Secret Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 5) (4 page)

“Honey…”

“No.” She stood up now. “I have to go and get ready.”

“I’ll drive you to the airport,” King said, desperate to make this right. “I’ll take you, yeah?”

“I booked a taxi,” Naomi said. “So don’t worry about it.”

She walked across the living room, and he watched her go. She paused, turned, glanced at the TV again.

“I love you for going out there night after night and taking down the bad guys, babe,” she said slowly. “I love you for saving people trapped in horrible situations, for getting kidnapped kids home, for protecting the defenseless. I love knowing that every time you come back from whatever you were doing, and wherever you were, the world is a safer place.”

King heard the ‘but’ coming a mile away.

“But ever since you struck that deal with Ace Cuddy and he started feeding you intel, you’re coming home badly hurt, and you won’t tell me what happened. You’re quiet, and you look angry
all
the time. You don’t pay attention when I talk, you don’t remember things that I say.”

“Naomi –” He cleared his throat. “I can’t slow down, baby. Not yet. Too much is going on, and we need to make our moves
now
. The kind of stuff we’re dealing with, it’s time-sensitive. You get me? It’s like… we have to be there to intercept the shipment, or catch the top guy. Things like this can’t be delayed or pushed. This isn’t my time-table and I don’t control it, as much as I wish I did.”

“No, I get it.” She gave him a small smile. “I really
get
it, Matt, I promise you. What you do is so important and it changes lives, and you need to be flexible and ready to go at any second. I know what you do isn’t safe or clean… I know it’s dangerous and dirty, and I know that you don’t want any of that in my head. You can’t stop doing it, and I know that, and I don’t
want
that. I’m not saying that I want you to
stop
.”

“So what
are
you saying?” he asked, almost afraid of the answer.

She bit her lip, thinking. “I don’t know what I’m saying… and that’s the problem.”

Stunned and worried, he watched her head down the hallway to their bedroom. What he heard next showed him just how bad things were getting – it was a sound that he’d never heard come between them, not since they’d first gotten together. Even when she’d been furious at him a few months earlier, and booted him on to the sofa for a week, she’d never done
this
.

Fuck. She actually shut the bedroom door
.

Chapter Three

That night, Jax Hamill glanced around Dangerous Curves, checking the vibe. It was pretty relaxed for a change, he was relieved to observe. Things had been far too tense far too often lately… but no surprise there. It seemed that every single goddamn time he’d turned around over the past few months, some crisis was sitting there, just hanging out and waiting to explode. And when it
did
explode, it was nothing less than devastating.

At that thought, his dark-green eyes zeroed in on Gabriela Torres as she headed in to the staff room for her meal break. Jax
still
couldn’t believe sometimes that Gabi was here, and safe, and whole; normally, a woman marked for death by the Fallen Angels MC would be just that. It had been damn close – way too close, in her boyfriend Aidan Carter’s opinion, and he wasn’t alone in thinking that – but she’d come up and out of the earth alive. Shaken, damaged, traumatized. But breathing.

The Fallen Angels had carried on with their reign of terror when they’d decided to go after Mac and Mirrie. Mac had conspired with King to defuse that whole situation, and Mac had been the one damaged that time.

He’d chosen it, of course, and King and King’s Men had had Mac’s back the whole damn time… but there had been more than a slight chance that the former MC President, Trigger, would simply shoot Mac in the head before King could get in position, and make his decisive move. Trigger
had
, after all, been given his nickname for his preferred method of killing people, and the man hadn’t been shy about just going for it.

Trigger was dead now, though, dead at King’s hand – or rather, at his former VP Ace Cuddy’s gun – and now Ace was the President of the Fallen Angels. He was also firmly in King’s pocket, and was proving himself to be one hell of an informant on local slime bucket Kirk Jensen’s criminal activities.

So far, and from what Jax was able to piece together by watching the news, and observing King’s comings-and-goings and his injuries, Ace had provided King’s Men with intel on no less than nine major operations that Jensen had going on all over the state. Jax knew – without being told a word – that King’s people had busted open and demolished every single one of them. Jensen was howling, and the ripples and repercussions were huge, and they were being felt right there at Dangerous Curves.

In some cases, Jax’s clientele wasn’t made up of Denver’s most upstanding citizens, and many of them had been directly affected by Jensen’s loss of drug and prostitution chains and distributors. Many times over the past few weeks, Jax and his staff had heard the bar patrons bitching to each other over a few drinks about a formerly-lucrative shady business going bust overnight, and with no warning. Jax was pretty sure he knew who had been behind every one of these surprise stings, even if he wasn’t privy to any of the details.

Jax wasn’t sorry to see Jensen’s ass being kicked, of course, and King was even less so. The man was sitting there now, drinking a beer and saying not much. Jax observed his friend, saw the severe damage done to his face. He’d asked, of course – they all had – about what had happened, but King wasn’t talking. They all knew it had to do with an op, and they guessed it had been a rough one, if the TV coverage dominating the airwaves that day was anything to go by. Beyond that, it was a fucking mystery, like so much of what King’s Men did.

Jax caught Mac’s eye now, and the two men exchanged hard looks. Yeah, they were worried about King, for damn sure, but no way he’d stand for that. King was a good guy, a stand-up guy, but he was also a brutal, lethal man who’d made it his life’s mission to handle shit that was even too hot for the cops to touch sometimes.

King would never let anyone feel sorry for him for getting hurt while rescuing kidnapped kids, or saving trafficked girls, or shutting down a meth lab. He’d fucking
die
first… and Jax’s biggest fear was that that was
exactly
what was going to happen one day. Maybe even one day soon.

Jax shifted a bit, and thought about that. If he, Mac, and Aidan were good and freaked out about King, then how the hell was Naomi coping? Even though Jax didn’t know her all that well since she never came to Curves, he knew she was a tough, smart, kind woman. She’d see the need for King to follow up on each and every lead given to him by Ace – and she’d have to be a nervous wreck each and every time King walked out their door to follow up on said lead.

As if he could hear Jax’s troubled thoughts, King turned to stare at Jax. His gray eyes were hard, as always, and showed exactly nothing of what the man was thinking. Yeah, King was hardcore and a killer… but he wasn’t fucking invincible. He could get hurt. He could get dead.

King saw the look on Jax’s face, and he almost sighed. It was the same look he’d seen on Naomi’s face that morning, a kind of still, silent watchfulness. Everyone was waiting to see if he’d open his mouth and start to talk… and talking was just about the last thing that he could do.

The truth was that King and his people were taken aback at just how dirty and deep Kirk Jensen’s criminal connections and operations were and went. Like a gigantic, slimy octopus, the man had his revolting tentacles everywhere, and in everything. King had thought he’d been prepared to finally get a full view of the monstrous underbelly that was Jensen’s world – but he hadn’t been.
That
shook him up. And if it shook
him
, what the hell would it to do his friends? Or, dear God, to Naomi?

No. He wasn’t talking about any of it with anyone but King’s Men. His priority was to keep the people he loved and cared about safe, and away from all this ugliness… and that meant shutting the hell up. It
also
meant putting up with lots of looks like the ones being directed his way right now.

Uneasily, King thought about Naomi’s departure that morning. She’d kissed him, thank Christ, and let him hold her close. Then she’d pulled away and given him one of her searching, sweet looks, one of the looks that he adored and lived for.

“I’m not going to call you, OK?” she’d said quietly.

When he’d started to protest, she’d laid her finger across his lips gently, silencing him.

“I don’t want to interrupt you in the middle of something dangerous, Matt. You can’t be distracted… that kind of thing gets you and your team hurt. Maybe worse. And you’re sleeping such crazy hours now, I don’t feel good about calling during the day anymore. You need your rest so you can focus when things get intense.”

He’d stayed quiet, just watching her beautiful face.

“You call me, when you can. Just remember that my meeting schedule with the art gallery owners is full-on, so I’ll have my cell off a lot. Leave a message or text if I don’t pick up.”

“OK,” he’d said softly. “I’m gonna miss you, baby.”

She’d just walked out the door then, and his heart had jumped out of his chest and stowed away in her luggage. He knew she needed to expand her Art With Heart business, to get her artists’ work in different cities and states – but the timing fucking sucked.

He looked up again, saw that Aidan was now giving him a wary look. King took a swig of beer, decided to deflect everyone’s attention away from him. He turned to Jax and said, “So. How’re the wedding plans going?”

Jax gave him a crooked smile, one tinged with a bit of sadness, one that said that he knew precisely what King was up to. He shook his head but he played along, as King had known that he would.

“Good,” Jax said, running his hands through his dark hair, messing it up even more than usual. “Sarah’s going dress shopping next week with her Mom, and she’s already spinning in circles about it.”

“Yeah?” Mac said, glad to have something to talk about besides King’s wrecked face. “She going with Annie?”

“Yeah. They’re both so damn excited, it’s unbelievable.” Jax grinned fondly as he thought about Sarah’s beautiful eyes alight with happiness. “Our living room coffee table has been taken over by bridal magazines, man. All I’ve been
hearing
about these past few days is is lace
too
traditional, and is a waltz-length dress flattering to curvy legs, and are sheer sleeves Sarah’s friends.”

Mac and King stared at him in utter incomprehension, drank some beer in self-defense against having to answer. Some days, they
still
couldn’t believe that Jax Hamill – quite probably the biggest man-whore to ever set foot in one of Curves’ back fuck rooms – was getting married. But he was, and his friends had never seen him happier, or more at peace.

“Oh,” Mac said brightly, trying to sound supportive, and like he had a clue. “Uh-huh. Sounds great.”

“Well, actually,” Aidan piped up, pouring out a beer and handing it to Kenleigh to take to her table of clients. “The trend for wedding dresses next spring is long, sheer sleeves with a bit of lace, which would look great on Sarah. Also? Tell her that she doesn’t have to go white or beige or cream, yeah? Blue is hot right now for brides.”

The men switched their bewildered stares to Aidan. Even Jax looked stunned.

“Uh… blue?” King said. “
Blue
wedding dresses?”

“Not
all
blue, like blue all over, and not bright blue,” Aidan explained. “Really pale material, and maybe darker blue on some of the details, like around the waist or on the bodice. With her blue eyes and red hair, I think that Sarah could
totally
get away with a blue wedding dress.”

“What the
fuck
, man?” Mac said. “What are you
doing
, knowing this shit?”

“Gabi.” Aidan’s gold eyes lit up as he grinned at their befuddled expressions. “She’s in Sarah’s wedding party, and so she’s been coming home from their coffee meetings bubbling over with all this information. I’m basically held hostage, and I’m absorbing it against my damn will.” He shot King a glance. “But
you’d
know all about this too, yeah? Naomi’s in the wedding party, right? Doesn’t she come back from seeing the ladies, and want to talk about the latest styles in wedding dresses?”

King looked away. “Uh. Yeah. Yeah, I suppose she does. But…”

He stopped, torn between wanting to keep his personal shit personal, and actually talking to his friends for once.

“What?” Mac said, surprised at King’s uncharacteristic hesitancy. “But what, man?”

“But… well.” King sighed, decided to just go for it. “I – I haven’t been home that much lately. Not when she’s there, anyway.”

Three sets of eyes studied him closely. The men waited, saw that King was actually fidgeting. He was twisting one of his heavy silver rings around and around, and his discomfort was palpable. Right away, they were all on high alert.

“OK.” Mac kept his voice low. “Where have you been?”

“Out.”

“We got that, man. Out where?”

“It doesn’t matter. What
does
matter is that Naomi’s not doing so well with it lately.”

King looked up now, met Aidan’s bright gaze, saw understanding flash across his face. Naomi and Aidan were both alcoholics, and so ‘not doing so well’ for them could mean many different things. None of them very good.

Mac also knew about Naomi’s battle with alcohol, but Jax didn’t, so the other men said nothing more. It had been Naomi’s choice to share that personal information with them, and there was no goddamn
way
they were betraying her trust.

King, Mac and Aidan exchanged knowing, worried looks, and Jax saw it.

“What?” Jax said quietly.

King shook his dark head. “Nothing. I don’t think she’s handling all these ops and stake-outs and take-downs well, is all.”

“But this is nothing new,” Mac said. “You’ve always been involved in this kind of thing. When you guys first got together, she knew about King’s Men. You guys talked about your job and what it means, right?”

“Sure we did.” King shrugged his massive shoulders. “But when we first started dating, most of my time was spent at the garage, you know. My involvement in King’s Men was actually pretty controlled. I outsourced most of the work, and I’d be hands-on maybe once every three months. When we moved in together, things got more intense, with all this Fallen Angels shit, but I promised Naomi that things would calm down. They did for a while, but since I flipped the tables on Ace and got him to keep me in the loop about Jensen, I’m hands-on pretty much
all
the time… and we’re fucking busy. Me and the team are stretched, actually, and I’m thinking about hiring at least four new people to handle the work that just keeps coming.”

“OK,” Aidan said calmly. “So how often are you out on ops now?”

“Twice a week, at least, usually three times.” King’s deep voice took on the tone of a confession. “Last week, it was almost every night.”

“
What
?” Jax stared at King, horrified. “You’re out doing dangerous shit every other night?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus Christ.” Mac was stunned. He’d seen with his own damn eyes what one of King’s ops looked like: it had involved killing a violent, dangerous man and blackmailing another, and he was sure that
that
had been a slow, tame night. “Why didn’t you say something to us?”

“What’s to say?” King retorted. “You guys know what I do. You know who’s in my pocket. You’ve seen me show up here these past few weeks, beaten up and barely walking. You’ve seen the news. What the fuck did you
think
was going on?”

They fell silent. Yeah, they’d known.

“And Naomi?” Aidan said. “How much does she know?”

“Nothing concrete.”

“Christ, King.” Mac huffed out a breath. “C’mon, man, that’s not OK, and you know it. You can’t just disappear almost every night, and show up back home looking like this –” Mac waved his hands at King’s face, “– and not tell her
something
.”

“I don’t
want
her to know,” King said. “She doesn’t need to know all this dark, evil shit. This ain’t her world, and I don’t want her anywhere near any of it.”

“But she
is
near it,” Aidan pointed out. “She’s near it when she’s near you.”