man who owned The Devilhouse, known only as The Dom, was none of these, and that was whom Rae was vacationing in Paris with. Georgie and The Dom respected each other’s emotional reserve, and to some extent, Georgie was more comfortable around him than around a lot of people because she knew that he wouldn’t ask prying questions that left her only the options of snapping back a sarcastic answer or lying, and he relaxed around her for the same reason.

  She could not imagine why Rae and The Dom wanted her and Lizzy to go to Paris, but menage was not a stretch.

  Georgie drove around to the back of the plantation house and parked in the employee’s parking lot, a perfectly safe lot with low walls around the perimeter and trees overhanging the walls, making those shaded spots prime parking real estate. With Lizzy cringing and trailing her, Georgie held her keycard above the card reader on the back door for an instant, sending prayers up to Mary that her card still worked, considering that she and everyone had been fired from The Devilhouse the week before, and she prayed that Mannix fucking Bonfils wasn’t inside there, waiting for them, watching them through the closed circuit cams as they walked in.

  Sour bile rose in Georgie’s throat, and she swallowed it down and sliced her card through the reader.

  The light flashed green, and a click of the lock opening echoed in the warm, spring air.

  One thing had gone their way. Maybe it was a good omen.

  She trotted through the office building-type hallways, nearly sprinting when Lizzy started yelling stuff to the black sphere-cameras embedded in the ceilings, and made her way through the ladies’ dressing and spa areas to the costume closet. Jasmine air freshener gave way to dust and leather conditioner fumes in the unfinished warehouse-type room where the dress racks stood in long rows.

  Luckily, Georgie was a size four and five feet-eight, so she had lots and lots of dresses to choose from in the middle racks, in colors from sherbet to jewels to midnight.

  Lizzy, poor thing, was down on one end, sorting through the shrimp-sized clothes.

  Seriously, if Lizzy got any smaller, she was going to end up in a tree, baking cookies.

  Georgie sneaked a peek at Lizzy with the practiced eye of the roommate of someone suspected of anorexia, and she did look smaller. Her arms, once defined with small muscles, looked thinner. She was wasting away.

  Maybe Paris would take care of that, too. A memory of croissants rose in Georgie’s mind, just a brush of a childhood spent in luxury hotels in Europe and South America. At the George the Fifth Hotel, just off the Champs-Élysées in the heart of Paris, the staff had known her family by sight and had had croissants waiting for little Georgiana, no matter what time of day it was, and a double scotch for her mother, no matter what time of day it was. Georgie had called it the Georgie Vee when she was little.

  Georgie found a couple dresses that didn’t seem too slutty, though she wasn’t entirely sure how sweet, sheltered Rae would define that.

  Jeff Jackson, head of security for The Devilhouse, strutted in, looking stacked and put-together as always in a suit. Georgie had often stolen glances at him, but he was married. Georgie put a cool front between herself and all married men.

  Georgie had ethical lines, very bright and hard ethical lines, that she did not cross. Married men were one.

  Other people’s money was another.

  If other people had such bright lines, if other people did the obvious and normal and decent things, the whole fucking world would be a better place.

  Oh, Georgie wasn’t judgmental. If you wanted to do something, whether it was drugs or sexual proclivities with consenting adults or lifestyle choices like living off the grid in a bunker or whatever, Georgie had no quarrel with that. Leaving people alone to live their lives was a great good in her book.

  But damn it, hurting people, damaging them, stealing, especially from people who couldn’t afford it, those were bright and hard lines that no one should fucking cross, ever.

  She was obsessing about it when she should be making final decisions on the green cocktail dress or the scarlet one, just because Jeff Johnson the married man was in the room, and they were going to Paris, and Mannix fucking Bonfils had been mind-fucking Lizzy.

  Georgie should chill.

  Green. She should take the green cocktail-length dress, and the black one with the jewelry-weight silver chains around the waist and hanging from the banded neckline.

  Good. Making decisions was better than letting her head spin around with crazy thoughts.

  Lizzy finished talking to Jeff and they left The Devilhouse, probably for the last time, Georgie mused.

  That was another problem, but it was a problem that she could think about in a few days. First, she had to get Lizzy somewhere safe and get herself away from the Russian mob.

  If Georgie had to make herself disappear again, it wouldn’t matter if she had a job waiting for her at The Devilhouse or not.

  While she drove to the airport, Georgie listened to Rachmaninoff playing a wintry piano concerto and drummed along with her fingers on the sun-warmed steering wheel. The freeways slipping away outside seemed alien again, barren rocks and gravel filling the median and lonely stretches of marred concrete stretching up the sides. Georgiana Oelrichs would have expected lush East Coast trees and moist grass lining the highway, but Georgie Johnson shouldn’t. She was still Georgie Johnson, and she needed to hold onto that as long as she could.

  Georgie shook her head as she drove, trying to clear all the crazy-buzzing up there, while Lizzy talked to someone on the phone. Rachmaninoff played on the stereo, trilling notes on the piano.

  The desert sun poured down over the freeways, flashing off the other cars’ mirrors and chrome, blinding her so that she couldn’t tell whether they were being followed. Other cars’ tailpipe smoke poured through the vents, making her throat itch and taste like she had been smoking.

  They arrived at the airport too soon and parked in the long-term parking garage to shield her car from the harsh desert sun while they were gone.

  After a perfectly cursory security screening and examination of her passport that bore her legal name, Georgiana Johnson, they reclined in first-class seats on the plane, and the plane lifted into the air.

  On the flight, Georgie put most of her energy into calming Lizzy and getting her to sleep so she wouldn’t have to think about what they were flying away from and flying towards.

  The hours passed. Lizzy slept some. Georgie fell into a dark place where she didn’t obsess for a few hours.

  Breakfast arrived. Pancakes.

  Georgiana Oelrichs had liked pancakes as well as croissants.

  Georgie Johnson preferred fruit and black coffee before she went for a long run in the mornings, but she was strapped into a plane, so that wasn’t happening.

  The plane’s engines whined a long, slow scream around them, and the aluminum walls shuddered with turbulence jitters.

  Georgie rebraided her long hair in the tiny airplane lavatory before she could bring herself to fork into the pancakes, which she shredded with her knife.

  Lizzy leaned over, her tiny fingers alighting on Georgie’s arm, and she asked,“You all right?”

  Georgie sighed. “Yeah. Paris is a big city.”

  Lizzy frowned at her, her blond eyebrows nearly meeting in the middle. “Um, yeah?”

  She sliced the pancakes to mush and pondered how to say this, if she should say anything at all. “Someone I know is in Paris, an old friend from a long time ago. I’m just hoping that I won’t run into her.”

  “Someone from The Devilhouse?” Lizzy asked.

  “God, no.” The Prinzessin von Hannover und Cumberl
and in The Devilhouse? What horrors. Oh, the humanity.

  Lizzy sat back in her over-sized chair. “There’s no chance you’ll run into her.”

  “I keep telling myself that, but I think The Dom knows her.” Georgie sampled the pathetic pancake mush, but the maple syrup was so much sweeter than the food that she chose to eat as Georgie Johnson that she set down the fork.

  Lizzy picked up her hand and held it, a moment of comfort from the present, and Georgie squeezed her fingers.

  “If I saw her on the street or something,” Georgie said, “she probably wouldn’t recognize me. It’s been almost six years.”

  Ah, the sound of whistling in the wind.

  TO PARIS

  Georgie

  Georgie led Lizzy down the hollow tube of jetway from the intercontinental plane and through the queued hubbub of customs. The other tired passengers disembarked from their many intercontinental flights, blustering and dashing from the snarl of the line to the next free window and scraping the dirty floor with their battered luggage.

  Lizzy pouted that the bored passport control guy didn’t stamp her passport.

  On the other side of the glass barrier, through the crowd that eddied and swirled like a flood studded with luggage debris, Georgie saw a sign with their names on it, and then she saw what was holding it.

  His dark blond hair was cut almost military style, but a little too long, like he was beginning to break bad. His black suit must have been tailored, because normal sizes would never cling to his broad shoulders and trim waist like that. His dove gray eyes cut through her.

  Paris might be looking up.

  You know, this was exactly what Georgie needed to get a handle on everything: a tumble on a hotel bed with a man with a jawline so sharp that she would have to be careful not to cut her thighs.

  He leaned down and asked her in low growl, “Lizbeth Pajari? Georgiana Johnson?”