Black Dogs Motorcycle Club: Full Series Box Set (29 page)

Eva nodded, and scrambled
to shut the back door that was still open to the drifting, quiet meadow. She
clicked both the locks and returned to the bar room. Charlie finally began to
move and react, talking to himself in speedy, curse-studded sentences as he
paced behind the bar. Will put his hands on his waist and walked slowly back
toward the bar, looking suddenly out of breath and tired. He reached to drain
the tiny bit of beer left in the stein he had just used to break some guy’s
arm. Even from a distance, Eva could see the blood on his knuckles.

She looked up at Will’s
face, and he met her eyes. Her knees felt suddenly weak.

I guess he’s not with
them…

~ SIX ~

As he put the stein back down on the bar, Will saw the
faint stains of blood left over from where bone had pierced skin when he broke
that motherfucker’s arm. He looked at his hand, fascinated to see that it was
still. No matter how righteous the violence, he typically got the adrenaline
shakes, even if they didn’t bother him. But not now. He didn’t feel his heart
rate jump at all the entire fight.

Not sure that’s a good
thing,
he
thought.

Will came out of his
battle haze and remembered he wasn’t alone in the room. The young guy who’d
introduced himself as Charlie raved around behind the bar like a robot whose circuits
had been splashed with water. In his stress, Will could hear a clipped accent
from the city on Charlie’s voice as he rambled. “What the fuck was that?! You
have got to be fucking kidding me. What the hell am I supposed to be, some
gladiator? I’m running a bar!”

And then there was the
girl, Eva. Well,
girl
wasn’t quite the right word—the soft curves of her
thin body gave her away as a grown woman, but she had a delicate air, like a
doll. She was attractive in a way that Will hadn’t seen in a long while,
surrounded as he was by women with edge and coldness. She stood in the doorway
that separated the bar from the employee areas, frozen in fright, staring at
him with her mouth hanging half-open. At her feet lay the book she had been
reading, pages crushed and haphazard.

Will stepped toward her
wordlessly, watching her big brown eyes get wider as he approached. He bent in
front of her and picked up the book, straightening the pages between the cover
before he offered it to her.

Eva stared up at him like
she couldn’t process what he wanted. Her soft brown hair fell in waves that
framed her pale, heart-shaped face. He couldn’t help but stare at her full,
pouty lips as they quivered, trying to find words. An unmistakable bolt of lust
raced down his spine and hardened his dick just a little.

He held the book closer to
her and she finally looked down and took it in nervous, shaking hands, holding
it to her chest like a shield. When her gaze lifted back to him again, she wore
a confused, but soft, expression.

“You all right?” he asked.

Will saw redness flush
across Eva’s cheeks, saw her pupils dilate when he spoke. It excited him.
“Y-Yeah, I’m fine,” she finally responded, voice cracking.

Will nodded at her, and
held her gaze a few minutes more. He could feel the growing heat in his veins and
turned away before he could get too distracted by it.

“What the holy fuck is
going on?” said Charlie, hands on his hips. He had come out from behind the bar
and stood now in the middle of the room. “Who the shit are you, and what just
happened?”

Will came toward him and
was impressed to see that Charlie didn’t back away. “Mr. Murdock, that was
racketeering.”

“What the fuck is this,
some Scorsese movie? I’ve seen more criminal behavior in the week we’ve been in
this shit town than I have my whole life in the city!” said Charlie, arms still
waving excitedly as he spoke.

“You said you were taking
over for Owen—looks like there’s some stuff he failed to mention before you
showed,” said Will as he stretched the fingers in his right hand. Already they
throbbed with ache and pain, knuckle wounds once again torn open and bleeding
down his arm.

“Fuck you,” said Charlie.
“He’s our uncle, he didn’t set us up to get killed by gangsters. Our aunt is
dying, he moved with her to hospice care. We’re just trying to help out.”

“Well, I can tell you,
it’s bad form to just come into a new joint and start wrecking the place,” said
Will, gesturing to the spilled beer from the farmer’s table. “Violence attracts
attention. Money is a better lubricant.”

“Your point being?”

“This isn’t their first
time here. Maybe your uncle made some enemies before he left—”

From behind came Eva’s
voice. “No, this isn’t their first time here. I’ve met them before.”

When Will turned around,
he saw her walking up to them, her flowery sundress swishing around her thin
legs. She held a bar towel out to him, giving a knowing nod to his bloody
knuckles. Will could see the fear from before was all but gone, her eyes lit up
by adrenaline. He took the towel from her and wiped the blood off his arm and
hand.

“When did you meet them
before?” he asked.

Eva licked her lips and
put her hands on her delicate waist. Will felt a distracting twitch in his
nether regions. “They came into the bar earlier. They asked for the owner, and
I was the only one here, so I told them it was me. They didn’t like that
answer, so they…” She paused and looked down, gathering some composure before
she continued. “The one whose arm you snapped got a little touchy and left some
vague threats. He said the real owner better be here when they return.”

Will felt anger rise in
his blood at her words. He raised an eyebrow and turned back to Charlie. “You
sure they didn’t know your uncle?”

“No,” said Eva. “They
didn’t. It was clear they didn’t know who they were looking for, only that it
wasn’t a woman. They couldn’t have met Owen.”

“What makes you say that?”
said Will. He was impressed with how this girl seemed to know what she was
talking about, despite being clearly in over her head. His tone may have given
that away, because she immediately blushed and looked self-conscious at his
question.

“By the questions they
asked. People betray their prejudices that way, if you know what to look for.”

Before he could stop
himself, Will felt a smile tugging at his mouth. Eva returned it for just a
moment before she cleared her throat and walked away, back behind the bar,
busying herself with something.

“Look, who the fuck are
you, anyway? How the hell did you do that to those guys?” said Charlie,
pointing at the door.

Will paused.
Fuck, who
am
I?
he thought. Before he let them make their cowardly escape, he
twisted the literal broken arm of the one in the bun until he told Will what he
wanted to know.
Those fuckers came from the Ramirez cartel.
Right now,
all those men knew about Will was confined to the injuries he’d dealt them. But
if they found out he was a Black Dog, they could use it as leverage to amend
the truce to their favor, or even start a turf war.

But if they really were
cartel men, they were breaking the truce, too. Howlett and LeBeau were strictly
off-limits to them, at least when it came to anything more than temporary
transport and storage of goods. Hassling a bar owner to no doubt start
laundering money or running drugs from his business was not a gray area—it was
a clear violation. He could call Henry right now and potentially have the MC
behind this problem.

What makes you think Henry
will suddenly change his tune on diplomacy? He has a treaty now to back up the
idea—illusion, clearly—of peace. He’s not going to listen. You might as well
bury both these kids out back right now.

“Hey, asshole, I’m talking
to you.”

Will shook out of his
thoughts and looked at Charlie. “I’m Will Bowers. I live around here.”

“And how the fuck did you
learn to fight like that? Military?”

“Right,” said Will with a
lying nod. “Lucky break for you guys.”

“Lucky, yeah, that’s the
word in my mind for sure,” said Charlie with bitter fire.

“It is lucky, because I’m
going to keep you both alive and with a bar that isn’t reduced to a steaming
pile of rubble.”

“What the hell are you
talking about?”

“Those men will be back,
or if not them, others like them. They might take a bit of time to try and
figure out what just happened, but once they feel prepared, they’ll hit again.
And next time, they won’t be so easy to push out the door.”

Charlie shook his head and
released a deep breath. “Christ. We have to go to the cops.”

“Cops clean up crimes,
they don’t prevent them,” said Will.
Plus, our cops will probably just call
Henry, putting us right back on the path to Armageddon.
“We have to stop
them ourselves.”

“
We
?”

Will gave Charlie a
withering look. He turned toward Eva behind the bar, halfway through a pint of
beer and trying to gather herself. He raised a hand at her. “I’m sorry, which
one of you is the secret kung-fu master that’s going to fight them off next
time?”

“So, what then, you’re
just gonna stay here and wait for them to come back? Let me guess what that’s
gonna cost me,” said Charlie. He lifted an angry finger at Will. “You’re
probably a part of it, aren’t you? These guys hassle me, and then you come in
and offer security, take all my money, and probably let them burn the place down
anyway, is that it?”

Charlie couldn’t know what
his words meant, but that didn’t stop Will from stalking over to him like an
angry predator. Charlie took a half-step back in surprise. Even though the
muscles in his chest and arms from years of obvious hard labor could probably
have dealt Will quite a bit of trouble in a fight, Charlie didn’t seem aware of
his own strength, not in that way. He didn’t even raise his fists up.

“I’m
not
with
them,” said Will quietly. “And I don’t want a dime of your fucking money. I’m
not offering you long-term anything. I’m just going to shut down this rabid dog
problem you’re having.”

Charlie searched his face,
likely trying to tell whether Will was being honest or not, but this kid didn’t
have the skills for it. It didn’t matter, anyway; he wasn’t lying. “Why should
we believe you?”

“Because I’ve seen it
before,” said Will. His ears filled with the sudden faraway roar of fire. He
swallowed. “And I don’t want to see it again.”

Charlie paused, and turned
back to look at his sister, as if he wanted her input. Eva looked at them both
from behind a glass of beer as she drank, but didn’t say anything. Her eyes
were wide like a scared animal.

Charlie said, “Fine. Help
us.”

~ SEVEN ~

Well, you wanted adventure, girly…
now you’ve got it.

As Eva watched the
conversation between her brother and Will unfold, she felt less and less like
she was still inside her dull, melancholy life, and it both excited and
frightened her. She hadn’t seen Charlie so rattled in a very long time; he
hadn’t even noticed that he had spilled an entire shot of whiskey down the
front of his crisp white t-shirt yet.

And she had never seen
anyone like Will.

“Close the bar up for the
day,” said Will. “We need to make some plans. Undistracted.”

“I can’t believe I’m
agreeing to this,” said Charlie, shaking his head. “I’ll make up some note for
the door.” He lumbered off toward the small alcove in back that served as
Owen’s makeshift office.

Will watched him go, then
turned and looked straight at Eva. She held his gaze a moment, simply because
she couldn’t help it. Then she turned away and finished the half-pint she had
poured herself in three deep swallows.

Will walked up to the bar.
“Mind pouring me one?” He lowered himself back into the seat he’d been in
before.

Eva nodded and tried not
to look at him. Maybe it was her frightened brain trying to find a distraction,
but once she started looking at Will’s gorgeous face, she never wanted to tear
her eyes away. She lifted a clean glass and pulled the draught handle, watching
the beer intently until she placed it in front of the intense man sitting
across from her.

He wrapped huge, scruff,
scar-covered hands around the cold glass. His knuckles still trickled blood.
I
cannot believe this is the type of man who’s revving my engine…
Eva thought
as her gaze wandered up his muscled forearms and shoulders until it landed on
his face. Will stared down into his beer glass, unaware she watched.

Not knowing what else to
do with herself, Eva poured another beer in her own glass. She took two big
drinks. “Thanks… for, uh, for helping with those men,” she said.

The way Will looked up at
her so suddenly, Eva was sure she had interrupted some thought. “Didn’t have a
choice, really. Some dogs need to be put down.”

The coldness in his voice
gave Eva an honest shiver. “Does that mean you’re going to kill them when they
come back?”

Will fell silent a moment,
and Eva’s heart nearly stopped.
Christ. What have we gotten ourselves into?

“Only if it comes to
that,” said Will. But something in his eyes had a different answer when he
looked up at her.

Eva swallowed hard, her
throat tight. She licked her lips and saw Will’s gaze focus on her mouth as he
watched. He stared at her lips and almost unconsciously ran a tongue over his
own.
How can I be so turned on and so terrified at the same time?

A distracting silence fell
between them. Eva heard the office phone ring in the back room, and then stop
ringing. She cleared her throat. “So, have you… I guess you do this a lot?”
asked Eva gently.

“Do what? Save strangers
from thugs? Yeah, I’m a regular Batman,” he said with a bitter laugh. He took a
drink.

“Well, it doesn’t seem
like the first fight you’ve been in, is all.”

“And it won’t be the
last,” he said. His eyes went heavy when he said it, staring down at the bar.

Sure is a warm and fuzzy
guy
. “Are
you from around here?”

Will looked up at her,
right into her eyes with his own deep brown ones, which served to send a jolt
of heat right from her neck all the way down to her thighs. “Eva, was it?”

 “Yes.”

“Eva,” he said, holding
her gaze, speaking deliberately. “I’m not the kind of fucking guy you chat up
with small talk and try to wiggle inside by being friendly, okay?” His
expression became some mockery of a smile, like sarcasm incarnate. “Ten minutes
ago I was snapping a man’s arm a few feet from where you read a book without a care
in the world. Do you try to pet dogs that have just gotten out of a fighting
pit, too?”

Eva’s face flushed with
embarrassed anger. She felt emotion rising up from deep in her chest, that same
vengeful feeling she used to get when boys from outside the neighborhood would
try to mess with her walking home from school. Her Pa used to tell her it was
their Irish fire—and Eva felt it burning now. “Christ, aren’t you a real tough
guy? Breaking a man’s arm isn’t enough, you’ve gotta be a bastard to a woman who
hasn’t done a thing to you, too?”

Will gave her an eye roll
and drank his beer. “A tough guy’s what you need, lady, not a cuddly teddy
bear. So why don’t you just fuck off and let me do what you need me here to do
in peace?”

Eva bit her lip as if it
would hold back the tide of furious words building in her throat.
Has there
ever been a single man in all the world that has ever been a grown-up?
she
thought as she drained the rest of her glass in a huff. She slammed it empty
back down on the counter hard enough that Will’s gaze flickered up to her.

“Some dogs need to be put
down, all right,” she muttered, as she swiped her book from where she’d left it
on the counter and walked away from Will. She nearly bumped into Charlie coming
in from the back with a roll of tape and his makeshift handwritten sign.

Charlie made a surprised
sound, and then frowned. “Where are you going?”

“I’m fucking off,” said
Eva in a dark tone, trying to move around him. She could feel Will’s eyes on
her back, and it made heat rise in her body—this time more of the angry type.

“What?” said Charlie,
confused.

“I’m going to the house,”
said Eva impatiently. “Just leave me alone.” She pushed past him.

“Keep your phone on you. I
want to be able to check in!” Charlie called as she weaved out the back door
and into the meadow.

Eva didn’t reply as she
stalked through the forest meadow, completely ignoring the view in a way she
hadn’t before. She stormed up the porch stairs, made a beeline for the kitchen
and a bottle of iced tea, and then holed up in her borrowed master bedroom.
After lying on the cool sheets for a few minutes, watching the curtains dance
in the breeze, Eva felt her anger mostly dying. Every minute, Will’s hurtful
words pulsed less and less loudly in her mind.

What the hell is that
guy’s problem? I didn’t do a single thing to deserve being talked to like that.
Why would he risk himself to help us in a lethal situation and then turn around
and treat me like shit afterwards?

Eva was so tired of men.
She felt like they were an alien species she couldn’t comprehend. Sure, she had
grown up a little shy and socially isolated, but she was a smart woman, totally
capable of overcoming those things to find friends, boyfriends, and eventually,
a husband. The friends, she kept and kept well. But the men never seemed to
follow the same rules. Laura always told her it was because men were
intimidated by her, and the thought always made Eva howl with laughter. But
Laura held the line, insisting it was Eva’s brains and fire that caused her
trouble.
Weak men are afraid of strong women
, she would say.

But she never felt like
Rick had been afraid of her. No, quite the opposite—in her mind, Rick loomed
like a monster who had never been afraid of anything. She was the one who had
been afraid. The man who proposed to her was strong, sweet, and supportive. The
man he became when he was finally her husband was none of those things. Rick
kept her tired and frightened, alienated her from her friends and family, and
even made it hard for her to hold down a job with his incessant and jealous
fits when she had to work late. When she lost that job, the net only drew in
tighter, and Rick had kept her from finding employment, insisting she remain in
the apartment as a housewife. Under his full control, Rick tormented Eva
psychologically and emotionally until she couldn’t sleep or eat, until she felt
like time had lost meaning and she had already died.

Laura was the only friend
who refused to let Rick push her away. She never ignored a call or text from
Eva, and frequently risked herself to try and intervene. Like many abused
women, Eva resisted help for years, refusing to see the truth of her life and too
afraid to fix it when she did. But after Rick cut off her ability to
communicate with the outside world by destroying her phone and laptop, Eva
finally realized the danger she was in. Laura and Charlie had worked together
to establish an escape for her. Eva would never forget the looks on their faces
when they saw her after months of no visits under Rick’s control: malnourished,
exhausted, bruised, utterly spent. She had never seen Laura look so frightened
before or since.

Eva hated that she
understood what a trapped animal felt like, that she would never be able to
fully shake off the darkness which Rick had shown her existed. For months after
she left him, Eva couldn’t even stand to walk by pet stores, because the urge
to compulsively rescue every single animal there would overwhelm her until she
was crying in a puddle of fabric on the sidewalk.

She spent the last two and
a half years with Charlie, trying to heal. And her misunderstanding of men was
not confined to her romantic entanglements; Eva had never quite understood her
big brother, either. Smart, sweet, attractive, and driven, Charlie had
nonetheless never shown much interest in any of the sort of connections Eva
enjoyed so much. A few girlfriends in his early twenties fizzled out unceremoniously,
and then he just seemed to stop caring about it altogether. In a lot of ways,
he reminded her of their pa and his deep work ethic, only taken to a greater
extreme.

Living with Charlie was
basically like living by herself, with an occasional man stopping by to leave
empty milk cartons in the fridge and piles of dirty clothes on the bathroom
floor. If he wasn’t at work, he was working on his own projects. Eva still felt
a bit isolated, but never for long, and never like she felt before. It might
have been lonely, but Charlie’s place was stable, quiet, and peaceful. He made
enough money that he didn’t care when she went back to work. She lost herself
in the pages of her books, still too tender to rejoin the world at full
strength, but longing for connections regardless. Connecting with book
characters had never been difficult for her.

And then Uncle Owen had
called, and led to this: Eva, lying on some strange lumpy mattress, trying to
figure out why she couldn’t stop thinking about the handsome, rude stranger who
had just saved her life and then bit her head off.
Remember when life felt
monotonous, like, a week ago?
she thought to herself with a sarcastic
laugh.

Eva sighed and reached for
her phone on the night table with the ugly doilies. She texted Laura to see
what she was doing; she told her developments had unfolded. Eva’s phone started
ringing not ten seconds after she sent the text.

“Developments!” said Laura
as soon as Eva answered. “I figured something good must have happened when you
had to hang up on me like that.”

“I’m not sure if ‘good’ is
the word,” said Eva. “But it’s not boring.”

“Should I get popcorn?”

Eva laughed. “No, just
shut up and listen. So, you’re not going to believe this, but our bar just got…
like…
hassled.
”

“What, like, by some
Fifties biker gang in leather jackets? Did you chase them away with a broom?”
said Laura.

“Seriously, they were
shoving customers out the door and threatening them.”

“Holy shit, Ev! Are you
guys okay?”

“Yeah, we’re fine. But
there’s this guy… this other guy…”

She heard Laura’s laugh
through the phone speaker. “Oh, I can already tell this guy is gonna be good.”

“He just
kicked the
shit
out of them,” said Eva. “Remember that one time we were at Morningside
Park with the Cicero brothers, and Tony kept prodding at that skinny nerd from
Ms. Locusta’s class?”