Grounds for Divorce (8 page)

Every last thread of injured pride snapped loose inside her.

“You son of a bitch.”

Zach turned, disbelief twisting at his features. “What did you just—?”

It was unlikely that Kayla’s fist in his jaw would help him hear any better. She hit him anyway.

Chapter
Six

The icepack wasn’t doing much, but as long as Kayla held it to her temple, the cops seemed willing to give her time to get her bearings. Her knuckles ached worse than her head, something the paramedics had ruled to be a good sign.

They still wanted her to come in for a CT scan.

“Sure,” Kayla promised. “Soon as I win the lottery.”

“We’ll find the money,” Lou piped up, standing from her perch on the curb. A cigarette smoldered between her red-painted fingertips. “Kay, come on—”

Kayla plucked the cigarette out of her hand. “You don’t talk to me.”

The urge to put out the smoke on Lou’s perfect brow rose in her chest like heartburn. She didn’t follow through. For one thing, the cops would throw both of them in jail. For another, Lou’s testimony was the only thing standing between Kayla and a pair of handcuffs.

Lou flinched, hugging her sides. She must have been cold in nothing but Kayla’s peignoir, her long legs bare and riddled with gooseflesh. The cops had offered to see them inside, but Kayla insisted on waiting in the parking lot.

She knew a thing or two about Hell Hounds business. She knew they’d come.

The thunderous roar of half a dozen Harleys proved her right within a matter of minutes.

The change in local PD’s demeanor was immediate. Uniforms hovered closer to their cars, as though seeking cover. All seemed compelled to check that their sidearms were holstered.

Lou retreated back a step as the hogs arced in a straight line and stalled abruptly.

The silence that ensued was more deafening than the growl of their engines.

“This is police business, gentlemen,” said the deputy chief. Kayla hadn’t caught his name. She made a point of not being too chummy with the police, and this fine specimen was even more righteous than the average. “You have nothing to offer here. I suggest you—”

“They own the club.” Kayla shrugged when he turned to glare at her. “Ask Zach.”

“Zach’s been sedated. Seems
someone
did a number on his face.”

“Told you… Did it to himself. Guy’s crazy.” And as long as Lou didn’t change her story, Kayla would keep peddling that lie until the cops believed it.

She aborted that line of thought as Booker dismounted his bike and doffed his helmet. His brothers followed his example, movements slow, deliberate. Kayla would’ve bet money that they were armed.

Kayla pushed up from the Mercedes. If she was going to face Booker, she’d do it standing.

“What happened here?”

The blood on the tarmac had dried in a crimson-black spatter. Zach’s sneakers peeked out from the rear door of an ambulance. The splash of red and blue police lights over the parking lot reflected in Booker’s shades.

Kayla lowered the icepack from the cut on her brow. “Asshole lost his mind. Ran his face into my fist…’bout eight times.” If she said it softly enough and the police didn’t overhear, it was as if she hadn’t said it at all.

Booker cupped her chin in a firm hand. “And that?” His tinted sunglasses mirrored the ruby weal of the laceration on her brow and the mottled bruise around it.

“Walked into a door.” She couldn’t read Booker’s gaze behind the shades. The story would’ve been the same even if she had. The truth was not so glamorous. Zach hadn’t thrown the first punch, but he’d slapped her silly. His slurs still rang in her ears.

“Is that who you’re with now?” he’d laughed. “That motherfucking crook?” A hand in Kayla’s hair, he’d thrown her up against the car hard enough that she’d hit her head on the windshield wipers. A smear of blood stained the glass. Her knees still ached with the force of the impact. “You know what he’s about? They run guns, blow—”

“And you run women!”

Zach had pressed in close then, breath hot on her cheek with the smell of liquor and pussy.

“I’m warning you, Kayla. You start running with the Hounds and you’ll end up
dead
.”

He must’ve meant it as a threat. Kayla had laughed in his face. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” The first shove had sent Zach reeling back. “I was sucking dick at truck stops when you were still learning to play with yours!” After that, there’d been no more talk of warnings. No more questions.

Kayla could still feel each blow vibrating through her knuckles. She flexed them warily.

Booker sighed as though defeated.
No wonder.
This wasn’t what he’d signed up for—an old stripper with a kid and anger management issues was a whole other ballgame. “Let’s get you to the clubhouse.”

“I have to open the Grounds—”

He slid an arm around her shoulders. “I’m taking you to the clubhouse. Grounds has seen enough action for one night.”

Kayla didn’t fight the gentle pull toward the bikes. She wasn’t in the mood for loud music and drunken perverts anyway.

“What about her?” Nolan asked, jerking his chin to where Lou sat alone.

It took Kayla a second to understand that the question was meant for her.

“She can come.”

Booker whistled to get Lou’s attention. “You look like you could use a drink.”

As eager as a puppy, Lou nodded. She took the helmet Nolan thrust into her hands.

* * * *

Kayla slapped the shot glass onto the table, grimacing. “Tastes like rubbing alcohol.
Fuck.”
Chuckles answered her down the bar. She’d been offered Advil, before the bottom shelf scotch, but Kayla had picked the lesser evil. She was beginning to rethink that strategy.

“Probably do a world of good cleaning that paper cut,” Nolan mused, gesturing with his beer bottle to the slash on her brow.

“Yeah, pretty face like yours,” said one of the other bikers, “should take better care.” The patches on his vest confirmed that he was local, but whether he was one of Booker’s men or the colonel’s, Kayla couldn’t say.

Booker scoffed. “I think it looks badass.” His hand was a warm, grounding weight between her shoulder blades. The way he was looking at her had Kayla aching from the inside out.

The Hell Hounds had opened their doors to her and Lou. They were treating them like friends of the club.
But for how long?

Kayla shook her head when Booker offered to refill her glass.

“What happens now?”

“You heal up.”

She pursed her lips. She knew a deflection when she heard one. “I mean with the Grounds
.
”

“Worried about your job?” Booker guessed. He wasn’t wrong. Her shrug served as an answer. “Like you told the cops. We own the lot and what’s on it. Zach was something of a…temporary caretaker. We have someone in mind to take over where he left off.”

“Here’s hoping that one doesn’t stoop to screwing the staff,” Kayla muttered. She couldn’t resist slanting a glance across the bar to where Lou sat with a couple of the women, wearing an ill-fitting shirt and a pair of boxers. It was an improvement on the silk robe, but not by much.

“We were thinking you might want it.”

Kayla whipped her head around. “What?” She was sure she’d misheard.

“You know the accounts, you’re up to date on the finances…” Booker rubbed his thumb into the topmost vertebra at the back of her neck. “And you’re familiar with the other side of the business, too. Thought you’d be pleased.”

I am
. The hazy-hot blur of summer nights and cathartic violence made it hard to think clearly, but Kayla knew she wouldn’t get another chance to negotiate.

“One way or another,” she pointed out, “I’m still under my boyfriend’s thumb.”

“Oh,” Booker said, grinning, “is that what I am?”

Kayla didn’t return his grin. “If you want me to run the Grounds, here’s what I’ll need. Complete overhaul of our CCTV—”

“Done. We want the girls safe and happy—”

“Two,” she went on, “the Hounds can’t run our security.”

The wrinkle between Booker’s brows told her he hadn’t counted on that sticking point. “Why not?”

“Your brothers are our clients. I don’t trust you boys to police each other. Sorry.”

Nolan chuckled behind his beer.

“I’ll bring it to the club,” said Booker. “But I can’t make any promises.”

“It’s non-negotiable.”

He tipped back in his chair, eyebrows arched. “Are you making demands, darlin’?”

“Three, what we have, where it’s going…” Kayla dropped her voice an octave, relieved when it didn’t quake. Maybe that engine lather was good for something. “None of that plays into how I run the club. I mean it, Book. You come in, you’re an investor or you’re a client. That’s it.”

You can’t be my boyfriend and my boss at the same time. Especially not the kind of boyfriend I need.

“You want me coming in to look at your girls?”

“Four,” Kayla added, brazenly snagging both hands in his lapels, “you don’t come to look at my girls.”

Booker smirked. “Five, your stage-struttin’ days are over.”

“That mean I can still give private dances?” she wondered.

Booker rested a hand on her bare thigh, just beneath the hem of the jean skirt. “Only to me.” His fingers climbed a little higher up her leg, triggering a skip in her pulse.

Kayla kissed him hard. She could work with those terms. She could compromise.

They could make this work.

“
Christ
. Take your old lady to bed already,” hollered one of the older bikers. “You’ll give us fossils a goddamn heart attack.”

Booker laughed into the kiss, pulling back to flip the bird. Despite the leather and the scars, the not-so-hidden bulge of concealed firearms, Kayla felt teased rather than threatened. Booker’s presence beside her had something to do with that, no doubt, but Booker had chosen
her
.

Just like Zach had picked Lou.

“You go on,” Kayla whispered, smoothing a hand down his flank. “Got some unfinished business I need to take care of.”

Booker tracked her gaze to the red-eyed blonde in the corner. “You sure?”

“I’m her boss now, right?” Or she soon would be. The sooner Lou was dealt with, the better.

Lou glanced up when Kayla’s shadow landed over her, expression shifting from confusion to wariness in an instant.

“Outside.” Kayla bit out. “Now.”

The clubhouse door muffled the wolf whistles and meowing noises that echoed from within.

Lou rounded on her with hands clenched in the fabric of her baggy shirt. “I’m sorry. Kay, I’m so sorry—”

A raised hand halted the mea culpas. Kayla breathed in the burnt-rubber smell of the parking lot, the arid heat. “I’m guessing Zach didn’t force himself on you.”

Reluctantly, Lou shook her head.
Good
. Honesty alone could help her now.

“When did it start?” Kayla pressed.

“A few weeks ago.”

So when you were telling me to leave him, you were just looking out for your own interests, huh?

Resentment simmered in Kayla’s breast. “Are you in love with him?”

“No!” Lou’s eyes were wide, her headshake vigorous. “God,
no.
It was a mistake. He came on to me and I didn’t want to turn him down—
”

“He should’ve known better.” Work wasn’t easy to come by in Hackby. Lou was right to worry about her job. Zach would’ve fired her out of wounded pride.

Kayla was tempted to do it out of sheer spite.

She shifted her weight, looking down the row of Harleys. “There’s going to be some changes at the Grounds
.
New management, more hands-on oversight… I’ll let you stay on, but I need to know that this won’t happen again.”

Lou nodded fiercely. “I swear it.”

“Good.”

They had been friends once—or close enough—but now all Kayla could think of was that she’d been lied to. She spun on her heel, eager to forget.

“Hey, Kay?” Lou smiled ruefully. “You throw a pretty good punch.”

The slam of the clubhouse door was all the answer Kayla had for her.

* * * *

In the sullen light of a reading lamp, Booker slowly peeled off his shirt. “So she’s staying on. You sure that’s wise?”

No.
“She hasn’t done anything I haven’t.”

“Fair enough.” Booker lowered his jeans down his hips and kicked them off. His cock was visible through his boxers, a hard bulge that nearly bulldozed Kayla’s lingering pique.

“You okay with that?” she snapped. “Knowing I screwed your brothers…”

“What, all of ’em?”

Kayla shot him an icy glare.
Really?

“Look,” Booker sighed, “you can’t rewrite your past. They know I’ll break their hands if they touch you now that you’re mine.”

“Oh, is that what I am?”

“Smartest girl in—”

“Shut up.”

Booker’s gaze darkened, eyes narrowing dangerously. “What did you say to me?” When his voice got low and gravelly like that, Kayla wondered if she shouldn’t retreat. Apologize. Booker backed her against the door, his body a broad, brawny obstacle in her path. He looked dangerous.

He was.

They run guns, blow…
Zach’s vitriol rang in her ears.

So what?

“I said,” Kayla gritted out. “Shut. Up.”

Booker snagged a hand in her hair and pulled her to him in a kiss so harsh that Kayla felt it all the way in the back of her skull. Their teeth clicked, grazing lips and tongues, raking flesh. He held her still when she made to adjust the angle, intent on plundering her mouth whether she liked it or not.

It was a heady notion, a powerful aphrodisiac. Booker seized the straps of her tank top and bra and wrenched them down her arm so roughly that the cotton tore.

Kayla gasped. “Hey—”

Booker slammed their lips together as he palmed her breast. He wasn’t apologetic about groping her. They’d left gentle behind in their rearview.

Kayla quaked in his arms, too weak to fight the wave of delight that raced up her spine. She needed this—Booker’s hands on her, his mouth sucking bites along the soft, fragile skin of her neck. Her breath caught when he pulled her top and bra down her other arm, baring her from the waist up.