ROMANCE: SHAPESHIFTER ROMANCE: Dragon Baller's Bride (Dragon Shifter Alpha Male Romance) (Paranormal Romantic Suspense) (55 page)

W
hen petite
and pretty Julie Dumbarton flees the big city fearing for her life, she wants only one thing: to escape the mistakes of her past. But instead of escape, she discovers she was followed to her home town by Martin Richter, the man who beat and abused her. Now, her family is at risk as well. Julie is afraid she’ll never be able be free of Martin’s cruelty.  When ex-boyfriend, Axel steps up to keep her safe, she vow’s she’ll never fall into a criminal life again, even if it means giving up Axel forever.

Tough and dominating Axel Kehoe, entrenched in the life as a gang leader, wants nothing more than to squash the man who is tormenting Julie, his one and only love. His plan: get rid of Martin and get Julie back into his bed. But is he willing to give up everything he knows to win back Julie’s love?

J
ulie Dumbarton sat
in the very last seat of the Greyhound Bus. She didn’t like sitting next to the chemical smelling toilet stall, but she needed the security of knowing no one was sitting behind her. She was impatient for the bus to depart, afraid that if they sat there too long the man that was hunting her would find her. She looked out of the window into the night but all she could see was her own reflection, her red hair creeping out from under her hat, blue eyes rimmed with dark circles from lack of sleep. Even her cheekbones seemed sharper than when she had left home months ago.

She thought back to the time before the city, when she’d stupidly driven the getaway car for her boyfriend Axel. She hadn’t known he was going to rob a bank, but that wouldn’t matter to the cops. The prosecutor would surely point out that she had known Axel was up to no good. She’d left him after that. Left him and moved to the city for a fresh start.

What a joke that had been; she’d had no marketable skills and couldn’t find a job. She should have known when the lovely Martin Richter had taken her in, that he was a con man. An unprincipled pimp. She’d actually thought he was in love with her until he had given her to another man. After that she’d stolen from his wallet time and time again, until she had the bus fare home. But he’d found her stash and given her a black eye so in the end she had to call her parents for a bus ticket home.

She’d spent the evening pretending to drink with Martin, refilling his glass time after time until he finally passed out on the couch. Then she’d snuck past the other rooms and down and out into the street, running barefoot to the bus station, her feet silent on the warm pavement, so the men wouldn’t hear her footfalls.

“I need to pick up my ticket,” she’d said panting with exertion and nerves at the ticket window.

“What?” asked the clerk behind the counter. “Say again.”

“I have a ticket here,” Julie spoke slower, tried to regulate her breathing.

“You must pay for ticket,” the clerk said.

“No,” Julie was starting to panic, she wasn’t sure how much time she had before the bus left. “My parents paid for the ticket, I just need to pick it up.”

The clerk had finally understood, found the ticket and handed it to Julie, after she’d produced her ID. Then she’d padded quietly onto the bus, still holding her shoes.

Shouting broke out in the station just as the bus engine roared to life and Julie slid down in her seat hoping to slip unnoticed out of Martin Richter’s life. He didn’t know where she was from and with a little luck he would never know where she had gone.

Julie woke when the bus pulled into her home town terminal. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, it wasn’t safe. The movement of the bus had lulled her and she’d slept deeply the last five hours of the trip. She rubbed her eyes and looked out into the familiar downtown. Her parents were standing on the sidewalk beside the bus; arms folded not talking to each other. There was nothing new about that, they hadn’t had a proper conversation in the last 10 years as far as Julie knew.

She grabbed her backpack and climbed down out of the bus. Her mother burst into tears and threw her arms around Julie.

“I’m okay mom,” Julie said into her shoulder. “I’m fine.” It wasn’t true of course but she would never tell her mother what she’d been through. Looking over her mother’s shoulder she thought she saw someone standing in the shadows on the other side of the street, but she couldn’t get a good look. Still, the figure reminded her of Axel and she realized she’d still have to be careful. She’d put that life behind her and that’s where she wanted it to stay.

“Why thank goodness,” her father said. “You’re safe. Let’s take you home.” He took her backpack and walked away.

“Mom. Mom!” Julie pulled away from her mother’s embrace. “Come on mom, dad already left.”

They followed her dad to the car and drove silently through the town toward their home. Once home, Julie made excuses to her parents and retreated to the sanctuary of her bedroom; the one place in the world she felt safe. She grabbed a towel from the linen closet and got gratefully into the shower. She let the water run and run, rinsing away the grime of the city life, the humiliation, the abuse. When the water ran cold she got out of the shower, returned to the privacy of her room and rummaged in her drawers for close she hadn’t worn in months.

When she pulled on her favorite jeans she discovered they were too big for her now. She looked at herself in the mirror, seeing for the first time that her hip bones jetted sharply and her lower ribs were visible. There had been no mirrors in the house in the city and she had no clue how emaciated she’d become. She dug around in a drawer for a belt and cinched her jeans tight on her hips. So she was thin, she thought, so what? All she had to do was eat ice cream every day for a week. She should get back to normal, at least normal looking. She might never feel like the same person again.

The jeans looked silly bunched around her waist, so she slipped into a dress instead. It was a flowy sleeveless shift with a scoop neck that dropped to just above her knees. Comfortable and homey. This dress was full of happy memories.

It was when she went to flop down on her bed that she noticed the envelope on her pillow. She smiled thinking one of her friends must be welcoming her home. She stuck her finger under the envelope flap and tore it open, pulling out not a card, but a single sheet of lined paper, the kind they use in elementary school. There were five words printed on it. You - will - never - be - free. A cold chill ran down her back.

Julie dug through her drawers for a clean pair of socks and grabbed her sneakers out of the closet. She dumped her backpack on the bed shaking out all the bits of detritus she collected in the corners during her stay in the city. Then she stuffed a change of clothes and a sweatshirt into the bag, dropped to her hands and knees beside the bed and felt for the slit she’d cut in the bottom of the box spring for the money she’d stashed there months ago.

Her fingers found the edges of the envelope and she slid it from the mattress, but when she opened it there was no money there. She dropped her head to the floor in despair. Who had taken her money? Well it didn’t matter she was just going to have to survive without it. She went to the window opened the lower sash and slid out onto the back porch roof. She inched down the metal as quietly as she could, rolled over onto her stomach and slid her legs out into the air until her hips could bend. As her legs dropped, she kicked around feeling with her toes for a gap in the lattice. When she found it she crept slowly down as quietly as she could and dropped into the bushes at the back of the house. The backyard was dark, but luckily she knew where everything was. Nothing had changed in the weeks she had been away.

She stepped out between the bushes and sat on the back door step to put her shoes on. The house was dark and she knew her parents were sleeping. She made her way quietly past the garage at the back of the yard, out through the gate and into the back alley. There she took a quick look to see that no one was skulking in the alley and she turned right and trotted toward town.

She walked through the small downtown and along the river until she reached the bridge. There she sat on the parapet watching the river flow and wondered what she should do. There were one or two people that might be willing to help her, but there were no guarantees. She’d left town without a word to her friends, hadn’t contacted them while she was away and couldn’t expect them to understand why she left.

She would not go back to Axel. She would not get dragged back into that life. People who ran with Axel’s gang didn’t survive long, and there were plenty of freshly seeded mounds in the graveyard that could attest to that.

Julie ducked down as a car approached the bridge hiding in the shadows. Her parents wouldn’t be looking for her yet, they wouldn’t even be awake, but the problem with living in a small town was that nothing stayed secret for long. If someone saw her sitting on the bridge her parents would be woken to a phone call telling them all about it. Julie had to remain unseen.

She slid down off the bridge onto the bank of the river and walked south. If she made it down to the marina she might be able to break into one of the boat houses the summer people kept there. Last summer Axel had shown her which boathouses had easy locks to pick, and which ones were hardly ever locked at all.

The sky began to fade and brighten as she approached the marina, but it was still very early. There was no one on the docks. She hurried down the farthest jetty and chose a house in a slip between two others where her movement might go unnoticed. She’d been here before, unlike last time the porch window slid easily open and she slipped inside.

She wondered if the people who owned the house boat even remembered it was theirs. No one had visited it in her memory and it was exactly the same as last time she’d been there. There were two cokes and a bottle of water in the fridge. She grabbed the water reasoning it could be refilled so it wasn’t really stealing. She made her way upstairs and out onto the roof deck, grabbing a wall blanket from the linen closet on the way. She curled into one of the reclining deck chairs, pulled the blanket over her swig to the water and then let herself drift into sleep.

A
xel Kehoe watched
with amusement as Julie inched her way down the back porch roof. She’d been sneaking out of the house that way since she’d been twelve or thirteen. She didn’t seem to realize that once she was over the age of majority, her parents couldn’t stop her from leaving the house when she wanted to. Even in the dim light from the streetlamp, Axel could see that Julie was a good 50 pounds lighter than when she left town. He’d heard rumors of what she’d been through and it worried him. He should have never dragged her into that job and he had regretted it ever sense.

Axel was a big man in his late twenties. Second in command to Eduardo Calzone, he knew that he must look bigger, harder, and badder than any of the other gang members if he didn’t want to be challenged on a weekly basis. So he had trained, and continued to train. His hard work paid off; Axel was known as the baddest of the bad in three states. Now he used his training to follow Julie as silently and lethally as a big cat. Not many would be able to see him in the shadows, and those who did would know to stay away.

When Julie headed for the marina, Axel had known where she was going. He cut ahead of her, trotting down the town roads instead of following her along the river. When Julie found the porch window open it was because Axel had opened it for her. When she curled into the deck chair on the roof of the boathouse, he was watching her from the shadows.

He was still watching when the sun rose high enough to rest on her face and she opened her eyes. She did not look surprised to see him but she gathered the blanket tighter around her and her mouth thinned into a grim line. When Axel came to sit on the foot of her lounge chair, she tucked her feet under, pulling her legs further away from him.

“Axel,” she said. He could hear the pain in her voice.

“Julie,” he said. “You’re back.” The pain in her voice stabbed at his heart. She had been his girl, his one love and he had failed her. He had not been able to protect her from himself.

“It’s hard to find a job when you don’t have any skills,” she said, and he could hear pain and anger in her voice now too. “People in the city, they aren’t what they seem.”

“Julie!” he started but he didn’t know what to say, there was nothing to say. He longed to take her in his arms, to hold her and stroke her hair and tell her how very sorry he was.

“Axel,” she said, “what are you doing here?”

“I’m trying to keep you safe,” he said. “Someone from the city followed you.”

“I should’ve known they wouldn’t let me go that easily,” she said. She dropped her head and Axel had to stop himself from reaching out to her. “I don’t know what to do,” she despaired. “I can’t stay here forever. If you found me they could find me too.”

“I have an advantage,” he said. “I know where you live.”

“They’ll be wondering where I am now. Thinking they’ve lost me forever.”

“Come with me. I’ll take you somewhere safe and then I’ll go tell your parents what happened.” He stood up and reached out his hand. She hesitated. He was about to lament; he thought he’d never earn her trust again. She suddenly reached out and took his hand. He pulled her gently to her feet and led her down to the dock.

When they reached the road, Axel pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed a gang wannabe. Then he slid off his hoody and draped it over her shoulders, with the hood drooping low over her face.

“I can’t see where I’m going,” she said. “I’ll fall.”

“I’ll make sure you don’t fall,” he said. “I don’t want anyone to see your face. If they don’t know it’s you, then it’s less likely they’ll rat us out.”

“Why only less likely?” she asked, her eyebrows drawn together as she looked out from under the heavy hood.

“They aren’t stupid,” Axel said. “They’ll see me and make the association. But at least they won’t know for sure.”

It was less than 15 minutes later that black sedan slowed to a stop in front of them. Axel helped Julie into the back and slid into the front passenger seat, directing the driver back to the alley where his truck was parked behind a dumpster.

They switched vehicles, Axel scanning the alley for watchers. He asked Julie to stay low in the seat, waved his grunt away and waited until the sedan was out of sight before pulling away. He drove north along the outskirts of town and pulled onto the highway. Twenty minutes out of town, he pulled back off the highway and drove to the Come On Inn. It was run down and frequented by married men and their younger girlfriends, but it was also discrete. For an extra ten bucks no one would ever know you’d been there. Not even the cops.

He left Julie in the truck and went in the office to register – and pay the extra fee. They parked at the far end of the building and walked up the stairs to a room with a view of the parking lot. It was hot and smelled like damp towels, but Axel believed it was the safest place Julie could be.

Julie pulled off his hoody, and dropped it on the ugly brown and mauve print bed spread. It was worn and matched the bed itself, which had a sizable dip in the middle.

“Why here?” Julie asked. “You couldn’t take me to your apartment?” She sounded a little offended and it put Axel on the defensive.

“I live in the crib,” he explained. “Everyone would know you were there. Some idiot would talk.”

“Oh. Of course.” She picked up the remote and sat on the edge of the bed focusing on the TV.

“I gotta go now, Jules” he said, “but I’ll be back later. Lock the door behind me.”

She nodded and did as he said without saying another word. Axel stomped down the stairs arguing with himself. He’d shown Julie his apartment before she’d left town. She knew what it was like. He had private space, but it was in the middle of a building owned by his boss. The gang leader. The others who lived there knew too much about her. That she’d been forced into prostitution. They would never leave her alone. This was why he was going to have to get free of Eduardo. It wasn’t going to be easy.

He drove the twenty minutes back to town and parked under the building owned by Eduardo. He locked his truck and rode the elevator up to the eleventh floor. There was only one floor above the one he lived on and that floor was entirely made up of Eduardo’s apartment and offices. He even had a roof garden for entertaining clients. It was a class outfit.

Axel showered and dressed in a dark suit, slicking back his hair and slipping his feet into handmade shoes. He looked in the mirror and nodded. He looked good. He was sure that if he’d met Julie while wearing jeans she would have never looked twice at him. But he’d been working, wearing this suit and she’d fallen. Could he make her fall again?

He took the elevator up to the twelfth floor, stepped past the guards in the foyer and knocked at the large double doors. They were black and carved with flowers and swirls. Eduardo said they came from a building in Italy, but to Axel they looked oriental. A small man wearing an apron opened the door and ushered Axel into the living area, where Eduardo sat with a small blond woman. He took one look at Axel in his business suit and sent the woman away, patting her ass as she walked off.

“Sit down Axel,” Eduardo said waving his hand at a couch on the other side of the glass and chrome coffee table. “Have a drink.”

Axel sat but refused the drink. He would need his wits about him if he was going to get out of this all in one piece. He sat upright, his instincts on high alert. He was about to speak when Eduardo preempted him.

“How many years have you been my second, Axel? Is it fifteen years yet?” Eduardo asked.

“Twelve years. Before that I was an enforcer.” Axel didn’t like to think about those years. He’d been young when he’d be recruited as an enforcer, only 21 years old. At the time he thought it was an honor. He’d been stupid. Killing people was not an honor.

“In my experience,” Eduardo went on, “it’s at fifteen years when a second starts thinking about being first. Either taking out his boss, or opening a branch in another city. Are you starting early, Axel? Have you begun to think about taking my place?”

“No. I am loyal,” Axel said, and waited. He knew better than to protest his innocence. That would only make him look guilty to the older man.

“Then why are you here, Axel? We have no business. The town is quiet. I am here with my lovely lady, relaxing and in you come. You are dressed for war and you make me worry.” Eduardo frowned at him, showing his disappointment.

“I want to buy myself out, Eduardo. I know you have invested heavily in me. Training me. Teaching me the business. I am willing to offer you one hundred thousand dollars to release my contract.” It was a long shot, he knew, but he had to try.

Eduardo threw back his head and laughed. And laughed some more. He laughed until his eyes ran with tears and he had to blow his nose. And when he stopped laughing his face was dead serious. Axel wasn’t afraid, but he knew Eduardo wanted him to be.

“One hundred thousand dollars for my best man? You insult me, Axel. If a rival gang came here and offered me that deal, I would shoot him dead where he stood. I see that you undervalue yourself. You are modest and that is a positive trait. But let me make it very clear, no amount of money will buy your freedom from me. When I am too old to hold off the wolves you will step into my position, or you will die. Those are the only ways which you will leave my employ, do you understand me, Axel?” Eduardo’s voice was low and menacing.

Axel didn’t trust his voice to remain neutral in the face of his anger so he didn’t speak. He nodded once.

“Then get out. And don’t come back until I call you. I might change my mind and shoot you instead.” Eduardo’s voice was low and cold.

Axel did as he was asked.