Page 3
Lynette
U nfortunately for me, when Hamish Aberdeen passes through the front glass doors of the station and down the few concrete steps, I can see why Willa found him attractive.
I thought it was the whole bad boy aura, but when she said biker, I pictured a man of average height and build, bad tattoos blobbed over his leathery skin, a straggly beard, grimy clothes, gaudy rings, thick steel chains, a rundown bike, grease-stained hands, broken nails, and a mean scowl, lips pulled back from yellowed teeth.
Basically, I pictured Ricky, the asshole piece of human waste our mom dated after Willa’s dad decided he didn’t want to play house any longer. It was a mercy for all of us. Of course, Willa doesn’t remember the drunken rages, foul friends, or wandering, lingering eyes, but I do. Ricky was even worse. I’m still haunted by the evil he perpetrated on our mother.
Hamish tilts his head up to the flag snapping in the stiff breeze, offset against a dreary gunmetal sky promising yet another day of rain.
His eyes land on me next. There’s no shrewdness in the soft velvet brown. Nothing conniving, crafty, or cruel. From his towering height to the massive breadth of him, there’s nothing average about this man. My heart stutters and kicks to life with a roar, just like the engine of his damn bike, which probably isn’t old and nasty at all. A man like this, who takes obvious care in his appearance, would take pride in his bike.
Hamish isn’t angry. His lips, which are almost too full to belong on a man, and certainly on a hardened biker, would be irresistible curved in a smile.
From his file, I know he dropped out of high school, faked his age, and enlisted when he was fourteen. I couldn’t believe it when I read it, thinking that surely there was a mistake, but looking at the man now, I can see him as a teenager, grown suddenly into the body of a man. With a good forged ID, he probably could have passed for a baby-faced eighteen. He got out when he was almost thirty-three, and went pretty much straight into another family of sorts—his club.
He’s forty-one now but looks much younger. His hair probably isn’t long by biker standards. It brushes his neckline, a dark brown without a single gray that I can pick out. His impressive beard is the same dark mahogany.
He wears no jewelry at all, and his hands, from what I saw of them, were manly, but clean.
Even with his brutish size and sporting a black t-shirt, leather jacket, dark-washed jeans so worn they’ve gone light in many spots, and his big biker boots, he manages to look like someone’s extremely hot dad. Certainly not a criminal. Looks can be deceiving. Just because he’s not what I thought he’d be and my pulse won’t stop racing whenever I look at him, doesn’t mean he’s not exactly what I assumed him to be.
A terrible man with blood-stained hands.
His face actually lights up when he spots me standing here, arms crossed. The wind whips straight through my blazer and the thin blouse I have on underneath, but I pretend I don’t feel it. I slant my arms over my chest to keep from shaking in the cold, but if he wants to think I’m annoyed at the massive imposition of him, he can go right ahead.
The way his lips turn up causes the small lines around his eyes to deepen, and the hard slash of his cheekbones above where his beard starts to stand out taut and defined.
The most absurd image of me sinking my hands into that beard to learn the texture of the thick, gnarly hairs, to tame it into a long braid, burns itself into my brain.
I turn my back, determined that we’re not going to have this conversation in front of the damn police station. There’s a coffee shop down the street. This certainly isn’t my first time here. I’m well acquainted with the area.
The coffee is disgusting, the staff outright rude, and the building itself is hardly ever properly clean, but the idea of getting out of the biting wind is attractive. I left my coat behind at my office in my eagerness to get down to the station this morning. Rookie mistake.
Clasping my vintage leather briefcase, I charge down the block, confident that my client will follow.
That’s the only way I should be thinking of him. Certainly not with the flowing sound of his unique real name, and never by his ridiculous club moniker.
I’m very well aware of the beast of a man trailing at my back. I’m aware of every footfall, every breath, of the image of his muscled body that my brain just won’t give up on, right down to hands so massive I’m sure they could span all the way around my waist and probably break me right the fuck in half.
Why my stomach should bottom out and tingle at that horrible thought, I have no idea.
I don’t find violence attractive. I defend people who have done bad things, simple as that. I could say no, now that I’m a few years in, but I rarely ever decline work sent my way. The toughest cases are just a little bit of an extra challenge. I’m good at what I do, and I take pride in that. At least, that’s what I’ve told myself time and again, whenever my conscience pricks me. Sure, the real truth is that I make good money, but in a city where the average house price is up around eight hundred thousand dollars, I need to make a good salary in order to survive. It’s not just me. I have Willa to care for and provide for as well.
The coffee shop is the same as I remembered it. Grungy, tables unwashed and cluttered with old coffee cups, a snarling, surly teenage girl who can’t stop rolling her eyes. I order two black coffees and choose the cleanest table, picking up the old paper coffee cup and balled-up napkins to deposit them in the trash.
I ignore the scathing look the blonde barista sends me for daring to come in and patronize the place.
My client has already seated himself at the table. They’re the same average, square, soulless things you’d see in most fast-food places that haven’t been updated. The chairs match, hard wood frames with padded blue seats, the vinyl ripped and torn on just about every single one of them.
I ignore the way that he fills out that chair, long legs tucked up under the table, his knees probably resting on the underside so that his feet don’t cut into space that shouldn’t be his. Unlike me, he doesn’t put on a blank mask. He smiles into his coffee like there’s not a greasy film on the top and the grounds probably haven’t been re-brewed, which makes the coffee smell and taste like an ashtray.
He’s not trying to intimidate me, but I stare him down like he is, and I’m refusing to give way. I refuse to show weakness, though he’s not probing for it. I came prepared, utterly professional and ice queen cold to the point of rude, but he doesn’t even care. He just smiles that absurdly attractive grin of his.
“It’s terrible, but I’d drink that black if I were you. The sugar probably has fly eggs, and the cream is likely eight days old.”
He chuckles softly and it takes everything in me to ward off the hot blast that the sound seems to send through the air like a dangerous radio wave.
“You think I’m kidding?” I shrug. “Your funeral.”
“I can’t go and die and make things easy on you. I’ll take it black, even if I have a rather hardy stomach.”
I need to bring this back around to business, which means wiping that far too attractive smile off his face. “I can see that you’re clearly happy to be out of the station, but don’t think you’re getting off that easy. There’s still going to be a court date.”
“Yes. September twenty-third.”
Just under a month from now. That leaves me lots of time to prepare, but on the other hand, it gives Harold and Donny plenty of time as well.
“I’d watch yourself,” I advise under my breath in a voice that’s hard and biting. “Harold has insider information on your club, which includes anything he could have gathered in the way of physical evidence with or without your club knowing, and if that’s not enough to nail you, he could create something else to have you charged. You own a range, and I know your club has to be involved in illegal activities. If he can tie you to anything, you could be facing far worse than just assault charges.”
Instead of stiffening or growing concerned, all he does is lean back in his chair and sip the coffee with a sigh that means he doesn’t mind the taste at all.
I want to gag.
And trace the lines of his shoulders, with all the corded muscle straining the soft leather beneath his jacket.
He rests one hand on the table and keeps sipping that coffee like he has all the time in the world, and zero worries.
I don’t fucking get it. I’m worried. I hate that I’ve already chosen to involve myself in this and that it meant sticking my neck out on the damn block. I can expect that blade to come slicing through at any time, despite how courteous and polite I was back at the station. I still had to stress certain points that I would rather not have made.
“Are you hearing me?”
He swallows and blinks long, dark lashes, pinning me with a gaze that tunnels all the way through me. “I’m hearing you.”
His hand remains on the table, the veins standing out on the back of the broad, tanned surface. Not leather. Just bronzed. A hint of dark black ink peeks out from under the sleeve of his jacket.
“You should come check out the club. Spend a day in Hart. Understand what it is you’re defending.”
My mouth drops open before I catch myself and press my lips together so hard that they tingle. I’ve learned control. I’ve carefully crafted my public persona, and that rarely means showing the true me beneath. To anyone else, I could be the daughter who had everything growing up, a privileged, trust fund brat, or at the very least, two loving, white-collar parents. I could be following in the footsteps of a father or grandfather. I want to appear like I was a child who never knew fear or the pain of hunger, who wasn’t left with her infant sister for the better part of the day and night because my mother had to work three jobs to keep us alive in a tiny apartment that was dank with mold and haunted by the shouts and cries of other tenants.
“I’m not defending the club. I’m defending you .”
“All the same…”
“No, thanks.” There’s no reason to be impolite. That would imply that I care, which I don’t. “I’m already putting my neck on the line taking this case. I don’t need to make it worse for myself. My firm is against organized crime. It’ll be a hard enough slog to convince them that you don’t fall under that category as it is. Doing a favor for my sister isn’t high up on their list of reasonable explanations.”
He traces an old, crusty coffee ring on the tabletop. “If you get fired, you could always start your own firm and come work for the club.” His eyes flick up to my face, wanting to see how that bomb of an invitation is received.
I give him nothing, though my mouth goes dry, because he also shifts in his chair and rolls his shoulders like they’re sore. When he tilts his hand so the underside of his wrist peeks up, I realize only now that there’s a red ring there from the cuffs biting in.
Something irrational and ugly rises in me, a swell of emotion that I can’t afford.
“Thanks, but I’d rather not be employed by a bunch of law-breaking thugs. Believe it or not, I became a lawyer because I loved the law, not because I wanted to defend scum of the earth day in and day out.”
Yet, that’s exactly what I do. Also, I’m a liar. That’s not the reason I became a lawyer, but that’s the token reason I always give.
His lips flatten out and I brace myself. Am I going to get the real him now? The man he lets loose when no one is watching and he doesn’t think he’ll get caught? I’m almost disappointed that even when he’s frowning, his eyes still sparkle, and his voice certainly isn’t unfriendly. “I told myself I wouldn’t let you do that again.”
“What’s that?” I ask like a sucker, falling into his trap.
“Insult my club. You don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“No? My mother dated a man like you.” It’s unfair. I’ve already established that Ricky is nothing like this man. “He wasn’t a one percenter, but he had a bike. Lived rough. Sold drugs. He beat her so badly that she nearly died. She took out a life insurance policy to ensure that if anything happened to her, her girls would be looked after. You know what happened, in the end?”
He meets my glare with a soft expression of his own. I could almost call it compassion or empathy, but I don’t want to see that. I don’t want to notice how, when he leans forward just slightly, I smell the sharp scent of him. Something distinctly male, leather and wind, but braced around the edges with cloves and oranges. It literally brought to mind images of old-school dried out Christmas decorations.
“I’m sorry someone hurt your family that way.” His voice is rich and deep, and with his proximity, it blankets me like a hug. I want to reel back, but I force myself to remain with my stiff back, legs crossed, hands fisted in my lap. “But that’s not how we are. There are strict rules in the club about harming a woman in any way.”
I ignore his biker propaganda. Anyone can say anything they want. It doesn’t make it true, and even if it is, what does that have to do with anything at all? So they don’t beat women. That’s truly remarkable, and I mean that, but they still harm other people in multiple ways by merits of existing, and that’s not okay. That’s never going to be fucking okay.
“Do you know what happened in the end?” I ask again, unable to keep myself from goading him. I want to prove to myself that he’s the asshole he should be. It would be easier if I hated him thoroughly.
“No,” he responds flatly.
“Ricky fucked off with a seventeen-year-old girl. He was acting as her pimp before he was killed in a motorcycle accident. She survived, thank goodness. Went back home to her family. My mom found someone else. He pretended like he was a good guy. He even had some money. In reality, he was a drug dealer. He promised her a better life if she’d get involved in moving his product. He was giving her a good cut. She quit her other two jobs and stayed working at the diner. She always worked late, and she’d go into the back alley after, when she was taking out trash at the end of her shift, and meet up with junkies to sell them product. I didn’t know any of that. I only found out after the police told me. That’s how she died. There was some kind of altercation and one of them stabbed her and stole what she had on her. She died for just over three hundred dollars. Just like that, for no reason other than she trusted the wrong man and made desperate decisions because she had two kids to provide for. I’d just turned eighteen. Willa was eight years old.”
Hamish’s brows crash over his eyes. Something dangerous glints in them, but it’s fleeting. His eyes remain narrowed, studying me. It feels wrong. Intimate. It makes me shiver like a gust of cold air has swept through the door. It hasn’t opened. We’re the only ones in here.
I didn’t mean to tell him all of that.
I was dangerously close to continuing, to tell him how cold the police were when they informed me that my mother was dead and had me identify the body. She was just another drug dealing, low-life scum of the earth whore who bounced from one bad man to another. I was old enough to understand the things they weren’t saying. I heard their tone. I saw the looks they exchanged with one another. There was zero compassion, zero empathy, and certainly no sympathy.
I couldn’t defend her. I couldn’t say a word to make them understand how much she loved us. I suppose I threw myself into the law because, in a way, I thought I could defend her by doing the same for others.
Unfortunately, now, that’s very little of what I do.
“No one should have to go through that.” Hamish’s rough voice digs under my skin. He curses under his breath and shifts uncomfortably in his chair. I believe he’s genuinely horrified and disgusted. The pain carved into his face is far more real than anything anyone ever gave me at the time of my mother’s death.
I’ve never told anyone except Willa the full story, and at the time, I had to word it in a way that an eight-year-old could comprehend. It was the worst thing I’ve ever done.
“I feel for everything that happened to you, but I’m confused as to how you think I correlate to either of those men. The club is nothing like that. Most of my club brothers have families, every single one of us has a job, and we would never put our women in the line of fire. I think that if you’d just come and—”
“I’m not going anywhere.” It takes everything I have not to pick up this now cold coffee and throw it in his face.
I hate that I feel his grief for me. Words are easy and cheap. Why should he be able to say them and drill them down so deep into me?
He scrubs a hand over his face, coffee forgotten. Even he can’t pretend to like this swill. “You’ve been a mother to your sister. You practically raised her, but she’s braver than you. Bolder. She’d come.”
“Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare threaten my sister!” I barely keep my leg from sweeping back and nailing him in the shin with the pointed toe of my shoe.
“I’m not threatening anyone,” he states gruffly, suddenly loosening his posture as if to prove it. “I’m just saying.” He sighs, oddly human. It has to be an act. Isn’t it always? “She doesn’t judge a person the same way you do. She doesn’t find them guilty before they’ve even committed the crime.”
“You’ve committed many , I’m sure. Don’t insult my intelligence by sitting there and telling me that you haven’t. You getting my sister involved in this at all in any way is a crime.”
I’ll take Willa to every damn college in this city if I have to, until I get her enrolled. I do realize how ironic it is that if I want her to stop the partying and the irresponsibility, that putting her in a college atmosphere is higher risk, but it’s the only thing I can think of. Plus, I want her to go. She’s so smart. She’s wasting her life at that vintage clothing store she works at. She’s so much more than just clothes, boys, and bars. I wish she could see that.
I’d make her see that.
“And should I need you, would you come? As my lawyer?”
I have no idea what he’s talking about. We’re going in circles, and I’ve basically said all I’m going to say. It’s clear that this is a man who knows he’s going to be fine. He trusts that his precious club will throw money at the situation until it goes away, like they no doubt have done every time in the past.
But every time in the past wasn’t like this.
I should be meeting with his overlord. Boss. President . My research this morning dove just deep enough that now I unfortunately know some biker lingo.
Hamish is a big boy. He can relate the details himself.
“That won’t ever be necessary.”
I stand, a clear signal that this conversation is finished. I have a life I need to resume. A whole pile of work waiting for me at my office, and now more, because of this. Meetings to reschedule so I can get Willa settled Monday morning. I’m so ready to be away from this man and the strange magnetism that shimmers in the air around him.
“You don’t have many friends, I’d guess, if any at all, Lynette George.”
Okay, fuck it. I’m bathing him in coffee.
He traces the path of my gaze and carefully picks up the coffee cups, rising to set them on the counter, instead of throwing them away, because mine is still full.
I should storm out the door, but I unwisely stay right where I am, letting him stroll right up and give me another tongue lashing.
“You control yourself so well, because that’s what you think you should be. Controlled. Professional. You’ve carved out that persona, and you’ve done it so well that you’ve lost sight of who you are.” His eyes burn into me, seeing far too much. “Maybe that’s because you’d like to forget. It’s easier. Once you decide something, that’s it. Nothing will sway you. You’re above criticism now, above things like humanity, mistakes, happiness, fun, and love.”
He’s trying to goad me, all because I wouldn’t agree to go see his stupid biker club. I’m not going to give him the satisfaction, though a sharp pain rolls through my stomach with nauseating intensity.
I snatch up my bag and slip the long strap over my shoulder. “You know what else I’m above, Mr. Aberdeen? Letting myself slip into villainy and darkness and excusing myself for it.”
I mean to have the last word, to leave him with that parting shot and hopefully not see him again until September goddamn twenty-third, but his lips curl into a lazy, insolent, self-deprecating grin that is absolutely maddening.
I turn on my heel and storm towards the door, but his words reach me just as my hand pushes against the metal bar to free myself from this place and this man’s horrid presence.
“It’s not that I excuse myself for it, Lynette George .” My full name. Again. Rich and decadent on his sinful tongue. “It’s that I quite enjoy it and have no desire to be anywhere else. If that makes me a villain in your mind, or in the eyes of the law, then so be it.”