EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®
www.evernightpublishing.com
Copyright© 2019 Raven McAllan
ISBN: 978-1-77339-994-2
Cover Artist: Jay Aheer
Editor: Audrey Bobak
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
To the RavDor Chicks. Thank you for all your help and support. You rock.
And to Paul, who is my rock.
THE GOOD BAD BOY
Bare Alley Ink, 2
Raven McAllan
Copyright © 2019
Chapter One
‘Everyone loves a bad boy—don’t they? Come and meet Chance…’
Gah, that was all I needed. Him twenty feet tall and his crotch at eye level. I glanced up at the poster and glared. Trust the local cinema to have his new blockbuster on soon after the premiere. That premiere was in four days’ time and I intended to turn off every TV, radio, and app that might report it.
Bad in film, bad in life. That about summed it up. Dammit.
Noah Jackson’s grinning face stared down at me, his baby blues taunting, teasing, and making me squirm. Not all bad, mind you, but not what I needed right now.
Liar, liar, pants on fire. Okay, then as I couldn’t have him, for the last three years I’d had nobody, except Bill. Bill my bullet, that was.
Sadly, not Noah…
The open shirt, arrow of chest hair that enticed my eyes lower, the dark jeans unsnapped and…
Do not go there.
The poster was an advertisement for testosterone.
‘Dark is the Heart is Jackson at his best…’
Sod it.
‘On at your local cinema soon…’
Damn it.
Enough already, build a bridge get over it, move on, enough already.
He was in a past lifetime. As much as I wished he wasn’t, he had to be for my sanity.
I shifted my glance from the poster to the street ahead. I was a clumsy sod and could trip over a matchstick with no trouble. Not a good thing in the main street, where no doubt I’d show my knickers to all and sundry. Which, as a local teacher, would so not be a good thing to do. No doubt half a dozen of my class would appear out of shop doorways with mobile phones in their sticky little mitts, snapping away and making my next term as embarrassing as hell. I shuddered at the thought.
Time to get my shopping and get the hell out of Dodge. I hated spending my days off shopping, anyway, especially the first day of the summer break, so this wasn’t ever going to be my happiest of times, even without this latest crap.
Safety, in the form of a quick visit to the local deli for something tasty, and a good book called. Well away from the cinema, two-timing bastards, and stupid hot bod groupies who squealed like stuck pigs and made my life crappy.
Okay, a bit of an exaggeration, but blimey O’Reilly, as my mum would say, you’d exaggerate too if you’d been in my position.
Oh, I’m Summer, by the way. Hale, hearty, two stones too heavy according to the doctor’s scales, and fancy free. And, as I kept trying to persuade myself, well rid of Noah sex-on-legs Jackson.
Boy, how wrong could a woman be.
There I was lost in thoughts I didn’t want, deciding on steak or salmon and sod it with chips, proper cholesterol-full chips, and I walked into a wall.
The wall swayed and swore and oh my, hands grabbed hold of my arms. Then hell’s bells, I was lifted off my feet and held in the air, to one side of whoever it was. What was the world coming to? This was a main street in the city, only halfway through the afternoon, and no one but no one wondered what was going on. Well, no one except for me, and I had been too busy trying to regain my balance to wonder what on earth was going on.
I did my best to remember all those self-defense lessons someone had given me and kicked out as I went limp. Hallelujah, my foot connected with a shin. I heard a very pithy cuss word—good—and then I found myself touching the pavement again. Sadly still held fast, but it was better than getting motion sick. Mind you, if I had been sick, it might have been over the bugger who held on to me.
Time to scream? I opened my mouth and a big, luckily clean hand covered it. I bit. It did nothing to the bloke who held me. He just grunted. Sod and shit and fuck and bugger.
“Watch yersel, hen. Dinnae gie in th’ way ae tha man.”
“Why should she change the habits of a lifetime?”
Oh, shoot, I know that voice.
“Hello, Summer, my sunshine, how are you?” The deep, chocolate-smooth voice curled around my senses. “This saves us a journey.”
Oh … bloody Nora.
Yeah, you guessed it. My nemesis was there in the flesh, not solely on a billboard. Okay, he had on those stupid shades and a baseball cap, which I always reckoned was a dead giveaway that someone was trying to go incognito, but it wasn’t obvious who it was. Well, not to most people, I hoped.
“What do you want?” I said with a snap. After all, I was gradually being squashed and my 34DDs didn’t like that. “Get the oaf to put me down before I shout GBH or something.”
Noah Jackson, yeah, you guessed right, chuckled. “Put the lady down, Mac. I’ll take over.”
“Ah, ye sure, boss?”
Who the fuck was he?
“Yep, she’s harmless. Aren’t you, Summer?”
How I’d loved to have said no and thumped them both, but even in this not-so-big town in Scotland we were attracting a lot of attention, so I just nodded. “Yep.”
Noah took my arm and sort of frog-marched me over to one of those stupid, mainly blacked-out windowed, top-of-the-range gas-guzzlers. “Get in.”
I stopped dead and leaned on the side of the vehicle. “Pardon?”
He chuckled as the gorilla, sorry, bodyguard bloke, growled.
Growled, for fuck’s sake. What, was he a bear?
“Summer, my love, before we attract any more attention, would you please get in? I really do need to talk to you.”
I hadn’t heard him sound so serious since … well, for ages. Even before everything went pear-shaped. I nodded and he held the door open for me to slide in and then followed me. The bodyguard slammed the door and got into the driver’s seat. “Whaur tae?”
Noah glanced at me. I shrugged. “Home, I guess. You know the address.” He gave it to—what was he called, Mac?—and settled back next to me.
“How are you?” Noah asked in his deep, gravelly, and bloody seductive voice. “You’re looking good.”
“Now, there’s one thing I refuse to do,” I said. “And that is talk to a pair of shades. Ditch the sunnies, and I might answer.”
He laughed. “Forgot that, sorry.”
Bless his little cottons, and I didn’t say that about him often. He ditched the shades and those deep baby blues turned on me.
Sod it and be still my racing heart. The fucker still had me.
“So, my Summer sunshine, how are you?” he asked again. “I’ve missed you, and not just in bed.” He sighed. “A certain part of my anatomy has forgotten how to grow and show, let alone what else it’s supposed to be used for.”
“Peeing,” I said flatly. Did he really mean he’d been as celibate as I had? Seemed a bit implausible considering the circumstances, but I wouldn’t challenge him, not now.
“Well, true, but nothing else. So, as I said bef
ore we got onto my urinary habits, how are you?”
Now how to answer that without sounding needy? “Fine,” I said automatically. Well, I wasn’t going to say, I know what you mean about the bed bit and missing good sex and I’ve worn my bullet out now, was I? It might be true, but oh, how it made me sound a loser. “You?”
He sighed. “Missing you.”
“Yeah, right.” Was it time to mention miss busy blonde costar who showed me the pictures? Maybe not. I sort of did the half smile if-you-say-so thing and he sighed again. He really had a good line in sighs.
“Oh, shut up,” I said. “You weren’t on the receiving end, I was.” I thought about that statement. “You were on the direct receiving line, so to speak. It was your dick that was getting the action. I was just shown the photos.” And even now the thought of those pics made me want to throw up.
“For God’s sake, Summer, they were fucking doctored.” He didn’t sound angry, just defeated.
He’d said that at the time, but oh-so-insecure me didn’t believe him. Now? Well, let’s say three years older and wiser, and three years of dear Tawny Teesa’s antics in every rag on the planet, I was prepared to be persuaded.
“So you said.” Shit, what did I sound like? I was about to temper my reply when he got in first.
“Ah, what’s the point? You’ll never believe me. I have no bloody idea how to show you other than say so and expect you to accept my word. Just forget it.” He sat back in his seat, folded his arms, and closed his eyes.
Oh, well done, Summer. I was actually disgusted with myself then. “I’m sorry, that didn’t quite come out as I meant it.”
He opened one eye. “No? Sounded as you meant it to me. Noah is a liar. End of.” He shut his eye again.
As bad as sunglasses.
“For goodness sake, grow up and listen,” I exploded. I mean, there I was about to grovel and do the benefit-of-doubt thing and he wasn’t prepared to listen. A little voice in my head started to go on about, well, why should he as I hadn’t, and I blocked it out. This was now, that had been then. “I’m trying to explain something to you. So if you want to hear it, open your eyes, sit up, and listen. If not, stop the bloody car and I’ll get a taxi home.”
He wriggled a bit, yawned in a way I had to bite my lip not to say something snarky, and sat up. “Okay, I’m all ears.”
He might be all ears, but he still had his eyes shut. Ah, well, better than him staring and making me feel like an insect under a microscope. He was always bloody good at that as well, and I doubt he’d changed there.
Actually, I wondered how he’d changed at all.
“Summer,” he prompted me. “Over to you.”
“When we were together before,” I said slowly, as I tried to say what I meant and get him to understand, “I wasn’t exactly confident in, well, in what we had going for each other, and do not butt in, else.”
He shut his mouth and inclined his head as he mimed a zip over his lips. That, of course, drew my attention to them and sod it, they twitched.
Chapter Two
“As I was saying, I couldn’t believe someone like you even gave someone like me a second glance. I mean, you spent most of your time after filming miles away from me, which I know you couldn’t help. I couldn’t just up and leave uni to follow you around. So I went through agonies of worry as I saw all those photos of you with elegant, glamorous women in posh clubs, drinking champagne, and so on. There was I, a wee lassie from a wee village with no idea how to go on. I was out of my depth without a swim ring. Then there was your costar and her mates. Bitches all. Did you know I used to get special deliveries of copies of all the photos with you and her? Even the ones I would have seen in every paper? You were the flavor of the time and she was determined I was having nothing to do with you. Everywhere we went, she turned up. Innuendo in every gossip rag. And, of course, did you deny it? Did you hell. When I said it to you, you laughed it off. Just because you were filming together, you said.”
Boy, was I on a roll. I knew once I started I wouldn’t stop, but I hadn’t realized just how much anger and yeah, sorrow, I still had inside me. “You screwed my mind good and proper and in the end, I just gave up. I said I couldn’t cope any longer. I had my finals coming up, I was stressed to high heaven, and you just said it was part of life and to get over it.”
He blinked. “Shit.”
I nodded. “Oh, yeah, mega shit. Okay, I was years older than the rest of the students in my subject at uni, but in some ways, that put extra pressure on me. Doing a gap year or four across the globe might make you worldly wise, but it’s not much help in a teaching degree. Well, except for the geography bit and most six-year-olds aren’t that interested in the geography of New Zealand or Bali. It didn’t help for the essay writing or the dissertation.”
“Oh shit again. But you did well and got your job, though. Even if it was no thanks to me.”
I shrugged. “I got the results the day you said I either got over my stupid jealousy or we were through. So we were through. I also got the pics of you and Tawny Teesa in bed. And you might say it was for a film, but oh boy, it looked remarkably like your bedroom to me.”
“What?” He howled the word. “I never saw that.”
“No? Ah, well, I did and I can tell you now it was the last straw. So I didn’t come down, you got nominated for an Oscar, I got a job, and here we are.” I glanced out the car window. “And here we are as well. Thanks for the lift.”
For once, he looked a bit flustered. “Ah, can I come in, please?”
“Please? Blimey. Okay, enough of the sniping. I guess so.” After all, hadn’t I decided I was going to have an open mind? Well, sort of. “What about your goon … er driver?”
“Mac. He’ll go to see his mum and stop there until I phone him.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but … new me. Sweetness and light until I found I needed otherwise. “Fair enough. Let’s go in.” Before the world and his wife—well, the farmer up the road, and the couple of blokes who lived half a mile away—wondered what the bloody blacked-out windowed car was all about.
****
“Why are you here Noah? Truthfully, no bullshit.”
We sat in the lounge and as ever, I realized just how big he was. Not fat but around six-four, a good foot taller than me, and in my tiny sitting room, he looked enormous. I did fear for my sofa before I remembered it was one that said all weights up to a combined fifty stones. That was at least twice the both of us. “I need straight-talking truth.”
“Apart from needing a partner to my premiere? I’ve refused point blank to go with anyone but you. I went for a tattoo with Finn. Bare Alley Ink. Got a superb reputation.”
I knew that. I’d been a few months ago and had the Chinese symbol for hope tattooed on my bum. Where it couldn’t be seen, but I knew it was there. After all, we all need hope, eh? It seemed apt and well, I was too much of a wuss to go for anything else. How he’d coped with that great big one, I had no idea.
But I had other things to think about then.
“Finn? That reprobate?” Finn was his twin. “Shit, what did you get? Nekkid women dancing up your cocks?”
“Ha, ha, I’m not that brave to get anything in that region. He went for a bear up his side, and I went for a tiger. Look.” He pulled off his shirt and turned his back to me. “Took several visits, which works well with me saying I was here with you.”
Here? What the fuck? I went to answer and then stopped. My mouth went dry. It was a long while since I’d seen anything of him in the flesh, and oh God, my body responded like a bee to a flower or whatever the saying was. Let’s say I went from cool, calm and sort of collected to hot and horny in three seconds flat. The sort of horny that made my nipples hurt and my thighs damp. Even my clit got into the act and began to throb. I hoped to hell none of my reactions showed. It was one thing to want to rip his clothes off and jump his bones, another for him to realize it. I swallowed and my bloody brain immediately remembered a dif
ferent sort of swallow. Him. His cock and his cum.
Enough already. My cheeks were hot and I’d bet I had a sex rash spreading over me.
“Very nice,” I said. Oh, sheesh, can’t I do better than that? “It’s amazing, but how the hell will you cover that up in a top-off film?”
“Clever people will do it for me. As it happens, I need a tat for the next one so it will be fine.” He pulled the t-shirt on again, damn him. I had enjoyed the view. “Any coffee going?”
That was something about him that annoyed me. He could swap subjects as fast as, well, no idea what. I was going to say knickers but even I couldn’t do that as fast as his trains of thoughts.
I pulled out the percolator. “Coffee coming up. I expect you want food as well?
“Well, now you mention it… What have you got?”
I tipped out my shopping bag. “You accosted me before I shopped so it’s freezer food. Have a look.”
He shook the bag and turned it upside down. “Empty.”
“I told you. It’s freezer rummage or a tin of beans.”
“I’ll rummage. Beans give me wind.”
I knew that.
Noah opened my freezer door and began to move packages around. “Summer, what the hell is CCCWR42? Or, hold on, FPWP41?”
I sniggered. Well, I’d never expected anyone else to need to understand my labels. “Chili con carne with rice for two. Fish pie with prawns for one. There should be two of them. And if you find Paella shop-bought, I didn’t make it. Nor oven chips or breaded fish.”
Apart from veg, I reckoned that would be it. I’d not had time to stock up lately. Parents’ evenings and end-of-term-itis had hit my class and every night all I wanted to do was have a glass of wine and sleep. Luckily, I’d eaten at school every day because there was no chance I would have cooked more than a cuppasoup and a cheese sarnie. “You choose.” I bit back a yawn. “Sorry, I’m knackered. Today is the first day since whenever I felt I had nothing to do except nothing.”
The Good Bad Boy Page 1
