Secret Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 5) (3 page)

Because now she hated him.

Chapter Two

Shane ‘Mac’ MacIntyre turned over in bed and reached for her. When his hands touched nothing but mattress and sheets, his eyes flew open.

Automatically, immediately, before he could see reason over reaction, his heart sped up. Mac knew that she was around here somewhere, that she hadn’t left him again, but his body needed time to catch up to his head.

He heard a noise in the hallway now, and he glanced at the bedroom door. There she was, so damn beautiful in the early-morning light, her honey-blonde hair around her shoulders in waves, her amazing violet eyes warm and full of love. The only woman that he’d ever loved; the only woman that he’d ever lost; the only woman that he’d ever won back. The only woman he’d ever be with for the whole rest of his life.

“Mirrie,” he said, his voice raspy with sleep and need. “Come here, babe.”

Hearing it in his voice, she came. She knew that even though she’d moved in with him and promised him forever, Shane still hated to wake up and find her gone. He was a snarky smart-ass in every single part of his life – except when it came to her. When it came to her, Shane was oddly vulnerable and deadly serious, and she knew that he needed reassurance and physical closeness.

Miranda Kane curled up in his arms, her head on his shoulder. His long blond hair fell around her in a sexy curtain, and she smiled.

“Good morning,” she said. “You sleep well?”

“Mmmm-hmmmm.” His large hands ran over her back, traced the forget-me-not tattoo on her neck – the tattoo that she’d gotten to remember
him.
She may have left him without a word all those years ago, but Mac knew now that she’d never, ever forgotten him. “You tired me out last night, sweetheart.”

“I certainly hope so,” she said pertly. “That
was
my intention.”

“Well, mission accomplished, for damn sure.” Mac grinned down at her, remembering her mouth on him the night before. The contrast between her soft, hot lips and the cool, hard metal of her lip-piercing had made him come so hard, he’d almost blacked out. “I didn’t even hear you get up.”

A shadow passed over her face now, and Mac gave her a sharp look. “What?”

“What
what
?” Mirrie responded, surprised at his harsh tone.

“What was that?” he said. “You looked… I don’t know. Worried.”

“Yeah, well.” She sighed and traced the curve of his muscled chest. “King called me this morning, really early. I grabbed my cell before it could wake you up, and snuck out of the bedroom to take the call.”

Mac frowned. She sounded upset, and right away his arms tightened around her.

“What did King want to talk to you about?” Mac said, even though he knew damn good and well
exactly
what King would have been calling about. Well, not ‘what’, actually, but ‘who’. He just hoped against hope that the ‘who’ in question was OK.

“About Warren.” Mirrie’s voice was unusually quiet, resigned. “But you guessed that, right?”

“Of course I did. He’s alright?”

“Yeah.” Her smile was sad. “He survived the night.”

Mac heaved a deep sigh, and pulled her closer. “
That
doesn’t sound good. Was there trouble again last night?”

“Yeah.”

“Bad?”

“Really bad.” Mirrie tried to stay calm, but it was getting progressively harder to do that with every passing day. “King gave me a heads-up that the lead news item today will be that a midnight raid on some drugs warehouse up in the Rockies got ultra-violent, and turned in to a fire fight. Seven of the bad guys are dead, and three are from the Fallen Angels MC. King wanted me to know that Warren wasn’t one of them.”

Mac sighed again, this time with relief. He’d never met Warren Kane, Mirrie’s younger cousin, but what he’d heard about Warren, he liked very much.

The kid – though at the age of twenty-five, maybe calling him a ‘kid’ was pushing it slightly – had been recruited to Prospect for the Fallen Angels. According to Mirrie, Warren’s home life back in Kentucky was pretty grim, although she’d never gone in to much detail about that. She and Warren had been close as children, though, and she harbored a soft spot in her heart for the guy.

When she’d heard from King that her shy, sweet, courtly cousin had moved to Denver and joined the Kane family ‘business’, she’d been horrified. King knew Warren pretty well, actually, and so did a few members of his team. Warren had been a reluctant guest at the King’s Men safe house during the negotiations with the Fallen Angels for Gabriela Torres’ safety. According to King, Warren had remained nothing but polite and easy-going the whole time, and he’d impressed everyone that he’d come in contact with.

King had handed Warren back to the Fallen Angels with nothing but misgivings, and by that point, Warren had started to fully understand just what it meant to Prospect for a one-percenter MC. It meant nothing good, and sure enough, in the months since he’d been returned and had been made a full member, Warren’s life had gone straight to hell. It was one violent event, and confrontation, and night, after another – and Mirrie was utterly frantic every time she heard about something befalling a Fallen Angel.

So Warren was safe, at least for now, though Mac was sure the kid’s days were numbered.

“Three of the MC members are dead, huh? Damn.” Mac shook his head, then paused. “And did you hear anything about…” He trailed off.

She knew what he was asking, though. “Dad and Donovan are OK, too.”

Mac nodded. Truly, he didn’t give two fucks about Sandy ‘Sands’ Kane or Donovan ‘Joker’ Kane. But seeing as they were Mirrie’s father and older brother, he felt obliged to ask, even though he hated them with every cell and nerve in his massive body.

He had good reason, of course. Mirrie’s own father and brother, along with their Fallen Angels MC brothers, had beaten the crap out of Mirrie years earlier.
That
was the price she’d had to pay for freedom from the group, and she’d paid it in full. With a fucking astronomical rate of interest thrown on top, just for good measure.

She’d landed in the E.R. and that was how she’d entered Mac’s life. He’d been her consulting neurologist, and she
still
stood out in his mind as one of the worst cases that he’d ever seen in his long career.

Christ, she’d just been so
damaged
… but she’d fought like hell, and she’d recovered, and she’d been with him. For a little while, anyway. Until the goddamned Fallen Angels had threatened Mac’s life if she carried on seeing him. Without a second thought, Mirrie had walked away from him to keep him alive, and Mac had never known what had happened – not until just recently.

So, yeah. Mac had a fuck-ton of reasons to hate those assholes, and Mirrie had double that number. She hated her Dad and brother for beating her almost to death, hated everything they stood for and loved and were loyal to, but emotions were complicated things. It was possible to hate someone, and still love them, too… Mac knew
that
all too well.

He gazed down at her now, wondering how she’d react to the news that Sands or Joker had finally just shuffled on off this mortal coil in a hail of bullets. Considering their lifestyles – and as hardcore members of the Fallen Angels MC, they were nothing less than full-on dangerous and brutal criminals – it was more than a strong possibility. It was a damn-near guarantee.

“How’d King know all of this?” Mac asked, changing the subject. He had strong suspicions, naturally, but he wondered how much King had chosen to share.

Mirrie raised her eyebrows. “He didn’t say… but we
know
that he and King’s Men were there in the thick of it, don’t we?”

Mac nodded, now worried about King. “Did he say how
he
was? How his team was?”

“Nope. I asked, but…” She shrugged. “He just said that everyone was whole.”

Mac digested that. “That sounds a bit ominous.”

“Yeah, I thought so too. I started to press him, but he told me he was at the police station and he had to go make a statement. Couldn’t get off the phone fast enough, really.”

“Christ.” He felt the sudden and overwhelming urge to call his friend. “I don’t like any of
that
.”

“What’s to like?” Mirrie said. “It seems that twice a week now, King’s on the phone to me, giving me insider information about some major news item involving the Fallen Angels and Kirk Jensen. He knows what happened before it hits the news stations, and he knows details that aren’t general knowledge. It’s crystal clear that the man is in deep, Shane.”

“Yeah.”

Mirrie wrestled with herself, asked the next question. “Is he in
too
deep?”

“I don’t know, babe. He’s been even more closed-mouthed than usual these past few weeks, and he’s been showing up at Curves beaten to shit.”

“Yeah, you said. He’s been getting up-close and personal with some very bad people, huh?”

“You know it.” Mac hesitated. “Has Naomi said anything?”

Mirrie shook her head. “A bit, but you know I can’t tell you.”

Mac
did
know. Mirrie was Naomi’s AA sponsor, and as such, she fiercely guarded Naomi’s anonymity
and
her secrets.

“Well, I’m sure that King’s OK.” Mac heard the doubt in his own voice. “He’s the toughest bastard that I know, so if anybody can handle the heat, it’s him.”

“Well, sure,” Mirrie said. “But even tough bastards have a breaking point, Shane. I just hope that King isn’t right at the edge of his.”

**

Matt ‘King’ Kingston unlocked his front door as quietly as possible. It was just past seven a.m. now, and it had been one hell of a long night.

He shut it with barely a click and turned. Despite his hopes that she’d still be sleeping, he wasn’t the slightest bit surprised to see Naomi Abbott sitting on the sofa. She had an empty coffee cup in front of her, and her short blonde hair was damp. The TV was on, though the sound was off. Clearly, she’d been up for a while – maybe even a long while.

He examined her closely in the early-winter sunrise, and guilt surged up his chest at the strain around her beautiful brown eyes. Yeah, she’d been up for hours… if she had gone to bed at all.

“Hey, baby.” King struggled to sound normal. “Why are you up so early?”

She regarded him steadily, silently. She took in the horrific bruising all along the left side of his face, watched him limp over to the sofa and sit with a grimace. When he reached for her, she looked down at his hand and saw the bloody, bruised knuckles.

“You OK?” she asked him.

“Yeah.”

“Is there any point whatsoever for me to ask you what happened?”

King tensed up. “You know I can’t talk about it, Naomi. I’m sorry.”

“Uh-huh.”

Naomi switched her attention to the TV now, and King followed her gaze, already sure that he knew what she was looking at. Sure enough, she was watching the news, and yep, the lead story was the drugs bust in the mountains. King and his team had beat it the hell out of there long before the cameras had shown up, and he was interested to see that the cabin was still ablaze. He also saw that a few bodies were still scattered around, though they were covered by sheets.

“You know anything about any of
that
, Matt?” she asked him softly.

“Naomi…”

“No, don’t bother.” She stood up. “I can smell the smoke on your clothes. I
know
you were there, and that you and your team killed those seven people. Hell, for all I know, you offed every one of those men all by yourself, maybe beat them to death with your bare hands. Please don’t insult me by coming up with some evasive answer or bullshit story of your whereabouts. I know where you were, and –” She nodded at the TV, “– I have a pretty good idea what you were doing.”

“Hey.” King grabbed her around the waist and hauled her in to his lap, wincing a bit as she made contact with the bruising along his ribs. He wasn’t about to let her go, though. “I’m sorry.”

She was stiff in his arms, and he didn’t like that at all. It reminded him of Naomi when they first met, back when she was so defensive and abrasive around him.

Back then, she’d still been in the first year of her recovery from alcoholism, and she’d fought hard against his attentions. She’d been so damn determined to push him away, to keep him at arm’s length, and King had finally understood why when Naomi had told him about her struggle with alcohol.

Since then, she’d been so open with him, so trusting, soft, and warm. But the woman he held right here and now was hurting and afraid, and when Naomi felt that way, she withdrew emotionally. She just slammed the doors shut, closed up inside herself, huddled up in the corner and went silent.

“Naomi…” King smoothed her hair back off her forehead, needing to see her eyes. “Don’t do that, OK? Don’t pull away from me.”

“Don’t pull away from
you
?” she said, disbelieving. “
You’re
the one who won’t talk to me, Matt.”

“Come on, now,” he protested. “That’s not true. I’m
here
, baby, I’m right here. I can’t talk about the shit I’m involved in, but I’m
with
you.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why am I up so early?”

He faltered, suddenly feeling like he’d missed something big. He was sure that whatever he said was going to be wrong, but he gave it a shot anyway.

“You were worried when I didn’t come home last night?” he said. “You were waiting for me?”

“You’re half-right.”

“OK.” King grinned up at her, relieved that he hadn’t messed up completely. “What’s the other half?”

She shook her head, jerked away from his embrace. “I have a flight to Miami in three hours.”

King froze.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. That’s today?

“Oh. Oh, yeah,” he said. OK,
that
was fucking lame, and he knew it. “Yeah, I remember.”

“No, you didn’t.” Her voice was soft, but he heard the hurt below the words. “You forgot, Matt. If you’d come home an hour later, I’d have been at the airport, and you wouldn’t have had a goddamn clue that’s where I was.”