PRIDE: A Bad Boy and Amish Girl Romance (The Brody Bunch#1) (22 page)

Still, his anger felt so unfair. Was she the first woman to break a man’s heart? Or the first restless teenage girl, torn between two different longings? Didn’t he know that she had broken her own heart, too? She was barely 19 when she left, practically still a kid. Jase wasn’t much older. Kids make mistakes.
God knows I’ve made more than my fair share.

He wasn’t there to see the long and torturous nights those first few months in Eagleton. He didn’t hear the neighbors knocking on her apartment door to check on her because her heartbroken sobbing was loud enough to penetrate the walls. He never had to feel the deep loneliness of being in a new place, without so much as a friend to call on the phone for familiar comfort.

Maggie felt all that pain rushing back, but it was mixed with a strange sensation, a pull to turn and see the man she had been missing for so many years, who was finally in the same room with her again. She missed Jase. She had always missed Jase.

This can’t keep up
, she realized. Jase as her bodyguard was only going to end in pure agony. She had to find a way to get rid of him. His loyalty to the MC was obviously strong enough to override his hatred of Maggie, but if his anger reached a tipping point, maybe he would demand a different duty from Henry himself.

Maggie looked down both sides of the huge oak bar. The few faces she could see were not ideal for her needs. She picked up her beer and took a walkabout into the dark edges of the roadhouse, sliding around tables and pushing through groups of drunk, happy people. On the dance floor, people were lit up like little disco balls from the pulsing lights above. She couldn’t see Jase, but she knew he was watching her, stalking her like a hawk. She was counting on it.

Maggie headed over to the corner filled with drunk frat boys. She ignored the drinking games and bad karaoke and chugging contests and walked over to one who was leaning against a wall, eyeballing the girls on the dance floor. He was blonde and tan and had probably never touched an engine or a gun in his short, dull life. He was Jase’s opposite.

“Hey,” said Maggie as she walked up within a foot of him. At first, he seemed surprised, but that melted quickly into a seductive warmness when he saw the look in her eyes.

“Hi there,” he said.

“Looking for something?” she nodded her head back towards the dance floor, then put one hand on his chest as the other tipped the rest of her beer into her mouth.

“I think I just found it,” he said with a grin. His hands snaked around her waist and one wasted no time getting a good handful of her ample ass and thighs. She tipped her head up to him and he obliged her with a deep but sloppy French kiss. Already she could feel his growing hardness as he pressed her against his body.

She had obviously found the horniest frat boy in the group; within seconds he was practically groping her right out in the middle of the bar. She stopped him just before he tried to sneak a peek down her shirt, slowed him down a bit with some sensual kisses that ended with his lip between her teeth. Once she was certain her point had been made to anyone who may have been watching them, she took the frat boy’s hand and led him through the maze of the roadhouse, heading for the bathrooms at the back. She could’ve just stopped the charade there and sent him on his way, but Maggie figured she deserved a good fuck after a day like today.

Maggie and the frat boy stumbled into the handicapped stall at the end of the row, making out along the way. She managed to lock the stall door before he tugged her shirt over her head and began greedily cupping her breasts, sticking a hand into her bra. The feel of his mouth and tongue on her neck was too much pleasure, and Maggie moaned out loud, eliciting giggles from someone in another stall. She reached down and wrapped her hand around a hard, thick erection begging to be released from the board shorts it was trapped in.

When his hand appeared between her legs, rubbing, Maggie felt like she might come right then and there. It had been so long since she was touched that way—with actual longing and desire. She closed her eyes and got lost in the moment until she heard the front door of the bathroom pushed open hard enough to hit the wall. A woman’s protests went ignored. The hand between her legs was rubbing, making her wet. It was all she wanted to think about. But what was wrong? What—

“Maggie!” Jase’s voice echoed through the bathroom. Before she could react, the stall door exploded inward with enough force to bend the latch beyond repair. She and the frat boy both let out a surprised cry, and he did his best to shield her from the shrapnel that came flying in.

Jase stood in the doorway, a hulking figure of rage and jealousy. He was twice the size of the college kid who didn’t put up an ounce of resistance when Jase reached in and grabbed him by his polo collar. He growled in his face to get the fuck out, and then pushed him hard towards the bathroom door. The frat boy hesitated just a minute as he looked at Maggie before he fled. A woman with golden hair watched the whole thing as she huddled in a corner near the sink, then boldly told Jase she was going to get the manager before she fled.

They stood there staring at each other for what felt like an eternity. Maggie didn’t even remember that she was shirtless, standing in front of her ex in just a bra and jeans, trying to slow down her heart and her breathing.

She had figured Jase would seethe quietly to himself all night at the bar and demand a transfer from Henry in the morning. She looked at the dangling, broken latch, realizing she had misjudged the hell out of the situation.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she said with deep anger.

“I could ask you the same thing! Some assholes are hunting you and your bright idea is to fuck some rando at the roadhouse? Do you care about your own life or not?”

“Oh please!” said Maggie, finally noticing her shirt on the floor and trying to act casual as she bent to gather it up. “Don’t act like this is some concern for my safety, Saint Jase. You could have waited at the fucking door. We both know you tossed that kid out of here because you don’t want anyone else down my pants.”

Jase’s face turned red and he stepped towards her a few feet. Maggie was far too angry to back down. She stood in front of him, shirtless and vulnerable, her pale skin probably still bearing the red marks from the frat boy’s eager hands and lips. In a bitter internal monologue, she hoped Jase saw them, too.

“I don’t give a fuck about your pants and who might be in them. I have a job to do, and I’m going to do it whether you like it or not,” he retorted.

“Keeping me from getting dick is not your job,” said Maggie, throwing her shirt over her head.

The muscles in his jaw clenched. “Well it sure as shit isn’t my job to
help
you get dick, either,” said Jase.

Maggie rolled her eyes and pushed past him just as the golden-haired woman and a round man in a dress shirt entered the ladies room. The man gave Jase a shocked look.

“Since you’re on the clock, you can deal with this,” said Maggie as she thumbed at who she assumed was the manager. “I’ll be waiting at the bar.”

“The hell you will,” said Jase. As she left the restroom, she heard him speak to the manager. “I don’t have time for this. Put it on the MC’s tab.”

“Look, you fellas are great customers but you can’t just be busting up my equipment!” said the manager.

“Did you hear me?” said Jase, his voice getting louder. “Charge it to the fucking MC.”

Maggie was halfway down the hall before he caught up with her bee-lining for the bar. Jase grabbed her arm and began to pull her towards the front door. “We’re fucking done with playtime, Maggie.”

“Hey, you bastard! Let me go!” Maggie tried to squirm her way free, but Jase’s hand was big enough to wrap nearly the whole way around her arm, and he was so much stronger than her that it was laughable. She resisted as much as she could, yet both of them knew he was going to get his way.

Jase dragged her outside and back to the driver’s side of her SUV in the parking lot before he finally released her arm. She instinctively rubbed the sore spot it had left. “Get in, drive home, or I will take you home myself.” He pointed at her, then at the car.

“What the fuck is your problem, Jase?” said Maggie.

“You’re my problem!” Jase yelled loud enough that some curious bystanders had begun to watch from the porch of the roadhouse. “You always have to make things so fucking difficult, Maggie. You don’t give a shit about anyone else or how they feel.”

“I make things difficult?” she screamed back. “No one made you bust into that bathroom stall, Jase! You did that on your own!”

“I promised your father I would make sure you don’t get your stupid ass killed, and I’m going to keep that promise. I don’t give a fuck about anything else.” Jase lowered his voice and stepped up to her again, backing her against the SUV door. He bent low to her face and she could smell the whiskey on his breath. “I don’t care who you fuck. I don’t care about you anymore, period. But you’re not getting killed on my watch. Understood?”

More than anything else that night, Maggie knew she would replay those last few lines in her worst dreams for months to come.
I don’t care about you anymore. I don’t care who you fuck. I don’t care about you anymore.
She was just buzzed enough that she couldn’t stop the pain from radiating out to pulse through her whole body. It must have shown on her face, because for a split second, she saw Jase’s expression soften, worried.

I don’t care about you anymore.
She felt tears begin to burn her eyes.

“Yeah, I get it,” said Maggie. She yanked her car keys out of her pocket and turned to climb in the SUV as Jase moved back to dodge the door opening. She didn’t look at him again as she started the engine and headed out of the parking lot.

Maggie let the GPS guide her mindlessly back the way she came. The head-start gave her time to assess her surroundings once she got back to her makeshift home. Drake was gone, but he had left a six-pack of beer and a pack of smokes for her. She saw the outline of furniture in the dark of the living and dining room, but didn’t investigate. She grabbed two beers and the smokes and ambled into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her. The bed wasn’t so much a bed as it was a brand-new set of box spring and memory foam mattress that had been put on the floor. A new pair of sheets and two pillows had already been made up.

Maggie undressed and sprawled out, cracked a beer, and lit a cigarette. Tears from crying on the drive home had stained her puffy face with mascara, but she was too tired, and too hurt, to bother herself with washing it off.

She heard Jase’s bike pull up and park in the drive; heard the front door open and close quietly; heard the sounds of heavy footsteps and the squeaking of springs as Jase, her quasi-faithful protector, made himself comfortable on her newly delivered couch in the living room.

Maggie smoked and drank for another hour, trying to forget how close Jase was, and how far.

A
t exactly 7
:13am, a beam of sunlight strong as a laser came through a window and sliced across Jase’s sleeping eyes. He woke with a start. Half his large body tumbled onto the floor before he could gather sense of his surroundings. The room was empty, unfamiliar, and distant. The light was all wrong. Was he still wearing his cut—and his boots?

The night fit back together in pieces. Maggie’s couch, in her weird little house: that was what he had just fallen from. The light looked wrong because he wasn’t in his bedroom. He remembered trying to stay up on watch for as long as he could the night before, but Maggie’s place had no television, and his smart phone died an hour into his night. The couch was uncomfortable as hell. He was surprised he managed to fall asleep on it. Jase stood and most of the muscles in his body began to scream in pain, thanks either to the dinky couch, or to his rampage the night before.

Shit…
he thought, as memories began to rise in his mind like alligators from a cloudy bog. He was sure to get an earful from Beck about kicking in that bathroom stall door at the roadhouse; one of his old buddies was the owner. He tried to conjure the state of mind he had been in when he did it, but it was like he had been possessed by some crazy emotional haze. He wasn’t the kind of dude to kick in doors looking to defend his claim to a woman. He had never wanted for women; he had never had to fight for one.

Jase realized that he was admitting to himself that Maggie had been right. He
was
jealous. The sight of Maggie in that den after all these years had been one kind of pain. The sight of some other dude’s hands all over her, his lips on hers - that brought a whole different version he had been completely unprepared to face.

One of the hardest years of his life had been the one after Maggie left him. So much drinking, drugs, mindless sex… a few stints in County for picking fights just so he could feel alive. It had been a hard, slow climb out of that abyss. He’d sworn off everything but pot and booze and smokes; he got his physical aggression out at the gym; and he didn’t bother wasting any more time with long-term women. When Jase felt lonely or hot, he would find a solution to that temporary problem, and then go back to his normal life. He had found a sort of peace this way.

And he had actually fooled himself into thinking he was healed from feeling things for her.

Jase felt a headache pulsing quietly at the bottom of his temples. He groaned to himself and tried to stretch some of the tension out of his body. Down the hallway, he heard the creaking of a door and the sound of socked feed padding on hardwood.

Maggie came from around the corner. He could tell she was fresh out of sleep. She always had a look like a grumpy kid whenever he used to wake her up too early. Her curls were still a little wild, and Jase saw the dark trails of makeup swirled around her eyes. She wore the t-shirt from the day before, but her legs were bare; she only had on her dark blue underwear. The moment was as pleasant to his eyes as it was upsetting to his heart.

Jase said nothing. He hadn’t had time to even consider what he would say to Maggie after last night.

Maggie had one arm wrapped around her belly. She held out the other, handing Jase her phone. “It’s for you.”

Jase looked instinctively at his own phone on the floor and remembered it was dead. He took the phone from Maggie. She turned immediately and shuffled back down the hallway to her bedroom without another word.

Jase put the phone to his ear. “Yeah, this is Jase.”

“Where the fuck have you been? I’m supposed to be able to check in on you!” It was Henry.

The headache pulsed. “Sorry, boss. I’ve been with Maggie all night, like you asked. She’s fine. I just left my charger in my saddle bag last night.”

“For god’s sake, Jase—“

“It won’t happen again.”

“—things are not fine. There was a shooting.”

Jase froze. He turned to look towards Maggie’s bedroom. “What happened?”

“Someone tore up Hot Tamales last night just after midnight.”

Jase slumped back onto the couch. “Jesus Christ.”

“Take Maggie to the clubhouse and make sure it’s understood that she remains there. Then I need you to meet me and the sheriff at the club.”

Jase got off the phone with Henry and rushed down the hallway. He knocked on Maggie’s door. “We have to go, now. Get dressed.”

“What? It’s like seven in the morning! Fuck off!” came her muffled reply.

“Maggie, there was a goddamn shooting. Will you do something without a fight, for once?”

There was quiet. Then he heard her rustling out of bed with a grumble. He waited impatiently until she emerged, dressed, her hair pulled back in haste, huge dark sunglasses obscuring her eyes. She stayed silent and brooding as she followed Jase to the SUV, which he insisted on driving to the clubhouse. She smoked in the passenger seat and didn’t look at him. She didn’t put up a fight when he dropped her off and told her to stay in with Tommy and the others. Like a fed-up zombie, she simply shuffled off wherever he pointed without a word. He didn’t have time to analyze it.

The police had set up their tape and crime scene equipment by the time Jase arrived. The sheriff worked often with the MC on issues of mutual interest, and no doubt Henry had gotten a call as soon as signs of the Black Dogs were found on-scene. Jase found Henry and Beck conversing with the sheriff on the porch. They brought him inside to show him the scene. It was surreal to see the dance hall from the night before flooded with daylight and dust; the floor scattered with shoes and cups and overturned tables. Blood from the victims still hadn’t been cleaned up.

“Witnesses put this at three or four guys, career criminals from the sounds. This type of thing isn’t usually for first-timers,” said the sheriff. He read slowly off a small spiral notebook he always kept in his pocket. “There was a lot of chaos, but multiple people seem to think they were targeting groups with bikers in cuts. Bartender says they were definitely looking for something, but they never once asked for money or the safe.”

“Do we think it was a hit out on the Black Dogs?” asked Jase.

Henry shook his head. “A few clubs were here, so it’s possible. But this was also very sloppy, which our enemies tend not to be.”

“We must have just missed it…” said Jase, more to himself than to anyone.
If I hadn’t kicked that bathroom door open and started that fight, would Maggie and I have still been here when the shooting happened?

“What’s that now?” asked the sheriff.

Jase said turned to Henry instead, ignoring the sheriff. “This was for Maggie, I can feel it. We were here last night. She wanted a drink. But we didn’t… we didn’t stay long.” He couldn’t help but avert his eyes, no matter how much of a tell it was. He was still boiling with shame. “Maggie gets back into town, and this happens? That’s no accident. Someone knew we were here.”

Henry and Beck exchanged heavy glances.

“You didn’t see anything?” asked Beck.

“The place was packed, but no, there was nothing suspicious. A few parties, plus the usual Friday night crowd… no one hassled us or seemed out of place.” Even as the words came out of his mouth, Jase doubted himself. Had he really been on point last night? Had he taken good stock of the crowd, or had he been far too focused on Maggie? Did someone tail them to the bar and he missed it, too busy rehearsing angry speeches in his mind?

“Well, that complicates things,” said the sheriff. “We’ll need to talk to your daughter, Henry, if you think she’s a target here.”

Henry looked unhappy about it, but he nodded anyway. “She’s at the clubhouse. Let me go speak with her now, and then I’ll have her come down to the station.”

As the men piled out of the roadhouse, Jase took one last look around. He made himself memorize the pattern of the blood spatter on the floors and walls. He wanted them to be a stark reminder that his job for the MC came before anything—before his feelings, and before Maggie’s. Otherwise it was likely to be her blood spatter he was memorizing next.