I’d kept it a secret, being quite content to be in the background. It wasn’t often that my brothers consulted me—not Dante seeing as he still wasn’t around—but when they did, it was normally about expanding this or that. I honestly didn’t care what they did. I was easy.
I was probably one of the least demanding men in the world. I was a joy to be around—my brothers told me that at least once a year when I freely paid the taxes on the company.
Though, I had a feeling that it was due to me paying the taxes and not because they actually thought I was a joy.
“How did you know?”
I frowned and brought myself back to the here and now. “How did I know what?”
“That I was ready to go.”
I snorted. “Maybe it’s the way you’re holding yourself with both arms wrapped tightly around you. Or maybe it’s the way when I go away for a second, I find you in the deepest darkest corner of the club.”
She grimaced. “This anxiety...it’s because Sal is a dick. He made me go to all of these police functions. And everyone thought I was just a bitch because I wouldn’t talk. But really it was because Sal told me if I talked to anyone when he wasn’t around—and I do mean anyone—that he’d beat the shit out of me when we got home. And me being the smart woman that I am, I didn’t. After the first time, anyway.”
I was almost afraid to ask.
“The first time?”
She looked pained.
“The first time I literally thought he was joking. Surely by talking to someone at one of these parties, he wouldn’t think that anything special was being said between us. Unfortunately, I’d made the mistake of talking to another man who was being nice and making small talk since we were seated at the same table. Sadly, it ended up being the chief of police. The top dog. The head honcho. I never knew how screwed I was until I got home. We hadn’t talked about anything in particular. The weather. The table decorations.” She started to pick at her cuticle. “I think he said something about Sal being a good cop…I don’t know. I must’ve frowned, shut down, or something because the next thing I knew, Sal was there. He said polite hellos to the man, then we went to the dance floor and never returned to the table that night.”
I waited for the other shoe to drop.
“I never suspected he was upset until we got home. The minute the door closed...he broke my arm.” She drew in a sharp breath. “Made me repeat, word for word, what I’d said to the guy. Then, when I started vomiting due to the pain, he kicked me in the stomach like that would help.” Her laugh was anything but happy. “I hate him so much.”
I folded my arms around her and picked her up, turning us so that her back was now to the wall and mine was to the rest of the club.
It’d been decided not to close the club down while we were having this party, but the bouncer at the door was under strict instructions to only allow people in that we knew and wouldn’t start any shit with our families here…sans kids.
Though, the kids were all upstairs in my office with a babysitter—my mother.
My mother, whom Lark still hadn’t met yet, but I knew she wanted to.
“Tell me what’s going through your head,” I ordered.
Her eyes met mine, and the only thing enabling her to see was the disco light that periodically shined over our faces at random.
“I’m scared he’s going to find me and take away my happy.”
Those words were enough to bring me to my knees.
“You’re scared he’s going to take you away from here?”
I was hoping for more.
She hadn’t repeated the ‘I love you’ that she’d said all those days ago. And I wanted her to. Badly.
“I’m scared that he’s either going to take me away from YOU—not necessarily here tonight, but soon—or that he’s going to kill you.” She reflected. “Both are unacceptable at this point.”
“Why?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why do I not want you to die?”
I chuckled. “No, I’m looking for three words here. Three words that I feel like you need to tell me immediately.”
Her eyes turned understanding.
“You’re crazy, baby.”
“Those weren’t the three words I was looking for.”
The ‘baby’ though did something weird to my heart.
Made it jump and leap like she’d called me something more than just ‘baby.’
“I love you.”
Her eyes widened.
The sight was so comical that I started to laugh, and her arms tightened.
In fact, they constricted so tightly that she cut off the oxygen to my head.
“You know what?” Lark whispered in my ear.
I turned as best as I could, given her death grip on me and stared at her.
“No, what?”
“I love you, too.”
I snaked my hand up the back of her t-shirt and held her, breathing in her scent.
“I wish I hadn’t broken your wiener.”
At that, I burst out laughing.
“I don’t think you broke it as much as my own exuberance did,” I pointed out. “And it seems to be working just fine right now.”
Her eyebrows went up.
“What…”
She trailed off when I shifted her so she could feel the length of my erection.
There was no more pain. Not even a little bit. Thank God.
There was, however, reluctance.
I’d only ever felt pain like that once before, and I couldn’t say which pain was worse. Having my dick broken—or nearly—or being shot in the testicle with a button.
Though the discomfort didn’t stop me from getting an erection—it was just more uncomfortable than pleasurable due to my memories of the event.
And I was just about to tell her that there was no more pain when my pocket rang.
I grumbled and pushed away from the wall.
Lark’s legs dropped from around me and she looked at me in confusion.
“Phone,” I muttered, reaching my hand into the pocket of my jeans.
She nodded and started to walk away, but I hooked her around the waist and held her in place while I answered.
“Hello?”
Luckily this quiet corner that Lark chose enabled me to hear the person on the other end of the line because I was able to hear everything…even my mother’s angry warnings not to have sex in the middle of the club. Seeing as her and all the kids were playing a game on who they could spot on the security monitors. Apparently, my mother had spotted me.
I rolled my eyes and hung up.
“Do you want to go meet my mother?”
Lark’s eyes widened.
“Was that who that was?”
“No,” I lied. “Wrong number.”
She narrowed her eyes at me in suspicion but nodded her head. “I guess I’ve avoided it long enough.”
“You’ve been avoiding meeting her?” I questioned as I shoved the phone back into my pocket.
She winced. “I guess you could call it that.”
I chuckled and reached for her hand.
Once she placed it in mine, I led her through the club, around the bar, and up the stairs that led to my private office.
But before we could get there, I spotted Rafe on the phone.
When I went to move past him, he held up his hand for me to wait, so I stopped.
My brows furrowed, but then I heard what he was saying.
“Where was he last spotted?”
My stomach clenched.
“In Texas? Oh, okay. That’s better. Does he know her exact whereabouts yet?”
My gut clenched.
And that was when Lark finally caught on to what the man was saying.
He wasn’t talking about some random person. He was talking about her ex.
The man who’d tried to kill her knew where she was—or at least the vicinity.
&
nbsp; Son. Of. A. Bitch.
I felt her trembling beside me, but by the time Rafe wrapped up his phone call, the trembles had turned into full-blown shakes.
“He knows where she is. Our sources have determined that he requested two weeks off from work. He’s left the house that you both previously shared and is presumed to be on his way here.”
Lark lost the battle and collapsed.
She would’ve hit the steps and rolled had I not caught her around the waist and hauled her against me.
“Please don’t let him kill you.”
It wasn’t the words that felt like a sock to the stomach, but the tears that were rolling down her eyes.
“He won’t kill me,” I snapped. “In fact, your lack of faith in my abilities is damn near emasculating.”
The anger worked, and her spine stiffened.
“I’m not saying that…”
“You’re not saying that you don’t think I can handle myself?” I asked. “Baby, you’ve divorced him. That’s not a criminal offense. He doesn’t like it? Too fucking bad. You’re mine now.”
“But I’m not yours,” she said. “I’m more his than yours. We were married for nearly eight years. He sees me as his property now. At first, he wasn’t happy to be marrying me. It meant that he wasn’t free to fuck with other girls so openly. But then he saw the benefits of having a wife at home. One sweet and quiet like me. He could take me to the social activities and police functions, presenting an acceptable wife while at the same time being his sick twisted self in the shadows. Doing what he wanted, when he wanted. I was a convenience, and I was his. Nobody took what was his and got away with it.”
My eyes narrowed. “So, being married will make you feel more comfortable?”
She shook her head.
She couldn’t deny it, though. I could see in her eyes that she literally thought I could be taken away from her that easily.
If being married to her would make her breathe a little easier…then that was what I would do.
“Where are you taking me?”
I had her hand in a flash, and I was walking up the steps in the next instant.
“Somewhere.”
That somewhere ended up being my office.
And since I had my whole fucking family here in the club—including my two brothers with their families who both lived hours away—then I didn’t see a better time to do this.
Chapter 20
Always keep a book with you in case of emergency. Like when you’re at social gatherings.
-T-shirt
Baylor
“I am not marrying you!” Lark yelled loudly. “I don’t know why you would even think that I would want to.”
My brother, Tobias, snickered in the corner of the room, and I shot him a murderous glare.
We were standing in the middle of the courthouse lobby and everyone was watching us have our heated discussion.
“I have been able to kick your ass your entire life. I will not hesitate to do so now if you don’t shut the fuck up.”
Tobias pretended to zip his lips closed, but I knew him.
He was the youngest, and the one most likely to do something you didn’t want him to do.
“I made a few calls,” I said quietly.
“Maybe it would help if she had a ring,” Tobias suggested.
I opened my mouth to tell him to fuck off when my mother rushed over. “Here!”
I turned to find her handing over the ring that she always wore on her right hand—her old wedding band that she wore until my father had gotten her a new wedding band for their fortieth anniversary.
“Mom, I can’t take this,” I said at the same time Lark said, “We can’t take that.”
Finally, we agreed on something.
“Yes, you can,” my mother said. “I’ve only been able to get it up to the first knuckle for years. One of these days I’m going to lose it and it’ll break my heart.”
“What if I lose it and it breaks your heart?” Lark countered. “Seriously, why am I even talking about this? Your son is a crazy person.”
My mother smiled.
“I know,” she agreed. “After he was hit by that drunk driver, he was so black and blue all over. He couldn’t walk. Could barely talk. And you know what he said to me when he saw me after waking up?”
Lark swallowed. “What?”
“He said, ‘Mom if you don’t go get me a beer, I might surely die.’”
Lark grinned and rolled her eyes.
“Why does that not surprise me?” she questioned, her eyes turning to me.
I shrugged. “I almost died. When you almost die, you’re supposed to get drunk to celebrate life.”
“I didn’t give him the beer, in case you’re wondering,” my mother told her. “But I did give him a sip of whiskey from my flask.”
Lark’s eyes went wide when my mother pulled a flask out of her purse.
“I don’t…do…I didn’t even realize people carried flasks anymore.”
Her grin was rather manic. “Six boys and two girls, darlin’.” She tucked the flask back into her purse. “I nearly died going through puberty with them. If it wasn’t for this emergency flask, then I surely would have passed away from the abundance of attitude and hormones that filled my house.”
“We weren’t that bad, Mom,” Travis muttered.
Tobias snickered. “You remember that time that Baylor and you snuck out, and Mom caught you with your pants down around your ankles while two girls gave you blow…”
I threw the nearest object, which happened to be a book, straight at my brother’s head.
Tobias caught it, chuckling, and went to toss it back.
His wife intercepted it before it could even leave his hands. “You deserved that,” she muttered. “And stop antagonizing them. You’re being mean.”
“I’m not being mean,” he said to his wife. “They’re being mean. I’m the baby. The perfect one. The one who never does any wrong.”
He continued to drone on, but I turned my attention back to the woman who was still adamant that she wasn’t marrying me.
“We’ll be back,” I muttered as I took her by the hand again.
She started to fight, and I pulled her in close, practically forming her body to mine.
I patted her ass. “No, we’re going to go have a little talk about this.”
“Fuck that.” She started to squirm. “Let me go!”
I took her to the judge’s chamber and slammed the door—which was where I’d been trying to get her to go into for the last twenty minutes.
Our family friend and local judge who just so happened to do all the marrying in this small town had happened to be at the club when this all had started. He was also a closet romantic and loved a good marriage ceremony—which so happened to be why he was more than happy to indulge me on this mission.
He’d even gone out of the way to have the clerk show up and get our marriage license sorted out—who also happened to be his wife.
There was no way we weren’t doing this officially. So, even though it would’ve been ten times easier to have this at the club, it needed to be done right. It needed to be documented, and it needed to be one hundred percent accurate in the eyes of the law.
“Get away from me!” She hurled the words at me.
She was like an angry, little kitten, hissing and spitting.
She was all meow and no bite, that was for sure.
I reached for her, and she yanked herself away.
“Go away. We’re done here.” She paused. “But make sure you leave me your keys when you do so I can get home.”
I started to chuckle under my breath.
We’d gotten here just fine. She’d been in a state of shock, but I hadn’t realized how opposed she was to this until my family had started arriving.
The more and more that crammed into the hallway of the courthouse, the more that Lark started to withdraw.<
br />
“Lark, look at me. Honey.”
***
Lark
“Honey.”
I refused to speak to him.
“Baby.”
It took everything I had not to turn my head and stare at him.
The sound of his voice was debilitating. All the love and caring he had packed in those two little words was enough to set me on edge.
Didn’t he realize what he was asking of me?
“You’re asking me to sign your death warrant,” I breathed. “I can’t...I won’t. Not to you. You’re off the hook.”
Then I was in his arms and he was forcing me to look at him.
“I don’t want to be off the hook.”
I felt the tears welling up in my eyes, blocking my throat. I choked them back, but it was hard to breathe.
My breath hitched.
“Don’t cry.”
The first tear slipped down my cheek and curled around my nose. When it got to my lips, he licked it off, causing me to smile despite the worry ripping through me.
“You’ll marry me.”
I shook my head.
“You’ll be Mrs. Baylor Hail.”
I gasped for breath.
“Rita Hail, but you’ll go by Lark.”
“But what about the men from Free making me disappear? Won’t that be a problem? They said they erased me.”
He shrugged. “They erased your tracks from what I can tell. Kind of gave you a clean slate, so to speak. But you can’t truly erase someone. Unless that person knows absolutely no one—someone will always know who they are. And what was erased can always be rewritten.”
I looked at him then.
He was saying all the right words. The words that I wanted to hear…but I still couldn’t shake the feeling.
Hearing my name linked to his coming from his lips was almost surreal. Like an out of body experience that I never knew I wanted to hear. At least not until he said them, anyway.
“We don’t have to do any hiding anymore,” he said. “He knows you’re here. Why hide the fact?”
He had a point.
“When I left, Rita ceased to exist anymore,” I told him.
What the Hail Page 13
