Shades of Love (Mad Jackals Brotherhood MC Book 3) (2 page)

The way he had looked at her, like he was devouring her with his eyes, wasn’t anything close to erotic, nothing close to the way Ray looked at her, like she was something to be nurtured and loved. She forced the thought of Ray out of her head, concentrating on the matter at hand. What would Eli do when she kept on refusing him? He was a man who wasn’t used to taking no for an answer and with a father as powerful as his, he’d never had to. Her eyes refused to close despite her telling herself to go to sleep. She was scared. She was scared of Eli.

Chapter Two

The buzzing of her cellphone wakes Mia out of her memories of the night before. There’s only one person that would call her at this time of the morning.

“How’s my favorite drama queen?” Mia can hear her friend smiling into her cell. Cassie’s standard way of dealing with any kind of situation that scared her was to turn it into a joke. And Mia knew just how much the incident at her apartment had terrified her friend.

“Morning, Cass.” Mia keeps her voice low, hazarding a look over her shoulder to check that Eli is still soundly sleeping. “Little early for you, isn’t it?” Early doesn’t even begin to cover it; there’s barely a glimmer of light in the sky.

“Marco’s on an early shift.” Cassie heaves a lovesick sigh that tells Mia just how much her friend likes the new man in her life.

“So when do I get to meet your man in uniform?” Mia busies herself pouring the coffee and taking a sip of the too-hot liquid, scalding her tongue in the process just like she does every morning because she just can’t wait for that caffeine hit.

“Tsk, he doesn’t wear a uniform; he’s a Detective. And soon, once I’ve figured out whether he is mine or not.” The lightness in Cassie’s tone has trailed off, replaced by something more wistful.

“Cass, don’t tell me he’s married.” Mia raises her eyes to the ceiling, not wanting to go through another of the talks she’s had with her friend in the past patiently explaining that no matter how much she liked the guy, he would never leave his wife. Cassie had grown up without a father and a mother that liked to be on more than a first named basis with the husbands of her neighbors. Growing up in a house like that hadn’t exactly made it easy for Cassie to form stable relationships with the opposite sex.

“Not married, Mia, just complicated. But we’re not talking about me and my sorry excuse for a love life right now. We’re talking about you. So how are you, really?” The concern in Cassie’s voice is touching and it’s all Mia can do not to burst into tears. She’s been an emotional wreck the past few days and today didn’t seem to be shaping up to be any different.

“I’m doing okay, Cass, really. It’s only been a few days. I figure I’ll be back to my old self in no time.” She cringes at the false-jollity in her voice even as the words are out of her mouth.

Cassie takes a deep breath and Mia knows she’s gearing up to tell her something Mia already knows. “I saw the news.”

Mia sighs deeply, leaning her back against the wall, seeing the images from the news reports that had sent her to bed early the night before. A liquor store had been held up – not a particularly surprising event – but the press had grabbed hold of the story with both hands because the storeowner had been shot and killed. As if that weren’t enough, witnesses on the scene had identified the perpetrators as bikers, bikers wearing a very distinctive patch. Before the newscasters had even said it, Mia already knew what they were going to reveal. It was the Mad Jackals.

“The storeowner had a little boy. He was only eight.” Mia bites hard on her bottom lip to stop the tears from coming. But it wasn’t just the little boy who was waking up without a father that she wanted to cry for. The idea that Ray had anything to do with what had happened made her want to scream the house down.

“I’m sure he wasn’t involved, Mia.” Cassie reads her mind as Mia’s hand tightens on the cellphone.

“You can’t know that, Cass. I’ve told you what he did.” Mia takes another sip of her scalding coffee, knowing with her psychologist hat on that it was a way of deflecting her attention from how she was feeling – physical pain to take away, or at least dull, the emotional. It was so cliché it was textbook. She forces herself to put the mug back on the counter and not to touch it for the next few minutes.

“Yes, you did and I’m not absolving him of any blame for last night. But what you described to me was an emotional situation that got out of control. Ray didn’t go into that house with the intention of being the only one to walk back out of there alive.” Cassie has her attorney voice on now and Mia bites back her irritation.

“It’s not just the intent that matters, Cassie. His intent doesn’t change the fact that he killed those people.” Mia takes a deep breath to lower her voice that’s edging up in decibels.

“If one of your girls told you she’d killed the man that was abusing her in self-defense, would you tell her that made her a criminal? Or would you understand that it was her only way to survive?”

Mia doesn’t appreciate the way Cassie is questioning her as if she’s on the witness stand. “No one forced him to join the Jackals, Cassie. Ray could have done anything he wanted. He could have been anything he wanted. He chose that path.” She swallows her words before she finishes the thought out loud; he chose that path instead of her and he’d done it again the other night. “Look, Cass, I really don’t want to argue with you. I don’t have the energy for it and you’re much better at it than I am anyway.”

“That’s why they pay me the big bucks!” Cassie huffs a mirthless laugh, letting Mia quietly steer the conversation away from a subject she’d been playing Devil’s Advocate on since Mia had confided in her with Ray’s story. “So how are things going being back at Eli’s? Bet that’s cozy!” She doesn’t try to hide her disdain, there was no love lost between the two of them.

“That would be one word for it.” Mia’s response is flat but Cassie doesn’t miss the faint tremble in her tone.

“What happened?” The worry in her friend’s tone makes Mia shiver again, remembering her own nervousness from the night before.

When Eli had left the bedroom it had taken her a long time to get back to sleep, she’d been on edge waiting for him to barge back in and…and what? What did she think he was going to do? Force her? That wasn’t Eli; he would never hurt her, not like that.

“I’m coming over there.” Cassie’s concerned voice breaks through Mia’s thoughts and she realizes she’s shaking her head despite the fact that Cassie can’t see her.

“No, I’m fine. Really, Cass, I’m all right.” She struggles to even out her voice, not wanting to give Cassie any reason to think she’s not telling the truth. She can already hear her friend opening her mouth to argue with her but she ploughs on regardless. “Besides, I’m not going to be here for much longer. I’m thinking about going to stay with my dad for a little while. He could use the company and, frankly, so could I. I’m going to take some leave from the shelter. I have vacation time owed. I figure I can use it to find a new apartment, decorate, that kind of thing. I can’t stand the thought of going back into that place, not after seeing what they’d done to it.”

It’s not until Mia has said the words out loud that she realizes it’s exactly what she’s going to do, what she needs to do. The emotional reminders of that night were enough; she doesn’t need the physical reminder of living in the place where her world had come crashing down around her. This was the first step to moving on and putting it all in the past, which is exactly where she should have left Ray.

“That sounds like a great idea, Mia. Well you know, if you need any help apartment-hunting…” Cassie lets the offer hang in the air.

“I definitely won’t ask you!” Mia finishes it for her. “You have a tendency not to like anything that’s in my price range.”

“It’s not my fault I have expensive tastes.” Cassie’s mock-innocence doesn’t fool anyone.

“You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t!” Mia smiles into her cell, enjoying the easy banter with her best friend. There was something reassuringly normal about it, which was a welcome antidote to the uncertainty surrounding everything else in her life at the moment. “You know I love you, right?”

“Who’re you talking to?” Eli’s voice from behind her makes her spin around and almost drop the phone.

“Jesus! Sneak up much?” She frowns at him, wondering how long he’d been standing there for.

“Who are you talking to?” He repeats the question, clenching and unclenching his fists with a look in his eye that sets alarms in Mia’s head ringing.

“Mia! What’s going on? Dammit Mia!” She hears Cassie’s voice getting increasingly agitated in her ear.

“It’s fine, Cassie. I’ve have to go. Call you later.” She ends the call, not ready for the explanations that she knows Cassie will demand. Besides, she has to deal with Eli before anything else. “I didn’t mean to wake you. Coffee?” She starts to set the phone to one side but Eli is there in an instant virtually snatching it out of her hands. “Eli! What the hell?”

He’s breezed through her passcode – of course he had; he was the one that had set it up for her. She watches as he scans through her recent call list before clicking on to her messages and checking the newest ones before he takes a deep breath and lets the phone drop back to the counter looking at her in relief.

“Eli, what the hell is the matter with you?” She folds her arms in front of her, skirting around so the breakfast bar is between them.

Eli shakes his head, still looking dazed. “I heard you talking quietly like you didn’t want me to hear what you were saying. Then you said about staying with your dad and looking for another apartment and you said ‘I love you’. I thought…I thought…” Eli doesn’t finish his sentence but he doesn’t have to.

“You thought I was talking to Ray.” She straightens her back; it’s a small victory to be able to say his name without flinching.

“I just don’t want you to fall for his act again. He doesn’t deserve you, Mia.” Eli takes a step towards her and Mia is grateful for the table between them.

“Eli, I appreciate you looking out for me and for letting me stay here the past few days, but you need to take a step back.” She holds up her hand and Eli moves backwards obediently. Mia shakes her head. “I don’t mean literally. I mean…emotionally.” She gestures with her hands to vaguely encompass the two of them. Eli looks at her as if she were speaking Chinese and she takes a breath to explain what she means. “I’m lucky that you care about me. I really am lucky to have someone like you in my life.” She pushes on as she sees the spark of victory in his eyes. The last thing she wants is for him to get the wrong idea. “But you can’t control everything I do.”

Eli’s expression darkens at her words. “That’s what you think I’m trying to do? Control you? I just want you to be safe, Mia. There’s a difference.” He looks hurt enough for Mia to wonder if she’s misinterpreted this whole thing. Her judgment hadn’t exactly been at its best recently, she admits to herself, dejectedly.

“If I’m way off base then I apologize.” She holds her hand up and sees a look in Eli’s eyes again, as if he’d just scored a point. “But listening in on my calls, checking my phone to see who I’ve been in contact with – those things are not okay. You didn’t do this stuff when we were together, what makes you think you’re allowed to do it now?” The words are out of her mouth before she’s had a chance to edit them and Eli picks up on them just like she knew he would.

“When we
were
together? So what are we now?” His look is challenging and Mia wishes that she’d just kept her mouth shut and let him look at the damn phone all that he wants. It’s not like she has anything to hide from him. Well, that might not strictly be true – Eli probably wouldn’t take kindly to the fact that she was still thinking about Ray, or, more accurately, that she found it hard to think of anything but him.

She shrugs wearily, already feeling exhausted and the day had only barely begun. “Honestly, Eli, I don’t know. Things just aren’t as clear as they used to be.” It’s the only answer she can muster and it also just happens to be the truth. She watches as Eli starts to process her words and decides that she doesn’t want to be around for the fallout. “I have to get ready for work.”

“Mia.” His plaintive voice stops her in her tracks. “I’m not trying to be a jerk. It’s just that I really…care about you.” It was obvious that he had been about to use a much stronger term of affection before thinking better of it.

“I know, Eli. I know.” Mia can almost hear him holding his breath as he waits for her to say something else. “I really have to get ready for work.” She doesn’t give him another opportunity to stop her, hurrying into the bathroom, the only room in the house with a lock on it.

She allows herself a small sigh of contentment as she steps out of the hot shower, her skin red from the scalding water. She dresses quickly, one of the benefits of only having access to a tiny proportion of her wardrobe. Her wardrobe, her brain darts back to the bag chock full of cash that Ray had stashed inside it, money that the Jackals had come looking for.