Text copyright ©2018 Lani Lynn Vale
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
To my bearded husband, who inspired Linc’s character when he was 19. This one is for you.
Acknowledgements
Photographer: Golden Czermak
Model: Chase Ketron
Cover Me Darling-book cover design
Danielle Palumbo—My awesome content editor.
Ellie McLove & Ink It Out Editing—My editors
My mom—Thank you for reading this book eight million two hundred times.
Cheryl, Leah, Kathy, Mindy, Barbara, Diane & Amanda—I don’t know what I would do without y’all. Thank you, my lovely betas, for loving my books as much as I do.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
What’s Next?
What’s Next—2?
The Beard Made Me Do It
Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale:
The Freebirds
Boomtown
Highway Don’t Care
Another One Bites the Dust
Last Day of My Life
Texas Tornado
I Don’t Dance
The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC
Lights To My Siren
Halligan To My Axe
Kevlar To My Vest
Keys To My Cuffs
Life To My Flight
Charge To My Line
Counter To My Intelligence
Right To My Wrong
Code 11- KPD SWAT
Center Mass
Double Tap
Bang Switch
Execution Style
Charlie Foxtrot
Kill Shot
Coup De Grace
The Uncertain Saints
Whiskey Neat
Jack & Coke
Vodka On The Rocks
Bad Apple
Dirty Mother
Rusty Nail
The Kilgore Fire Series
Shock Advised
Flash Point
Oxygen Deprived
Controlled Burn
Put Out
I Like Big Dragons Series
I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie
Dragons Need Love, Too
Oh, My Dragon
The Dixie Warden Rejects
Beard Mode
Fear the Beard
Son of a Beard
I’m Only Here for the Beard
The Beard Made Me Do It
Beard Up
For the Love of Beard
Law & Beard
There’s No Crying in Baseball
Pitch Please
Quit Your Pitchin’
Listen, Pitch (10-16-18)
The Hail Raisers
Hail No
Go to Hail
Burn in Hail
What the Hail
The Hail You Say
Hail Mary
The Simple Man Series
Kinda Don’t Care
Maybe Don’t Wanna
Get You Some
Ain’t Doin’ It
Too Bad So Sad
Bear Bottom Guardians MC
Mess Me Up
Talkin’ Trash
How About No (11-6-18)
My Bad (12-4-18)
Bayou & Pru (1-15-19)
Talkin’ Trash Blurb
Linc has two very important things on his mind—professional football and his motorcycle club.
What he does not have on his mind is the woman that drives him crazy and makes him want to do stupid things, like throw caution to the wind.
Nope, not Linc.
At least, that’s the lie he tells everyone.
In reality, every time Conleigh’s name is mentioned, he squirms.
She’s everything that he wants, wrapped up in a cute little package that is stamped ‘hands freakin’ off.’
She’s four years younger than him, in school to be a doctor, and thinks football is stupid.
Even more, Linc and Conleigh get along like oil and water.
There’s not a single second that they’re in each other’s presence that they’re not at each other’s throats.
But all it takes is hearing that she’s in trouble for Linc to drop every single thing—football and MC duties alike—and head to her side.
A side that he’ll remain at until they either kill each other or finally give in to the heat between them.
Either way you look at it, he’s well and truly screwed.
Chapter 1
Life is just a series of obstacles preventing you from taking a nap.
-T-shirt
Conleigh
I watched with my heart in my throat as the ball was released from Lincoln James’, star quarterback of the Longview Liners, hand.
The ball went into a flawless spiral, the absolute most perfect pass there ever was, only to stop short when the man who was supposed to catch it was slammed to the ground seconds before it hit his hands.
Everyone everywhere who loved the Longview Liners like I did collectively groaned.
“Noooo!” I cried out, pissed off and outraged that the man didn’t catch the ball. “How could you do that?”
Then the buzzer sounded, and the season was over, just like that.
I prayed that they’d pan over to Linc so I could see him, make sure that he was all right, but the stupid cameraman panned to the coach, who looked mad as hell. Then to the little pissant who they called Joe Blow, but was really named Joe Hoyt, who looked even epically pissed off that he was tackled.
I immediately felt horrible for calling him a pissant, because he really was a great guy. And catching that ball really was impossible, especially with half of their team hurt and Joe the only logical choice to throw to since he’d been the only one to make actual plays tonight instead of fumble the damn ball.
I watched with avid fascination as the world went on around them, waiting for a glimpse or two of Linc.
However, none ever came, and I only realized when they were filming post-game interviews that Linc had straight up gone to the locker room and avoided all contact with everyone.
Not that I blamed him.
Linc was always a sore loser, and he’d told me before that he was forced to put on a happy face and play nice when he least wanted to.
My phone chimed on the chair beside me, and I smiled when I saw my mom’s name on the screen.
She’d put a sad face with huge fat tears on it, and I knew
that she and my stepfather, Steel, had been watching the game just as closely as I had been.
A couple of years ago, my mother wouldn’t be caught dead watching a football game—they reminded her too much of my former stepfather—but now, she’d cuddle on the couch with her big, bad biker president and stay there for hours watching a game with him.
Me? I’d always loved the game of football. I loved it even more now that I got to watch Linc’s tight ass running around on the field. Though, he thought I hated it, and I allowed him to think I hated it because me and Linc had a weird relationship.
Another text came in while I was replying with my own sad smiley face to my mother, and my heart started to pound.
Other things in my body started to act weird, too.
Like my vagina.
That thing was always betraying me.
Especially when it came to Linc James, my one-time not-so-much boyfriend.
I say ‘one-time’ loosely, though. At one point, we’d discussed being more than friends, but then he’d gotten too big for his britches, so to speak, and had forgotten all about little old me.
Sure, he still texted every now and then, like right now, but it wasn’t like how it used to be when we’d talk every single night.
I always made it a point to reply to him.
Always.
But I was never overly friendly.
I had to protect my heart, because I’d had it broken by one too many men over my life—my father, my first stepfather, and then finally, Linc.
It couldn’t handle being broken again, especially a second time by Linc James, professional football player, and owner of many hearts—including my own.
Linc: You up?
I swallowed past the lump in my throat and replied.
Conleigh: Yep. Lots of homework to do. I’m not sure this master’s degree thing is for me.
I really was thinking that. The more that I studied, and the more I got away from the actual nursing part of nursing, the more I realized that maybe I’d made the wrong decision.
Originally my goal had been to become a doctor, but that would take way too long for me to accomplish, and on top of that, the required schooling was so intense that you couldn’t really work or do anything else while in school. In the end, I’d changed my major to nurse practitioner with a plan to possibly explore the option of becoming a doctor once I had established myself financially.
A long time ago, my mother, brother, and I had been poor. And when I say poor, I meant the kind of poor where eating ramen noodles once a week was a treat, and I was stealing shoes from the store for my baby brother. That kind of poor.
My mother wasn’t the one to do that, though.
Nope, it’d all been me.
But, as I got my bachelor’s degree in nursing and then pursued my nurse practitioner’s license, I only had one goal in mind—to never be poor again.
I didn’t want to be poor. I couldn’t handle being poor.
And the one thing I could do to ensure that I wasn’t was to educate myself and find a very well-paying job.
Linc: Then quit.
I rolled my eyes.
He’d told me that before.
Conleigh: I can’t just quit. Not everyone gets multi-million-dollar contracts to play football, you know. I have to pay my bills and my school loans.
School loans were scary to me. For someone who feared being in debt, putting thousands of dollars on credit to be paid after I finished my degree would be downright debilitating if I let myself think about it too hard.
Like right now.
Linc: You have a degree from what I remember. You also have a job utilizing said degree where you make pretty good money. Or so my dad tells me. Why don’t you just keep doing that job? Your mom said that you liked it the last time I was over there.
I felt my stomach drop.
Linc still thought that my ultimate goal was to continue in school to become a doctor.
He hadn’t realized that I’d changed my degree path and he’d gotten the wrong profession and hadn’t taken the time to learn the right one because he was too busy trying to “save my soul” by staying away from me.
At least, that was what I got from my mom. Mom was never one to pull punches with me, and from what her husband had told her, Linc thought he would hurt me, and in order not to do that, he stayed away even though he supposedly didn’t want to.
I called bullshit, but it wasn’t like I could force someone to be with me who didn’t want to be.
Just thinking about it made me angry, which was why I did what I did next.
Conleigh: Sorry you lost.
Linc: Night.
I chuckled at that.
Linc really didn’t like to lose. Even more, he hated being reminded of that loss.
Well, I didn’t like being reminded that he didn’t want to have anything to do with me, so there was that.
Instead of dwelling on it like I usually did, I turned my focus to studying for my exam tomorrow and tried not to think about how much I hated this class, as well as the subject that I was studying in general.
The next day dawned bright and early, and wouldn’t you know it, Linc’s face was the first thing I saw as I turned on Sports Center.
I immediately turned it off, and skipped my normal morning routine, knowing that if I saw Linc’s face again, I’d likely lose my shit.
Linc had a way about him. A way that made me lose my train of thought and caused me to forget that I was a grown ass adult and not a teenager with a crush on an older man who didn’t want her.
It’d been eight years since I’d met the man, but with the way I still felt about him and how much his rejection still stung, you would think it was yesterday.
***
Eight years ago
I was not happy to be there.
My mother had dragged me there instead of letting me hang out with my friends, and I was about as enthusiastic about going to this particular party as a person heading to the dentist for a root canal appointment.
Opening the door, I took a long look at the large house that we were entering and felt a tiny thrill coursing through me.
This house would have a lot of fancy stuff inside…fancy stuff that would likely get me a lot of money if I went and pawned it.
But then I mentally smacked myself.
I wasn’t stealing anymore.
Why wasn’t I stealing anymore? Because for one thing, Steel Cross, my mother’s man, would kick my ass. And, in addition, because I didn’t want to spend any time in jail if I could help it.
I was too soft. I’d probably die the first day on the inside.
“Conleigh?” my mother called. “Are you coming?”
I kept up a running dialogue about how much I didn’t want to be here as I kept my eyes down on the ground to make sure that I didn’t trip and make a complete fool of myself in front of all of these bikers.
I managed to make it to the front door before it opened and walk inside unassisted—and without falling on my face like I was known to do.
My eyes were searching the area when I saw him blocking our way.
He was tall and younger than the other men, but he had a beard that made him look way older.
I felt my heart stall inside my chest and felt the start of panic rising up.
I hadn’t dressed nice.
My mother hadn’t given me the time I normally needed to make myself presentable, and since I was told this was being held outside, I hadn’t bothered with anything more than jean shorts and a t-shirt that said ‘cheer’ across the breasts, though I hadn’t cheered a day in my life.
I swallowed thickly and turned away, following my mother and Steel into the very beautiful house.
But it didn’t have anything special about it. Though the outside was very nice, the inside made it seem more like a vacation rental rather than someone’s actual residence.
Which coincided wit
h Steel’s explanation that this was their clubhouse—a place where they hung out, but rarely ever stayed at. The reason for today’s party was that a couple of men from other chapters were coming in for the week for some reason that I hadn’t been privy to.
I suddenly felt that feeling that one gets when someone is staring a hole through them. I was surprised to find that it was the teenager with the beard…and tattoos.
My God, he had tattoos everywhere.
I felt my stomach dip as our gazes caught and felt something akin to excitement start to course through my veins.
Steel’s face split into a wide smile as he threw his arms around the man and said, with great affection, “Linc!”
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Could barely keep my knees from knocking together.
“Linc,” Steel said, stepping away from him and shifting sideways to allow Linc to see us more fully. “This is my woman, Winnie, her daughter, Conleigh, and Cody, her son.”
My eyes widened at hearing Steel say my mother was ‘his woman.’
Linc caught both and started to chuckle. “Y’all could pass as sisters.”
Chapter 2
If you drink a gallon of water a day, you’ll be too busy pissing to worry about other people’s problems.
-Nutrition Fact
Linc
I was still pissed off about the text Conleigh had sent me eight hours later.
Since we’d lost the game, we were no longer in the running for the playoffs, and were officially off until next season began, leaving me with not a goddamn thing to do but think about how much that girl pissed me off.
Instead of dwelling on how she always knew just how to press my freakin’ buttons, I did the one thing that I knew would piss her off even more. I called her mom.
Finding her name in my contacts, I pressed go and put it to my ear.
“Hello, Lincoln,” Winnie Cross, Conleigh’s mother, drawled. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
She knew exactly what I was going to ask.
I sighed. “Is it time yet?”
Winnie laughed. “You know what he’s going to say.”
Eight years ago, when I met Conleigh, I was warned away from Conleigh by none other than Steel Cross, the president of the Alabama chapter of the Dixie Wardens MC.
Normally, I would’ve completely ignored anyone and anything that got in the way of what I wanted, but it was hard to tell my father’s club president that he could go fuck himself and that I was going after his new stepdaughter anyway.
Talkin' Trash (The Bear Bottom Guardians MC Book 2) Page 1
