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Chapter 1
Gracie
The numbers on the computer screen in front of me were not making the headache I had any better. Nope. Not even a little. Sighing, I closed my laptop and pushed it across the kitchen table, hoping that with a little distance the numbers that had been sadly low and represented the amount currently in my bank account would magically increase. Or at the least, make my head feel a little better.
Neither happened. Figures.
“Fudge,” I grumbled as I stood and moved toward the pot of coffee I’d made before sitting down to look over my finances.
As I took a small sip of the strong black coffee I tried to keep my chin from trembling. I’d been living with the Hannigans for over two months now, and they all seemed to like me. I adored them, felt safe with them. They were the closest thing to a family I’d had since my mother’s death.
But I couldn’t stay here anymore. It was slowly killing me to sleep in the same bed with a man who I was seriously infatuated with—damn it, who I was falling in love with. At first I’d tried to ignore how I felt, how much I’d started caring about the man who had saved me from a fate that most would consider worse than death. I’d even put it down to some crazy hero worship. But I hated lying, especially to myself. I was definitely falling in love with Hawk Hannigan.
So when he came home and fell into bed beside me smelling like cheap perfume mixed with his usual after-work scents of sweat, smoke, and booze, my heart would crack open a little more. Last night had been one of those nights when he smelled like that. The scents had been nearly overpowering for me as he’d fallen into bed behind me and pulled me against him, too tired to take a shower before falling asleep.
I’d lain there, calling myself a hundred different types of names as I’d fought back tears. I knew what it meant when he came home smelling like that. The biker groupies—or ‘sheep’, as Willa and Raven tended to call them—had been at the bar last night. It meant that Hawk had probably hooked up with one of them before coming home and climbing into bed with me.
Of course he would hook up with one of them. It was his right after all. I didn’t have any say over him having sex with anyone. All I was to him was the girl who he’d saved from a gang rape at a frat party. A girl he continued to protect. His holding me every night, taking such gentle care of me over the last few months, didn’t make me special to him. Sure as heck didn’t mean that I owned him or anything.
I had no right to be jealous.
As I’d laid there, listening to his breathing, feeling like I was being smothered with the overpowering scent of that damn cologne, I’d turned in his arms. I’d meant to get up, maybe go downstairs and sleep on the couch. When I’d seen the lipstick on his jaw, and then on closer inspection on his neck, I’d felt like my heart had been torn from my chest. Thinking something was one thing. I’d been able to handle that. But seeing the proof that he’d let someone else put their lips on him where I ached to put mine…
I’d jumped out of bed, grabbed my robe and ran like the hounds of hell were snapping at my heels as I’d gotten as far away from Hawk Hannigan as quickly as possible. I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t stay here. Couldn’t share a bed with a man I ached to touch and love. Not and still hold onto my sanity. My heart. My self-respect.
I needed to move out, and fast. The only problem was, I had nowhere to go. The university housing was already filled up for the summer and the fall classes, and it wasn’t like I could afford it anyway. All I had was enough money to pay for law school for one semester and a few little necessities. There was none left over for housing. As for financial aid? I didn’t qualify for it because technically I was still considered rich. It didn’t matter that I’d left all that money behind. It was still legally linked to me. Double damn.
If I was going to move out, and damn it I was going to do it soon, I needed to get a job. Maybe even two until school started back at the end of August.
“Those must be some heavy thoughts.”
My gaze lifted from where I was frowning into my cup of coffee and I forced a smile as I met the olive-green eyes of Raven Hannigan. She stood just a few feet away, watching me closely. Her long, blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she was dressed in torn jeans, a white T-shirt with the Hannigans’ logo on the left breast, and boots. The girl was beautiful and was as scary as the devil himself. But after watching her with Lexa, her boyfriend’s daughter, I’d seen just how soft and loving she could be.
“Just thinking,” I told the girl who had become a good friend over the last few months. “I need to get a job. Do you think I could start waitressing at Hannigans’?”
Raven’s eyes widened. “Do you want my brother to kill someone?”
I snorted at her question. “For working at your bar?”
“For touching you. Hawk would go off the walls if someone touched you. There is no way he would let any of us hire you to work there, Gracie. But if you really want to get a job, why don’t you ask Uncle Jack? I’m sure he’d—”
I held up my hands, cutting her off. There was no way in hell I was going to ask Jack for anything. I didn’t want anything to do with Raven’s honorary uncle and the man who was my maternal grandfather. In my eyes he had been no better than my fath
er’s family. He’d turned his back on my mother when she needed him the most and she died because of it. I couldn’t forgive that. “Don’t,” I murmured softly, but it seemed to have the same effect on Raven as if I’d screamed it at her.
She snapped her mouth shut and walked over to the fridge to take out a carton of orange juice. “Okay then. If you are set on getting a job I have a few places we can check in on to see if they are hiring. Let me drink this and we can go.”
“This early?” I asked, glancing out the window to see that the sun had yet to rise. It was barely six in the morning. I’d been up since before three. Surely no one who would be willing to hire me would be up this early?
“Aggie’s has already been open for a few hours,” Raven assured me. “She always needs more waitresses. It’s hard work and your feet will probably be throbbing by the end of the day, but she pays her girls well and the tips are a hell of a lot better than if you worked at the bar. Plus, when school starts back she will be willing to work with you around your schedule.”
I glanced down at my pajamas. I was pretty sure that my current outfit wouldn’t get me a job anywhere. Grimacing, I put down my cup of coffee. “I need to change.”
“Jeans and a T-shirt will be fine. And sneakers. Something comfortable,” Raven called after me as I rushed up the stairs to Hawk’s room.
He was still sound asleep, lightly snoring. My heart contracted at the sight of him, and not surprisingly my body started to hum with a need I still wasn’t sure I understood. I shouldn’t want him this much, shouldn’t want any man. Not after nearly being raped by two twistedly sick freaks. Yet I did. I wanted him more than anything I’d ever wanted before in my entire life.
Figures that the one man I’d ever wanted, ever cared about, wouldn’t want me back.
Quietly I moved around the room, grabbing a pair of jeans and the first T-shirt that was mine from the closet before going to the dresser and opening the top two drawers that Hawk had given me. I pulled out a bra and fresh panties along with a pair of socks before going into the bathroom to dress. Once I was changed I pulled my hair back into a tight ponytail and brushed my teeth.
Hawk was still sound asleep in the same spot when I silently closed the door behind me.
Raven was standing by the door when I came down the stairs, the keys to her Challenger already in her hand. Those olive-green eyes scanned over me critically, but then she grinned and nodded. “You’ll do,” she assured me with a wink and opened the door.
While I’d never been there myself before, I’d had some takeout from Aggie’s on several occasions over the last two months or so. Hawk had brought me lunch from there more than once. It was possibly the best food I’d ever tasted in my life. Considering my life had mostly involved gourmet chefs and five-star restaurants, that said a lot. When Raven pulled into the parking lot, which was almost overflowing with a mixture of motorcycles and vehicles, I was left speechless from the outside look of the place. It definitely wasn’t what I’d been expecting. It looked like a truck stop, made all the more plausible from the convoy of eighteen-wheelers parked across the road in an even larger parking lot. The outside of the building looked like an overly large shack with a sign on top almost as large as a billboard that proclaimed the place as simply “Aggie’s”.
Honestly, it looked like you needed a shot of penicillin and an antacid just to enter the place.
Raven smirked at me when I turned my startled eyes on her. “It’s better looking on the inside than it is on the outside. Aggie is a nut. She likes scaring people off with the outside trappings that suggest that if you dare eat here you risk walking away with food poisoning or even a bullet lodged somewhere in your body.” She laughed, and my face flamed red. Yeah, that was exactly what had been going through my head in horror when I’d first seen the place. “Relax. Neither of those will happen. Not only is Aggie the best cook in all of Northern Cali, she also has one of the Angels as her short-order cook at all hours of the day. No one messes with Aggie’s. It’s known to everyone that this place in under club protection.”
“O-kay,” I murmured and got out of the car when she laughed again. As soon as my door was open I was overwhelmed with the scents of breakfast foods. Bacon, sausage, steak… It smelled so good that my stomach growled almost painfully.
Raven led the way into the restaurant. As soon as the door opened and I stepped inside the shack I felt terrible about my earlier assumptions. The place was crowded with people, something I’d been expecting since the parking lot was so full. What I hadn’t been expecting was the overall cleanliness of the place. It was so clean that I was sure even the floors were cleaner than some restaurants’ plates and utensils were.
With everyone talking and laughing, the softly playing country music coming through the speakers overhead and the sounds coming from the kitchen, I couldn’t really hear myself think. There was a sign at the entrance that said for patrons to seat themselves and Raven went straight to the back where a booth was empty. Menus were folded and sticking out of a little basket where salt, pepper, ketchup, hot sauce, and packets of sweetener were stored.
