THE OUTLAW’S BRIDE

by April Lust

  “Are you going to help me up?”

  Darren looked almost relieved to see her, and that sent sparks of confusion through her like wildfire. His face went back to his characteristic impassiveness, though, and Victoria decided that this was the type of guy that was always either neutral or arrogant. He had to be hiding something. No one could be like that all the time, and who wanted to go through their life living out an act?

  This guy, apparently.

  “I thought you were dead,” he said, his mask slipping before gaining control back in a millisecond. He extended a hand to her and she took it. “Your car is full of bullets.”

  She swung her legs out onto the pavement and stumbled shakily to her feet, Darren pulling to help her. As soon as she was out of the car, she withdrew her hand immediately. Something weird had happened the last time they’d touch, and, much as she’d wanted to fuck the guy earlier, it’d be better for her to have her wits about her while she dealt with this.

  Whatever this was.

  “Thanks for noticing,” she said. She liked to hide behind sarcasm. It was a common enough tactic and she knew full well it didn’t make her unique in the slightest, but it usually did enough to make the average guy back off. All it did with Darren was make him look at her more closely, like he was looking for something beneath all her carefully made-up layers. So they were both playing that game? Fine.

  “I’m not the one who shot at you.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why don’t I find that surprising?”

  Glaring at this guy this often was going to either be the death of her or it was going to give her massive wrinkles. “Probably because you know it’s something you’d do.”

  “It isn’t, actually.”

  “Well, then it’s something one of your lackeys would do.”

  “Did you not believe me when I said one of us couldn’t be responsible?”

  She turned her back from him and shut the car door before responding. There was no polite way to say this, and she was running through all the possible replies in her head, trying to find the most sardonic, rude, ball-shrinking response she could muster. Nothing in particular came to mind, unfortunately, so she settled on growling out something that sounded a lot like, “No shit, Sherlock.”

  “Hm.” He said nothing else for a second, watching as she opened the car door again and slammed it shut. “You’re not going to do your car any less damage doing that.”

  This time, she didn’t bother responding.

  Darren wasn’t going to wait for her to decide to talk to him, though, so he just grabbed her arm as soon as it seemed like she wasn’t going to talk. This made her tense up again, as usual; she’d expected the touch this time, however, so she wasn’t beating herself up on the inside for not noticing his hand sneaking up on her. His large hand, his fingers, wrapped around her forearm, pulling her back to him like he had yesterday. She didn’t turn back to face him like she had before, however. Getting her lips in sight of this guy didn’t seem like the brightest move; someone was trying to kill her, and kissing Darren Saylor didn’t seem like the area where she should be directing most of her focus.

  “Hey,” he said. “I’m going to fix this. Do you see my car?”

  Victoria couldn’t really see over the top of her car from where she stood, so she moved away. Darren’s arm fell away from her, and she moved so that she was glancing out from over the hood of her own vehicle.

  A few parking spots – if they could be called that – across from her was a shiny black car. She couldn’t identify the model off the top of her head, but it looked new-ish and like something an irresponsible driver would get into on their way for a few joy rides. Typical. The wheels were uneven and going out in either direction from where Darren had just randomly stopped the car, and Victoria identified that as the awful screeching sound she’d heard earlier.

  “Definitely don’t see anything.”

  He chuckled beneath his breath, but he didn’t sound too amused when he said, “Get in it.”

  “What?” That came as a shock. Sure, her car had just had a few clips unloaded into it (at the very least, but it was probably more than that), but that was no reason she couldn’t drive it. She still had a shift to get to, too, although she didn’t care about that as much as the fact that she just didn’t want to be around Darren any longer. “You’re high.”

  “I’m actually not, unfortunately.” He laughed for real this time. “It’s in your best interest.”

  His laughter set her off, and she snorted; unlike Darren, her sounds weren’t coming from a place of joy. “Right, so you can kill me without witnesses.”

  “First of all,” Darren said, “the cameras in this lot don’t even work anyway. Second of all, I didn’t shoot at you. Now get in the car or I’m going to make you do it.”

  “You can’t make me do anything.”

  “Probably not,” he admitted. “But that’s not stopping me from picking you up and just placing you in the front seat.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  He grinned. “Or the trunk,” he continued. “Your choice.”

  He reached his hands out to her like he was about to grab her, since she wasn’t responding quickly enough. She squeaked, hating how it sounded but going with it anyway. What about this man put her so on edge? She backed away from him, putting her hands up in a defensive position.

  “Fine! Fine. Give me your keys.”

  “I’m not giving you my keys.” He raised an eyebrow at her, for what felt like the hundredth time in the brief time they’d known each other. “Why do you want them anyway?”

  “Why do you think I want them?”

  A small smile flitted across his face, and then he shook his head. “Passenger’s seat for you, Victoria.”

  Sighing, she made her way over to his car, and got in.

  Chapter Six

  Victoria

  She regretted it immediately.

  If being shot at by a stranger was scary, being stuck in a car with Darren Saylor was even worse. Especially when that very same man was refusing to tell her anything, except for telling her to get in his car and pretty much swearing that it wasn’t his club that shot at her. Not “his club.” Probably some other club, then, although he hadn’t said as much.

  She leaned over the console to look out the driver’s side window. The windows in Darren’s car were dark. She guessed that the tinted glass was to ensure that no one else could see in, and it sent a shiver down her spine. She wasn’t worried he would hurt her, crazy as that seemed, but she also wasn’t totally at ease with everything that was happening in her life today.

  She was sitting in the passenger’s seat. It was difficult not to hug her knees up to her chest, but there was no way she could do that. Darren probably already thought that she was some type of weakling. And she wasn’t, really. She had actually been through enough. Not enough to make her tough shit, but enough that she liked to think of herself as that. Regardless of all that, she was damn near shaking in some guy’s car while she waited for him to get in.

  She looked out the window again. What was he even doing anyway? Darren was standing outside of the driver’s side door, with his back pressed against it. She couldn’t see his facial expression from here, although she longed to. There was no way she was going to get out and start asking him things, though. He didn’t have his playful demeanor like he’d had on last night, and something was definitely wrong.

  # # #

  Darren

  Something was more wrong than Victoria could know. Darren breathed out angrily, watching the empty parking lot in front of him. If he’d had time to look, he could probably find a bunch of stray bullets lying around on the concrete. Then it would only be about asking a few questions to figure out who was responsible for this, but he didn’t even need to do that. He already had a guess.

  Someone must have seen the way they were talking to each other last night. Maybe they thought it was a couple fighting
. Either way, it had to be the doings of a rival MC. He just needed to prove it and bring it up to the right people. The Bloody Saints fought with other gangs, and they argued and they made bad coke deals, but shooting at a woman because they thought she was his girlfriend was too far.

  He turned loosely so he could look into the car without Victoria seeing the look on his face. She looked scared. Definitely scared. And that meant he was going to have to take care of her. Annoying as that was, he couldn’t turn his back on her. He hadn’t paid this much attention to a woman since his last relationship, and that had ended messily years ago. But now he felt responsible for Victoria. He just hoped he wasn’t about to start a repeat of the past.

  He couldn’t think like that. He was done with dating. Done, for good. He’d just have to find a way to take care of this woman without anything happening between them.

  He whistled low under his breath. If he could find a way to do that, he could find a way to do anything. But for now, he had to make sure that Victoria stayed alive. That way she could worry about man troubles later in life, instead of dying within the week. He got in the car.

  “You know,” Victoria leaned back in the seat as she talked. She wasn’t as at ease with leaning back like she owned the place as Darren was, but he couldn’t fault her for it. If he did, she would probably slap him. “You basically kidnapped me.” She paused, then said, “No. Scratch that, you did kidnap me.”

  The car came to life with a purr of the engine as Darren put the keys in the ignition. He didn’t have to drive that fast now that he knew this chick was alive, but maybe he should anyway, and scare her into shutting up. He didn’t. Instead, he said, “You got in the car willingly.”

  “You made me.”

  “I think, actually,” he said, backing out and not looking at her as he talked, “that you walked over to the car after demanding the keys, opened the door, got in the passenger’s seat, and waited for me to come get in with you.”

  That was exactly what happened. Darren refused to give her the keys, but he’d unlocked the car for her with a quick beep. He didn’t care about Victoria. It just wouldn’t be right to let an innocent woman be murdered to serve as a message to his club. She was a stranger. That was it. A hot stranger, but a stranger nonetheless, and that was exactly how she was going to stay.

  “There were implications,” she said.

  “Implications aren’t admissible in court.” He’d pulled the car out of his space now, not really caring to check his rear-view mirrors and make sure he wasn’t reversing into someone. There was no one there. Even if there was, they probably weren’t people who should be there, so Darren wouldn’t exactly care if he plowed into a pedestrian or two.

  “They are when they’re threats.”

  “Goddamn, you are uppity, aren’t you?” He was smiling regardless of the words, but there was no harm in being a little rude. Maybe if she thought he was a complete asshole – and he was, sometimes – she wouldn’t want to be around him, and they could part ways without any of that messy bullshit afterwards. They would have to be stuck around each other for a while, anyway, so that seemed like the best move.

  “I’m actually not.”

  “Sure.”

  # # #

  Victoria

  Lapsing into silence seemed like the best way to deal with being stuck with Darren Saylor. Victoria didn’t know where they were going or why they were going there, and she was getting pretty pissed off at how casual Darren seemed about the whole thing. But maybe he wasn’t being too casual about it. She looked over at him. His hands were gripping the steering wheel tightly as he drove, and that didn’t look like something a man in control would do.

  Still. Whatever concern he might have undoubtedly wasn’t much. It was still enough to make him freak out, though, and Victoria wasn’t sure how she was supposed to feel about that. It was probably better to say nothing instead of making him flip out on her, though, because that seemed like something he might do. So she just leaned back in her seat and kept her mouth shut.

  She wasn’t sure where they were going after he’d backed out of the parking lot. The road she was so familiar with from her commute to Lanterns steadily disappeared, but he kept going. There were more trees around them than city by the time she decided she’d better speak up. What if he was just tricking her and was actually a murderer?

  No.

  That just screamed paranoia.

  But she had a right to know what was going on. This was about her, after all. And he wasn’t telling her anything.

  “Where are we going?”

  He didn’t reply. She looked over at him again. She knew she should probably be looking straight out ahead or out of the window to get a bearing on her whereabouts, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t focus on anything but the silence in the car and how tense it all felt; there was something in the air between them and it hurt her to ignore it. She tried to be patient with Darren’s lack of response, occupying herself by running her eyes over Darren’s face to his neck, to his shoulders, to where his arms reach out for the wheel and, finally, to where his fingers held it.

  His entire body was tense. The farther away they got from the city, however, the more he relaxed. No distance could make him quit clutching the wheel so tightly, though, and the sight of it made Victoria’s stomach churn in the worst way. But she was angrier that he hadn’t responded to her question than she was worried about whatever he was worried about. What was wrong with this guy? Who did he think he was?

  She knew almost nothing about this guy besides what she heard from rumors, and what they’d said to each other, which was pretty much nothing. Now they were on their way to the middle of nowhere for God knew what reason.

  They passed more trees. Darren pulled onto another road and went down it, turning onto another road, and then turning onto another and then going down another…

  Victoria wouldn’t know where they were even if she was intent on tracking their course. Luckily, she wasn’t all that intent; in actuality, she didn’t care at all. She just wanted to make sure that this guy wasn’t planning on murdering her once he got her where he wanted.

  He stopped the car in silence, and Victoria decided to try asking a question again. Information looked like it was going to be hard to pry from this guy, but maybe if she asked enough questions he would eventually have to answer some of them.

  # # #

  Darren

  And again, he didn’t answer. What was he supposed to say to her? He wasn’t even sure he could look at her yet. This was a huge pain in the ass. She’d done nothing, besides start yelling at him, and he’d done nothing, besides kissing her. And now he was stuck with her. He was undoubtedly stuck with her; he couldn’t leave her alone to go run off and get killed, and that was definitely what was going to happen if he just let her go off on her own.

  There was no way it was his club that had done this. Usually he didn’t mess around with civilians when it came to this stuff, and he especially didn’t bring women into it, which was another key reason for why he refused to get into a relationship, but there was little point in ignoring the issue here. Someone must have seen them together at the bar. That bar was dominated by people from Bloody Saints, but sometimes other characters made their way onto the scene there too. It wasn’t like the bar was a clique; it was a public business, and anyone could come in if they wanted – and once there, they could deal with the club, or get kicked out.

  The person who saw them, and who decided to kill Victoria, had to be from the Broken Skulls. The Broken Skulls and the Bloody Saints weren’t always friendly. In fact, they were huge rivals, and they were always fighting over business, fighting over women, fighting over who had better bikes, anything. That had changed recently, and now their rivalry had turned deadly. More serious.

  He sighed low under his breath, the sound almost coming out like a hiss. How was he supposed to explain this to her? Hey, sorry, a rival club wants to kill you for reasons I don’t know.

>   But it wasn’t really that he didn’t know. As he’d surmised earlier, they probably thought she was his girlfriend. He had no idea how whatever had gone down in that bar could be construed as a couple’s spat. She’d been yelling at him to get out of the bar and he’d been throwing out smart-assed remarks, clearly the interaction of a pissed off female bartender and…he wasn’t sure what to describe himself as that sounded remotely nice, so he skipped that part. This entire thing made no sense, but he didn’t expect someone from the Broken Skulls to be the smartest. Of course, he had kissed her in the parking lot. Where a stray member of the Broken Skulls might have seen, if he happened to be in the right place at the right time.

  No wonder Victoria thought he was trouble.

  His heart lurched and he sighed again. Whatever she thought about him didn’t matter. He would trap her here if it meant he could keep her safe. How could he explain it? He couldn’t. He could feel her eyes on him as she watched him, and the watching just made it all the harder for him to come up with words to describe this situation.