Between Two Wolves and a Hard Place (2 page)

He rises slowly from behind the bed with a weak smile on his face. "Actually, this room is rented under the corporation's name, Kiera." His smile is pathetic. "So if anybody has to leave, it's you."

I stand there swaying. Under the corporation's name. Like my apartment in Brooklyn. Like my car. Everything was streamlined and placed under the name of Iron and Roses. Which now belongs to Marv.

It hits me like a blow to the chest. I've lost everything. Not just my art. Not just my studio. But my apartment. My car. My business savings account. All gone.

The room is spinning. Marv says something, but I can't begin to understand his words.

I pick up my purse and head for the door. I feel nauseous. Everything I've worked for since I arrived in New York. The last three years of my life. All my successes. Gone. Yanked out from under my feet. By Marv, of all people. The man I felt sorry for.

I open the door and stumble out into the hallway. Marv follows a couple of steps behind. "Kiera, listen. If you change your mind, I'd be happy to take you back. There'll always be a place for you at Iron and Roses, yeah? Don't be too proud. I'd love to have you as part of the team."

I turn around and stare at him. Something in my face makes him take a step back and turn pale. "You are a despicable human being, Marvin Travis. You'll be hearing from my attorney."

Then I turn and head toward the elevators. Never mind that I don't have an attorney. Or the money, now, to hire one. I hit the button and wait, feeling Marv watching me from the doorway of what used to be our room. I stare woodenly at nothing, trying to fight back the tears. The feeling that my whole world has crashed down around my ears.

"Hey, Kiera." Marv's voice is tight and ugly. "You're going to need some spending cash. Come back here and let me fuck you in the ass, and I'll pay you fifty bucks. Should be enough for you to get a cab home."

I stiffen, but mercifully the elevator doors open. I step inside and don't want to turn around, but I have to press the Lobby button. Marv is standing in the doorway, grinning at me and giving me the finger. Tears spill over and run down my cheeks. The doors close, and the elevator sinks down. I stumble through the lobby, then out into the Manhattan night.

Oh god. What am I going to do? I've got little over a thousand dollars in my personal checking account. Should I transfer money out of the Iron and Roses savings? I laugh bitterly. Knowing Marv, he's already changed the access code.

I feel lost. Bereft. My night of success has turned into the night my every dream has shattered. I feel sick. I press my hand to my forehead. I can't go home. It's not even my home anymore. That, and I don't want to see the space I've shared with Marv these past several years. The memories, good and bad.

"Ma'am?" The valet steps forward hesitantly.

I dig into my purse and pull out my ticket. "Here."

He's a handsome kid, and I look away from his concern. He runs off. It's not my car anymore, but I'll let Marv come after it. But where am I going to go? I can't stand the thought of talking to my New York friends. Trying to explain to them how Marv just screwed me. How stupid I've been. How incredibly, mind-blowingly naive.

I think of my parents. It's only a little past nine o'clock. My dad will be reading by the fireplace, my mother probably working on her latest knitting project, one of the weird sweaters that nobody ever wants to wear. I think of home, and I'm swamped by a sudden, almost violent desire to go back there. Home to western Massachusetts. It's only a three hour drive.

The valet drives up with my Volkswagen and jumps out. I get in, and he closes the door, then leans into the open window. "Ma'am, I don't know who he is, but trust me when I say he's not worth it."

I glance up at him in surprise, but all I can do is nod and drive away. I can't handle even basic human interactions right now. I have to go somewhere safe. I have to go home.

Back to Honeycomb Falls.

Chapter 2

To say I'm distraught by the time I reach Honeycomb Falls is to put it way too lightly. There's nothing worse than spending three hours in your own company, trapped in a dark car with nothing to do but go over every mistake, every chance I had missed to avoid this fate. Several times I wanted to pull over and puke, just thinking about Marv, about the many times I should have broken up with him. Everybody goes on about hindsight being 20/20, but hindsight was blinding me. So many obvious times I should have dumped him! I lost friends because of him, ruined business opportunities. Who knows how much quicker I might have scored a gallery showing without him?

Instead here I am driving home, tears streaming down my cheeks, with Marv back in our hotel room, no doubt calling hookers to come celebrate with him. Worse, mingled with my shattering hatred is shame. Humiliation. My mind keeps shying away from this one basic truth: Marv would never have gotten away with this if I had been a better businesswoman. If I had taken the time to read the small print. I can blame him, but in the end, the real fault is mine.

Which is why I slow down as I drive by Fool's Gold, my old hangout bar from the summer before I left home. I almost can't believe it's still open, its yellow neon sign lighting up the night. Reflexively I press down on the brakes and pull over onto the side of the road. I stare at the bar's reflection in my rearview mirror.

I don't think. I do a U-turn and pull into the parking lot. There's a decent amount of cars there. I park next to a beat-up pickup truck and kill the engine. Wait. Should I? You can't revisit the past, can you? I used to come here with Dean and Drake, my two best friends during my teenage years. Right up till everything went bad, and we stopped talking. Right up till I fled home for that glassblowing workshop in Venice.

So many memories. I get out of the car and shiver, hands thrust in my coat pockets, shoulders up by my ears. It's early spring, which means there's still a mean chill in the night air. I can hear muffled music. Borne along by nostalgia as much as anything else, I cross the parking lot to the door, and pull it open.

I can almost see my teenage self right before me. My curly brown hair wild and untamed, laughing and wearing the cowboy boots that were my call sign that summer. Dean and Drake right behind me, grinning, ready for another wild night.

Or as wild a night as you could pull off in these hills.

I smile wistfully and enter, moving to the bar. The owner, Max, went for the Alaskan theme in a big way, and everything is made of varnished wood. A huge stuffed polar bear stands in one corner, and black and white photographs of 19th century gold diggers are framed on the walls. Two pool tables are set in the back, and a small stage is raised off the ground in one corner.

"Evening," says the bartender, and I feel a flash of disappointment when I don't recognize him, followed immediately by amusement at my own ridiculous expectations. He's a good-looking guy, his smile practiced and easy. "What can I get you?"

I almost ask for five shots of tequila, but at the last second I smile and say, "A beer and a shot, thanks." Then I sit on one of the stools and simply look around. A tapestry of memories appears before my eyes. Memories I've forgotten, suppressed, even. These past few years everything has revolved around Iron and Roses. My travels to different workshops. My laser focus on my art. I've had no time for my past. No time for the difficult feelings, the pain and raw emotions I ran away from. Thoughts of Dean. Thoughts of Drake.

I'm halfway through my beer, having washed down my shot, when the front door opens and three people enter. Something about them draws everybody's eye. Two men, one woman. All of them are breathtakingly attractive. Now, I've been in my share of fancy New York restaurants, bars, and clubs. I've seen models walk in through the door, seen how they draw people's eyes. But this is different. These three are more than just attractive. There's something predatory about their intensity. Something dangerous. And - something familiar?

The man in front is tall, broad-shouldered, his hair shaved close to the scalp so that it's little more than a dark shadow. His face is ridiculously handsome, almost harshly so, his eyes brooding and dark. I feel a flush of desire. He's wearing a black jacket over oil-stained jeans, a white shirt hugging his obviously muscled torso.

Just one step behind him is a taller man, thick black hair falling to his shoulders, square-jawed and pale-skinned. His eyes are a searing blue, the kind of blue you only see in the hearts of glaciers or the bottoms of California swimming pools, yet there's something kinder about him, his expression more open, less guarded than the first man. And oh. He's just as smokingly hot, with large, strong hands, and oh-so-kissable lips.

I can't breathe. I get that tunnel-vision thing, where the rest of the bar seems to recede, and all I can see is these two men. I faintly register the gorgeous woman standing behind them, but I can't tear my eyes off their faces. Then they turn. And look at me. And their eyes go wide with surprise.

Oh shit.

Dean and Drake.

I spin back to the bar, heart hammering like a crazy asylum inmate trying to break free. The bartender looks at me in surprise, and I raise a finger. "Tequila," I whisper. "Please. Now. Double."

I take a long pull from my beer. I can escape. Forget the tequila. I can just sprint to the ladies' room and escape out the window. Would I still fit? I've put on a little more weight since the last time I used that window to get away. I take another gulp from my beer, and then take my shot and throw it back, wincing and chasing it with the rest of my beer. Please no. Not tonight. Not now.

Back in the day, when Dean, Drake and I were inseparable, I developed the ability to sense when they were around. I could tell when one of them came up behind me. It became a game - they would try to surprise me, and I'd always turn at the last moment, knowing one of them had crept up on me.

I lower my beer. That sixth sense hasn't left me, it seems. I can feel them both stepping up to me. I bite my lower lip hard enough to wince, wish I could dash to the bathroom at the very least to check my hair and makeup, and then sigh and turn around to face them.

There they are. My childhood werewolf friends. Dean's glaring at me, while Drake's smiling, and of course Drake speaks first. "Kiera?"

I raise a hand and give a little wave. "Hi." Oh, how they've grown. How many years has it been since I saw them last? I do the math: one year in Venice, two in Seattle, three in New York. Six years.

Dean's voice is hard. "What are you doing here?"

I raise my chin. "Actually, I was enjoying a beverage." I take up my beer and turn it around as if to read the label for the first time. "Heineken."

Dean's face darkens. Some things never change, it seems. Even during our golden summer, he was prone to bad moods, imperious and tempestuous.

"Hey," I say, peering at his neck, where I can see ink spiraling up in a gorgeous design. "Is that a tattoo?"

Before either man can speak, their companion steps forward, insinuating herself between them and sliding her arm through theirs. "Dean? Drake? Who is this?"

Something about her voice rubs me the wrong way immediately. There's a calculated and utterly false tone of lightness to it. She's tall, statuesque even, with gorgeous ash brown hair falling down her back to the small of her spine. Her face is that of a model, her lips bee-stung, her eyes almond shaped and mesmerizing. She looks like a Hollywood actress, and I immediately feel dumpy, fat, and awkward in comparison.

Dean's still glaring at me, as if my presence here at Fool's Gold is a personal affront, so Drake answers. "This is Kiera."

"
This
is Kiera?" Her tone of incredulity is so insulting that my eyes go wide and I have to restrain my impulse to wallop her across her pretty-model face. Ooh, a thousand insults come flashing to my mind. My mother always told me to bite my tongue, to not give in to the impulse to cut into people. Just as I resolve to take the high road, she turns to Dean.

"Funny. I thought she'd be prettier."

The tequila must have hit. That and the exhaustion, anger, bitterness and shame all come together in the worst possible way. I came in here to find a little respite from the cruelties of the world, and instead I get this?

I take my beer bottle by the neck and smash its base against the corner of the bar. The glass shatters, sending the last of the beer splattering, and I raise the jagged edge to the woman. "Glass knives, bitch. Get the hell out of my face."

Absolutely everybody in the bar is staring at me. I see a large man from beside the door begin to hustle over. I only have eyes for the woman, whose eyes have gone wide. This she clearly didn't expect. Then, to my horror, she leans forward with a wicked smile. "You don't have the balls to cut me. Do you,
Kiera
?" The way she says my name is so derisive and mocking that I see red.

"You know, normally you might be right. But tonight? Bad call." Part of my mind is screaming at me to stop, to put down the beer bottle, to act like a sane, rational person. But that part is currently very small and completely overwhelmed by the uncivilized, crazed, grief-stricken and slightly drunk part of me that has just been pushed over the edge. Marv. Iron and Roses. Dean and Drake. My loss, my pain, all of it comes together and finds focus in this woman's face. I draw back the broken bottle and swing, intending to rake it across her chest.

Dean stops me cold, his fingers clamping around my wrist with iron strength. I glare at him, and his gold eyes are flared wide. Oh god, I forgot how beautiful his eyes are. How utterly captivating. I just stare into his face, the woman temporarily forgotten.

"Drop the bottle, Kiera." His voice is tight. Commanding. Absolute.

I do so. There's no winning against Dean. I learned that early on as a kid during wrestling games that always ended up with my being pinned underneath his muscled body, my chest heaving for breath, and him smiling quietly, not even having broken a sweat.