Rush - Blue Devils MC Book 2 (Book 1 Included FREE for a short time only!) (6 page)

“It’s a long story,” Ella said with a laugh. “I’m from New York, which I’m sure you could’ve guessed from the accent.”

Hannah grinned at her, and said drily, “Yeah, I may have caught on to that.”

“Well, anyway,” Ella waved her hand in the air, waving all of that away, “I came here to do an interview and fell in love with Lain. I know you two don’t get along, but he’s a hell of a guy, truly he is. Maybe if you got to know him better…” she trailed off hopefully.

Hannah wanted to laugh.
Get to know Lain better?!
They were inseparable the last year of high school. If you were going to date Rush, you damn well better be okay with Lain being on every date with you, because they did
everything
together.

Okay, so maybe Lain didn’t join us in bed…

But Hannah knew everything there was to know about Lain. She knew he was the reason why Rush didn’t choose her. He was the reason why Rush didn’t leave Copper Lode. He was the reason that Hannah had been lonely for the last 13 years, a deep loneliness that never went away, no matter how many people she was around.

‘Knowing Lain better’ sure as hell wasn’t going to solve a damn thing.

“Let me try my dad again,” Hannah said instead. She couldn’t bring herself to burst Ella’s delusion that she and Lain were going to become best buddies if only they shared a beer or something.
As if…

And thank God above, her dad actually answered this time. “Hello?” he said, his voice scratchy. Tired. Sleepy.

“Hi Dad, it’s me, Hannah. Look, I, ummmm…I have a favor to ask you.”

Chapter Six

Hannah Blue

Hannah walked into the chapel without knocking. She ignored the anger that flashed across Lain’s face and announced to the group, “I’ve called my Dad. I believe he’s calling a press conference right now. I saw a TV out there - I’d like to watch and see what he says.”

She turned and walked out into the main part of the clubhouse, not checking to see if anyone followed her. Not even Rush. She was going to watch, and they could choose whether to pull their heads out of their asses or not - it was up to them.

She found the remote on the bar and began flipping through the channels until she found Channel 7, the local TV station. Since she was international news, according to Ella, she figured the local station could probably find time in their programming schedule to work in a press conference about her.

“…about to start. The daughter of the local Wright family has been missing since early this morning, apparently the victim of a second kidnapping in less than a week.”
Breaking News
in brilliant red font was scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Hannah bit her lip as she watched. The whole thing was so surreal, it was hard to even fathom they were talking about
her
. She reached up and felt the bandage, covering where the bullet had grazed her skull.
Thank God that
Chupa
had such shitty aim!

And then there was her Dad, standing in front of a group of reporters and Hannah felt her heart swell up with pride. Even as tired as he looked, he was handsome, as always. She felt an arm slip around her shoulders and she gulped back a yelp of surprise. She looked up at Rush but he wasn’t looking at her. He was watching her dad on the TV and she wondered for a moment how he felt about her father. Maybe he felt the same way about her dad that she did about Lain.

What a weird thought to have.
For the last 13 years, Hannah had been sure that Rush was wrong, Lain was wrong, John was wrong, the club was wrong. Maybe, just maybe, she’d been a little bit wrong, too. The world tilted a little at the thought, and she leaned gratefully into Rush’s side. He caressed her arm and she felt tingles shooting up her arm at his touch.

God, she’d missed him. She hadn’t realized just how much.

“This morning,” her dad said, starting the press conference, giving Hannah a welcome interruption to her conflicting thoughts, “around 3 a.m., I arranged to have my daughter moved to a private facility.” He was serious, he was believable, and if Hannah didn’t know any better, she never would’ve guessed he was lying his ass off. “I had reason to believe that her life was still in danger, and I wanted her moved in the middle of the night without telling
anyone,
including hospital staff, so as to make sure the transfer was completely safe. She has gone through enough in the last week; I could not bear to have anything further happen to her.”

The reporters began shouting questions and Dad held up a hand to stave them off. “In all other ways, the hospital did an admirable job of my daughter’s care. It is not often that a case like this comes through, and I believe that there was simply no protocol in place to protect her like she needed. I would be happy to meet with hospital officials later, in private, to go over my concerns so that in future cases, the patient is as protected as they need to be.

“Finally, I ask for privacy during this trying time. Hannah is recuperating from a gunshot wound she received while attempting to protect the lives of her students. I believe that she deserves the privacy she needs to recover from this incident. Thank you.”

He turned and walked away with a couple of cops escorting him inside of the hospital, ignoring the shouts of the reporters.

“Well, that was certainly a turn of events none of us were exp—”

Lain hit the power button on the remote and the TV went dead.

“Again!” he yelled, turning, glaring at Hannah. Her eyes widened and she stared back at him in shock. She’d expected him to be happy. She’d solved the problem, hadn’t she? She’d had to beg her father to trust her and overlook Rush’s involvement in the whole thing. He’d seen what their first breakup had done to Hannah, and hadn’t exactly been thrilled with her plan, but being the supportive father that he was, he got on national TV and lied his ass off anyway. How
dare
Lain get angry about that!

Rush pulled her up against him protectively. “Now hold on a—”

“Again, you made a choice that affected
my
club,” he jammed a finger into his chest, advancing towards her like an avenging angel, “and didn’t even fucking bother asking me about it!”

“Lain, I’m the one who told her to do it,” Ella jumped in, placing her hand on his arm. He stopped and looked down at her and then back at Hannah. She could see the wheels turning in his mind - was it true? How could he manage to stay angry with Hannah but not get angry with Ella? Because he sure as hell didn’t want to think anything but the absolute worst about Hannah. That would’ve been obvious to a blind man.

“I told her what your concerns were, and we came up with that plan,” Ella said, and finally, painfully, Lain relented.

“Well, it does solve a couple of the problems,” he said begrudgingly. Hannah fought to hide her smile. She’d never seen Lain act like that around a girl before. Ella really did have him wrapped around her pinky finger.

He stared at Hannah a little while longer and finally said decisively, “Rush, take her back to your house. She needs a place to recuperate that isn’t a clubhouse or a hospital that doesn’t give a fuck about its patients’ safety. I’ll contact the Copper Lode police and arrange for them to meet you two at your house to take her full statement. I’ve got shit to do; I’ll come over when the police show up.”

He turned and walked away, pulling Ella close to his side as they walked, and Hannah heard Ella’s laughter spill out as Lain whispered something in her ear. She was pretty sure his “shit to do” included fucking Ella, and based on Ella’s grin, she was also pretty sure that this was a permanent item on Lain’s to-do list.

The other bikers drifted off, probably to take a nap - getting up at four in the morning had to be rough if you’d only gone to bed at two - and Rush pulled her to him in a bear hug. “I’m proud of you, Blue. Lain just needs some time to come around. I think he’s mostly pissed because he didn’t think to pull that stunt himself.”

She grinned up at him. “Yeah, well, I didn’t either. Ella’s a hell of a firecracker. Remind me to never piss her off. She’s got a devious streak a mile wide.”

“That’d be his Ella all right,” Rush said, and laughed. “I don’t think Lain quite knows what he got himself into just yet, and I’m not going to be the one to tell him.”

They walked outside into the bright sunshine, already hot at 9 a.m. He swung onto his motorcycle and she slid in behind him, shockingly growing a little more comfortable with riding. She’d feel better when she had a helmet on, but she was surprised to find that she didn’t abhor riding a motorcycle like she’d always expected she would.

She snuggled her face against Rush’s back and closed her eyes as they roared through town. They came to a stop in front of…

She looked at the house - mansion, really - in front of her, and then up and down the street. Then back to the house.

“Rush, is this the old Miller house??” She swung her leg off the bike, and started walking up to the mansion that didn’t look a damn thing like the decrepit old mansion she and Rush had made out in during high school.

Okay, the mansion we fucked in, let’s be honest.

It was a Copper High School tradition - slip into the abandoned house through the back door and then let the make-out sessions begin. There was a piece of shit couch in the living room that was the site for more lost virginities than that couch really had any business claiming. It was old, dusty, and for some reason, just the coolest.

“Yeah, I bought it about ten years ago,” Rush said at her elbow.

“Oh my God, I can’t believe it!” she exclaimed. “All of the windows are there, and the trim seems to be in one piece, rather than, you know, hanging at weird angles.” Actually, the mansion looked much better than her glib words gave credence to - instead of the broken, jagged windows of before, Rush had installed old leaded windows with colored glass. The porch, which had been sagging and in danger of falling in at any moment when she was in high school, was now straight and simply gorgeous, with carved wood details that lent the mansion a stately but friendly personality.

She drank the lines in with her eyes. “How long was the Miller mansion uninhabited before you bought it??” she asked, turning to him finally, tearing her eyes away from the miracle in front of her.

“Ten years, although it sure looked like it’d been abandoned for a hundred,” he said with a laugh. “Birds had been nesting in an upstairs bedroom for a while, and I had to hire guys in hazmat suits to come in and clean it all out, because the ammonia from bird shit can make you ill if you breathe it in. It’s been…a hell of a project. I’d say that you’d never believe everything I did to the place, except you saw it at its worst, so I think you know
exactly
what I did to the place.

“C’mon,” he said, grabbing her hand, “if you think the outside is stunning, wait until you see what I did to the inside.”

He pulled her up the front walkway and into the gorgeous leaded double doors that served as the front entryway. They stepped inside and the sight literally took her breath away.

This…this was where she and Rush had screwed around in during high school?

No.

Fucking.

Way.

From the gorgeous trim work to the crown molding to the stately chandelier to the gleaming wood floors, it was like a whole new house. Fucking
gorgeous
house. “Was that crown molding there in high school??” she asked, astounded. It’d seemed like…well, considering their amorous activities here, and, you know, the position of her body during said amorous activities, that she would’ve noticed something like that.

Okay, maybe not.
Rush was too fucking sexy and it’d been hard to remember to breathe during their fuck sessions, let alone stare up at the crown molding.

“Most of it. Some of it had deteriorated so badly or had simply fallen off completely, that I’d had to pay for a local carpenter to replicate the missing portions so I could install it to match. Then I painted the whole thing so you couldn’t tell where the replication ends and the original begins.”

Hannah looked at him and couldn’t help it - she laughed. “Oh my God, the bad boy biker did all of this. You do know that paying for replicate crown molding so you can restore your piece of shit mansion automatically takes you off the bad boy list, right?!”

“Dammit, there goes my membership to that club,” he said with a grin.

“This is just…this is amazing.”

She heard the slow clicking of nails on wood then, and looked up to see a black lab, white in its muzzle, lumber slowly into the room.

“Turbo?” she said. The dog’s tail began to wag and he moved with increased speed towards her. “Oh God, Rush, he was just a puppy during high school. I can’t believe you still have him!” Turbo nudged his nose into her hand, begging for pettings, tail going a hundred miles a minute. He didn’t seem to have arthritis there.

“I think he remembers you!” Rush said with a laugh as Hannah dropped to her knees in front of Turbo and hugged him. He licked her ear and she squealed with laughter, which only encouraged him more. She buried her face in his fur and he nosed her hair, smelling her. After all this time, he was making sure she was okay.

As she finally got up and they began to wander around the house, Turbo stayed on Hannah’s heels, never letting her leave his sight for a moment. It was obvious that he didn’t want Hannah disappearing on him again. Hannah would occasionally reach down and pet him absentmindedly, which sent his tail into a frenzy every time. Hannah loved it. She hadn’t dared to get a pet, not with her hobo lifestyle, and she hadn’t realized how much she missed having a dog until now.

They toured the house and she oohh’d and aahh’d over every detail of Rush’s home, which was great fun until she was struck with the painful realization that this house was the perfect symbol of why they didn’t work out after high school. She’d wanted to go to college somewhere exotic (or at least not Arizona, for God’s sakes) and then travel the world. She wanted to be a schoolteacher so she could make a difference, sure, but it didn’t hurt that she would have summers off. She’d spent the nine years since graduation traveling to every continent in the world - including Antarctica - and having a grand time. She hadn’t wanted to settle down, not even with Rush.

But now…as she listened to him talk passionately about the differences in farm sink styles and replication lighting and refinished hardwood floors, she realized that she hadn’t had any of this…any meaning in her life.

Meaning had come from teaching underprivileged students in rundown areas for a year or two, and then moving on to the next school in the next country over. Meaning had come from spending her summers taking outrageously exotic trips all over the world. And it had been great and fun and liberating, but in the end, what did she have to show for it? Other than having some great stories to tell around the dinner table, she hadn’t built anything lasting.