Page 1

CHAPTER 1

Camila

“ H ead’s up!”

I ducked, wondering what was about to hit me, then cringed with embarrassment at my action as the football landed in our yard at my feet. My eyes darted over and I groaned as my gorgeous neighbor came jogging over.

“Sorry about that,” he called as he slowed to a walk. “Freddy’s got a cannon for an arm, but his aim needs some work.”

The man flashed me a devastating grin and it wasn’t the heat of the morning threatening to melt me into a puddle anymore. He pointed to the football. “You mind?”

It was lying at my feet, so I set my purse down, bent over and picked it up. I wished just for a second that I was wearing something a bit…nicer. I eyed the man in front of me as I walked it over to him. I wasn’t about to throw it and embarrass myself further. Nothing but running had ever been my thing. I’d loved track and cross country when I was younger, though there hadn’t been an opportunity to keep up running lately.

He was still smiling as I walked up. He had his shirt off and there were tattoos covering his chest, arms, and neck. His jeans rode low on his hips, showing off a six pack that most men would kill to have.

I stopped in front of him and held out the ball. I didn’t say anything to him. This wasn’t the first time I’d noticed my neighbor. That had been when he’d pulled up on his motorcycle a few weeks ago. We’d just finished unloading our things a few hours before and were sitting out on the porch drinking lemonade. Mama had given me a warning look and said, “Don’t even think about it.”

She knew her daughter well, because I hadn’t stopped thinking about it. About him.

He took the ball, his tattooed fingers brushing mine. “Thanks.”

I nodded and started to turn away.

“What’s your name?”

Pausing, I looked back at him, then over at my house before facing him again. The curtains were still closed, which meant Mama wasn’t spying on us. “Camila.”

“I’m Kilo.”

My eyebrows shot up at that and I frowned. Sure he rode a motorcycle, had tattoos, and had one of those vest things that had the name Saint’s Outlaws Motorcycle Club on it, but the name still threw me for a loop. “Kilo?”

“That’s right,” he shrugged. “It’s my road name.”

He wasn’t wearing the vest now, as he played outside in the street with the kids. “What’s a road name?”

He chuckled. “It’s a nickname I was given.”

“Because you do drugs,” I said before I could stop myself. My eyes widened and both my hands slapped over my mouth. Dad had always told me my mouth would get me in trouble. And boy had it over the years. Sometimes I wondered if he cursed me when he’d first told me that. Ever since, I’d done my best to keep those inner thoughts to myself, but most of the time it didn’t work.

Kilo’s laugh was deep and loud as he bent over a little, holding his flat stomach. “Alright,” he admitted once the laughter died down, “I could see how you’d think that. But no, it’s not because I do drugs.” He cocked his head. “Tell you what. Let me take you to dinner and I’ll explain how I got my road name.”

My eyes were so wide now they must have looked like saucers. I glanced back at the house again before focusing on him and shaking my head. “I can’t.” I turned and all but ran to my car in the driveway. The door slammed behind me, but when I looked over I saw those tanned, sweaty abs at the window.

I muttered to myself when he bent down a bit so I could see his face and made the ‘roll down the window’ motion. Glaring at him, I did.

He shot me another one of those mega-watt smiles and held up my purse.

Calling myself an idiot, I reached out to grab it, but he pulled it back before I could. I narrowed my eyes on his gorgeous face.

“Come on, Camila,” he all but purred at me. “You owe me now. First you insult me and then forget your purse, forcing me to deliver it to you. Going to dinner is the least you could do.” He dangled it and smiled.

“I don’t date men like you,” I told him.

His grin grew as he studied me. “What do you know about the kind of man I am?”

He had me there. All I knew was that he rode a motorcycle and had tattoos. He handed me my purse, giving me a heated look as he did so. “Maybe I’ll surprise you.”

My eyes flicked back to my house again and I groaned softly when I saw the curtains move. I was in for it when I got home.

He caught the sound and turned to look at my new—well, new to us—house. “How old are you?” he asked, sounding suspicious.

“Twenty-four,” I replied, amused at the relief that crossed over his face.

“Had to ask,” he said with a shrug.

The kids called out for him to return to their game, sounding impatient.

“Heading to work?” he asked.

I nodded. “I’m going to be late if I don’t go.”

He stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest, palming the football with one hand. “Have a good day at work, Camila.”

He didn’t leave, so I started up my car and backed out of the driveway. I could feel his deep brown eyes on me as I drove away. Mama was just looking out for me, but how was I supposed to resist a man like that?

By the time I got to work, I had to rush into the employee area to stow my stuff in my locker and grab my apron. I hurried up to the front. “Morning, Mary,” I said, as I stepped behind the register I’d been assigned for the day. Being a cashier wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, but I’d be damned if I was going to let Mama work three jobs to try to support me and my little sister.

“Morning, Camila,” Mary called as she rang up her customer. The familiar beeps settled my nerves as I began my work day. It was too busy to think too much of gorgeous eyes and tattoos.

The minute I sat down with my lunch though, Kilo crept back into my mind.

“What held you up this morning?” Mary asked, as she sat across the table from me in the lunchroom.

I sighed. “My neighbor.”

“The gorgeous biker?”

Nodding, I told her, “He said his name is Kilo. That it’s a road name.”

“Oh,” she said, drawing the word out with a grin. “So he’s in an MC.”

“A what?”

“A motorcycle club. Those are usually the guys who have road names. Does he wear a cut?”

“What’s that?”

“A black leather vest.”

So that was what he wore. A cut. I nodded.

“Yeah, your neighbor is in a motorcycle club.” She smiled at me.

I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but experience told me I’d been right to turn down his offer of dinner. We’d just moved here. There was enough going on in our life without me dating a man like that. Not that I knew what it meant to be in an MC, but I planned to research it the minute I was alone.

After lunch we went back out to our registers. The day was going great until a man dropped his case of beer onto the belt. It hit so hard the noise made me jump. A stranger dropping beer shouldn’t have me on full alert. My eyes snapped down to the beer then up to his face. He was grinning sheepishly, though I wasn't sure if it was from making such a loud noise or from buying a thirty pack for himself. It took every ounce of self-control to keep my hands from shaking.

My heart thumped heavily in my chest as I rang him up and sent him on his way. I hated my reaction, but couldn’t seem to help myself. Four years ago something like that wouldn’t have even fazed me. But enough had happened during that time that now I was jumpy as hell.

“Hey, Camila,” Joe said from behind me.

“Hi.”

“Gary said you were interested in overtime?” he asked.

“Yeah, if it’s available,” I told him.

“Let me look over the schedule and I’ll let you know. It’s time for you to head out. Your shift’s over,” he told me, staring down at the clipboard in his hand as he walked away.

I closed down my register, grabbed my stuff out of the back, and headed to the grade school nearby. Sitting in the carpool lane gave me time to look up motorcycle clubs on my phone. I frowned down at the screen as I read.

It said that some clubs were one percenters, which meant they committed crimes. Others didn’t and they just liked to ride their motorcycles with like-minded people. I didn’t know what kind of club Kilo was in, but considering my luck? I wasn’t holding my breath thinking it was the second kind of club.

I was too much like my mama, which meant trouble followed us everywhere we went. And we already had more trouble than we could handle. I didn’t want to have to move again. It was getting tiring. I was hoping that Phoenix would be our permanent home. That the city would swallow us up and we couldn’t be found. I looked up and honked the horn, watching as my sister ran toward the car.

“Hi, Mija,” I told her as she got into the back seat and buckled up. “How was school?”

“Great,” she said, her dark brown eyes shining with excitement. She talked my ear off the whole way home. She was taking summer courses to catch up on missing the last few weeks of classes at her last school. We’d had to run again and pulled her out before summer started. She was also taking additional classes to help her get ahead in case the same thing happened again.

It took too much willpower to keep my eyes from landing on the motorcycle in the driveway next to ours as I pulled up to our house. Just because he wasn’t right for me, didn’t mean Kilo wasn’t tempting.

I went inside with Carmen and started dinner as she continued to tell me what she learned in her summer school classes that day. It relieved me to see the spark coming back into her eyes. For too long she was withdrawn and quiet.

“When is Mama going to be home?” she asked.

“In a few hours,” I told her as I chopped vegetables. “Why don’t you get started on your homework?”

A few hours passed in silence as she worked, and I was just coming back from pulling the carne asada off of the grill in our backyard, when there was a knock on the door.

I froze, then looked over at Carmen. She wasn’t moving in her chair, eyes wide, as she stared at me. Forcing myself to relax, I gave her a smile and set the tray of meat on top of the stove, then went to the kitchen window and looked out. My sigh was heavy as I wiped my hands on the apron around my hips and went to the front door. “It’s okay. It’s a…friend,” I told her. I waved in her direction. “Homework.”

Her now curious eyes dropped down to her math book, but there was still a spark of fear in them.

Opening the door, I stared at Kilo. A grin stretched over his face and it made me wonder if he was always smiling. I wasn’t sure I’d seen him without one yet. It had a way of setting me at ease. Which was probably his plan. Not that I thought everyone was out to get me, but when someone was actually trying to find you, it was hard to remember that some people were just nice.

“Hey there, Cami,” he said.

I frowned at the nickname. “Hi.”

His smile got even bigger, then he held up his hand. From his fingers a keychain was dangling. “Found these after you drove off,” he told me. “Must have dropped out of your purse.”

I narrowed my eyes on the house keys I’d been trying to find earlier. We’d ended up having to use Carmen’s to get inside. Reaching out, I went to grab them, but Kilo pulled his hand out of the way. He was holding my keys up too high for me to reach. I was five-six, a whole four inches taller than my mama, but this man had to be at least six foot or more. Hard to tell from down here.

“What smells so good?”

“What?” I asked, too shocked that he’d just yanked the keys away from me to focus on his question.

He sniffed the air. “What’re you making?”

I stared at him in disbelief. “Carne asada,” I answered when he just watched me with an amused look.

He groaned. “I love carne asada.” He took a step forward, about to invite himself in. He must have seen the expression on my face, because he seemed to realize that I was ready to bolt. Not from him—though he couldn’t know that—but from a man barging into my home.

Instead he moved his foot back and kept the smile on, easing my nerves. He dangled the keys playfully. “I skipped lunch today. Makes a man a bit hungry.”

I relaxed at the playfulness. My mama would kill me, full on murder me in my sleep, if I invited this man to have dinner with us. But the manners she’d taught me were also nagging at me. “Oh. Um…”

“One set of keys for one taco?” he asked, bringing the keys down. They were lying in his huge palm.

I stared at them, then looked up at him and opened my mouth to tell him that I was sorry, but he couldn’t stay. “Would you like to have dinner with us?”

Sucking in a breath, my eyes widened. Where had that come from?

You. It came from you. Mama is going to kill you.

Great. He had me so twisted I was arguing with myself.

“Thank you, Camila,” he rumbled, using my full name in a way that had heat unfurling inside my stomach. He handed me the keys, then put his hands on my shoulders and gently moved me to the side. Then this sexy, overbearing man walked into my house. I was in deep trouble. In more ways than one.