JAGGED EDGE: A BILLIONAIRE ROMANCE (ALPHA MALE) (16 page)

Chapter Seven

The next day they left early again, with the bright morning sun shining in their eyes as they headed east toward Flagstaff, winding through mountains and beautiful country.

Everything looked perfect, but Dirk was uneasy. He had things to work out. Troubling things.

Roaring down the highway, with Audra clinging to him, was the definition of what he thought he wanted, yet now he felt ensnared by a growing web of thoughts and doubts. That his feelings for her made his head spin things out this way wasn’t good. He had a job to do. He was working and you worked best when you focused on the here and now, when you identified the enemy and put all of your attention on what was happening. Thinking of the past and wondering about the future were distractions.

The worst distraction was the woman herself. She’d asked if he’d ever killed anyone and he’d dodged the question. Telling her the truth would mark him as an undesirable in her eyes. Lying to her, something he never liked doing to anyone, had become unthinkable.

She had put her trust in him, paying money for his protection without knowing that he was exactly the kind of man she needed protecting from. He vacillated between thinking that he wanted to see her safely to Canada, away from the clutches of this husband, and just wanting to strip her naked and fuck her.

Bart’s idea that he could do both seemed increasingly like it wasn’t going to work.

He didn’t want to care for this girl. He had enough problems of his own—more than enough. And now the biggest one was that he had started liking her and wanted to help her. He wanted to make her safe, and he wasn’t sure he knew how to do that. He sure as hell didn’t think sneaking her across the border was going to do that.

He should have seen it coming. Once again he’d let himself be blinded by pussy and he just hadn’t considered.

That was a lie. He had considered it and he’d seduced her anyway. And she’d liked it. She was starting to like him. That was a nonstarter. Why couldn’t she see that he was cursed? Whether she was a nice girl who’d been through shit or a rich bitch, there was no future for her with him. And now he was sure she was nice and that was the worst outcome. He could screw a rich bitch, some weird privileged girl running away from an unhappy marriage, just have a good time fucking her all the way to Canada. He could even convince himself that a girl like that would get off on having a fling with a bad-assed biker, cuckolding her husband with the very guy who was whizzing her out of his reach.

That’s what he’d intended. That’s how it was supposed to play out. A good time had by all and no regrets.

But he’d been stupid enough to ask her about her story, to tell him why she was running. And he’d learned she’d had as rough a time as anyone. Being married to a rich guy had turned into hell for her and she had spunk. A nice girl with spunk was even more of a turn on than a willing rich bitch. Even when he knew that she was really nice, he’d pretended she was just hot, just a piece of ass. Now it was biting him because he did have scruples of a sort. Unless it was life or death, Cutter didn’t kick nice people when they were down and he didn’t use the fact that he was helping someone as a lever, especially when they were paying him to do it. That was abusive. He’d abused the situation and he hated himself for letting it happen. That she wanted it didn’t matter.

Now his desire for her, which was still there and not diminished by what had happened, was mixed with a need to wash away her unhappiness—an urge to protect her. That wasn’t healthy. The two didn’t mesh well. One required caring about her and the other required not giving a shit at all.

Beyond getting her to Canada he was not the right man to become the solution to her problems. He wasn’t the solution to anyone’s problems. In a club of villains of varying degrees, he was the one who did the dirty work and he’d spent years turning off his feelings. Feelings got in the way of his work, even if sometimes, like now, he wished he understood more about feelings and emotions than he did.

But he didn’t. Pushing her away was all that made sense. If he kept her at a distance, then he’d be able to think. Then maybe he could even get her safely to Canada. It was damn hard to keep a woman at a distance when you spent the day with her arms around you, her warm and desirable body pressed up against yours. He needed to change things around, redefine the relationship in a way that they both understood. Maybe she could accept just being a nice fuck. That would work. If not, he’d change things.

After that, when he’d gotten her across the border, she’d be on her own, and vulnerable. He’d be on his own again too, and the thought gave him a horrid, gut-twisting feeling of emptiness. Was that what emotions did to you? He’d have to force himself not to think about what happened after they reached Canada.

* * * *

After some time around him, Audra came to the conclusion that Greg was simply a nicer person than Dirk. His sincere smile, and a real warmth, continually surprised her.

She recognized this partly in contrast. Over breakfast, Dirk had seemed out of sorts and during the day he’d grown distant, speaking to her in monosyllables, making her wonder if she’d done something to piss him off. Something had changed in his attitude toward her since he’d come to her room the night before. What it was, she couldn’t imagine. It had been a beautiful night of lovemaking. And then again in the morning. He’d made her come and she thought she’d pleased him. He’d seemed more than satisfied.

While it would be unfair to say he had seduced her, he’d certainly been willing to make love to her. He’d liked her well enough for that. Now, whatever it was kept him from carrying on a conversation, or even asking how she was doing. It was a giant step backwards from even the distance he’d put between them when they first met. He had to be having second thoughts about his feelings for her, or perhaps only been pretending to feel anything more than lust.

No matter what was happening in his head, she was suffering.

It wasn’t that Dirk acted nasty or rude—just curt. A chill had settled in between them. It hurt more because she had no idea what had upset him and therefore no clue what to do to heal it. With him unwilling to talk to her, she had to accept the possibility that this was permanent. She’d loved their night together. She’d assumed there would be more. Without that hope, when she wrapped her arms around him so they could cover the miles between LA and Buffalo, the contact made her feel incredibly sad and lonely.

And his change wasn’t something she imagined. The guys had noticed Dirk’s attitude shift. Maybe it was some biker code, where he let them know he wasn’t interested in her any more, but they’d become more attentive, chatting to her when they stopped for gas or at a rest stop, offering to buy her a cool drink, or asking her silly questions. Greg’s change was the most dramatic. When he heard Dirk being short with her at one stop his face clouded over in a disapproving scowl and when they stopped for dinner that evening he apologized for his friend.

“He’s in a real fucked up space for some reason or another,” Greg said. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but Cutter can be an asshole at times.”

Despite the hard words, the calm in his voice soothed her. She took a good look at the man, really seeing him for the first time as a man and not just Dirk’s mechanic. She liked what she saw. Although not a hunk, like Dirk definitely was, he was attractive in a rough way. Of medium height, he was well built and had close-cropped blond hair and sad pale-blue eyes. When he smiled, which was often, lines crinkled around his eyes.

“Does he ever get in a mood that’s better than just ‘good’? Is he ever really happy?”

Greg shook his head. “Not so you’d know it. He rises from his dark shit for air from time to time though.”

Looking at his face, basking in his sympathetic smile, she felt a strong affection for Greg and was grateful he wanted to listen, to help. And she wondered about his intentions. For that matter, she wondered about her own.

He didn’t have all the qualities of the man of her dreams, but then Dirk came up short in some ways himself. Her perfect man, her ideal man, probably combined the best these two had to offer. Strength, compassion, being fearless and manly… thinking you’d find one guy with all those qualities… how unrealistic was that? And if she had to chose one combination?

Dirk was overwhelming but unable to share who he was with her. As a protector, he offered comfort. And he was sexually exciting.

Greg’s steadiness offered a different kind of comfort. He didn’t so much arouse her as reassure her, and now, on the run, and seemingly dumped by Dirk, she craved reassurance.

She saw that he liked her, perhaps wanted her. Her heart ached for Dirk, to have him tell her what was wrong, but she had no idea how long she might have to wait to find out. She had no idea if she’d ever find out. Whatever damage had been done, it might be permanent. Maybe sleeping with him had driven a stake through the heart of any chance they’d had to be together.

And Greg simply touched her arm gently and smiled. In a moment when she was overwhelmed with thanks and affection she reached over and wiped a smudge of grease from his cheek. Seeing the grease on her finger, Greg laughed.

“Hey, you’ve removed my main identifying mark. Now no one will know who I am.”

She stared at the finger. “I can put it back if you like but I thought bikers used tattoos for that.”

“Not the ones who hate needles. Besides, I can’t keep the shit off my face. I’m always poking my nose into engines, even when they’re working. I just love the damn things, and you can’t do that and avoid grease. I had an old lady for a while who called me Grease Nose—in private, not when we were around the guys.”

Picturing a girl riding with Greg came automatically, and she wondered what she’d be like. Probably a lot like Trudy or Meg, she guessed “What happened to her?”

“She outgrew the thrill of the life. Decided she wanted a guy who would be about a home and kids and an SUV, not some stupid biker with nothing but a bike, some tools and a serious thing about the open road.”

“That sounds romantic.” It did.

“She thought it did too—for the first five years and fifty thousand miles, but when the warranty expired, she found she was pretty much right where she started and that scared her. When she hit her early thirties she realized that while we’d been a lot of places, there were things she wanted to do that we hadn’t even attempted.”

“Like having kids?”

“Kids? Yeah. We didn’t even have a permanent place and I didn’t want one. Dirk and I are alike that way. We might have a place for a while, but the open road is where we belong. Can you see me and my old lady with a papoose hurtling down the road? Besides, I’d be a shitty father.”

Audra thought he might be a wonderful father but kept that to herself. “Did she find what she wanted?”

Greg considered the question. “Hard to say, but she did hook up with a guy who works for a big company. They got married and bought a house and I heard she was pregnant. So I guess she found the road she thought she wanted. I’ve always hoped it worked for her.”

“But you didn’t stay in touch?”

He laughed. “That would be a classically bad idea. What good could come of it? If her guy sees me hanging around and if he’s got half a brain, he calls the cops. I might screw up whatever she’s found. Besides, once you’re done, what’s the point in reunions anyway? I’m not much on talking about the great times we had and others we might’ve had if things had been different. I’m more about what’s happening now.”

The look in his eyes, his tone of voice, resonated in her. Audra found herself thinking a lot of Greg. Inside the biker mechanic lurked a warm and somewhat charming man, whether he wanted to own up to it or not. Dirk was sexy, and he turned her on like no other man ever had, but the inner man was conflicted and not a little scary. He played the role of alpha male as if he owned it.

When you got down to the core of the matter, Dirk was the stuff of red hot sexual fantasies and Greg was as close to a regular guy as a biker probably got. A girl could imagine herself being with him for a long time. She could see how his steadiness, in a rather uncertain world, had lulled his old lady into hanging around. When she woke up from the dream they lived, she’d been startled. That could happen. Greg wove a protective cocoon around her that was, in its own way, as seductive as Dirk’s sex appeal.

He was coming on to her, although his approach was smoother, gentler. Still he was sexy, and she had to ask herself how she felt about that. If Dirk wanted distance, she needed comfort, and Greg offered that.

Two such different men. Two virile and sexy men.

* * * *

“What the hell is going on?”

Sitting on the bed, Dirk looked up from his magazine and stared at Greg, thinking he didn’t look pleased. “What’s your problem?”

Greg sat in the chair and put his boots up on the bed. “Why are you being a shit with Audra?”

“We have a job to do. Might as well get her done, then we can head back.”

Greg snorted. “And that’s all this is to you? A job?”

“What else?”

“Audra is a nice girl.”

“So?”

“You are being a shit.”

He shrugged. “I need to focus.”

Greg laughed. “You managed to bed her and now you’ve dragged out your Ice Man Cutter routine and won’t even tell her the score. What’s that about?”

“Come on, man. Okay, the girl is hot and I like her. But what has you all bent out of shape? Are you jealous that I managed to snag some pussy on the trip? I can tell you that it wasn’t just me pushing for that. She wanted to get laid pretty bad too. I didn’t force her or even tell her I’d be her old man.”

“You probably didn’t mention you intended to be a prick once you fucked her, either.”

“Look, we’re hauling her cute butt to Canada. Once she’s there, she’s on her own. That was the job—the plan.”

“Yeah, that was the plan. But fucking plans change all the time. You can adapt, you know.”

“Adapt? What am I supposed to adapt to?”

“Use that pea brain for something besides playing Enforcer, dude. The girl likes you and she got to trusting you. Maybe that was a stupid thing to do, but she did. This gig sucks from the get go. It isn’t like she hired us to take her to her folks, or to a job. She isn’t going somewhere, and we can drop her off at the curb. She is just running. Her destination is that cool place called ‘away’ where we all go to hide when the shit gets too heavy.”