Fire Me Up

by Rachael Johns

  But that’s what she liked so much about Travis. Well, one of a growing list of things. He was his own man. Yes, he was back in town at Ajax’s command and working alongside the others for one particular purpose, but he was doing it his way. And spending as much time as he could with her in the process. Yet, despite all this, Billie knew the flimsy line that connected them would snap the moment he wrapped up his business with the Deacons. Late at night, she sometimes lay in his arms imagining that this meant as much to him as it did to her. That he was falling in love with her in the same crazy, wholehearted way that she was falling for him. Sometimes—when they talked over dinner or post sex—she even believed it did, but despite the bliss she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was only a matter of time before she lost him.

  And hers wouldn’t be the only heart broken when that happened. Baxter was perhaps, if it were possible, even more besotted with Travis than she was. Travis pretended to be a real tough dude, and he looked even more the part since he’d started wearing his Deacons cut again, but inside she knew he was a softie. A few times when he didn’t think she was looking, she’d caught him tossing Baxter bits of bacon or other treats under the table. It made her heart turn over in her chest. During the day while Travis worked at his computer in the kitchen, Baxter lay at his feet, only occasionally pottering out to check on Billie in the gallery. Part of her was jealous that her dog seemed to have transferred his affections to what he obviously saw as the alpha male, but she couldn’t really blame him.

  Travis was simply that kind of guy. Even when he was acting all hard-ass, being a sarcastic, infuriating douchebag, you couldn’t spend any length of time in his charismatic company without losing your heart. When Saxon had tried to control her, it had made her want to throw knives, but when Travis went all tough guy, all she wanted to do was take off her clothes.

  Sighing at that thought, she glanced down at her sketch pad, then across at his bike still taking pride of place in the gallery, and bit down on her charcoal pencil. The piece was almost finished—after days of trying to get it exactly how she wanted it—but she was still reluctant to show Travis. Partly because his approval meant more to her than anyone else’s ever had and partly because handing it over would feel like the first nail in the coffin of their fling. It felt symbolic. This would be her goodbye gift to him, but what would she have of him besides bittersweet memories and dreams of what could never be?

  Amidst this dismal thought, her phone beeped. She put down her charcoal and dug the phone out of her pocket, glancing down to see a message from Lorna. Her heart clenched and she quickly glanced toward the house, where Travis was working. His mom had sent a few messages over the last few days, but Billie had ignored them, less able to bring herself to intervene in the mother–son relationship the more time she spent with Travis. She wanted to help, but she also respected his decision to leave the past where it was. In the end, reconnecting with Lorna had to be his decision; however, she couldn’t bring herself to tell the woman she’d changed her mind about her promise.

  “Hey. How’s business?”

  Billie startled at Travis’s voice as he emerged from the house into the gallery, Baxter’s furry shadow at his feet. She shoved her phone back into her pocket and summoned a smile. “Slow. I’ve sold a couple of hand-painted magnets this morning, but that’s it. You?”

  He shrugged as he came to stand alongside her desk. As he loomed over her, every cell in her body melted, her hormones begging the question of when they could next get up close and personal with his. “What about my commission? Can I have a peek yet?”

  “No!” She quickly turned her sketch pad over. Distracted by the phone message and his mere presence, she’d forgotten to hide her work, but no way was he seeing it yet. “Not long now,” she promised.

  He frowned. “The suspense is killing me. You artists are cruel creatures, you know.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Says the man who teased and taunted me into bed.”

  “If I recall, you were the one who made a move on me.”

  She opened her mouth to refute this statement with the facts, but he leaned down and covered her mouth with his before she could. Thank God she was still sitting because his lips on hers, their tongues dancing, made her swoon like a Victorian romance heroine. Every. Single. Time.

  When he finally broke their kiss, she took a moment to catch her breath and then asked, “What about you? How goes your progress?”

  “Not real great, but you just made me feel a whole lot better. I’m heading out to get some lunch. Want me to grab you something?”

  “Thanks.” She nodded. “That would be fab.” He’d attempted to cook her lunch on a couple of occasions, but cooking wasn’t his forte. He managed to mess up even the simplest of toasted sandwiches, but she forgave him because he was very good at other things.

  “Okay.” He patted her on the butt, as he often did. If Saxon had done such a thing she’d have wanted to scream blue murder, but Travis didn’t make her feel like his pet, someone he could order around and train to do as he wanted. No, he made her feel sexy, and whenever he patted her on the bum she forgot about whatever it was she should be doing and simply wanted to throw herself at him. Luckily he spoke again before her newfound hussy tendencies reared their head. “Want to go for a ride later?”

  “Uh…yes, please.” Until a few days ago, she’d thought riding on the back of a bike a reckless thing to do. But like Travis had reformed her thinking on so many things—tattoos, sex, her talents, to name but a few—he’d also changed her opinion on motorcycles. He’d found her an old helmet from somewhere deep inside The Priory and she adored the feeling of being pressed tightly against him, the wind buffeting them as he sped down highways and back alleys alike. His skill on the roads was akin to his skill in the bedroom. She often wondered if there was anything he wasn’t good at. Besides sandwich making, that was.

  They’d only been able to go at night because of her gallery commitments, but she couldn’t get enough of it and wondered what it would be like to learn to ride herself. To have the freedom to get up and take to the road whenever she damn well pleased. When she was on the back of Travis’s bike she forgot about all her woes, forgot about the fact that this thing between them had a rapidly approaching use-by date, forgot about the whole gallery-losing-a-lease issue, and simply lived in the moment.

  Every moment with Travis was an exciting adventure. The rush he gave her was similar only to the one she got whenever she was lost in her art. And he’d given her the confidence to take that up again.

  She waved him goodbye and went back to her work, stopping to eat lunch when he returned with a seafood pizza and a box of beignets. The way to her heart truly was with this local fried dough delicacy.

  “As much as I’d love to sit and chat,” Travis said, standing and grabbing their empty pizza box, “or better still, whisk you inside for another round of dessert, I have work to do, and I think you have company.”

  Frowning, Billie turned her head in the direction of the gallery entrance to see Rolley strolling in, an uncharacteristic scowl in prime position on his face. Travis chuckled, bent over and planted a kiss on the top of her head and then went into the house, Baxter following closely behind. It was the most chaste kiss he’d ever given her, but the way Rolley reacted you’d think Travis had bent her over the piano and had his wicked way.

  “Did I just see what I think I saw?” Rolley’s eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head.

  Billie smiled sweetly as he approached. “That depends on what you just saw.”

  “You really going to ask me to spell it out?”

  Billie sighed. “Look, Rolley, I don’t want to argue with you, okay?”

  “You can’t seriously tell me you’re dating that jerk.”

  Dating? Was that what they were doing? She doubted Travis would use that definition, even though they went out together in public and slept together every night. Dating sounded like a relationship that actual
ly had a future.

  “No.” She forced a laugh and shook her head. “We’re just being a little more civil now. I can’t afford to make an enemy of my landlord now, can I?”

  Rolley crossed his arms over his chest and glared in the direction Travis had headed. “Well, I hope that’s all it is, because you deserve a lot better than the likes of him, Billie. You deserve the world. Do you know what those dudes are like? They treat their motorbikes better than their women. They treat their women like toys. They…”

  “Sounds like you’ve been watching too many episodes of SOA,” she said with a laugh. Truth was Travis had treated her like a queen this last week and she couldn’t imagine him ever treating her badly, but then again, maybe that was because this was only an interlude for him. Either way, she didn’t want to dwell on this or talk about him with Rolley.

  “Do you know he’s Lorna’s son?” Rolley asked, surprising her.

  Billie frowned, not sure where he was going with this. “Yes, I found out the other day.” She lowered her voice. “I spoke to Lorna about him after she came to deliver some paintings, and things got a little heated between them.”

  “Geez.” Rolley looked genuinely concerned; he was good friends with Lorna’s partner. “Is she okay? Maybe I should go talk to her.”

  Before Billie could say anything more, he turned and charged back out of the gallery. She couldn’t help letting out a breath of relief. Dealing with a happy-go-lucky Rolley had always been fun. He’d been a good friend since she’d settled in the French Quarter, but she didn’t like his irate, jealous streak when he had no claim over her at all.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Billie tried to focus on her art and on the enthusiastic tourists that strolled into the gallery for a look-see and more often than not ended up walking out with a special New Orleans keepsake. That’s what she loved about the gallery she’d established. Although there were some expensive works of art, she also held plenty of pieces that were affordable for the average tourist. She wanted people to be able to take home a small piece of New Orleans, something that wasn’t tacky plastic from a cheap tourist shop like one across the street.

  Still, although she loved her work, she couldn’t help the happy bubble that formed inside her as she finally shut up shop for the day. It was midweek, so the gallery didn’t stay open late, which meant maybe she had time to whip up something special for dinner. She’d always enjoyed cooking, but she liked it so much more now that someone appreciated her efforts. Not only did Travis know how to compliment a woman in the kitchen, he also happily helped with the dishes and made sure he continued to show his appreciation much, much later. Her insides heated at the thought as she stepped into the house.

  Baxter ran to greet her, leaping up at her legs and trying to lick her knees. She laughed and bent down to scoop him up. “Nice effort, little guy. Maybe I’d actually believe you still cared if you’d bothered to come out and sit with me for more than five minutes today.”

  As she walked through to the kitchen—Travis’s makeshift office area—Baxter licked her nose as if trying to make up for ignoring her. She laughed again and put the dog down, expecting Travis to get up when he saw her, to come over and yank her against him, to kiss her till she went boneless, as was becoming his nightly habit. But Travis stayed in his seat, his eyes glued on his computer screen. There was a furrow between his eyebrows that looked like it had been there a while. She started to cross over to him, planning to offer a shoulder massage, when he banged his fist on the kitchen table. Frustration was etched all over his face.

  “Bad day at the office?” she asked.

  He glanced up at her as if he hadn’t until that moment heard her come in, then ran a hand through his hair and attempted a smile. “I’m just tired of getting nowhere.” He sighed and glanced back at the screen. “Maybe we need to take to the streets instead; maybe it’s not—” His words stopped abruptly and his mouth dropped open as he leaned closer to the computer screen. “Holy fuck. How did I miss this?”

  “What?” She hurried across the room to stand behind him and look at the screen, which seemed to display some bank statements.

  “This.” He breathed the word as he touched his index finger to the screen.

  Billie followed his finger to a line that showed a significant amount of money transferred from one account to another. “Laundry?” she read the transaction description aloud. “Must have been a heck load of dirty socks.”

  “Dirty laundry,” Travis breathed. “One day after Priest was murdered.”

  Billie swallowed as goose bumps littered her skin, but they weren’t the kind of shivers she usually got around Travis. “You think someone was paid to kill him? A contract killing?”

  “Looks that way.”

  Billie peered at the name at the top of the statement. “Who is Brendan Lee Tuckett?”

  “He goes by the name of Blade. You met him at Café Du Monde. I knew it. I just knew this hit had Ministry written all over it.” Travis frowned. “It looks like he paid someone to murder Priest, which I’ll admit is odd. Why the fuck didn’t he just slit his throat himself?”

  “And why would he have wanted him dead?” Billie asked, trying not to focus on the visuals. Funny, she no longer felt like cooking and, with all this to digest, she guessed Travis might not be hungry yet either.

  He chuckled. “The Ministry has always wanted to move into the Quarter, into Deacons territory. The question is why did they wait so long? Why now? There’s a lot about this that doesn’t fucking make any sense.”

  “But it’s the evidence you were looking for?” She gulped, realizing that if this Blade guy had killed Priest, then Ajax, Travis and Co. would enact their revenge and once they were done, there’d be nothing keeping Travis here anymore. Her knees quivered and she pulled out a chair to sit down. It was too soon. Despite knowing this time was coming, she wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet. Not by a long shot. Suddenly the fact that Travis’s departure might also mean the demise of her business meant nothing alongside the thought of losing him.

  “It’s a start,” he said, sounding distracted.

  “What will you do now?”

  “I’m going to try and follow this trail a little more, check out a few things, and then I’m going to take it to Ajax.”

  —

  Once Travis found that first little nugget of evidence, it didn’t take him long to confirm. The money had come from one of Blade’s personal accounts rather than a Ministry account, which was why he’d almost missed it. It was a mammoth amount of cash—the type only exchanged in drug deals, contract killings or the like—and he guessed the recipient was also a member of the Ministry. There was a remote possibility this could be a freaky coincidence, that Blade had done some other dodgy deal around the same time Priest died, but something in Travis’s gut told him that wasn’t the case.

  Anger curled tightly in his stomach at the thought of Blade, of the motherfucking Ministry, taking Priest’s life, making it look like he’d had a road accident. Although he’d thought he didn’t want to get his hands dirty again, he wasn’t sure he was ready to hand over this information to Ajax and Blue and simply walk away. So much for living life on the straight and narrow, so much for believing in legal justice—right now he wanted to be at the front line when his brothers confronted the Ministry president. His fists curled in anticipation. After what felt like hours sitting in this same position, Travis pushed back his seat and stood.

  At the sound of his chair scraping on the floor, Billie looked up from where she’d been sketching on her pad across the other side of the table. “You going out?”

  He nodded and grabbed his cut from the back of the seat. “I’m going to see Ajax and Blue.”

  “At The Priory?”

  “Yep.”

  “Can I come with you?”

  He paused halfway to the door, surprised by her question. “I didn’t think The Priory was your kind of place.”

  Billie cocked her head to one side and hit
him with a “really?” look. “And most people would say you’re not my kinda guy, but I think we’ve proved the opposites attract theory by now, don’t you?”

  Travis deliberated only a moment. Ajax wouldn’t like him bringing an outsider into their club business, but Travis didn’t give a fuck. He wanted to have Billie with him as much as he could during the time they had left. “Okay, let’s go.”

  Billie blinked as if she couldn’t believe he’d agreed, but then she put down her sketch pad and smiled. She ran her hands through her hair and then smoothed them over her jeans. “Should I get changed?”

  “Nope.” He shook his head. “You’re perfect the way you are.”

  Billie crossed the room to the fridge, took out a bone for Baxter and then tossed it down to where he was sleeping on the floor. Even before his eyes opened the dog was sniffing at the treat, his muzzle moving before his body. Travis and Billie crept out of the house so as not to alert Baxter to their departure.

  “He’s besotted with you, you know that?” Billie said as Travis pulled the door shut behind them.

  “What can I say?” He shrugged. “Do you blame him?”

  Billie shook her head. “You’re so damn arrogant.” But the way she said it sounded like a compliment. “He’ll miss you when you’re gone.”

  It suddenly struck Travis what tonight’s discovery meant. Unless this Blade thing turned out to be a dead end, he’d soon be free. Free to leave town, to leave the Deacons and the French Quarter behind once and for all. That was what he wanted. Wasn’t it? He’d been harping on about leaving since the moment he returned. His life was no longer in dirty, crazy New Orleans. It was in Tallahassee, where he had a cool apartment, where he wore suits more than he did leather and where he was respected, not because people were scared of him but because of his expertise and knowledge.

  “I’ll miss him, too,” he said. But not half as much as his drop-dead sexy, feisty little owner. Travis got a funny tightening, painful feeling in his chest and reached out to take Billie’s hand as they walked through the dimly lit courtyard, passing his bike, the piano and all the artwork he’d at first turned up his nose at but that now reminded him of Billie. As they closed the gate behind them, they hardly heard its creak over the din coming from The Priory right next door.