In Too Deep (The Lovers Duet) (2 page)

I COULD STILL remember the call like it happened yesterday.

As I surfaced from a deep sleep and awoke with a hangover the size of Utah, I realized the call
had
taken place last night and my brother was either dead or in deep shit. Either way, it wasn’t a good way to start a new day.

Linx was already up and about. I looked over at the clock and realized it was almost ten-thirty in the morning. He never slept in and probably took pity on me and all the Macallan I’d nursed the night before, worried about my brother and whether or not he’d been shot and killed while I’d talked to some Northern Irish bitch.

It didn’t matter to me I was half-Irish myself. I would blow that whore’s brains out if I had a gun and would go on to live a long, happy and healthy life.

Fuck it, this was Trey we were talking about and he was the only family I had left.

Technically, that wasn’t true but my parents and brother were dead to me and since I had no idea where Witsec took former FBI agents and their families to hide out, they would remain that way.

I only had my husband, two step-sons and a brother who might or might not have been taking a dirt nap in a filthy, dilapidated part of the world buried in the bowels known as the UK. True, Northern Ireland shared a land mass with Ireland proper but it might as well be another country and since it was officially a part of the Crown’s property, it really wasn’t the Emerald Green Isle after all.

I got up and felt like shit. My head pounded with a force that wouldn’t quit and I felt like road kill run over twice and then torn into a million pieces for good measure.

I knew a shower and a really strong cup of coffee would go a long way so my first stop was my bathroom. I walked straight to the shower, opened the frosted glass doors, and turned on the deluxe shower heads until the water was almost hot enough to scald.

I stood there and allowed the water to wash over my body and wet my hair before I scrubbed myself from head to toe as if my life depended on it and afterwards, washed and conditioned my hair.

By the time I stepped out of the shower, dried off, applied scented moisturizer and donned a pair of jeans and short-sleeved burn-out t-shirt with Winter’s Regret’s logo, I felt somewhat human. My hair was another matter altogether. I brushed it out and slipped it into a high ponytail though it was still damp.

How could I possibly go downstairs and face Linx knowing what I knew? If he accompanied me to Northern Ireland, he was putting his life on the line for me and was that fair to ask? He was the bass player for a famous rock band and had two young sons. I couldn’t reconcile something happening to him and me being able to live with myself. He was only immediate family, besides Trey, and the thought pained me to no end. It simply wasn’t a good decision and extremely selfish on my part.

Besides, I loved the man with all of my heart, mind, body and soul.

For the first time in my life, I was in love with someone who wasn’t a parent or a sibling or anyone else of blood relation to me. I couldn’t stand to lose him over bullshit, and as far as I was concerned , anything club related was always a waste of fucking time.

Those goddamn MCs had taken my brother and a normal life from me. They’d cost me my family, the place I’d grown up and loved but couldn’t bear to stay. I would have been willing to have made a life in Northern Nevada if it wasn’t ruled with an iron fist by a certain criminal element that included three motorcycle gangs, the Italian Mafia, and the fucking Mexican cartel slash Motorcycle Club known as Aztecas Infierno.

The three major MCs: the Lucifer’s Saints, the Demon’s Bastards and the White Knights were all fierce and brutal. Nothing about them screamed
Sons of Anarchy
but something deeper, darker, blacker, scarier. They were blood-thirsty human vampires who were fueled and strengthened by blood and violence; they also returned it with more savagery and desecration than one could imagine.

There was nothing sexy or romantic about the MCs where I came from and any woman crazy enough to fall in love with a biker from any of those crews was in for a lifetime of pain and hurt, death and destruction, suffering and misery piled upon one another day after day, week after week until it stretched into months, years, decades and a life considered normal was the life of an old lady—if a woman was lucky.

There was also the fate of being a Demon scrubber, a Saint slut or Knight knob-rider—all code words for sweet butts or club whores, whichever one preferred.

I wasn’t built to be either and had escaped as far away as I could to Los Angeles where my cousin was the lead singer of the very successful Winter’s Regret but I never truly left if I thought about it.

Talia, my own flesh and blood, had a kid by a biker for fuck’s sake, though Jaden Cox played the role of rock star and lead guitarist of the highly respected and superstar group, Scarlet Fever, a little too well.

My brother Trey was a Demon’s Bastard while Jaden belonged to the Lucifer’s Saints by blood. His father, Desmond “Dizzy” Cox, was the President and founder of the club. Shit like this didn’t go over well at home because it was best for the clubs not to mix but Dizzy had a massive amount of respect for Talia and he’d never had any issues with Trey.

My train of thought became fuzzy and I knew I needed coffee and would have to focus if I was going to deal with the situation at hand. My brother might be dead and me talking about him in the present tense as if he were still alive might have been a deadly mistake on my part.

The tears threatened to overtake me and rip me apart at the seams. I needed coffee and I desperately wanted to know what our game plan would be once we arrived in Northern Ireland. Trey’s last known location had been the Lucifer’s Saints charter club in Belfast. It was located in a dangerous part of town because it sat just yards from where a predominantly Catholic section of Belfast ended and a heavily Protestant section began.

There were still tensions despite the Good Friday Agreement and a general belief by most Americans that all Irish people sang “Kumbaya” and had tossed their religious and political feelings aside like yesterday’s trash. The anger and hatred still ran deep and despite the years that’d passed, most Catholic Irish stuck to themselves in Northern Ireland and most Protestants kept to their own as well.

Decades of hatred couldn’t be erased by some agreement on paper and no one could legislate the feelings that existed in one’s heart and mind. There was just too damn much history and nothing would change that except maybe time and that wasn’t even a good indicator.

My feelings that morning were downright maudlin and I realized it had been a while since Linx had seen me this way but he could handle me better than anyone. It was just how we were hard-wired. He innately knew what to say to make me feel better and his words were more soothing than all the Xanax and expensive scotch in the world.

He was my elixir and pain reliever all rolled into a sexy, drop dead gorgeous tattooed package and I wouldn’t trade him for all the money in the world.

I stepped outside my comfort zone and walked down the stairs. He handed me a cup of coffee he’d made with our deluxe Keurig machine and I embraced him one armed before I kissed his lips. Hot, tasty lips that tasted of chocolate raspberry truffle, one of my favorite flavors.

“Good morning. You looked so peaceful, I couldn’t stand to wake you.” His gorgeous cornflower blue eyes were brilliant in the daytime and I found myself falling in love with him all over again.

“Thank you for letting me sleep. It meant more than you could ever know.” I sipped from my coffee and it was perfect. Just enough Sugar in the Raw and cream to make it exactly the way I liked it.

No one would have guessed we’d known one another for less than a year. We were so in sync with each other, I didn’t believe in fate but I knew our love was meant to be. And so did Linx, which made our connection all the more deep and intrinsic.

I walked to the comfortable sitting room and sat on the sofa before he took a seat beside me. It felt so true and right to lay there against him. He breathed in the fresh scent of my shampoo while I smothered myself in his masculine scent and studied his tattoo sleeves.

“Are you sure you want to do this? I know how much you love me but you have others who are dependent on you and none of them would be pleased if something happened to you on account of me. Talia would want to murder me and Cassidy would actually finish me off. Not to mention the boys. Brady and Jimi need you to be around. So do I…the truth is I can’t think of a world if you’re not in it with me, baby.”

Linx held me closer before he kissed my forehead. “Sorry but I am on this trip to the very end, babe. Do you think I would let you go over there by yourself? You have another think coming if that ever entered your mind. You’re the love of my life and I won’t allow you to put yourself in harm’s way…not without me.”

He paused and sighed with frustration. “I know how to take care of myself and use a gun. I choose not to have any in the house because of the boys and I’m not crazy about them but I would scour the ends of the earth with you to help you find out whether Trey is alive or dead.”

“Probably dead and I’m too hard-headed to get that through my thick fucking skull. You are my family and while I love my brother to death, I can’t see how putting our lives in danger for him is going to make a shred of difference if he’s already worm food.”

“But we don’t know that, Trista and the unknown would consume you alive and you’ll never be whole—not ever again if you don’t find out what happened to him.”

I knew he was right and I was dead wrong.

If anything, closure was overrated but it was a damn sight better than the not knowing anything at all. I couldn’t live my life with the “What ifs?” They would drive me absolutely bat shit crazy—and I was barely on the side of sane—and hanging on by a thread as it was. It turned out my husband knew me better than I knew myself.

I looked toward him and was about to speak when a phone went off. That particular melody didn’t belong to Linx’s phone but mine and the tune, one I wished I could forget. It was a message from Hell and God knows I didn’t want to answer it.

Chapter Two

LINX STARED AT Trista’s phone while she refused to pick it up.

He knew she was frozen by inertia and instead of pushing her already fragile psyche, he grabbed it and answered the phone with a brisk, “Hello?”

“Is this Lennon Carter I’m speaking to? I assumed I was calling your wife’s mobile phone number,” a Northern Irish-accented voice gruffly greeted on the other end.

“You are but my wife is a bit…fragile at the moment. What is this about?”