Vodka On The Rocks (The Uncertain Saints Book 3)

by Lani Lynn Vale

  “I’m not saying you can’t,” he grunted. “I’m just saying you’re not going to get your ass kicked when I could’ve done something to prevent it. So I’m doing something.”

  I huffed, but shut up shortly afterwards.

  He made a weird sort of sense.

  “Your phone’s lighting your purse up,” Casten observed, interrupting my thoughts.

  I frowned, wondering who in their right mind would be texting this early in the morning.

  My phone only lit up for text messages.

  I was a lazy person by nature.

  And since the majority of the time it was on silent, the only thing that distinguished a text from a call was a flash of light from my phone.

  “Thanks,” I grumbled, swiping the phone open.

  Hello, the strange number’s text read.

  Me: Who is this?

  Strange number: We met at the bar last night. It was nice to meet you.

  I blinked, then turned to Casten.

  “Did I meet any weird men and give them my number?” I questioned him.

  He shook his head.

  “Not from what I saw. You were there the entire time I was,” he answered.

  I was?

  “I was?” I echoed my thoughts.

  He nodded. “Was sitting in the back when you came in. You sat down, and you looked a little weird, so I came to sit with you. You never gave anyone your number.”

  I blinked, then handed him the phone.

  He kept rolling as he scrolled over the message, then frowned.

  “Ignore him,” he grunted.

  I nodded, hitting delete on the messages, then dropping it back into my bag.

  “Are you going to make me do this the entire way there or are you going to get on?” He lifted his brows at me.

  “I’m going to make you drive to that stop sign right there,” I pointed. “Then I’m going to go into that coffee shop and get myself another cup of coffee, then I’ll come back and get on your bike.”

  He nodded, not complaining at all that I was making him wait.

  Nor that I was weird, because I got that a lot, too.

  “Bring me a black coffee,” Casten ordered as I turned to go into the coffee shop.

  I smiled at him over my shoulder, walking into the coffee shop.

  “I need a black coffee, large,” I smiled at the barista.

  “Name?” The little barista looked bored.

  “George,” I smirked, but I pronounced it in a Spanish accent, the way Kassie pronounced her father’s name, whose bar I’d been at last night.

  The girl nodded, writing on the cup.

  “What else?” she continued, ringing up the black coffee.

  I studied the board in front of me.

  “Do you have any pumpkin spice coffee?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No. Teeny only has what you see listed here,” she gestured, pointing to a list in front of my face.

  Idly I wondered just who “Teeny” was, but decided it’d go faster if I didn’t let my natural curiosity take over this morning.

  I had a hot biker on his motorcycle outside waiting patiently for me, and I didn’t want him to leave me.

  I nodded.

  “I want a mocha latte, medium,” I smiled.

  “Name?”

  “Donna,” I quipped cheerfully.

  She looked at me like I was lying…which I was.

  But how did she know that?

  Who said I had to give her my name?

  “Thank you,” I said as I handed her a ten-dollar bill. “Keep the change.”

  The barista smiled faintly, nodding to the customer that was at my back.

  I left, shouldering the door open, then walking straight to Casten where he still sat on his bike.

  Both of his muscular thighs hugged the motorcycle as he firmly planted both feet on the ground to hold the powerful machine steady.

  The bike was loud, too.

  He took his cup, looked at the name that was on the cup, and then back at me with a lifted eyebrow in question.

  “What?” I feigned innocence.

  He turned the cup around, allowing me to see the name, and I burst out laughing.

  “Oh, my God!” I wheezed. “I told her George in a Spanish accent. Not Whore Hey!”

  Casten rolled his eyes and placed his drink into a cup holder that magically appeared on the handlebars.

  I’d thought the circle thing was just decoration, but obviously it was functional as well.

  I, on the other hand, had to hold my drink.

  Which worked out well because if I had to put my arms around him, I might start thinking inappropriate thoughts.

  Three minutes later, we arrived at the school, with only minutes to spare, before I was supposed to start practice.

  “Sorry, ladies,” I called, dismounting the bike from behind Casten.

  The girls stared at me like they’d never seen me before.

  “What?” I shooed them out of my way as Casten turned his bike off. “What are you doing?” I asked before they could answer.

  Casten nodded at a dark car in the parking lot that was completely away from all of the players’ cars.

  “Whose car is that?” He studied it.

  It was parked nearly in the back of the lot, away from any of the lights that lit up the rest of the lot.

  It was six in the morning, and the sun barely started to rise, meaning there wasn’t much, if anything, to see.

  “Not ours,” Tiffany looked.

  “It was here when I got here today, and I was the first,” Jody nodded.

  I shrugged, then unlocked the door to the gym.

  “You go in here alone?” Casten asked, stopping me from opening it all the way.

  I nodded.

  “Yes.”

  His eyes narrowed, and he opened the door and disappeared inside without asking.

  Lights appeared throughout the long hallway.

  We shared the hallway with the other sports teams, and all of the coaches had offices in the hallway as well.

  He was gone for nearly ten minutes while the lot of us squeezed into the hallway waiting for him to come back.

  “Who’s that, Coach?” Adriana whispered.

  I looked at her.

  She was the youngest, at fifteen, and the only freshman on the team.

  She was good, too.

  And would probably be amazing by the time she graduated in four years.

  “That’s Casten,” I answered her, purposefully skipping the part where I told them exactly what he was to me.

  “He’s hot,” Elsa chirped.

  I smiled at her.

  “He is.”

  “It’s all clear,” Casten came back, startling us all by appearing behind us and not in front of us.

  “How’d you get in?” I squeaked.

  The door had been locked, and I knew this for sure because I’d been the one to lock it.

  “The car was gone when I came around the front,” he conveniently didn’t answer my question.

  I blinked.

  “Why are you trying to scare us?” I poked him.

  “This isn’t safe. Y’all are women, and this is a big place with lots of places to hide,” he looked at the hallway beyond me. “There’s no reason in the world that y’all should be here without a security system to make sure that the inside is free of squatters. You shouldn’t have to wonder if you’re ever alone.”

  I agreed with him, and it’d been a dilemma on my mind since I’d started at the school two years ago.

  Yet, the administration had never done anything about it and had no plans to.

  “It’s not in their budget to install a security system,” I told him. “Let’s go, ladies, you’ve got a little over an hour for practice before you have to be at your first class.”

  They filed through the hallway, one by one, each of them tossing cu
rious looks over their shoulders at the two of us.

  “Thank you,” I said once the last girl filed through the gym’s door.

  He looked away. “You need to be more cautious.”

  I did.

  But I’d been doing this for two years now.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I called as I walked past him.

  He glared at my back until I disappeared around the corner, grabbing the carts of balls as I went, smiling as I did it.

  Chapter 3

  If you want to see bright eyed and bushy tailed in the morning, look out the window. Because I’m not a fucking squirrel.

  -Tasha’s secret thoughts

  Casten

  I couldn’t say why I was upset, but by the time I reached my office, I was beyond pissed off.

  There were fifteen girls there, including Tasha, and the entire school had been dark.

  The gym was massive, and there were so many dark areas and places for someone to hide that I’d been sick with dread by the time I made it back around the parking lot to find the suspicious car gone.

  By the time I’d gotten to my office, I was ready to spit nails.

  None of the girls would’ve been able to protect themselves. They were all ranging in age from fifteen to seventeen.

  I’d never, not once, imagined that I would be worrying about the safety dynamics of a girls’ volleyball team, but there I was, contemplating how to make it better.

  “What’s your deal?” my sister asked.

  I looked to her, then away as I started to input the number of the person who texted Tasha earlier this morning.

  It came up as a burner phone, and I narrowed my eyes at the screen as if it would give me the information I sought if I glared hard enough.

  “Nothing,” I muttered darkly, standing up and facing her with my cup of coffee in my hand.

  Her eyes went to the paper cup and widened.

  “Why does your cup say ‘Whore-Hey?’” Her eyes glittered.

  I shrugged.

  “What are you doing here?” I changed the subject.

  I wasn’t ready to talk to my sister, or anyone, about Tasha.

  “I thought you were sleeping,” I lifted a brow at her.

  She worked night shift, and she should be sleeping right now.

  “I got a phone call from our mother,” she huffed, taking a seat on the couch with a soft plunk.

  I gritted my teeth.

  “And what did she want?” I leaned against my desk and crossed my feet.

  “She’s getting married next weekend, as you know, and she wants to know if either one of us needs a date or if we plan on wasting our plus one,” CeeCee explained.

  “Fuck no she didn’t,” I growled.

  CeeCee smiled like it was painful.

  “I told her we had dates,” she smiled like she’d solved a problem instead of creating one.

  “But we don’t have dates,” I stated the obvious.

  “I’ll have a date, even if I have to ask Joe.”

  My brows rose at that.

  “You’d ask Joe?” I questioned in surprise.

  She nodded. “Yeah, Joe.”

  Joe was her ex-husband, and he was her ex because he was so vehemently against her being a cop. He was so against females becoming law enforcement, at all, that it wasn’t funny.

  Joe hated that his wife was going out and putting her life on the line night after night.

  Joe hated that CeeCee wouldn’t just stay at home, barefoot and pregnant, content being his little housewife, and I couldn’t say that I was totally against that idea, either.

  It wasn’t that I thought women couldn’t handle themselves, I just felt like my sister shouldn’t have to.

  She was all of five-foot-nothing, and would go down in a swift wind like she did one year at a water park when a storm blew in.

  I just didn’t know if my sister would be able to protect herself from some meth-head addict that was high out of his mind or a robber intent on getting away.

  “What am I supposed to do?” I growled at her.

  “Ask the brown beauty you were with last night,” my sister suggested.

  I shook my head. “That isn’t going to work.”

  CeeCee’s eyes rose. “And why not?”

  I twisted the paper holder around the cup absently as I stared out the windows to my office.

  “She’s Annie’s sister.”

  “The one you have a crush on,” CeeCee teased.

  I snapped my eyes over to hers.

  “I never said I had a crush on her,” I informed her.

  She shrugged.

  “I didn’t say that you did, but you also haven’t tried to bring a woman home since you met her. Figured you had it bad for her if you weren’t trying to pound my wall down,” CeeCee said.

  My stomach tightened.

  “They’re my walls, and you said you couldn’t hear anything,” I grumbled.

  CeeCee smiled.

  “I lied.”

  Shit.

  “That…” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “That’s just wrong. If I’d have known, I wouldn’t have brought anyone home.”

  CeeCee shrugged. “It’s not that big of a deal, Ten. When it happens, I turn my TV on, and I can’t hear a thing anymore.”

  My sister moved into my house with me after her divorce. And, although she’d looked for a place here and there, she hadn’t found one that had caught her fancy yet.

  I didn’t care.

  I was rarely, if ever, there.

  My business kept me gone until late, and if I did manage to come home, I was only there for a couple hours to sleep.

  It was nice to have someone there to take care of Koda.

  Koda was my dog.

  She was a beast, and I loved her like she was my own kid.

  I’d become her handler while I was on a tour in Iraq.

  She’d saved my life by warning me of a roadside bomb before we walked past it, and I’d moved at the last minute.

  Had she not been there to warn me that day, I would’ve been dead, along with eight members of my team.

  Koda and I had some awesome PTSD from the incident, and we’d both been injured.

  While she and I were recuperating, my team moved mountains and I’d kissed some major ass and pulled some serious strings to get her home with me.

  And she’d been with me ever since.

  “The doctor’s office called,” CeeCee revealed. “Did you mean to skip your appointment this week?”

  I grimaced.

  “Yeah. I had a skip,” I confirmed, dropping my empty cup down on my desk and circling around it. “Did you do the paperwork, or did Rhea do it?”

  “I did it, boss,” my other sister, Rhea, called.

  I grimaced.

  Rhea was all of eighteen years old, and I wasn’t sure she really needed to be involved in my business. However, she was my little sister, and I’d rather her work somewhere where I knew she’d be paid what she was worth.

  Rhea was what one would call a brainiac.

  She’d graduated from high school when she was sixteen, graduated from college with her degree in electrical engineering two and a half years later and was now working as my secretary, of all things.

  Why, I didn’t know, and I wouldn’t question her on it.

  If she needed the time to integrate herself in the world, I’d give it to her.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Did you get all the invoices paid?”

  Rhea nodded. “Yep. Sent you the email this morning. I also paid your gym crew.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered, scanning my emails.

  I stopped on one I assumed was spam, but opened it regardless.

  The email wasn’t spam.

  But I should’ve deleted it anyway.

  It was from Tasha.

  How she’d gotten my email, I didn’t know.

  But it was simple and to
the point.

  A picture she’d sent from her iPhone, with a caption that read, ‘Does my butt look big in these shorts?’

  She was standing facing away from a mirror, and she was taking a picture of herself over her shoulder.

  I could see the top part of her thighs encased in similar work out pants to the ones she wore yesterday. The same t-shirt. The only thing different was her hair.

  It cascaded down her back in long waves that nearly reached her butt.

  She was laughing.

  She was so sexy, it hurt to look at her.

  “Who’s that?” Rhea chirped.

  “That is the girl he has a crush on,” CeeCee cooed.

  I clicked out of the email without commenting, then skipped down to the one just below the one from Tasha.

  The subject line read: Meeting time: 2000 hours.

  “Fuck me,” I groaned, scrubbing my hands down my face.

  It was from Dante Hail.

  He owned Hail Auto Recovery, an automobile repossession business, and from time to time, we ran jobs together.

  He’d get the vehicle, and I’d get the man.

  It worked out in a lot of ways, because most of the time people got downright cranky if you tried to take back their ride.

  I was there to recover the men (and sometimes women), because the two of our businesses ran hand-in-hand quite a lot…not that we got along all that well ourselves.

  I ignored the two of them as I scanned through the rest of my emails, finally deleting about two hundred of the two hundred and twenty there.

  “One of you go get breakfast,” I ordered, leaning to the side and removing my wallet from my back pocket.

  I snatched forty out and placed it on my desk before going through the stack of mail.

  Owning your own business was not as glamorous as it was made out to be. There were a lot of responsibilities that I disliked immensely.

  Such as checking my mail, paying my bills, getting office supplies. Making sure things were clean when clients came in.

  “I’ll go,” Rhea snatched the money. “I have to drop off the mail and make the deposits anyway.”

  I didn’t say anything as she left, nor did I talk to my other sister.

  I had shit on my mind, and a million things I needed to get done before I had to meet Dante later that evening.

  But first, I had to make a phone call about a piece of shit car at a bar.