Return of the Bad Boy

C
opyright
© 2016 by Favor Ford Publishing

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

T
his edition
of Return of the Bad Boy contains the following bonus content:
Smith (The Beckett Boys, Book 1)
, a standalone romance novel by Olivia Chase.

I
f you want
to know when the next Paige North book is released, and get alerted to the hottest deals in romance—
sign up now to the Favor Ford Romance newsletter!

I
’m sitting
on Route 667 in a torrential downpour, trying to get the engine of my VW bug to turn over and wondering why life has decided to just kick me in the shins yet again.

I didn’t want to even come back here in the first place, and especially not for the reason I’m obligated to return.

It’s just my luck to have my car call it quits not ten miles from home, on the busiest drag around, though that isn’t saying much in a town with two stoplights. Still, the few cars that are behind me swerve around me, some of them laying on their horns, as if it’s
my choice
to be broken down in the middle of the road.

Friesville people can be real assholes sometimes. I should know, because I’m one of them. Or at least, I used to be.

I take a deep breath and fight hard to keep the tears from rolling down my cheeks. No, professional, mature city women do not cry over things like this. They handle drama with poise and grace.

Drumming my fingers on the steering wheel, I collect my thoughts. Then I reach for my wallet. The Auto Club card my parents gifted me with on the day I left for Boston College is tucked in the back, behind my company ID and driver’s license and Starbucks card, because I’ve never had to use it until now. Dialing the number, I draw in a few deep, cleansing breaths.

“Hi, I need a tow,” I say when the cheerful service agent answers. “My car won’t start.”

I tell her my location (out in the sticks, with pretty much nothing worth seeing or doing for miles and miles).

“Actually, hon, you’re in luck. There’s a garage right down the street.”

I’d hardly call
that
luck. She’s referring, of course, to Harding’s Garage, which, if there wasn’t a forest between us, I could probably see from this very spot. Yep, I guess if someone really wanted to break down in the middle of nowhere, this is the place to do it.

Except . . .

“Isn’t there another one?” I ask hopefully. I mean, new businesses spring up all the time. Is it really out of the question to hope that a new garage might have opened nearby?

She makes a tut-tut noise. “Oh. No. I’m sorry. Not one for another thirty miles.”

I sigh loudly. Of course, it
is
really out of the question to think that a new garage might have opened to give the Hardings some competition. This isn’t Boston, it’s Friesville. People here aren’t exactly enterprising. In Friesville, time stands still. Nothing new ever happens.

I gnaw my thumbnail and consider my options. “So, that one that’s thirty miles away . . . could you call them?”

“Well, dear,” she says doubtfully. “I’m sorry, but that will be an additional two-hundred dollar fee, plus mileage, since it’s out of your local area.”

Of course. I do a mental tally of my checking account and remember I’d overdrawn it last week buying Thai food for Fowler’s late-night work meeting, and he still hasn’t paid me back.

My eyes trail out the window, to the thick dark forest lining the narrow road. The rain has slowed slightly, but the sky’s getting darker, and rain has begun pattering the windshield.

“Um. I just had a bad experience with Hardings,” I finally sputter to the agent.

Not them.
Him.

Dax Harding.

Even thinking his name hurts my stomach.

And it wasn’t just bad. Sardines are bad. Gum on the bottom of your shoe is bad. What’s the word for bad to the extreme? Bad to the thousandth power?

“Is that so? Hardings has a five star rating here. Well, I can put a note in their file so that—”

“Oh, no, don’t.” The fact is, every one of those five stars was earned. The Hardings live and breathe cars. They’d saved my 18-year old hunk of junk VW from the scrap pile countless times. In fact, people from other towns even ship their fancy sport scars in to Friesville to get the Harding boys to work on them. If the Hardings can’t get a vehicle working again, no one can. And isn’t the definition of maturity putting aside childish fears and dealing with shit when it hits you? I just need to grow up, stop thinking of myself, and get this done.

I let out a deep, deep sigh. “Forget it. Fine. Just call them.”

“Will do, hon. Just sit tight and they’ll be out to get you ASAP.”

That’s what I’m afraid of, I almost say, but restrain myself.

When I get off the phone, a panic attack hits me full force.

Suddenly, my mind whirls. My pulse is thudding in my ears and racing out of control. I throw the phone on the front passenger’s seat and reach for my make-up bag on the center console, half-wondering if it was possible to make myself look human again and half-wondering if I can hide in the trunk. All I manage to do is swipe some lip gloss over my bottom lip before I catch sight of two headlights coming toward me. My entire body’s so wound up like a top that my vocal chords shudder and I let out a mouse like squeak as the truck rumbles toward me, U-turns, and pulls onto the gravel shoulder ahead of me.

I quickly zip up my make-up bag and toss it into my overnight satchel, then pick through the jeans and t-shirts I’d hastily packed when I’d gotten my parents’ call last night.

Oh, hell. I forgot underwear.

Just then, there’s a quiet rapping on the window. The Harding family’s well known in this town, though not exactly in a good way, but I’ve never had a problem with any of them. There’s Cal, and the twins, Eric and Tom. Vincent, the youngest, is probably in high school by now. Sure, they’ve given me dirty looks because of who my parents are, but they know cars,
really well.
All of them are rough-and-tumble, wrong-side-of-the-track boys, with a penchant for drinking too much and raising a little hell, but they’re not total assholes.

Not like their eldest brother.

But it isn’t Cal or Vincent or Eric or Tom, standing outside my car in the pouring rain.

It’s the textbook definition of asshole, and the biggest mistake of my life.

Dax Harding.

H
e gives me this slow
, easy smile and motions for me to roll down the window.

It’s just a window, I know. But it also feels like the last bastion separating me from certain doom. The fortress walls are crumbling. The second I roll it down, I’m a goner.

But what choice do I have? Slowly, I reach down and crank the handle.

He’s the same Dax Harding I remember so vividly, only deadlier. His chin is full of dark stubble, and his lean physique has filled in, in all the right places. He has a new tattoo on his forearm, some sort of reptile, snaking up under the sleeve of his white-t-shirt.

That t-shirt is almost see-through now, because the rain has gone from a drizzle to something more consistent, but Dax seemingly couldn’t care less about the bad weather.

He’s always been the type of guy you have to stare at, usually with an open mouth. There’s a definite reason why he was the object of so many of my teenage fantasies, and believe me, it has nothing to do with his ability to recite Shakespeare.

“If it isn’t Katie Donahue,” he sing-songs, giving me a little smirk. He’s not nearly as uncomfortable as I am, but he sure is just as bitter. Not that he has any reason to be. “Never thought you’d turn up again. Especially in this car. I thought for sure you’d have traded this in years ago,” he says, eyeing me and the car all at once.

“Hey Dax,” I breathe out raggedly, focusing straight ahead. I can’t very well look at his face for any length of time. He has green eyes.
Green freaking eyes
, like, mountain-lake, emerald green. Those eyes have this magnetic, hypnotizing power that’s nearly lethal.

And I’m not going to let them work their magic on me today.

“What seems to be the problem?” he says in a low voice, and I have to cough to suppress the animal groan that nearly escapes my lips. I’d forgotten the effect his voice has on me. It used to echo in the deepest parts of me back then, but now, it’s even lower, and impossibly sexy. I feel a strange fluttering down low, beneath my abdomen. I press my legs together under the steering wheel and pray he doesn’t notice how he gets to me.

Of course he notices. Dax Harding likes to play it dumb, but he’s not. He notices everything.

No. I’m not letting it happen. I’m not letting a Grade-A asshole like Dax Harding get the better of me. “I don’t know,” I say, sarcasm making my tone bite. “Could it be something to do with my car sitting in the middle of the road, not moving?”

He puts his hands up in surrender. “Well, well, well, look who’s gone and got herself a brand new saucy attitude to go with those fancy clothes.”

I scowl, though I’m secretly happy he noticed my clothing. I hope it screams
I moved on, and I’m nothing like you
loud enough. I hope he knows how much better my life is without him in it. “I don’t have an attitude. I’ve driven a long way, and I’m tired, and I just want to get home. Look.” I turn the ignition and it makes the same sputter-sputter-sputter-dying horse whinny noise. “Do you know what that is?”

“Yeah.” He starts to explain, as my phone dings.

I hold up a finger and inspect the display. I see the name Fowler and every hair on the back of my neck stands at attention.

As in, Evan Fowler, douchebag attorney extraordinaire at Banks and Hoffman, who also happens to be my boss.

Shit. Shit. Shit.
I don’t need this. This can’t be my life right now. Sitting in front of the guy who screwed me worse than I’ve ever been screwed, while my dick boss rides my ass from three states away. I look up at him, completely distracted. “What?”

His eyes are narrowed at the phone. “Who changed your oil last?”

I shrug. I can’t remember back that far. Actually, with Dax standing next to me, a solid, 6-foot-five wall of tattooed muscles, I’m surprised I can remember my own name. “I don’t know. I don’t really use my car much in the city.”

“Oh, right. City girl, huh? New York?”

“Boston,” I answer automatically, before the shock can creep in. Everyone who lives in Friesville knows everyone’s business. Does he really not know where I’ve been the past four years, making something of myself while the rest of Friesville just rots? Or does he not care?

“I never thought I’d see Little Blue again,” he says, lovingly patting the rusty bucket of shit known as my car. One thing about Dax is that he makes it no secret, he likes cars better than people. And he and his family are big on nicknames. They nickname everything and everyone.

Suddenly it springs into my head, the nickname he used to call me.

I want to pound on my head and shake it out, but instead, it blossoms. I know it’s going to infect my head like a disease. Everything Dax has ever said and done has had a way of burrowing itself into my cranium.

He’s still talking about the car. “That’s guts, girl. I can’t believe the Donahues let their baby cross several state lines in this. I thought for sure they’d insist you get something with a five-star crash rating and air-bags out the ass.”

The truth is, even before I went away to school, my VW was on its last legs. My parents had considered getting me a new car but it eventually became a non-issue, since the T took me everywhere I needed to go. So I’d left my VW in my parents’ garage. I’d only had my parents bring it up to me three months ago, when I graduated and had to go on the job hunt. They’d wanted to buy me something new, but I told them, mature woman that I was, that they should save their meager teacher’s salaries and let me work for it.

That was back when I had the world at my fingertips. When I was young and, obviously, stupid. Those idealistic dreams crashed about two minutes after I started working at Banks and Hoffman. At the current salary I’m making, I’d have to work, oh, a hundred years to be able to afford something decent.

But Dax doesn’t need to know any of that, and I’m determined to keep it that way. I thrust my chin into the air. “This car is just fine. Cars never impressed me. They’re just a way to get from Point A to Point B,” I say, knowing it’s the one thing guaranteed to rile him up.

It doesn’t work. He lets out a short laugh. “You haven’t quite made it to Point B, yet, Katydid.”

Ugh. There it is. The nickname. I cringe inwardly, trying to think of a witty retort. Nothing comes.

“Ha, ha,” I say. Brilliant comeback. And now I’m blushing. FML.

Just then, my phone dings again. I look at it. Fowler wants to know why I haven’t been answering him. Perfect. I start to jab in a reply when suddenly Dax snaps his fingers at me.

He yanks open the door and hooks a finger toward me, beckoning me out. The last thing I want to do is to come closer to him, but I guess I have no choice.

I swing my legs out from under the steering wheel and step outside as the sky lets out another burst of cold wet rain, dampening my skin as I push a ropey wet lock of blonde hair out of my face. I’d had it in a slick city updo, about a million years ago, but now the style is probably more like cavewoman.

I can feel his eyes roaming the length of my body, stopping at my pumps. Since Friesville is a farming community, shitkickers are considered perfectly appropriate footwear for church, weddings, formal dinners. Probably the last time someone wore business attire here, it was 1979. I’d done it on purpose, so I could show everyone in this town just how mature and worldly I’ve become. I’m projecting hot, successful and
way beyond Dax Harding’s reach.
Fake it until you make it, right?

Well, it’s not exactly having the effect I’d hoped.

He manages to look
better,
with his white-t-shirt matted against his muscled chest and his dark hair tumbling over those hypnotizing eyes of his.

I look down toward my toes, because I can’t look anywhere near him without being flooded with memories and realize that my silky shift is also starting to hug itself against my body, and my bra isn’t doing nearly enough to hide the fact that my nipples are as hard as peanuts.

I try to be casual about crossing my arms over my chest but it only draws his eyes right there. Goosebumps pop up like daisies on my arms.

He starts to say something, but my phone dings again. I look down at it, but there are raindrops on the display, so I can’t quite make out the message before, to my shock, he grabs it out of my hand and mimes like he’s going to throw it into the forest.

I reach for my cell. “Don’t you dare!”

He shakes his head. “So you’re one of those people who are more attached to their phones than their own brains, now, huh?”

“I have to deal with my boss,” I explain, reaching for it. He yanks it just out of reach again, the bastard, playing a childish little game with me. I say, as if I’m speaking to an ESL student, “You know,
my supervisor?
For my
job
?”

He drops the phone in my waiting palm, still shaking his head, like he’s disappointed in me. And why should he be? Having a job and responsibilities is terrible while going out and drinking all night and screwing conquest after conquest is a great thing?

How did we ever get together?

And then I remember how and why. It was a long time ago and we were just teenagers.

“Now what?” I ask, hardening my voice, and right then I make a resolution. I’m going to do it. I’m going to look into his eyes and prove that Dax Harding doesn’t have any power over me anymore.

I raise my eyes up to that well-muscled chest, past the chiseled jaw, to his perfectly kissable lips. And then I laugh.

His lips are red. Not lipstick red, but the red of a little boy who’s just finished a cherry ice. “Are you still eating those things?” I ask, as his brow furrows.

He realizes what I’m laughing at and quickly wipes at his lips. Scowling, he reaches inside my car, grabs my bag, and shoves it into my arms. “You go and sit your ass in my truck while I get it hitched.”

Caught off guard in these shoes, which don’t mix really well with the terrain, I stumble a little, then take the bag, and heft it onto my shoulder. I take a step toward the cab of the shiny red Harding Garage truck, and nerves creep in.

I have to be alone, in that truck, with him? Oh, hell no.

I stop short. “Wait, what? You didn’t even look under the hood. Maybe it’s something you can—“

“I can what?” He’s staring me, incredulous. “Wave my magic wand over and fix?”

“Well, you’re the Car God.”

He holds up a hand and stalks to the front of the VW. He hefts it open and stares at it for a beat, two, pretending to consider it. Then he crashes it closed. “Nope. I can’t undo the shit that happens when people don’t take care of their cars.”

“Thanks for the lecture, Dad,” I mumble.

“You always did treat Little Blue like trash,” he admonishes. And, car-obsessed freak that he is, he’s back to petting my car. The car has officially gotten more action from him than I ever have. Not that I care. He holds out a finger and preaches, “You love your car . . .”

I roll my eyes. “I know, I know,” I say, finishing the lecture he’s told me about a thousand times. “It’ll love you back. But you obviously love it enough for the both of us. And anyway, I did do regular maintenance. Just like--”

I stop. I can’t say that it’s just like he taught me. I don’t want him to think I actually remember
everything
he told me all those years ago. After all, he didn’t even care to know what city I’d moved to.

He lets out an exasperated sigh and now he’s looking at my VW as if it’s a terminal patient. “But you obviously used a shit Pep Boys wannabe mechanic for your oil changes and got taken advantage of. Now your lines are all clogged up and I gotta take it in to get it unclogged so the pump’ll work. Got it?”

His face is so serious now, like I personally insulted him. But as far as I can recall, he was the one who screwed
me
over.

“Fine,” I say, looking at my phone. I thrust my chin into the air and plant my feet. “Forget the ride. Just tow my car. I’ll get a ride with my parents and call the garage in the morning to find out the damage.”

His expression softens. “Come on, Katydid.” He reaches out to put a hand on my arm, but then must think better of it, because he stops. I stare at his hand, frozen mid-way between us. “Look. I was joking. You never could take a joke.”

“Joke? It sounded like you were accusing me of murdering my car.”

“Come on, come on. Don’t bug your parents. Just let me drive you home.”

“That’s not my home,” I remind him.

He nods and his face looks slightly pained. “Right. I know. Figure of speech.”

Part of me feels a fleeting pang of sadness as I see the look in his eyes, and I try my best to brush it off and forge ahead. “Okay, you can drive me, but only if your promise not to keep lecturing me about what a bad job I did with my car.”

“I won’t say a word, seeing as how everything I say gets you pissed.” He zips his lips and holds up his three fingers, scouts’ honor, as if a guy like Dax would ever be caught dead in a Boy Scout uniform. He kicks the tire with the toe of his workman’s boot, and an uncomfortable silence ensues.

I look down at the display of my phone, containing my half-typed apology to Fowler. Just then, the screen goes blank. I jab at it, trying to remember how much charge I had. But my phone is old; even if it was fully charged before I left Boston, with my GPS running, it’s probably lost most of it by now.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

“Thanks,” I say, mumbling a little. Hefting the bag higher on my shoulder, I march onto the shoulder, where his truck is. My pumps squish through muddy puddles and gravel pings my ankles, but I soldier on, determined to hold him to that promise of not saying another word to me for the rest of the ride.

And the truth is, I’m being like this because I have to stay strong or else I might break, and I can’t let Dax know that.

I can’t ever let him see how weak he makes me.

Suddenly the enormous weight on my shoulder eases a little. He’s behind me, trying to take the bag off my shoulder. Alarms sound in my head.
Too close. S
o close I can feel the head radiating from his body. I knew he had some manners buried in there somewhere, but it’s those manners that get women everywhere to drop their panties for him. And I refuse to be taken in by them. I tear the bag away from him and swat his hand away.