Title:
Rebel Custody
Author: Sarah Hawthorne
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Release Date: May 1, 2017
Publisher: Carina Press
Series: Demon Horde, MC #2
Format: Digital eBook
ASIN: B01MUG1G4V
A son in danger
The Demon Horde MC are no strangers to breaking
the rules, but making a man pay to get his son back crosses one too many lines
for Skeeter. He'll do anything, including play by the book, if it means
bringing his son home. Hiring straitlaced attorney Miriam Englestein is meant
to solve his problems, not create new ones. One look at her and his good-guy
facade goes out the window. He wants to throw his buttoned-up lawyer onto the
back of his bike and make her his.
A woman at risk
Miri wants nothing to do with the club. Her
father may be in their pocket, but she's on the right side of the law and she
intends to stay there. But there's something about Skeeter's plea—something
about him—she can't walk away from. While she's tempted to let him do
unspeakably wicked and delicious things to her, she can't risk her law
practice, or her heart.
A dangerous deception
When Miriam agrees to pose as Skeeter's woman to
get details they need for the case, things heat up fast—and it's not long
before the lines between business and personal blur, and they're both in over
their heads. In the MC world, lies have a way of coming back to you, and they
put everyone at risk.
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Excerpt from Rebel Custody:
Chapter One
Skeeter
I
liked to keep my back to the wall. It was a habit I developed in the Registan
Desert. But tonight I was just in a neighborhood hangout, a strip club called
Jiggles. I surveyed the strip club from a corner near the pool tables. A woman
danced onstage while a rock song played. The booming bass had a slight buzz.
The strip club’s sound system had blown a few speakers last year, but no one
bothered to replace them.
When
it was my turn, I leaned across the green felt. Bank shot. Three ball into the
corner pocket. I closed my eyes and let the cue slide through my fingers. The
balls cracked together. I heard the thump off the side cushion and then the
rattle as the ball sank into the pocket. Easy.
I
opened my eyes to set up my next shot.
“Hey,
genius.” Clint laughed. “You’re stripes. Thanks for taking care of one of my
balls, though.”
Fuck.
I looked at the table. He was right; I was stripes. I hadn’t been paying
attention. Instead of returning to my favorite spot against the wall, I sat on
a stool in front of the bar.
“Hi,
baby.” Asia, one of my favorite pay-to-play hookups, leaned in close. “I’d be
happy to take care of your balls, but how about you buy me a drink first?”
I
rolled my eyes and asked the bartender to get her a beer.
Asia
pouted. “You haven’t called me in weeks.” She stuck her lower lip out. “I could
call a friend, and the three of us could have our own personal party. Remember
how fun it was that time?”
Tempting.
Asia was always enthusiastic and willing to please in bed, especially if it
would earn her a big tip.
“Actually,
I don’t really remember much of that night.” I sipped on my beer. “I haven’t
been in the mood lately.”
“Oh!”
She smiled and started to root through her huge purse. “I got stuff for that.”
I
put my hand on her shoulder. “That’s not what I meant. I’m just not interested,
okay?”
What
the hell was wrong with me? Asia was tall with long legs that she could bend
any which way I wanted. And her fees were reasonable. But sex had just lost its
thrill. It was the same old shit. Women in skimpy outfits trying to entice me
to buy, which I often did. Then a meaningless meet-up in my room at the
clubhouse and a morning alone.
Maybe
I could soften the blow. “Why don’t you go hang out with Clint?”
We
both looked over at him—he was chatting up a blonde stripper in a purple dress.
Asia frowned.
“Well,
maybe I’ll just make a new friend tonight. Thanks.” She walked away, hips
swinging. I knew she wanted me to take a good look at her ass and change my
mind, but I just didn’t care.
Leaning
against the bar, I finished off my beer and surveyed the room. Hanging out at a
strip club every Friday night was getting tiring. The constant noise and empty
flirting made me wish for a night at home, and not just a night in my room at
the MC. I bought a house last year and never fucking stayed there. I was always
partying. Maybe it was time to move.
I
tried to catch Clint’s eye; I was thinking of making the long drive out to my
place. He was still talking to the blonde, so I decided to hit the john. Strip
club bathrooms were always nasty. No matter how much froufrou crap they piled
in there, it was still a urinal in a titty house.
As
I was zipping up, something touched the back of my neck.
Cold.
Hard. Steel.
Fuck.
“Thought
I’d find you here.”
The
man’s thick Cajun accent brought me home, the voice vaguely familiar. My
father’s face floated in my head before I remembered the fucking gun pressed to
my neck.
“I
know you?” I started to turn to see who this fucker was.
He
cocked the hammer. I froze. It’s a distinctive click, and when it’s pressed
below your ear, it’s real fucking loud.
“Well,
then put away the gun and we’ll go get a beer.” The barrel pressing into my
neck eased off, and I heard him release the hammer. “I’m turning around now,” I
told him.
Holding
the pistol was Davide Lavernge. A year or two behind me in school, he had been
a class clown who dealt a little weed on the side.
“How
’bout dat drink?” He grinned.
Davide
followed me over to the bar, and we ordered a round. I sucked on my beer and
studied the piece of shit next to me. His sour breath wafted over from two bar
stools away. He smelled like crawfish three days after the boil.
Davide
licked the salt off his lips and combed peanut shells out of his beard. His
face was lined and weathered, his teeth yellow. He was no longer the
happy-go-lucky guy I used to know.
“Tacoma,
Washington, is damn far from Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. What’re you doing this
far north, Davide?”
He
put down the beer I had paid for and turned toward me. “I’m here about child
support.”
He
must be in a shit ton of trouble if he was coming to me for help. I shrugged.
“How much do you owe?”
He
shook his head. “You owe me, Skeeter.
Forty large. I been taking care of your kid.”
The
world went fuzzy, so I blinked. Again. My vision was clear, but my brain didn’t
quite understand what Davide had just said.
“Embrasse moit chew.” Kiss my ass. I pushed back from the bar.
“I haven’t been back to Breaux Bridge in years. I don’t got no kid.”
Davide
scratched at his beard. “After you joined the Army, Delphie realized she was
pregnant. She decided she wanted to raise it on her own. That’s why she dumped
you.”
Delphie.
My first love. We had been nineteen and full of dreams. Well, I was full of
dreams, and she was full of meth, weed, whatever else she could get her hands
on. I put a tiny ring on her finger and then packed up for boot camp. The
letter came two days after I arrived in Afghanistan. Classic Dear John. I read
it in my bunk and then had to find a private place to fucking punch something.
A captain saw me, and I spent the next three weeks cleaning latrines in the
Registan Desert.
I
narrowed my eyes. I wasn’t about to fall for his line of shit. “She never told
me she was pregnant.”
“Don’t
matter. You got a kid that you ain’t never paid child support for. So, by my
accounting, you owe me forty Gs.” Davide shrugged and stuffed more peanuts in
his mouth.
I
rolled my eyes. That’s what this was about. “This is a goddamn shakedown. If
there was a kid, Delphie would be serving me with papers. You’re bullshitting
me, and you fucking know it.”
Davide
stared at me, cold, hard. This was not the man I used to know. Back then he
sold a little weed and raised a lot of hell. He was always quick to laugh, the
life of the boil. Whatever he was into now had changed him.
“Delphie
overdosed about six years ago. Don’t matter, though. You got a fucking kid, and
I want my fucking money. Once you get that through your head, call me. Else
I’ll come find you again. I promise you that.” He handed me an old-fashioned
matchbook with the name of a dive motel and a cell phone number scrawled in
pencil. “Kid is here with me.”
Davide
got up and left me with the tab.
The
matchbook was blue with a red stylized horse. Cowboy Motel. Printed on the back
was a map. It was just off the highway, south of town, in the middle of a bunch
of apple orchards. Tourists would drive right on by and find a room in Seattle
or Tacoma. This place was meant only for truckers or the kind of people who
didn’t like to deal with society. The kind of people who would blackmail
someone for child support for a kid that didn’t exist.
This
was just another way for the Lavernge family to screw me over. Delphie had
dumped me as soon as deeper pockets had come along, and now Davide was trying
to milk me for all I was worth. I had enough to make ends meet, but forty grand
wasn’t sitting in my back pocket for a rainy day.
I
ran my thumb over the top of the matchbook and felt ridges. In the light of the
bar, I could just make out indentations from a pen. Something was written on
the inside. I flipped open the damn matchbook and saw a drawing. There wasn’t
much room, but someone had drawn a sun with sunglasses. The rays of the sun
weren’t quite even, and the lines all wobbled. A kid had drawn it.
What
if I did have a kid? What if Delphie had been pregnant when I shipped out? I
did some quick calculations. The kid would be nine or ten. I thought of myself
at that age, all skinned knees and dirty hands. If I had a kid, what would he
or she be like?
I
flipped the matchbook over and stared at the map printed on the back. Same
shitty location, right off the interstate. Davide was pretty desperate if he’d
come all the way up here to Washington State hoping to get a lot of cash. I
didn’t know what Davide was mixed up in, but it was bad, and no child should be
caught up in it.
I
paid my tab and went to find Clint at the pool table. If this was blackmail, I
was gonna need reinforcements.
* * *
An
hour later me and Rip and Clint cut our engines and parked in a field behind
the motel. It was easy to track down which room belonged to Davide. There was a
beat-up blue truck with Louisiana plates parked at the far end, as far away as
possible from the motel office and the security camera.
So
we crouched with ivy up to our goddamn shoulders and waited. The lights
flickered in the room, like someone was watching television.
“Shit,
Skeeter, it’s been forty-five minutes,” Clint muttered in our ivy hole.
A
sliver of light shone in the dark motel as someone opened their door. It was a
woman coming out for a smoke. She collapsed into a plastic patio chair and lit
up a joint. Too short to be Delphie, dark hair. Craggy face. Torn jean shorts.
Maybe Davide’s girlfriend? Under the hyperfocus of the binoculars, she looked
worn.
Then
Davide came out and sat in the other chair. They passed a joint back and forth.
The door opened again and showed a small, dark figure. With the bright light of
the inside of the room, the person’s features were in shadow. The shadow only
went a foot or so past the doorknob. A kid
My
heart leaped up into my throat. I tried to breathe, but it just came out as a
guttural sound. Even though I couldn’t see the kid clearly, I knew. It was like
a brush stroke inside my brain that spread truth. Davide hadn’t come all the
way across the country just to shake me down. He was telling the truth.
Holy
shit.
I
had a kid.
Copyright © Rebel 2017 Rebel Custody by Sarah
Hawthorne
Sarah
is offering one (1) lucky winner a $50 Amazon Gift Card! To enter, simply fill
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About the author:
Sarah Hawthorne
lives in the Pacific Northwest and drinks coffee in the winter and champagne in
the summer. She enjoys writing, gardening and planning vacations. Please visit
Sarah at www.sarahhawthorne.com.
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