“You really loved her, didn’t you?” Her tone had completely changed, suddenly quiet and gentle, but Vince didn’t let that fool him this time.
He laughed sarcastically. “I like to think so, but you know people like me. We don’t have a softer side. Hell, I’m the one who drove her to drink and become an addict. She hated me as much as you do, and she couldn’t take it anymore. I guess you can’t love someone and make them hate you, all at the same time.”
Now, he yanked on his jeans, feeling an unjustified anger. Had she really thought he didn’t love his wife? Who could really believe that of anyone? He knew there were plenty of men out there who didn’t love their wives, but he wouldn’t have gotten married if he just wanted eye candy on his arm. He could have had that any day of the week. He was tired of Ariana looking at him like he had no values.
“Vince…” He turned away from her. It was the first time she’d used his first name, but did it really matter? “Maybe I’ve been a little too judgmental. And I shouldn’t be, especially since I hate the way other people judge me. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have accused you of using your wife’s death like that. It was out of line.”
That was an understatement. “I appreciate the apology.”
He heard her huff behind him and could just imagine her standing there with her hands on her hips, irritated again. “Can you answer one question for me without a snide remark or a sarcastic comment?”
He grunted, reaching into the drawer of an old dresser for a shirt he could use. He’d have to make do with an oversized shirt from a rock concert dated ten years ago. He had places to be too soon to go home and change. “I can try, but I’ll warn you that you probably won’t like the answer.”
“Why me, Vince? Why did it have to be me? You could have screwed any of the nurses in that hospital, and probably most of the female doctors. Why did you choose me? Do I have ‘glutton for punishment’ written across my forehead or something?”
“No,” he said, her words cutting him deeper than they should have. She was angry and hurt, and he couldn’t really blame her. If she wanted to say things to make him feel the same, so be it. “I didn’t intend for any of this to be a punishment, Ariana, and I’m sorry you see it that way.”
She growled, an amusing sound under other circumstances, and Vince heard her plop down on the bed. “I didn’t mean it like that. What’s wrong with me? I can’t even say things the way I mean them anymore.” She paused. “Why did you want me? That’s all I want to know.”
Could he tell her the truth without her laughing in his face? And what difference did it make? She probably wouldn’t believe him, and she didn’t think much of him to start with. He rested his weight on a desk that stood against the wall and told her, “Your touch is tender. I don’t have a lot of that in my life anymore. I miss it, and I had a moment of weakness because you gave that to me, even when I was acting like a dick.”
Vince stood there, waiting for her to scoff at him or laugh, but he was met with silence. What did that mean? Turning around, he chanced a glance at Ariana, and he surprisingly found her staring at him with a soft expression.
“Did I really affect you that strongly?” she asked.
He nodded. “I never meant to offend you, and I wasn’t trying to take advantage of you. I reacted, and that’s all. You were working on my foot, and your hands were soft and kind. The only other person who has ever treated me like that was Kristi. With her gone, I’ve got nothing but my club family. They aren’t exactly kind.”
Standing, she moved toward him, and as she stood directly in front of him, he prepared to flinch, or to be backhanded. But neither happened. Instead, she reached up and touched his cheek, and he found himself leaning into her palm, rubbing his scruffy face on it and closing his eyes. “Maybe you gave me something I needed, too,” she whispered, embarrassed of such a confession. “Maybe I’m just bored and lonely, and you didn’t treat me like someone who had no business setting lofty goals for myself.”
Considering he had no idea what she meant, Vince assumed she was talking to herself as much as to him, and he said nothing, just turned to press his lips to her palm.
“Do you think maybe we could forget the shit that’s passed between us and start over?” he asked. “I just want to be around someone from time to time who doesn’t expect me to be tough and strong as steel.” It was hard for him to say, but he at least felt less uncomfortable sharing the request with this woman, who was capable of treating him like a man instead of a beast.
She nodded. “I’d like that.” A sly smile curved her lips. “Besides, I wouldn’t mind relieving some sexual tension in my life once in a while, if you’re up for it.”
He couldn’t help but smile back. “Oh, I’m up for it. You can count on that.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Once Vince had donned his jacket, he felt more like himself, and he quickly exchanged phone numbers with Ariana before walking her out to her car.
She didn’t try anything intimate, and he appreciated it, considering all his brothers were milling around watching, and not being very subtle about it either. She pulled away, and he assumed by her steady driving that she was feeling much less homicidal.
Once she was out of the place, he shook his head and strode toward Pound, who was staring at him with displeasure.
“I hope you got that out of your system. Now we’re running late.”
“Come off it, Pound. It’s only a few minutes, and I’m ready to ride.” He wished he had his own bike, but if he had to choose a temporary ride, he was more than happy to take Cyril’s.
But Pound didn’t make a move toward his own bike. “You’re playing with fire, man. That chick is dangerous. I can guarantee you if she found out the sort of business you were in, she’d run straight to her cop friends, and with someone else reporting, they can’t overlook it. We’d be under the microscope, and that would get the feds’ attention.”
“She has no clue what we do, and it doesn’t matter. It’s not like she’s an old lady. She’s just some chick that’s good in bed. There’s nothing more to it. I didn’t raise hell when you were sleeping with that cop’s daughter.”
Pound laughed. “Yes, you did. And that was one time. There was no repeat offense.” He leveled a warning glare at Vince. “You need to be more careful. If you’re thinking with the wrong head, you’re putting all of us at risk, just like Cyril and his stupid ideas about this whole new contact.”
Vince held his judgment. Pound always overreacted, and he didn’t really know any details about Ariana. In fact, Vince still wasn’t exactly sure how this was going to work.
It was something they’d figure out later. He just knew he wasn’t going to let his friend tell him who he could and couldn’t see, any more than he would let Ariana dictate his business.
But he was going to make one thing plain. He stepped closer to Pound and held his gaze. “What I do or don’t do with her doesn’t reflect at all on this club. The Iron Claws always come first, and if I think for one second that she’s a problem, she disappears. Got it? I’ve got my priorities straight, and I don’t like being questioned.”
“Whatever,” Pound sighed, giving in. “Just make sure your priorities stay in check on this ride. You’ve got five other guys with you, Cyril’s bike under you, and a whole family back here you need to protect.”
Vince was well aware what was at stake. That’s why they were flying in under the radar and getting in and out in a hurry.
Salem wasn’t their territory, and they didn’t need the Demons burning their asses.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
With better sleep and a clear conscience, Ariana headed to school the next morning with a much more amicable attitude. She smiled at her classmates—after all, they didn’t have white coats yet, either, and most of them were still decent people—and prepared for her exam.
What she hadn’t counted on was an inability to concentrate, her thoughts swirling back around to Vince every time she came across
a question about assessing possible broken bones or how to determine the most likely injury in a leg. She remembered being in the back of the bus, looking at his bandaged thigh, treating the burn on his foot, and the way he stared at her as if she was his first meal in a month.
Ariana returned to her exam, but she couldn’t concentrate, and it took her much longer than usual to complete the test. She didn’t have time to review it, and she couldn’t guarantee she hadn’t flubbed several questions. She didn’t want it to affect her mood, but she couldn’t help worrying. She had so much to prove, and if she didn’t get high enough grades, she’d live with the stigma that Jennie had brought up yesterday.
She didn’t give herself a lot of time to think about it. Instead, she ran through a drive-through and ordered off the dollar menu on her way to work. She had her longest shift of the week tonight; there would be time for a quick dinner later, but that was hours away.
With her stomach no longer growling, Ariana was able to greet her partner with the same smile she’d had when she’d entered the classroom this morning. “Did you get to catch the end of your boy’s soccer game?” she asked, making conversation as she pulled her clean uniform from her locker and shoved the two dirty ones in. They’d be returned to her tomorrow, clean and ready to wear.
“Only a couple of minutes, but that was good enough. He scored the winning goal, and I got it on film.” He beamed, and his enthusiasm was infectious. She managed to forget her issues at school and went to change into her uniform in the women’s locker room.
She met Sal out by the bus and grabbed cleaning supplies. It was a daily ritual—cleaning the rig before and after each shift on most occasions. They took pride in the bus, more than any other paramedics she knew, and it was one thing that kept Ariana from feeling like she’d already been defeated. The people in charge took notice of their attention to details like that, and it would go a long way in getting her the recommendations she needed for the future.
But as she climbed into the back of the bus, her whole body tingled, as if the memory of riding Vince was still alive in there. She could almost smell him when she closed her eyes: the strange mix of antiseptic, cologne, sweat, and grass. And on top of all that, the smell of sex haunted her.
She shook her head to clear it, and Sal looked up at her. “Are you just going to sit there all day and let me do the dirty work?”
His tone was teasing, but coming off a body high she hadn’t wanted, Ariana didn’t really care. “I don’t know. Are you going to harass me all day, as if I never contribute to the team?”
“Damn, there’s that attitude again.” He was still joking, but the words crawled uneasily up her spine. “What’s gotten into you lately? You used to be so sweet. Did someone suck the warmth out of you?”
Maybe if she spent enough time in Vince’s bed, he could do just that, and she wouldn’t feel all the pain and shame of the horrible ideas people had about her. At least being around him could help her man up against her opposers. “I was young and dumb back then,” she said casually. “Now I’m jaded.”
“I can see that,” Sal said thoughtfully. Ariana scrubbed at the base of the rig, but Sal had stopped and was staring at her.
“You’ve been all kinds of rattled since the kid the other night,” Sal said. “Or was it the biker guy? I know he was kind of a dick, and I know how you feel about those guys anyway. But you can’t let that get to you. His opinion of you doesn’t matter, okay?”
Ariana shrugged, trying to play off the issue. “I’m not worried about him. He’s just another thug.” A thug you slept with again, and one you plan on cavorting with in the future.
“You say that, but I see the look in your eyes. You’re already trying to prove yourself to too many people, Ariana. You don’t have to prove anything to some piece of garbage like him. You have to worry about impressing the big kahunas in the medical industry, and you have to like yourself. Those are the only two things that matter.”
He was right, but for some reason, she still wanted Vince to like her. She could read the same negative stigma coming from him that she had felt toward him, and she wanted to resolve it, for whatever reason. But she wasn’t going to tell him that. Instead, she forced a teasing smile and went back to work. “There is one other person I want to please. I mean, my partner, Sal, means enough to me that I want him to like me and all.”
She heard his chuckle and the teasing attitude he put on in response. “Hey, all the ladies want Sal to like them. But don’t worry, sweetheart, aside from my wife and mi madre , you’re my number one gal.”
Ariana stuck her tongue out at him as they finished their cleaning, and she grabbed the supplies to restock on the shelves. She called back to him, “If we don’t get a call soon, I think we should give this baby a bath.”
“I think she’s alright.” He came up behind her and smacked her butt, probably the only person in the entire universe who could get away with something like that. “I say we practice our CPR on each other.”
She rolled her eyes and slapped him playfully on the cheek. “There’s nothing here for you, big guy. Save it for when you get home to your wife.” And she would save it for Vince.
That thought hit her like a ton of bricks. She could barely even remember the last time she’d had sex before him, and even then, it hadn’t been anything spectacular. Now, somehow, she’d gotten herself mixed up with a guy she barely knew who epitomized everything she despised but was a maniac in the sack. He made her wish she could just jump in bed with him and never crawl back out.
It made Ariana wonder if she even really knew who she was after all. She searched her soul for an answer she couldn’t find, and as they headed toward their first call—what sounded like an asthma attack with no inhaler around—she was more focused on figuring out her own life than saving someone else’s. She doubted the attack was lethal; they were usually just caused by panic attacks when an asthmatic discovered they’d left their inhaler at home. They’d give the girl some oxygen, carry her to the hospital for a shot of steroids, and she’d be fine.
Ariana had bigger problems. She didn’t know if it was worse that she’d mischaracterized bikers in general in the past and lumped them into a category, effectively treating them like a lower class, or that she now suddenly saw something good in one of them, which raised questions about why she would just up and change her opinion.
Either way, Vince Larson was a distraction, and he remained as such throughout her shift. In fact, she caught herself starting to apply burn ointment to a bleeding cut instead of antiseptic wash and placing an oxygen mask on a patient but not turning on the oxygen feed. If she didn’t get her head on straight, she’d end up causing someone to slip into a coma with too high a dose of painkillers.
She’d never presented this sort of danger to her patients, and she didn’t like her distraction was affecting her job. She was just grateful that she caught her own mistakes and that Sal didn’t see her fumbling like this. He would shit a brick and tell her she needed to take time off until she could guarantee that she wasn’t a danger to herself and others. She couldn’t afford time off. She had walked away from the never-ending supply of money a long time ago, and she had no intention of repairing that severed bridge.
Finally, she was off duty. The day had been stressful not because there were any huge emergencies, but because the calls had been nonstop, Ariana did something rare—she went into the women’s locker room for a shower.
Turning on the hot spray, she bent forward, bracing herself against the wall with both hands, and let the water slide over her head and down her back. It eased her muscles momentarily, until her wayward thoughts turned to Vince and what he looked like in the shower, his body glistening with water as it poured in rivulets over his toned muscles and down the creases between them.
She washed quickly, spending extra time and effort on her hair to the point of irritating her scalp. She didn’t mind—at least it kept her from having an orgasm right there in the public sh
owers. Wrapped in a towel, she went to her locker and grabbed her street clothes, tugging them on and twisting her wet hair on top of her head with a clip. It could dry later. She had to get out of here.
She headed home, and when she got there, she held her phone in her hand, staring at Vince’s number. She shouldn’t call him. She should block his number and pretend none of this had ever happened. She still didn’t know how they were going to work this out. Hell, she couldn’t decide if she wanted to get to know him better or just use him for sex.
But she couldn’t fight the urge. She had the feeling it was going to take more than a few bouts of sex to get him out of her system to the point that she could function like a normal human being again. She dialed his number, hoping she could start on that road tonight. It was late, but he was in a motorcycle gang. They didn’t really run on normal business hours, right?
DADDY AT THE ALTAR Page 5
