Dangerous Love

by Jamie Begley

  “Have you told her that you’re not going back with her?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You sure you want to do this? It’s not too late to back out.”

  “I’m sure.” Pivoting, he strode back toward Harvey.

  Ice knew what he signed up for. Thankfully, the other man had no clue about the nightmare heading for him. By the time he did, it would be too late.

  This wouldn’t be the last time Harvey was used as a pawn. This Predator had a use for him, too.

  CHAPTER 13

  Grace looked at the corner of her computer screen, seeing what time it was. Taking her purse out of a drawer, she then pushed her chair back from underneath her desk.

  “Can I get you something for lunch while I’m out?” she asked Penni, who was sitting at the desk close to hers.

  “If you wait until I finish this email, I can go with you.”

  “I wasn’t going anywhere in particular. I was just going to hit a drive-thru. I have an errand to run so I might be a little late coming back.”

  Penni lifted her blue gaze to hers. “Where are you going? I don’t mind waiting for you to finish your errand.”

  Grace knew her friend and boss wouldn’t let her leave until her curiosity was appeased. “I need to stop by the club, and I want to go alone.”

  She could tell that Penni’s curiosity had risen even more.

  Grace moved toward the door, wanting to get out before she was asked more questions. She didn’t make it. Penni caught up with her in the outer office where Stump was working.

  “You never go to the club unless Ice is there, or if Sawyer, Vita, or I go with you. What’s up?”

  “Nothing. If it was important, I would tell you. I’ll be back in an hour or two.”

  Grace left before Penni asked any more questions.

  She should have stayed home today. Penni told her she could have the day off since she just came back from Treepoint the day before, but since she had taken off so much lately she wanted to get caught up with the work that she knew would be waiting for her. Besides, the house was lonely without Ice there.

  It was going to be a long two weeks.

  Driving to the Predators’ clubhouse, she thought of several ways to accomplish her errand and finally concluded that she would just wing it.

  Lizard was smoking a cigarette outside the door when she got out of her car.

  “What’s up?” he greeted her, taking a drag on his cigarette.

  “Not much.” Seeing the same curious expression on his face that had been on Penni’s and Stump’s, she hastened inside before he could say anything.

  Hiding her nervousness behind a cool mask, she looked around the clubroom. Surprised, she saw Max sitting at the bar with Griffin. The woman behind the counter paled as she walked toward Max.

  Grace ignored both Griffin and Rita.

  “Hi, Max.”

  The burly biker looked over his shoulder at her. “Whatcha doing here? Ice isn’t here.”

  Grace barely kept herself from rolling her eyes, conscious of the other men in the room.

  “I know. I’m not here to see Ice. I want to talk to Porsche. Is she around?”

  “In the kitchen.” Max nodded toward the door behind the bar.

  “Thanks.”

  Grace was thanking her lucky stars that Jackal wasn’t there as she went around the bar.

  Feeling the whole club’s eyes on her back as she went into the kitchen, Grace saw the woman she was looking for standing at the old four-burner stove, cooking something.

  Grace didn’t let the disdainful glare deter her from walking closer.

  “What do you want? If you want a grilled cheese, you can make it yourself.”

  “No thanks. I just stopped by so that I could talk to you. Do you have a minute?”

  “No, I’m busy.”

  The woman’s breasts were bulging out of the push-up bra she was wearing under a white tank top. If T.A. hadn’t told her what purpose she was used for in the club, her clothes made it self-explanatory.

  Steeling herself for the confrontation she was determined to have, Grave reached out and turned the stove off.

  Porsche turned around, giving her an irritated glance.

  “It won’t take a minute.” Grace gave her a cold look back. “Ice won’t be back for two weeks.”

  “Bitch, tell me something I don’t know.”

  Grace wanted to smack the look off her face but restrained herself, continuing as if she hadn’t heard the smart-ass comment. “That gives you two weeks to find somewhere else to live.”

  The woman’s mouth dropped open before she closed it with a snap.

  “I’m not going anywhere. If you don’t like me being here, you need to take that up with Ice. He’s the only one that decides if I stay or leave and, baby girl, Ice likes me here just fine.”

  Refusing to return the woman’s barbs, Grace plastered a fake smile on her face. “Two weeks, Porsche. Or, should I say Colleen? Which one do you prefer? Personally, I would stick to Colleen. You don’t remind me of a Porsche at all.”

  The woman had turned a sickly shade of grey at being called by her given name.

  Grace gave her a feline smile. “The next time you want to brag about fucking someone’s husband, you should be smarter about whom you confide in. Not only is T.A. my stepmother, but she has friends that are bounty hunters. I’d really hate to use my relationship with my new stepmother to get rid of you, but”—Grace gave a careless shrug—“she did offer. I’d really hate to go that route, but hey, if you want to be here when Ice comes back, go for it. He won’t thank you when the cops come busting in here to arrest you.”

  Porsche gave a half-laugh that Grace didn’t believe for a second.

  “You wouldn’t. Ice would be furious at you for drawing the cop’s attention to the club.”

  Grace widened her eyes in pretend indignation. “Me? I’m not the one that has an ex-boyfriend that robs banks and drove the getaway car. That’s all you.” Grace gave a low whistle. “Damn, I almost feel sorry for you. You’re looking at some hard time when you get caught.” Then she shook her head. “Never mind. I really wouldn’t care.

  “By the way, your lie about fucking Ice and that he was going to leave me for you didn’t work. T.A. knew you only told her because you were hoping I would play right into your hand and cause trouble between me and my husband.” Caustically, Grace let the pain of the last three weeks roll off her back, releasing the last burden she had been carrying. “It might have worked if you had tried it with anyone else, but one thing you couldn’t have anticipated was that T.A. is used to dealing with sluts like you, which fortunately, I’m not.” Flipping the burner back on, she moved away from the stove. “You should make Max another grilled cheese. That one’s too burnt.”

  Coming out of the kitchen, Grace came to a full stop at seeing Jackal, Penni, Stump, Griffin, and Max standing just outside the door while the other men were practically leaning over the bar to eavesdrop on the conversation she had just been having in the kitchen.

  Grace waited for one of the men to say something about her telling Porsche to leave, but it was Penni who broke the silence.

  “Can we go to lunch now? What are you in the mood for?” Penni hooked an arm through hers, leading them from behind the counter.

  Grace’s eyes shied away from Jackal’s and the other men, knowing that they would be getting in touch with Ice before she and Penni were in the car.

  Penni waited until they were outside before saying anything else.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you thought Ice was having an affair?”

  Grace looked at her friend from over the roof of the car. “Because if you found out he was, you would have told me the truth.”

  Looking sympathetic, Penni rested her hands on the roof. “I would have told you that he wasn’t. Jackal says that Ice doesn’t even look at any of the women in the club. Not only that, he had already ordered her to get out before he gets back, Lizard has b
een trying to find her a place to stay, regardless she has to be out before he walks in that door again.”

  “Well, hell.”

  “That’s why you should tell your BFF these things.” Penni cracked up, trying to keep a straight face.

  “Besides it wasn’t his looking that I was worried about.” Relieved that the altercation with Porsche was over, and she had been lying about Ice wanting her to stay.

  “There will always be Porsches at the club,” Penni stated frankly.

  The small victory she just achieved seemed hollow at Penni’s realistic observation.

  “You could have at least given me five minutes before bringing me down to earth,” she snapped.

  Penni’s joyful laughter brought a smile to her lips, despite her irritation with her friend.

  “Don’t worry; our husbands prefer to ride their motorcycles.”

  Joining in with her laughter, they got in the car.

  Grace snapped her seatbelt in place, then started the engine. “You’re right; she would have had a better chance if she had called herself Ducati.” Grace was laughing so hard she had to wipe a tear away.

  “Hell no! Ice wouldn’t be seen on a Ducati. She should have passed off as a Harley.” Penni stopped cracking jokes long enough to ask, “Where are we eating lunch?”

  Grace pulled into traffic. “You know… you’re right.”

  “I am? About what?”

  “About our husbands. And I’ve come up with a plan.”

  Penni was usually the one with harebrained ideas, but Grace wasn’t going to let some other big boobed witch in the future try to get one over her.

  “Do I want to know what it is?”

  Penni was her one friend that was game for anything, and she had no intention of embarrassing herself without someone doing it right along with her.

  “How do you feel about pole dancing?”

  HALO FOR THREE

  CHAPTER 1

  The whirling sound of an empty soda dispenser had Mika looking at the button on the vending machine. There was no red light on the old machine to show that the brand she wanted was empty.

  Aggravated at herself for not stopping at a convenience store before checking in to her motel room, Mika pushed the button for her second choice. The whirling sound came again, but this time it was followed by a loud thump as the bottle dropped.

  Bending over, she reached for soda, but it wasn’t in the tray.

  “Dammit!”

  “Need some help?”

  The deep, masculine voice had her jumping and turning around, then wishing she hadn’t. The blue-green eyes staring back at her had her mouth dropping open.

  “Ah… no thanks.”

  Turning back to the machine, she bent over to open the flap metal door, hoping the bottle would suddenly appear. It didn’t.

  Squatting down, she shoved her arm inside, trying to reach farther up the mechanism. She had heard the thump of the stubborn soda, so it should’ve been just within her reach. Extending out her fingers, she came up empty again.

  “You sure you don’t want me to try?” The dry amusement in his voice had her wanting to tell him no again, but she knew she was holding him up from getting his own drink.

  “I would appreciate it. Maybe you can reach it? Your”—standing to face him again, she made a conscious effort not to swallow her tongue at the rugged man in front of her—“arms are longer.”

  Moving aside, she expected him to try the same method she had. However, he used his powerful arms to grab each side of the machine and easily tipping it toward him, causing her eyes to widen as the stubborn bottle easily slid down the dispenser.

  “That’ll work, too,” she said drily as he set the machine upright again, then grabbed the soda.

  “There you go.”

  “Thank you.” Taking the bottle from him, she kept her lashes lowered as she went around him, conscious of his eyes following her.

  As she was exhaling a breath of air, she found herself face-planted against a masculine chest that was coming around the corner at the same time she was.

  Raising her startled gaze upward, gray eyes met hers.

  “Excuse me,” she muttered in embarrassment.

  “I’m sorry. It was my fault. I should have been looking where I was going. Are you all right?”

  The hard face staring down at her had her giving a brief nod before she stepped around him, her feet hurrying her away from the unsettling encounter.

  Jesus, if all men in Kentucky look the way these two did, she should move here.

  Once safely locked in her motel room, she turned on the television to break the lonely silence. Then she set the bottle down on the dresser, wanting to wait a few minutes before opening it in case it spewed. She used the time to unpack a change of clothes, taking out a pair of jeans, a white scalloped sleeveless top, and a jean jacket. Laying them out on the bed until after a shower, she went back to the dresser to open her soda.

  “Excuse me,” she mocked herself out loud. “Mika, just once, couldn’t you have done something cool? Why didn’t you say, hey, handsome, what’s your name? Why couldn’t you have just said hi to the other one?”

  Though she laughed at herself for the wishful thoughts, Mika knew she was incapable of making small talk with men. Especially not two who looked like they were cover models for Hunky Studs Weekly. The fictitious name for a magazine that didn’t exist at least showed that she did have a sense of humor, even if it was bad.

  She wondered if the men knew each other or if they were friends. Then another thought occurred to her. Maybe they are a couple.

  Not only did she consider herself low on the scale of hotness when compared to other women, but she also ranked herself competitively against men; she received a failing score. Hotness had never been a descriptive word she would use to describe herself, and as luck would have it, neither did men.

  Her male friends and coworkers always put her in the “friend” category, despite how hard she tried to get herself out of that group—when friendship wasn’t what she was after.

  Slipping out of her flat shoes, she sank her tired feet into the carpet and wiggled them. It had been a four-hour drive from the airport, where she spent the entire flight from California squished. Arriving at Treepoint at precisely 2 p.m., she had searched and found the motel. Now the rest of the night was hers to do with as she wanted, and the plans Mika made caused nervous butterflies to swirl in her empty stomach.

  Taking a drink of her soda to relieve her parched throat, she then screwed the lid back on before going to the phone beside the queen-sized bed. Picking the receiver up, she pushed the number for the front desk.

  “Front desk,” the irritated male desk clerk answered.

  “Yes… I… Could you tell me …?” The butterflies flapped around in tighter circles, making her want to vomit up the small sip she had taken. “Are there any bars close by?”

  A small pause, and then Mika heard a faint rustle in the background before he answered with, “Sure are. Take a left out of the parking lot and go straight for about three miles. You can’t miss Rosie’s; it’s sitting on the left side of the road. Tell Mick I sent you, and he’ll give you a free beer.”

  “Okay, I will. Thank you.”

  Hanging up, Mika stared at the phone as if it would reach out and bite her.

  “Don’t do it, Mika. Stay here and get some sleep. You need sleep.” She tried to convince herself not to do the thing she convinced herself she would do just days before.

  She tried to bolster her courage. “If you’re going to change your life, you have to start somewhere. We can do this, Mika. Where’s your backbone?”

  She grimaced at herself, for not only talking to herself, but at the business suit she was taking off.

  Mika wished she had gone to get the soda in the new outfit she bought and planned to wear tonight—at least then she could have had a better chance of attracting the attention of the two men outside.

  Her inner demons battl
ed as she showered, which Mika tried to ignore. However, the insecurities she’d dealt with since college wouldn’t be silenced.

  Men didn’t like to fuck smart women. It had taken her a while to figure that out. In fact, it had taken a male friend to clue her into why she wasn’t getting asked out. In a new university, she was not only the youngest but no longer having her BFFs around that she could have turned to for their support at how to fit in better.

  “Mika, a guy doesn’t want you to call them out on their bullshit.”

  She’d been hurt by Cory’s observation, having just overheard him promising to take one of the girls in their class to a concert that weekend.

  “The tickets are already sold out,” she’d informed him, thinking she was being helpful by letting him know. Instead, Cory had given her an angry look in addition to the “advise.” The remark stung, but nothing was more truthful than a hormone-ridden boy when he didn’t get what he wanted. Then, when the young woman had switched her attention to another male classmate, he’d taken his failure out on her.

  She might have been gifted with a smart mind, but the drawback was that the same intelligence allowed her to see through the crap that men used to get women in bed. And it only grew worse as she got older, and their lies became more skilled and covert.

  Like the boy who had asked her to go with him to homecoming their senior year, she had seen through his schemes, that he’d only wanted to make his ex-girlfriend jealous.

  Her first job out of college hadn’t gone any better. The men hadn’t given her nerdy appearance a second glance until she moved up the ranks. If they hadn’t loved gossiping loudly in the break room so often, she would have been fooled a couple of times. One day she had gone to work early and had heard her name. Outside of their line of vision, the full effect of what they felt for her was revealed.

  “If Mika wasn’t such an ugly cunt,” Carter Long told another coworker, “I’d think she got that award by giving blowjobs.”

  The crude comment had her ignoring her embarrassment and humiliation, and walking into the break room with the pretense of getting a cup of coffee. Their startled eyes were unable to meet hers, the deafening silence heightening their unprofessionalism.