Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 117494 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117494 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
I shrugged, deciding then and there to close up, as she’d suggested. “I gave him a little lesson about the Red Demons, and told him if he didn’t say a word about the damage, they wouldn’t burn down the store.”
She gasped, her eyes getting big. “They’d do that?”
I gave another shrug. “Who knows? Maybe. Probably not. We’ll never know now.”
She chuckled and nodded toward my register drawer. “I can stay a few minutes. Walk out with you?”
“Nah.” I locked my door. “Go. Seriously. I got this.”
“Okay. See you tomorrow?”
“See you tomorrow,” I called, heading to put my drawer away.
The door pinged. That would be Macy leaving.
I was coming back with my drawer locked up tight when I heard the door ping again.
I frowned, my feet faltering. “Mace?” I rounded the last aisle, turning to see the front. “You forget…”
It wasn’t Macy.
It was a biker, and I had to stop because holy hell. It was the biker of all bikers.
Tall. Well over six feet. Maybe six three?
Lean.
Muscled.
Seriously tan. Holy.
And he wasn’t wearing a shirt under his Red Demons cut. The guy had tattoos all over his body.
My gut flared. My body grew hot because even though it’d been twenty years since I last saw him, I knew who was waiting for me.
I wondered why they hadn’t singled me out yet.
When the Red Demons came to town, they found my mom. They found my sister. But not me. I hadn’t heard if they’d found Gloves’ (my brother’s real name was Connor) and Claudia’s father, Patrick Hinton. He was a good man, and he’d tried to father me as he could, but I had a dad. I spent time between my dad and my mom, but was with my mom during the school year.
But back to Shane King, because that was who was standing and staring right at me.
Good Lord, his eyes.
He had an almost heart-shaped face, with pretty, long eyelashes over dark eyes, but it was the square jawline with some serious, dark five o’clock shadow that I’m sure caused ovaries to explode. He looked pretty, almost too pretty to be a Red Demon, but then his eyes flashed. There was the hardness.
He’d had that in high school too.
We’d been in the same grade, but he’d befriended Connor, who wasn’t called Gloves back then. They’d been table partners in shop class, and since Connor had already been on the path toward criminology, I guess now, thinking back, it made sense. Shane never had a tolerance for any bullshit from teachers, principals, or classmates. He’d been fostered by our neighbor, another connection that cemented his friendship with Connor, but Shane hadn’t lasted long in Friendly.
He got into too many fights, was arrested too many times, and was sent to juvie. That was the last I heard about him, except I knew he kept in contact with Connor, and I’d gotten a call from my brother seven months ago saying he’d done a favor for some Red Demons in prison, and one day, they’d come to pay him back.
I’d had no idea what he was talking about then, and since the Red Demons showed up, I’d been hoping I still wouldn’t find out.
But that seemed to be over.
I stopped at the candy section. “You know me?”
“I know now.”
Right. Shane had known me back in high school, but as he gave me a once-over, and I struggled not to let it affect me, I knew twenty years was a long time.
“You don’t look like Connor’s sister.”
I frowned, looking down at my dark hair and golden brown skin. “My dad’s Black. He was Black back then too, you know.”
My mom had red hair and dark eyes, and because of her pale skin, she kept inside as much as possible. She was white, and there was a history of skin cancer on her side of the family. But my two younger siblings, from a white father, didn’t care about the cancer—or at least Claudia didn’t. She had straight-from-a-bottle blonde hair, dark eyes, and was hella tan. Connor had dark hair and dark eyes.
My eyes were hazel, and I had no idea where they came from. No one in my dad’s family or my mom’s had hazel eyes.
“I know.” He gave me another once-over, lingering on my legs. “But you didn’t look like this back then.”
“Like what?” I raised my chin.
“All fucking woman.”
Damn.
Damn!
Heat traveled through me. “What do you want?”
His eyes flickered, cooling off. “My club owes Gloves. We came to pay that debt. Part of it is helping his family the way they need to be helped. I didn’t know you were in town. He said you were in New York, married with a husband. A good life.” He took in my sneakers and my employee ID. “Your mom wanted more customers, so we’re setting it up so other charters stop in, and spread the word. We take care of our own, and that’ll spread too. Your sister mentioned opening her own salon. We’ll help set that up, but we’ll have a percentage of the ownership. I know you helped my guys today, kept the cops away and the manager from being a pain in the ass. We’ll pay the damages. In my eyes, that makes us owe you twice. So, I gotta ask, what do you want?”