Outrageous Proposal (A British Bad Boy Romance) (23 page)

M
aggie was
on her third cup of coffee when Jase and her father returned from Hot Tamales. She waited with a large group of men from the MC, all gathered to hear updates and receive orders. It had been a very long time since the quiet din of LeBeau had been shattered by anything more than a drunken fist-fight; Henry worked hard, and sometimes with the police, to keep it that way. It was as much self-preservation as it was philanthropy. Large-scale violence, no matter the real cause, always blew back on the MC.

Maggie felt emotionally—and a bit literally—hung over from the night before, and did her best to sink into the crowd unnoticed. Between the painful pulses of the headache brewing at the back of her neck, she could occasionally hear Jase’s voice, clear as a bell.
I don’t care about you anymore.
When it would echo through her head, she would rub her face and eyes like she could wipe the thought out of existence if she found the right spot. Henry’s arrival acted as a welcome distraction from the broken record of heartbreak in her mind.

Leader that he was, Henry came right into the den with Beck and Jase at his back. Henry launched immediately into it.

“We’ve got six wounded locals from the shooting at the roadhouse last night. Witnesses said they were masked, three or four of them, and that they came in after midnight. Plenty of armed folks were there, but no one was ready for it. Tamales never got hit this bad, even in the old days.” Henry cleared his throat before he continued.” No one is totally sure what they were after, but they definitely ran around like they were looking for something, and they didn’t take a single bill from the registers. Witnesses say they were targeting bikers wearing cuts. And we have some suspicion that this is related to my daughter.”

Every pair of eyes in the room turned to look at her, this newly arrived stranger hunkered over her cup of coffee at the bar, looking a hot mess that hadn’t seen a mirror or a hairbrush that morning. She felt her exhausted heart skip a beat.

“Related to Maggie? Why?” asked Tommy from the crowd.

“That’s a good question, Tommy,” said Henry as he took a few steps towards her. “You tell us, Maggie. Why does someone want you dead bad enough to open fire on a packed roadhouse?”

Everyone was staring at her. She was grateful she had kept her sunglasses on; at least they couldn’t see the fear in her eyes. “I told you why, Henry.”

“You want me to believe a couple of street-rat opiate pushers had the time or money or fucks to give to follow you over three-hundred miles to your hometown, just because you wouldn’t play ball with them? I might have believed that story yesterday, young lady, but today there are folks in the hospital right now who tell me you’re holding back.”

The room fell quiet and still as the grave. Like any good predator, Henry had layers to his anger, and the one he was revealing now came straight from the core. He was many men in this instance. He was a citizen distraught by violence. He was a soldier upset at a tactical error. He was a general on display for the morale of his troops. And he was a father, disappointed in his offspring, yet driven to defend her regardless.

Maggie took a deep breath and turned on the barstool to face him. She recognized what he was doing. She knew she had to be honest with him now or lose his respect forever, even if that meant having this conversation in front of Jase and the entire MC. Henry had always reacted to her rebellion by forcing her to prove herself in the most vulnerable of ways. Throwing her into the fire now, at this moment, didn’t faze her; it just felt like old times.

At the rear of the room, Jase couldn’t see the quick glances of him she stole from behind her sunglasses. Like everyone else, he made no attempts to hide his own staring.

She found a spot on the floor to stare at as the spoke. “When I ran from here, I ran because I felt like I didn’t belong,” she said. “So when I got to Eagleton, I tried to do what you had told me I should do my whole life. See if maybe I did belong somewhere. I found an apartment and got a job at a pharmacy. I found new, boring friends to do normal things like go to the movies and have dinner parties. I paid my bills and wore my seatbelt. I did everything you were always trying to push me into, Henry. I tried to rise above this life that was always good enough for you and mom, but never for me.” She stopped for a second to quell her rising anger. “But I guess I’m your daughter no matter what either of us wants, because before I knew it, I was hanging out at dive bars and making dangerous friends.”

Henry moved to speak and she stopped talking. But he swallowed whatever he was going to say.

She continued. “The crimes started small and harmless. They got the shit I snuck them from work, and I got my thrills, and extra money too. I started getting romantic with one of them. Things were fine until the pharmacy caught on to my scam and fired me. We blew through my savings in a couple of weeks and started doing riskier robberies to make up for it. Everyone was crashing at my apartment by this point, and Evan… my ex… as soon as I lost my connection to the pills, he dropped any act that he had ever cared and started beating me.”

If there was one way to make a roomful of tough-guy bikers tense up in discomforted rage, it was wife-beating. Nearly every pair of boots in the room shifted at the sounds of that confession. Wood creaked under their feet. Maggie looked up and saw Jase biting his lip, gaze on the floor.

“When I realized he was planning to force me into prostitution as a new way to make money, I knew I had to get out. It took some maneuvering and longer than I wanted it to, but I was finally able to sneak out one night. At first I didn’t know where I would go even if I did leave… but where else could I go? I had to come back here.”

The room was heavy and tense after she finished. Henry spoke first. “Your ex and his cronies, do you think they could have done the roadhouse shooting? Does it seem like their MO?”

Maggie frowned as she thought. “Evan is certainly crazy enough to not care about killing innocent people… he popped off rounds during robberies before just because he could. And he was controlling enough to want to get back at me for running. But they’ve always been small-timers, easily distracted. Maybe I just underestimated them.”

“Or maybe they’ve got big friends,” said Beck.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you all this before. I thought I would be safe once I was out of Eagleton. I really didn’t think they would follow me.”

Henry watched her for a few moments. “You’re going to need to give the names of these bastards to the sheriff, but I’m going to make sure it’s us who finds them first.”

“Something doesn’t make sense though,” said Maggie. “Evan and the gang didn’t know anything about my life before Eagleton. I never talked about the MC. If they were the shooters, how would they know to be looking for bikers at the roadhouse?”

“I don’t know,” said Henry. “But however they found out, it sounds like they know you’re getting protection with an MC.” He turned and addressed the group. “Everyone needs to be on high alert. These bastards might shoot at any one of us if they think it will get them to Maggie. Keep an ear to the ground about any out-of-towners. Tommy, run up to my gun cabinet and grab the 12-gauge and the Bersa 9mm with some rounds.”

Jase finally spoke from the doorway. “What’s the plan?”

“Maggie’s going to give us all the info on these assholes she has, and we’re going to send it out through our contacts until we track them down. This just turned from a friendly chat into something else,” said Henry. When Tommy brought him the guns he requested, Henry took them and walked over to where Maggie still sat at the bar. He held them out for her. “Take both of these. The shotgun stays by your bed, and the handgun is on you at all times. No discussion.”

She carefully lay the 9mm on the counter before using both hands to take the shotgun. It was heavier than it looked. “I never got to actually
use
the guns in our robberies, Henry.”

“Jase,” said Henry, and waved his fingers. Jase hesitated only a second before he pushed through the group and came to stand before Henry. “Our arrangement remains—you stay with Maggie at all times, day and night. And you need to make sure she gets practice with these.” He pointed to the guns.

Jase and Maggie looked at each other. He seemed to look as tired and resigned as she felt. His anger from the night before was completely washed away by something new, something deeper, but just as dark.

“I’ll take care of her.” The words dropped from Jase’s lips sincere and quiet. Maggie was glad he couldn’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses.

A
fter Henry had handed
out some individual assignments to the MC, he adjourned the meeting and all Maggie wanted to do was get back to bed. She had even procured a few joints from Tommy, and she was looking forward to a day of lying around, napping, and seeing Jase as little as possible.

She waited at the bar, smoking and finishing off her coffee until Jase came to get her and the new weapons Henry had gifted her. She had no energy to deal with what had happened the night before, or even to be feisty with him. She knew control of this situation was no longer hers—if it ever had been. To be frank, she was almost relieved to be letting someone else strong and decisive take the wheel. Where had her own decisions led her to, anyway?

A few other bikers followed Maggie and Jase out to the parking lot, lighting up cigarettes and rumbling generally about the shooting. Maggie let Jase take the shotgun and shoved the unloaded 9mm into the waistband of her pants. Still feeling the general vulnerability of telling her story to all the men, she tried to distance herself from the group when she noticed a woman walking to the porch from the parking lot along the driveway. There was something familiar about the pattern of clothes she was wearing, like Maggie had seen the outfit before. The woman held a box in her thin arms.

“Hey, state your business!” came a gruff male voice from somewhere in the group. Instantly all the men turned and faced this potential threat. The woman froze in her tracks, her eyes wide.

Maggie started. “Oh my God-- Julie?” She said as she took a few steps forward.

“Maggie, stay back,” said Jase.

Maggie ignored him and continued towards her friend. Julie stared at her in half-confusion, half-fear. She was a waif of a woman with gorgeous bone structure and a sweet personality. Maggie hadn’t seen in her in months. “Julie, what are you doing here?”

Julie’s eyes began to flit from Maggie, to the gang of bikers looking ready to pounce, and back. The shotgun in Jase’s hand couldn’t have been comforting. “I-I brought you some of your stuff… your landlord called me to pick it up. He said he hadn’t seen you in a while and your… friends… they weren’t paying the rent.”

Of course
, Maggie thought. Her whole focus had been on escaping Eagleton. She hadn’t thought of what she was leaving behind—like poor Julie, her emergency contact, having to pick up the slack. The landlord’s threats of eviction in the week prior to her escape had been the last thing on her mind. It occurred to her that this wasn’t the first time she had made such a mistake. Judging by the feeling of eyes burning into the back of her head, it was probably occurring to Jase at that moment, too.

Maggie blinked a few times and looked down, ashamed. “Julie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to drag you into this. I was…. I had to leave in a hurry.” She took the box from Julie’s arms and thanked her. “How the hell did you find me here?”

“Well, I was…” Julie stopped, and made a few nervous gestures towards the men. “Can you… can you tell them to relax? I feel like I’m about to get tackled.”

“Jesus Christ, guys, stand down!” Maggie shouted, turning her head towards them. She heard shuffling in the gravel and boots moving back up on the wood of the deck. “Sorry, they’re a bit on edge. Shit’s not going great right now. You were saying?”

“When I got the call from your landlord, I tried getting in touch with you again. I only had your cell from when you worked at the pharmacy. I wasn’t even sure if it was working. I left voicemails that never got returned. But I was really concerned about you just disappearing and leaving things behind,” said Julie, twisting her rings around her fingers as she talked. “I thought I remembered you telling me where you had moved from, so I went back through my journals to see if I had written it down, and I had: LeBeau.”

“You and those goddamn journals,” said Maggie with a grin.

She smiled. “I took a few vacation days and thought I should come down and see if I could at least find your family… let them know what was going on. Or maybe they had even heard from you. At the least, they probably wanted your things.” She gestured to the box. “I asked at a few places when I got into town if they knew the Olivers, or Maggie Oliver, and I got sent here.” Julie eyed the clubhouse. “It’s not what I was expecting.”

Maggie wanted to hug the woman. “You are too damn sweet for your own good, Julie. This was beyond thoughtful. I’m sorry to have worried you, and put you through all this.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” said Julie. “I really thought something had happened to you.”

“Well, things did, but not
that
thing,” said Maggie with a genuine laugh. “You should come back to the house and we can talk some more—if you don’t have to head right back, that is.”

“I would like that,” said Julie.

Maggie turned at the sound of approaching boot-steps on the gravel of the lot. Jase was sauntering up to them. Without asking, he took the large box from her in one arm, shotgun still in the other. “She should ride with us. Her car will be safe here, and we don’t want anyone connecting her with that house.”

Julie’s eyes widened again and she looked at Maggie. “Wow, you weren’t kidding about things happening?”

“I wish,” said Maggie. “Jase, this is Julie Montgomery. She’s a good friend that worked with me at the pharmacy. Julie, this is Jase Campbell.”

Hands full, Jase made an awkward closed-mouth grin and gestured with his fingers. Julie smiled and nodded at him. He took the lead to the SUV.

Once he passed, Julie caught Maggie’s eyes. Her eyebrows were raised. She gave an obvious look at Jase’s back and mouthed without speaking, “
That’s Jase?”

Maggie felt the blood drain from her face. Julie couldn’t see how wide her own eyes were behind the big sunglasses. Maggie shook her head and waved her hands in thick motions that could not be misunderstood. In her head, she cursed herself for having actually acquired a friend that became close enough to tell some of her secrets—even if she was also very grateful for it.

Julie took her by the arm as they walked to the SUV and gave it a playful, knowing squeeze. Maggie couldn’t help but chuckle to herself, feeling better than she had in days.

The ladies let Jase drive them back to Maggie’s house. When shit started to really go down with Evan, she had cut off all contact with the few friends she had, with Julie being the closest. She felt guilty about it at the time, but then things got so intense that even that feeling was lost. Now, sitting in backseat together, they were able to chat and catch up as if they hadn’t lost months of time together. Maggie thought she saw Jase smirking at them from the rear-view mirror a few times.

Julie was a big fan of the Golden Age of Americana, and she immediately began gushing over Maggie’s temporary pre-war house. Maggie gave her the short tour while Jase hauled in the box of possessions Julie had brought down. He waited for them in the kitchen when they finished, drinking one of the beers Drake left. Maggie offered one to Julie and teased Miss Cabernet Sauvignon when she actually accepted.

After a few minutes of light conversation, Julie said, “This place is so beautiful! How long are you going to stay here?”

On instinct, Maggie turned and looked up at Jase. He was looking back at her with questions in his eyes. They both turned away with a bit of embarrassment. “I’m not sure,” said Maggie before she took a swig of beer. “For the foreseeable future, at least.”

“At least you could ask for a worse place to stay,” said Julie. “This is certainly an upgrade from the apartment.”

Maggie laughed. “Yeah, it is that.”

Julie’s question had more or less killed the playfulness of the atmosphere. Jase cleared his throat and mumbled that he was taking a cigarette outside. He wandered out to the shady backyard with his beer.

Julie gave Maggie a look she had been holding in the whole drive over. It was that wide-mouthed excitement that only women seemed to express, and it made Maggie laugh despite herself. She felt a deep flush moving over her face.

“I can’t believe that’s Jase!” Julie whispered, though still too loudly for Maggie’s comfort.

Maggie rolled her eyes and tried to contain her quiet laughter. She didn’t know what was so funny. Maybe just having Julie’s wide-eyed joy around all this death and pain was relaxing enough. After the years of horror she had spent with Evan, giggling about boys seemed like a rare, sweet surprise. She grabbed her beer and one of Julie’s hands and led her through the house back to her bedroom. She left the door open a just a crack.

“Keep your voice down,” said Maggie when they were alone. “Things are not great with that, either.”

“He’s
so hot
, Maggie!” said Julie with a little clap of her hands. “And you can tell he’s still into you.”

Maggie scoffed, digging through her pocket for the joints Tommy gave her. “Whatever.” She stuffed one in her mouth and lit it before taking a long, satisfying drag. She offered Julie a hit. At first, Julie hesitated, but then she seemed to shrug and accepted it with a giggle.

“I’m serious!” said Julie. She took a drag and came up from it coughing hard, which only made the two of them laugh harder. She waved smoke out of her face and passed the joint back to Maggie. “He was basically staring at you the entire time we were talking.”

“He’s my bodyguard,” said Maggie, shaking her head. “It’s his job to stare at me.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he hates it, too,” laughed Julie.

Maggie smiled and took another drag. She blew out the smoke without a cough. “He’s not the only one.”

“Oh, come off it,” said Julie as she snatched the joint. “How could you hate having that handsome strapping beast around you all the time?”

Maggie made an exaggerated groaning sound and fell to the floor with a laugh. Julie took a hit and laughed along with her. She joined Maggie on the floor one knee at a time and passed the joint.

“Let’s not talk about Jase, he might overhear us and his ego doesn’t need the meal,” said Maggie after she took a hard hit and exhaled.

“Okay,” said Julie. “Do you want to talk about where you’ve been for the last eight months?”

Maggie didn’t. She really, really didn’t. But she looked up and saw Julie’s earnest expression, and knew it was the right thing to do. “Yeah, I guess we can do that.”

“I tried calling you, Maggie. I guess I feel like… like maybe I failed you as a friend. I wanted to help you up, I couldn’t get you to take my hand,” said Julie. She handed the joint to Maggie and adjusted to sit cross-legged on the carpet, her back leaning against the bed. “Jordan kept telling me there was nothing I could do, but I just couldn’t accept that.” She giggled a little to herself. “Obviously—how else would I be here right now? I could never just give up on you, you know?”

Shame tore through Maggie’s mind and heart. She let the joint’s embers burn out as she held it between her fingers. “Jordan wasn’t wrong. I saw you calling me, Julie… I found the note you left in my mailbox. I was just too afraid to respond to any of it. I didn’t want…” Maggie had to take a deep breath. “I didn’t want you to see what I had become.”

“Oh honey. We all have our dark times. You know I watched my older sister go through her alcoholism. I know it’s not apples to apples, but well….I just mean I care about you anyway, even if you don’t care about you.”

“Part of me wishes I had called you,” said Maggie. “But part of me could never live with involving you with dangerous people.” She felt a strange sensation that Henry had told her those exact words at some point in years passed. And like Henry had with her, Maggie kept Julie at the perimeter of her life.

Julie nodded sadly. “I’m sure none of your decisions were easy ones at that point.”

Maggie cleared her throat. “No, they weren’t. Neither was the one to cut loose and make a run for home. But things got out of my control. Evan had soothed some need in me for that first little while, and then suddenly it felt like I was sliding down a muddy hill with no way to stop myself.”

“Everything seemed to be going so well before you met him,” said Julie. “You didn’t seem unhappy. I’m surprised there was something missing that he somehow filled. You seemed like a whole person.”

Maggie had replayed those transitionary months so many times in her mind, but she had no answers for either Julie or herself. “I was, in a lot of ways. But I just… there’s something inside me that isn’t right, Julie. It’s been there since I can remember; since I was a little girl. It won’t settle or shut up, no matter what I do. It’s like a big black ocean that lives inside my chest, and it’s always sloshing around, always storming. I can never find a way to keep it still… at least not for very long.”

Julie’s eyes welled up with sympathetic tears. “Oh Maggie. You feel that way all the time?”

“Not all the time,” said Maggie before she could stop herself. “I mean, sometimes it’s… sometimes it’s still. Sometimes it’s calm.”

“Like when?”

Before Maggie could answer, two stern knocks came on the bedroom door. Jase stuck his head inside the bedroom and looked at Maggie.

Like now.

“Jesus,” said Jase as his face scrunched up. “First night in a new house, and you decide to hot box the place?” He waved his hand and watched the collected smoke from the joint swirl in the sunlight.

Both Maggie and Julie started to giggle. Maggie took advantage of the distraction and hoped Julie would forget about the question she had asked. She re-lit the joint, took a puff, and offered it up to Jase. “Don’t be jealous, we wouldn’t leave you out.”

Whatever humor had been on Jase’s face died the second she said the word ‘jealous’. She got no pleasure out of seeing the stricken look behind his eyes, too subtle and far away for Julie to pick up on. But neither did she want him around her after what he had done last night.

She expected anger, but instead she saw only exhaustion pass over his face.

Julie must have missed it. “Yeah, Jase, why don’t you come have a seat and join us? I’ve heard so much about you!” She gave Maggie a very obvious grin that Maggie returned with a stern, bitchy look, pulled tight to hide her embarrassment.