Hard Core: Biker MC Motorcycle Club Menage Steamy 3 Story Bundle Set (Hot Tales From a Hard Road Book 1) (19 page)

“It’s a stitch up job. I didn’t do the thing that I’m charged with. I may have done other things, but I had no part in this.”

“Can’t Laughlan prove that? You pay him enough.” Laughlan was Karl’s lawyer.
 

“That’s not how it works, Son. Not this time. The law is just how some men get what they want.” He saw his father’s bitterness almost spill from a dry rage into a brimming frustration. “Rich men for the most part, or men who made the right connections. Men who’ve done the right deals and favors, that’s who the law works for.”

Karl seemed on the verge of self-pity. It shook Jackson. He’d seen a lot of things he hated in his father, but this was a whole new downhill slope. “I’m out of position in the favor circle. Nope, somebody else did this thing, but this time it’s not going to be him who picks up the tab. It’s going to be me.”

Jackson had gotten next to nothing in the way of love or affection from his father, and he didn’t feel like he had a whole lot to give back, but still this deal stank. The law should act on what men have done, not on deals made in back rooms, hidden away from view.

Remembering lawyer Laughlan and his sad preacher eyes, Jackson knew two things now. He knew that when he completed his tour with the Marines, he wanted to be a lawyer. And he knew that he meant to be a better lawyer than that man.

Karl had never been much of a father to Jackson, but he had always seemed ready to be less of one. Always had some fresh disappointment ready to hand. This time, maybe it wasn’t his fault. Or maybe there was a whole other side to the story. Jackson didn’t know what to think.

He’d been trying not to look, but the girls on the next table shouted as the three bikers slapped their asses and beat their hips against them. The brunette had a hand in her hair and her mouth in a helpless ‘O.’ Her eyes didn’t look so helpless as she winked at Jackson. Her tongue flicked across her red lips.
 

Now Jackson’s mind as well as his body wanted just to say ‘Fuck it’ and get up to join the party. The blonde had turned and her drooling face was just a couple of feet from his. Her hands banged on the table and her mouth twisted as she gasped. Her eyes were wide on his and her face trembled.

Jackson couldn’t stop himself from smiling back to her. His father’s life was one that Jackson was determined not to follow or repeat. Damn if he didn’t live it against a vivid backdrop, though.

Every day of Jackson’s life seemed to draw some new low out of Karl, some unexpected trough that the ragged scraps of their dysfunctional family would be drug through. Over the noise of the five-way fuckfest and the grind of death metal, Jackson barely heard him say, “Hey, Maryette.”

Without looking up or even thinking, half sullen, half joking Jackson said, “Kind of a name is ‘Maryette’?” When he lifted his face from his bourbon he regretted saying it.

Her big, green eyes were right on him. Green, like the shade he saw in the mirror every morning. The recognition made a thud deep inside him. Maryette was raven-haired and curvy. She had the face of a smart, eager student and the body of a hot and horny suburban housewife. What stayed with Jackson, though was the look in her big, slow eyes.

She stood with one hand on the back of Karl’s chair. Her dark eyes were framed by her hair that fell to the collar of her open shirt. The glistening tops of her butterscotch globes heaved inside the shirt.

Her long fingers drummed on her tilted hip. The weary scorn in Maryette’s soft green eyes would follow Jackson for a long time.

Chapter 2

When Jackson left the bar, Maryette was outside by the doorway. Her scent reached him before he saw or recognized her, but as soon as he registered it, his senses went into overdrive. Before he saw her, he knew it was hers.

From the shadows her voice was sultry. “Maybe you don’t need to be so hard on your father, Jackson.”

“He tell you to come and say that?”

“No. He told me not to talk to you. Period.”

He turned to see her face, lit by the red desert sky in the frame of her dark hair. Her eyes shone at him with purpose.

What does she know about it?
he wondered. Could be she knew Karl better than he did. Hell, that wouldn’t take much. Jackson hardly knew his father at all, but she knew nothing at all about him.

He said, “I’m just following the family traditions.”

He scowled as he turned to leave. She said after him, “Sometimes it’s good to break with tradition.” He looked over his shoulder and saw her leaning by the door, hip cocked and her eyes shimmering.

She said, “Breaking things can be good, you know. Some things.”

As she pushed away from the wall with her shoulder he caught that look again,
Show me
. The challenge stoked a fire deep inside him. Then she was gone.

His reaction alarmed him. Not only the physical reaction, which was big enough to be uncomfortable, bordering on painful. The way that she made him light up inside infuriated him. He wanted nothing to do with any woman from that life, so why would the sight, sound and scent of her ignite his whole being?

He had never felt an electricity so sudden and from so deep inside him. Why her? He figured it would pass soon enough.

All the way through training and all around his term of service, he remembered her eyes at unexpected moments. At the end of a long, hot, dusty day, or in the tense hum of boredom waiting for a
GO
signal, shaking over hills and scrub in the back of an armored Humvee, or prone in the cold night air behind a cinder wall, peering down the length of his M107 long-range rifle.

No woman had such a big effect on Jackson, not before and not since. It wasn’t only his physical reaction, the pumping blood, the stiffening pulse. The back of his mind seized on the image of her. The moment he saw her she was like a song or a poem that drifted around his head and wouldn’t leave.

Show me
, was what her eyes said.
I’ve seen it all
.

Jackson progressed to his specialism very quickly, and it left him out for long, lonely hours on hillsides, on rooftops and in abandoned buildings, waiting for word from a spotter. In many of those hours, Jackson remembered Maryette’s eyes.
I’ll show you
, he thought.

On a cold and moonless night, Jackson was prone and still behind dry scrub on a dusty rock. Hostiles had been in view for several minutes. They were approaching silently. Jackson took sight on the eight silhouettes in turn. Without warning, the sky lit up red and yellow. The Pashtun insurgents had encountered an infantry patrol.

The fight was coming towards his position, flashes were in his eyes and Jackson could hardly hear the spotter’s voice over the two-way. As he blinked to try to see, he felt Maryette’s eyes on the back of his head. Heard her scorn, heard her say, ‘Go on, Jackson. Show me.’

It stiffened his nerve. Slowed him. Through the smoke and haze he made out a target, but he waited.
I’ll show you
, he thought. As the target rose in front of him, two more appeared in the scope behind the first.

He waited another fraction of a second and four hostiles were headed right for him. The one at the front had seen him for sure and the others were following. One had a weapon raised and pointed.
 

Cool as ice and taking his time, Jackson squeezed off four easy shots. At each one the thought was in his head,
I’ll show you alright
.

It haunted him now, while the pale Florida shore slipped under the slate sky and the blue-gray wing of the C130 transport plane that carried him home.

Chapter 3

1991

Jackson’s tour with the Marines was over and he reckoned he’d seen all the mayhem and anarchy he needed. Now that was all behind him. On route back to the US, on a shaking bench in the din of the transport flight, he took his mind ahead to the clean, controlled lawns and pools of home in the Las Vegas suburbs.

That was where he planned to return and where he would start a new life. Finish college and his law studies, pass the bar exams. Build himself a fresh, clean and secure life. And Maryette. Even now Jackson tried not to think too much about her. Like always.

Yesterday he was in the arid desert plains and scrub. Dunes, hills and bushes that could explode at any second without warning. Mile after mile of desert under thick, acrid palls of smoke and the stench of burning oil and flesh. A filthy place where they did filthy work.
 

Tomorrow he’d be returning to the sparkling miracle that glittered as it rose out of the tamed Nevada desert. Vegas, the city of fun, the theme park for adults. The emphasis now was on family entertainment. Ads and billboards talked about ‘gaming.’ Nice, friendly, wholesome games.

None of that sleazy
gambling
, that’s all over. Forget about it. No hint either of the casino pioneers. Men who brought huge sums of money into the desert. In cash, mostly.

Far from prying eyes in the forgotten Nevada wastes they turned their cash into the new dens of pleasure. Back then, a carpet was a curiosity in a room with card tables, roulette wheels, or a sports book. Then the ‘carpet joints’ sprang up. Places furnished so gamblers, as they were known way back when, could bring their wives. These sprouted showrooms for crooners.

Casinos now were reaching upwards out of the desert, rising proudly for the sky. Stately palaces of pleasure and play thrust up in high, shimmering hotels.. Strung all around their spires and high façades were other temples of temptation, twinkling strings of clubs and low-light dives.

All those pawn shops. All that booze, all those girls, all those men all those hard eyes and soft morals. All those hasty weddings, and that money. All of those hustlers attracted by the same glimmer and promises. What better place on Earth to practice law?

Ever since his father had taken him along to meetings with his attorney, Jackson had loved the law. He was driven by the thought of passing the bar, of standing up in court, of being the man with the calm voice—being the one and only man who his father had really listened to.

When the lawyer spoke over the expanse of his big polished desk, the look on Jackson’s father’s face burned itself on young Jackson’s mind. Karl Sage, Jackson’s father, respected no law and few men. Those that knew him thought twice before telling him anything that he didn’t want to hear.
 

Not the attorney, not the man with the office that was more like a library than the county library.

Andrew J Laughlan told Karl Sage, “You did a reckless thing, Karl.” The lawyer’s voice was slow and sad, just like his big watery eyes. “You allowed yourself to be in a difficult position.” This was how he introduced the subject of his high fees.

Little Jackson didn’t understand much of the meetings that he attended, but he knew this much: he wanted to be an attorney.

He wanted an office like that, and he wanted to be the man that men like his own father listened to.

It was only later that he learned the power of the law itself. That he learned the reason for his daddy’s awe at Andrew J Laughlan’s ability to navigate its twists and turns. How the lawyer steered and swerved around it.