Well, she thought, as she grabbed her own freshly-laundered jeans and sweater from the drawer and shimmied them over her nightgown, that was what Noel had always wanted for her. He’d wanted to cultivate that fear of the real world and everybody in it, of what they could do to her. But the real danger, she knew, was staying and growing complacent, a stone growing over with moss, afraid to move, afraid to dare. That period of her life was over; it was time to move. It was time to leave and start planning a few schemes of her own. She closed her eyes and swung herself over the rail.
“You’ll want this, don’t you?” she heard Tomahawk call. “Liana?” she heard him ask as he emerged back onto the balcony, probably just in time to see her head disappear over the side.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Tomahawk,” she called already having leapt down from the lowest branch, her feet landing with a satisfying thud on the damp lawn. “Just chuck it over.”
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
“Have you ever been on a bike before?” Tomahawk called back to her as he revved the motor on their way out. He’d wheeled it silently down the street, far enough away so it wouldn’t attract Tryg’s attention as they peeled out, Liana’s heart thrumming in her chest along with the rhythm of the motor as it took the curves, clinging to Tomahawk’s ample leather-clad torso, the smell of gas and wind in her nostrils and snarling her hair.
Liana had only been on a motorcycle a couple of other times in her life—that she remembered, anyway. She still had photo of her in the baby seat Trace Ryan had strapped on the back of his customized Harley chopper, the one her mother had sold for six months’ worth of grocery money after he’d died and before she’d married Noel. It was one of the many things about her father she wished she could touch—same with his leather jackets, which had been similarly been disposed of by Larissa Ryan, as if to torch the ground her first husband had walked on, salt it so that nothing could grow there, so her daughter couldn’t put down her own roots there. She almost laughed, thinking what her mother would say if she woke up from her wine-soaked Florida haze and could see her now.
Liana’s stomach jerked forward and back, accelerating and decelerating, joining with the motion of the bike. Breathless, she thought of Nick, of what he’d say when he saw her, of the surprise in his eyes, of whether he’d finally be proud of her, the way she’d always wanted him to be – for breaking the rules, for being the girl she hadn’t been brave enough to be the first time around. As a teenager, she’d never snuck out, never climbed a tree, never stuffed her bed with pillows to look like she was in it. The one time she had broken curfew, Nick had saved her from Noel’s wrath. But if she’d actually listened to her own voice, rather than her stepfather’s, who had invaded her head. In the school musical, she had garnered so much acclaim for playing a good girl gone bad, the one who’d finally ginned up the courage to break the rules—and yet her connection to the character had been nothing more than to see her name at the top of the program, and to see how many rose bouquets she could collect when the curtain closed. And when she finally had crossed the Rubicon to be with Nick, the first time in her life she’d ever broken a rule—it had broken both of them instead, because she hadn’t been brave enough to stand up for her choice – for the boy she wanted. She knew it may be too late to make up for it now, but as she whizzed down the stretch of highway that separated Helena’s enclave from the town of Prudence, she knew she had to try.
“Are you kidding?” asked Liana, trying to push a toughness in her voice that she didn’t quite feel. “You do know that my dad founded the motorcycle club you’re currently a member of, right?”
“Seriously, how many times?” he asked.
“Twice, I think,” she said meekly.
Tomahawk laughed so loudly she could hear it over the motor.
Kirrily had picked Kizzy up from her daycare at the neighbor’s two doors down, and was just getting off her shift at the bar as they pulled into the driveway of her house. Liana had hoped nobody would notice their presence, but there was really no way to pull in on a customized Harley and not alert the whole neighborhood.
Kirrily quickly handed Kizzy a juice box and scooted her inside before she could ask what was going on, then ran out and grabbed Liana, hugging her to her as fiercely as a mother bear whose cubs had climbed a tree and couldn’t get down. “There’s a strange energy about you,” she said. “A new energy.”
“Kirrily, I’m really sorry I can’t stay longer and explain what’s going on, but I have to find Nick.” Liana said with determination, breaking away from the hug, aiming herself toward the garage.
“Liana, wait!” shouted Kirrily nervously. Liana barely spun around. “Don’t—are you sure you don’t want to come inside first? Have a cup of tea? A cocktail? Some cookies? A palm reading?”
Tomahawk just shrugged; he wasn’t going to try to stop Liana when she was this determined. Liana wrinkled her brow, not sure why her aunt was using these obvious stalling tactics. “I’ve got to talk to him now. It can’t wait.” But Kirrily’s concerned eyes looked even more desperate now as Liana ventured around the side of the house and into the backyard. What she saw there stopped her dead in her tracks: Nick disappearing into the garage, Helena’s willowy figure wound around his body like a black swan.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
If Helena found anything distasteful about the drafty, cluttered, sparsely-furnished garage—and Nick assumed she would, given what she was used to—she made no sign of it as she threw herself down languidly on the grease-spattered threadbare couch. Still she laughed, determined, as Nick opened the mini-fridge that served as both his own personal beer repository and a place for the guys to store their lunches when they were working. He shoved aside an old Tupperware container to get at some bottles of Heineken he had hidden behind a jar of expired olives, in hopes that the prospects wouldn’t find them.
“You know, it’s hard to breed the Desperate Housewife out of the biker girl,” she remarked, ramming her index fingers together to make a point. “It’s the yin-yang. A constant battle.” She walked to him on the coach. “Still, we’ve got to find you a new place to live,” she said with a short glance around her.
“That didn’t take long,” said Nick. “You’re going to get me some new clothes, too?” he asked, trying to play along, though nothing about this felt natural. Hanging out in Helena’s well-appointed living room, drinking her Scotch, felt like acting, like playing a game with no real consequences. Here, he knew, he was on a mission, and he didn’t want to think about what Tryg would say, or do, if he didn’t succeed. “Elocution lessons? Charm school?”
“Armani suit. Fedora,” she teased, bouncing up to her knees and reaching under his chin, turning his face gently down toward her. Some strands of her slick-backed bob had fallen sensually loose around her face.
He couldn’t go more than few seconds of looking at Helena without Liana appearing before his eyes, twisting his stomach into a snarl, and he had to look away, pretending to look for a bottle opener.
“Haircut,” she said with a laugh, fingering one of his copper locks. “Ah, but that’s not you. That’s my husband talking. He deals with bikers, but he sure wouldn’t want to look like one. Personally, I think there’s nothing sexier,” she said breathily, reaching up from the couch to touch his bicep. “But when you start your new life, you’ll want to leave that all behind.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, whipping off his jacket and tossing it aside, where it landed on a file cabinet
“Don’t be coy. Tryg sent you to check me out, didn’t he? He’s pulling the same thing he always does: sending you on the errands he’s too lazy to do himself.” Nick looked up from the drawer he was rummaging through. “Well we don’t need him. I told you you’re smarter than him, better than him.”
“Cuter than him?” he murmured playfully.
“You know it,” said Helena, perching on her knees and breathing into his ear, winding her manicured fingers around a lock of his hair. Her ho
t lips brushed his neck, giving him an up close and personal view of her ivory cleavage. “There wasn’t a woman in that restaurant earlier who wasn’t staring at us in complete and utter jealousy.
Of course, Nick knew just as many men had been staring at Helena as they ate. It was hard not to be aware of that. For the past hour and a half, he had played along, allowing Helena to think she was in charge. It was the only way, he’d decided, she’d let loose enough to reveal herself to him. So he let her choose the restaurant, too—first, because he didn’t trust himself to choose one that was up to her standards, and because he knew she would understand that it was wise to use discretion. So they ended up at a place styled like a particularly elegant log cabin, high up on a hill the next town over.
He would have admitted that the he lamb meatballs she’d recommended he order were one of the better meals he’d had in a while, if the stress he was under hadn’t made everything taste like sawdust in his mouth. Instead, he’d downed two glasses of Wild Turkey on the rocks, trying to sip as slowly as he could to relieve his nerves but still keep his wits about him. But now, he was having trouble telling whether he was still letting Helena think she was in charge, or whether he’d ceded control completely.
Shaking it off, popping the caps off, he eased himself down next to her on the couch, handing her one of the beers. She put it to her mouth instantly, some of the liquid dribbling down the front of her ridiculously expensive dress. Nick wasn’t sure how sloppy drink could be sexy, but it was. He bit his lip.
At the restaurant, every time he’d raised his eyes from his plate, he’d seen her in her cream-colored, form-fitting peplum dress, almost the exact shade of her skin, as if she were already nude, and matching Louboutin heels. Nick never knew it was possible to be both buttoned-up and sexy at the same time.
“Quite the couple we make, huh?” laughed Helena. “The wife of a CEO and an honest-to-god outlaw. Of course, what they don’t know,” she whispered, putting her beer down on the floor and lying on her stomach on the couch, gazing up at him, taking one peach-manicured finger and tracing the outline of the bulge at his crotch, ghosting her fingers over it.
Nick felt himself stiffen, his heart rate increasing. He looked over her, feeling innocent and very young. Helena had a way of doing that to him, and she knew it. He’d been sent here on a mission, he thought as he swallowed, trying to force himself to think clearly, with his brain rather than with his cock. Helena could think she was leading him around by it, as long as he stayed firmly in charge.
“Is that it’s all a disguise. I’m an outlaw, too.”
“Oh?” Nick said. “Let’s see you do something an outlaw would do.”
“All right,” she said, reaching up under her skintight nude-colored dress, pulling off her panties and tossing them on the couch.
Nick frantically glanced around him. The business day was long over, but he got up and tested the lock on the door to the main office just in case.
“Is this outlaw enough for you?” she asked, grabbing his hand and guiding it over to the zipper on her dress, helping him peel it off. “There’s an upside of not being able to have children, you know,” she whispered devilishly, guiding her hand to her uncovered hips and thighs. The dim light outlined the script of a word tattooed just beneath her perfect peach triangle of hair. Mama. “Having this body at my age, for one. Of course, because I never had children,” she whispered, “there’s a fundamental part of my nature as a woman that went unused. I never got to take care of anyone.”
Nick wasn’t sure he wanted to imagine what it would be like to for a kid to grow up with Helena for a mother. But then again, what was to complain about? If he’d known Helena as a ten-year-old, and she’d offered to adopt him, he wouldn’t have thought twice before jumping at the chance to live in that house and have anything he wanted. Or all he thought he wanted, anyway.
“But that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do: take care of people. I can take care of you, Nicholas,” she whispered, her fingers entwining in his, placing them perfectly on the pretty strip of skin between her breasts, bouncing on the bed girlishly.
He was momentarily transfixed by the rhythmic way her hips moved up and down on the cushions. He swallowed and looked down at the carpeted floor.
“That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, from the second I saw you.”
“Do I look like someone who needs taking care of?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” she laughed, taking both his hands between her own and bring them up to her mouth, kissing his knuckles and some of the red, peeling skin that always seemed to show up there. “When you give me those lost-puppy eyes.”
Helena draped herself like a boa around him, and his body responded the way he’d predicted it would, pressed against her like a wave of softness. Nick closed his eyes and bent to kiss her neck, trying to engage his mind as well as his body. Her scent was of some exotic jasmine flower, something expensive and rare, and totally artificial.
This would be his life if he ended up with her—her money, her choices, her life. He would be a kept man. She’d made it clear that he’d have to put her first—before Tryg, the man who’d been the closest thing to a father to him, the man who had given him a chance when no one else would. But if it can help keep Liana safe, he told himself, it’s a small price to pay.
But his mouth went dry when he thought of Liana finding out he had lied to her when he’d told her didn’t want to be with Helena, about how they’d had that moment of perfect honesty in the woodshed, and now he was ruining it. Did everybody really think that he was that much of a sellout? That he would throw over anybody he could for a quick buck? That he had no scruples, no shame, no pride?
“Jack offered you the shipment back, didn’t he?” Helena cooed, lowering her head, to where she had begun working on his zipper again.
“How did you know?” Nick forced out the words. This woman scared him sometimes. She seemed to have eyes in space.
“Come on, kid. We’ve known each other for a while now. I would think you wouldn’t have to ask that anymore,” she said. “What did you tell him? You told him the right thing, I hope. Nicholas,” she said. “I thought I made this clear. Getting that shipment back is our chance to screw the Vipers, and my husband, once and for all, to finally get for both of us what we deserve.” One of her fingers curving underneath the edge of boxers; Nick relaxed, a flow of warmth cascading through the entire lower half of his body. She knew what she was doing, all right. “And start a new life.”
“What are you talking about?” he grunted, trying to carry on the conversation while his body was engaged elsewhere. Helena’s other hand guided his own hand down across her navel, and to her two perfect B-cup breasts, as bouncy and perky as balloons. There was something unreal in their perfection, and he suspected he knew why.
“Come on. We both know I have a valuable commodity curled up in the front of the DVR back home in front of all three Princess Diaries movies. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t thinking about seeing what you could get in return.” Her voice was low now, calculating, cruel.
He jerked himself back as if he were on a cut string. A wave of utter disgust gripped him as strongly as if it were a pair of thick hands on his neck. He backed away so quickly his shoulder banged into the old faux-wood stand the refrigerator was perched on. Nick rose from the bed, pushing Helena off him.
“I don’t understand you,” she pouted, bracing herself with her hands behind her, the shadows on her face unflattering, emphasizing the cragginess a woman of her age always had, even when she hid it. “Why can’t you just make up your mind?”
It wasn’t worth it; nothing about this felt natural; nothing about it seemed right. There had to be another way to use Helena that didn’t involve throwing away the only thing he ever cared about. Nick paused for only a second, his hand on the doorknob as he rearranged his pants and tucked in his shirt. “I just did,” he said, throwing open the door.
Behind him, Helena sputtered and s
creeched, clawing for her clothes as the cool shaft of moonlight intruded into the little den of the garage, but he wedged it closed behind him and leaned against the wall of the garage, trying to collect himself, willing his arousal to disappear. His jacket was still inside; he’d have to go back for that once Helena took the hint and left. He gazed up at the moon, wondering if Kirrily would take pity on him and let him camp out in the living room for a while. The last thing he expected to see when he looked up was Liana.
“How could you?” she demanded, looking like she were made of a very fine type of glass, which had managed to survive much longer in a house full of dangers than anyone could have expected.
“Liana, you—” he felt like he fallen into the mouth of a volcano, clawing at dirt, trying to regain a handhold as it collapsed beneath him. There was a million things he had to explain, and he didn’t have half the words he needed to explain them. “Look, I—”
“It was always you, Liana,” she spit with scorn, mocking his words from earlier, throwing them back in his face where they stabbed him with sharp edges they had somehow grown. “Was that a lie, or do you honestly not even listen to yourself when you speak? Are those just words you throw out because they sound good? Random combinations of words like…like refrigerator magnets that you rearrange to suit whichever fancy you happen to have? Like getting into the pants of a girl who happens to be conveniently standing in an isolated woodshed, terrified and vulnerable?” She heaved again, as if the mere effort of speaking were a weight she was struggling to bear. Yet her words were strangely precise, as if she were cutting them out with a knife, designing them to say exactly what she had not yet been able to express. Her gaze was laser-like, focused on him, intense, but not really seeing anything. Tears had gathered in the corner of her eyes, and she blinked them away. “Well they meant something to me, Nick. I shouldn’t have let them mean anything, but they did. Apparently they never meant anything to you. You told me this wasn’t a setup, and I believed you.”
Long Ride: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Black Sparks MC) (Whiskey Bad Boys Book 1) Page 15
