Blazing Hot Bad Boys Boxed Set - A MC Romance Bundle (57 page)

Chapter Three

“Amber?” Richard called to his secretary, “could you come in here for a minute?”

She clicked into the room, popping some bubblegum. She always wore too much makeup and too little clothes, but her primary duty was definitely not secretarial. His work was far too sensitive to truly have a secretary. She existed for appearances only – in two senses of the word. “Yes, Mr. Hall?” she asked, holding a memo pad and pen with some sort of fluffy thing on the top that surely wrote in pink or purple, or something obnoxiously neon.

“Do I have anything else scheduled for today?”

She grinned, “Nope.”

“Then let’s go home.”

A couple hours later, the two of them were sprawled on his massive bed, her curly hair splayed out across the pillows while she lightly snored.

Hall disentangled himself from her arms to pick up his phone and make a phone call. “Hello, James?”

“Good afternoon, Richard,” a smooth voice on the other end answered.

“Are you busy?”

“Not terribly. What can I do for you?”

“Well, I was wondering if you remembered my daughter.”

“Ah, I believe so. Her name was Sierra?”

“Yes, precisely. Well I’m sure word got out that she had run away to Las Vegas after the tragic death of her brother. They were very close and she just needed some space to grieve and realign herself. Well, she will be coming home soon and I was wondering if you’d like to come get dinner with us.”

“I would be more than happy to meet your daughter properly. Do you have an estimate for when she will be coming back?”

“Ah, within the next weeks, I’m sure. She has to wrap up her life in Las Vegas, of course. That will take some time; she has been there for three years after all.”

“Of course, of course. Well let me know when you have a date in mind. I would be most obliged.”

“Thank you. I’ll talk to you later.” He hung up the phone and smiled. Hopefully this daughter wouldn’t prove such a disappointment to him. His son was always outwardly respectful and willing, but also always distant and somewhat uncooperative in minor ways. He couldn’t trust his son to do what was needed.

He had never put much pressure or responsibility on Sierra, but she was his daughter and youngest child. Things were different for her. All he ever expected of her was to do what she was told and marry the man he picked. She was part of this family and, as such, had a responsibility to do what was best for the family. She couldn’t avoid that – no matter how far she ran.

Chapter Four

The lights came on in the club, the music turned off, and the girls went backstage for the last time to put clothes back on and wash off their faces as best they could in the tiny dressing rooms. Sierra shared her room with five other girls; they were the closest thing to friends she had.

Kat untied her bikini top and threw it on the ground. “This thing has been cutting into my neck for the past three hours. I didn’t have a chance to slip away and put something else on.”

Charlie grinned, “Well it was sure helping you rack in the tips.”

Kat shrugged, “You’re just jealous.”

Sierra laughed, “We’re all jealous, Kat. You make more money in one night than any of us do in a week.”

The girls laughed and started wiping their faces off to prepare to go home for the night. Glitter and rhinestones abounded everywhere. The smells of makeup wipes and hairspray filled every nook and cranny, and the cheap perfume gave the whole building a sort of brothel-esque feel. There were worse places to work, especially in this field.

“I’ll see you later, girls,” Sierra said, leaving the dressing room. Hairspray, gel, and glitter still covered her body, but most of the makeup was wiped off her face. She had pulled her blonde hair into a ponytail. She just wanted to go home and collapse into bed at this point.

She froze as she reached the parking lot, though. There were two strange men standing by her car. This wasn’t that unusual of a circumstance since men liked to hang out in the parking lot. Some of the girls like to pick up a little…extra work, but not Sierra. “Can I help you?” she called, fishing out her pepper spray.

“Miss Hall,” one of them said, reaching out a hand to her. “We don’t mean you any harm, Miss Hall. Please put the pepper spray away so we can talk like civilized people. We didn’t want to come to your place of residence, so we decided to meet you here. Out in the open, public space you know?”

“Who are you?”

“We are part of the Shadow Souls MC. We knew your brother, Scott.”

She froze. “You knew Scott?”

“Of course we knew Scott. He was a great guy. After his death, we decided that he would want someone to keep an eye on you, make sure no one came after you and made trouble for you, you know?”

“Wait, you’ve be stalking me in the name of my brother?”

“Not stalking, exactly. Just checking in on you once in awhile. Make sure you haven’t disappeared or been murdered. That you got enough food and comforts and such. It’s what your brother would’ve wanted.”

Sierra contemplated the two standing across from her. One was tall and skinny, and had teeth as yellow as cat’s eyes. The other was short and a little pudgy. He was the one who was doing all the talking. They probably were here in name of her brother. That
would
be what her brother wanted. She smiled slightly. Her brother was always watching out for her. She could at least hear these guys out and see what they had to say.

“All right. Well, what do you want?”

“Do you want to go somewhere a little bit more comfortable to talk?”

“Here is fine.” They may have a good story, but they were still strangers.

“All right then. There was this fellow who called me up the other day – Chad Pender – says he’s got to talk to you. Asked us to find out where you were. We told him we would talk to you and find out if you would talk to him.”

“What did he say he wanted?”

“He didn’t tell us, but he said he was Scott’s best friend.”

Sierra’s anger started to rise. Her brother’s ‘best friend.’ If he had some best friend, wouldn’t Sierra know about it? Wouldn’t he have told her? This whole story was completely ridiculous. She wasn’t going to trust these guys. How did they know where to find her anyway? Sure, they said they were friends with Scott, but she didn’t know who these people were. No one in Vegas knew about her past as far as she knew.

“This may come as a shock to you, but I don’t trust people blindly nor do I need some goons watching over me. I’m twenty-five years old. I can take care of myself. So you two and this Chad Pender character can just go back to California and leave me out of this mess. There is no reason why I need to be involved in that chaos ever again. Now please kindly step away from my car so I can go home. I’ve had a long and busy night and I need to get some sleep.”

“Of course. Sorry, Miss Hall.” They backed away from her car and she hurried inside, trying not to make eye contact with either of them.

They probably knew where she lived and her schedule and everything else. Maybe she should leave town. Get away from these creepers. That’s what they were – creepers. Creeping on her, stalking.

She rushed into her condo and locked the door solidly behind her. Why did her life revolve around the disaster that was her family? She fled California to get away from all that and now she was going to be dragged back into it? No. She was not going to let herself be part of all of that anymore. She just wasn’t. She had the ability to be her own, independent person now. She was out of this nonsense. That was all there was to it. She collapsed into bed hoping that she could just block out the whole thing.

Chapter Five

Around eight in the morning, Chad got a phone call from Billy, “So we talked to Sierra after she got off work. She doesn’t have any interest in meeting with you.”

Chad punched the bed. “Not at all? Did she say why?”

“Something about not wanting to be dragged back into her family business.”

Chad sighed, “Do you have an address for her? I’m just trying to get her home. She hasn’t seen her father in three years.”

Billy hesitated, “Well, yes. I have an address for her, but I’m not sure if I should give it to you, you know? It’s my responsibility to watch over her and make sure no strange men are trying to get into her apartment to do bad things…if you catch my meaning?”

“Yes, I know, but don’t you trust me? I mean, we are both Shadow Souls. That means something…or it did.”

“I know it means something, but I have a greater responsibility now. You know?”

“Look, you keep an eye on her house, right?”

“Of course.”

“Then you’ll know if I show up. I don’t want to scare her – or you. I want to make sure everyone is happy – including myself – and it would make me really happy if I could have a brief moment to explain to Miss Hall why I’m here.”

“I really don’t think that she would appreciate that,” Billy’s voice sounded conflicted now.

“Just give me an address. I’m just going to write her a note just explaining why I’m here. Maybe if I told her the whole story, she would be more willing to hear me out, okay? Just let me do that.”

“Well…” Billy drawled, “That might be okay, I guess. It isn’t like we can stop people from sending her mail. That seems pretty harmless, I guess. Nothing dangerous or hurtful or anything, okay? Just a simple note. Ink on a page.”

“I swear by Scott’s grave. Okay?”

“Well, all right then. Don’t try any funny business. We’ll be watching.”

Billy gave him the address and Scott sat down to write Miss Sierra Hall a letter. If she wasn’t going to listen to her guards, maybe she would listen if it came directly from him. Maybe.

What would he say? Would he tell her the whole truth?  Would he tell her about Scott’s death and about working for her father? About the guilt? She didn’t need that. Would he tell her anything about her father? If he lied, that would probably just be worse, but he could disguise the truth a little…maybe.

She most likely wanted answers about her brother, about everything that happened that night, about what he was involved in before he died. He could give her that in some small way; he could give her some aspect of the truth of the situation – not all of it, never all of it. All of it would ruin everything he was trying to accomplish here.

He wrote the letter, a page long affair that focused on the relationship he had with her brother and not anything to do with her father or his mission. He somehow felt that would make things a lot, lot worse. 

He addressed the envelope and went down to the front desk in search of stamps and a place to mail letters. The woman sitting at the desk had those claw fingernails that Chad thought were so weird and impractical.

“Hey, sugar,” she drawled. “What can I do you for?”

Chad resisted the impulse to the correct the grammar of that question. “I was wondering if you sold stamps down here?”

“Nah, I don’t got any, but you can buy some down at the convenience store down the street. You can walk there. It’s about three blocks down the street, just turn left out the door and walk straight. Can’t miss it.”

“Thank you,” he said. He really hoped this worked.

He finally found a book of stamps and headed toward one of those blue boxes that lurk in random places. He paused with his hand on the box. If this didn’t work, he wasn’t sure what he would say to Richard Hall.