Tempted: Reckless MC Opey Texas Chapter Read online

  Copyright © 2019 KB Winters and BookBoyfriends Publishing LLC

  Published By: BookBoyfriends Publishing LLC

  Contents

  Tempted - Reckless MC Opey TX Chapter

  Copyright and Disclaimer

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

  More From KB Winters

  Free Book!

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  Copyright and Disclaimer

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 KB Winters and BookBoyfriends Publishing LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of the trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Chapter One

  Gunnar

  “We’re gonna be cowboys!”

  Maisie had been singing that song since we got on the interstate and left Nevada and the only family we’d had in the world behind. For good. Cross was my oldest friend, and I’d miss him the most, even though I knew we’d never lose touch. I’d miss Jag too, even Golden Boy and Max. The prospects were cool, but I had no attachment to them. Though I gave him a lot of shit, I knew I’d even miss Stitch. A little. It didn’t matter that the last year had been filled with more shit than gold, or that I was leaving Vegas in the dust, we were all closer for the hell we’d been through.

  But still, I was leaving.

  Maisie and I’d been on the road for a couple of days. Traveling with a small child took a long damn time. Between bathroom breaks and snack times we’d be lucky to make it to Opey by the end of the month.

  Lucky for me, Maisie was had her mind set on us becoming cowboys, complete with ten gallon hats, spurs and chaps, so she hadn’t shed one tear, yet. It wasn’t something I’d been hoping for but I was waiting patiently for reality to sink in and the uncontrollable sobs that had a way of breaking a grown man’s heart.

  “You’re not a boy,” I told her and smiled through the rear view mirror. “Hard to be a cowboy if you’re not even a boy.”

  Maisie grinned, a full row of bright white baby teeth shining back at me right along with sapphire blue eyes and hair so black it looked to be painted on with ink.

  “I’m gonna be a cowgirl then! A cowgirl!” She went on and on for what felt like forever, in only the way that a four year old could, about all the cool cowgirl stuff she’d have. “Boots and a pony too!”

  “A pony? You can’t even tie your shoes or clean up your toys and you want a pony?”

  She nodded in that exaggerated way little kids did. “I’ll learn,” she said with the certainty of a know it all teenager, a thought that terrified the hell out of me. “You’ll help me, Gunny!”

  Her words brought a smile to my face even though I hated that fucking nickname she’d picked up from a woman I refused to think about ever again. I’d help Maisie because that’s what family did. Hell, she was the reason I’d uprooted my entire fucking life and headed to the great unknown wilds of Texas. To give Maisie a normal life or as close to normal as I was capable of giving her. “I’ll always help you, Squirt.”

  “I know. Love you Gunny!”

  “Love you too, Cowgirl.” I winked in the mirror and her face lit up with happiness. It was the pure joy on her face, putting a bloom in her cheeks that convinced me this was the right thing to do. I didn’t want to move to Texas, and I didn’t want to live on a goddamn ranch, but that was my future. The property was already bought and paid for with my name on the deed. It was just a few thousand acres, but it was all mine, and I had big plans for the place. If I didn’t run back to Cross, Mayhem and the Reckless Bastards before I got it off the ground.

  “Gunny, will I make friends in Texas?”

  “Sure you will.”

  I hoped she would, but what the hell did four-year-old’s do all day? “We’ll make sure to find you some playmates, I promise. Plus, we’ll find you a preschool, okay?”

  Before we left, Moon, my Prez’s old lady, had given me a list of places that were good to meet up with other parents and arrange playdates for the kids. More information out of my wheelhouse, but I would do anything for my baby sister.

  “What about your friends?”

  “Hey, don’t you worry about me, little girl. I worry about you and that’s how things go. All right?” Her stubborn expression was the first hint that I’d have my hands full with this little girl until the day I died. Lips pinched into a frown, face red and scowling, chin tilted up in defiance.

  “Gunny is family and family is everything,” she said in a sing-song voice I knew she’d gotten from Vivi.

  I knew those words though, had heard them plenty from Moon and Vivi, not to mention all the other old ladies in the MC. Women who had stepped in to help with Maisie, loving and caring for her as if she were their own. I owed them a debt I could never repay so all I could do was keep moving forward and make sure Maisie’s life was better than mine.

  “That’s right but you’re too young to worry. You have all the time in the world to worry about me and everyone else. For now, enjoy being a kid.”

  “I’m not a kid, I’m a cowgirl!”

  “Not yet.”

  The closer we got to Texas the more the doubts and the fear crept in, which was bullshit. I didn’t do doubt, and I sure as hell didn’t do fear, at least not until I became a father to my baby sister. Taking care of Maisie had given me a new appreciation for everything my mom had gone through. From her addiction to the bottle to her never ending search for the elusive Mr. Right, all with the constant weight and fear of a tiny little person who needed her. For everything.

  In the three years since our mother had passed, my feelings had softened toward her. I did my best to give Maisie good memories of the woman who’d given us matching blue eyes. I would make sure she knew her mother and also knew that she was the reason Maisie had a shot at normal. It was her final act and one borne of complete selflessness, which meant I would do everything in my power to make sure I did it right.

  A
quick look in the mirror told me what the silence had already confirmed, Maisie had fallen asleep.

  In the silence of the truck my thoughts inevitably drifted back to Mayhem. The Reckless Bastards. Leaving had been hard, harder than the decision to leave the Army. Hell it was harder than deciding to join the Army. And the Rangers. “But it’s done.”

  Saying it out loud helped. Made it seem final. Which I guessed it was.

  We pulled into the ranch as the sun began to set and a calm settled over me. There was a long damn road ahead, and I was guaranteed to make more than my share of mistakes, but somehow I knew this was the right choice.

  For both of us.

  Chapter Two

  Peaches

  “Ouch, shit!”

  Stumbling around my New York apartment on a twisted ankle wasn’t exactly how I pictured spending my Friday night. Then again I hadn’t planned on someone trying to snuff me out either. Yet here I was, burning another apartment. Not burning in the pyro sense of the word, just getting rid of all traces of me inside this residence.

  My soon-to-be former residence and all because of a job I never should have fucking said yes to in the first place. Now, MiB types in suits tried to put tracking devices on my car, my bicycle, and even my jacket in the subway this morning. But that wasn’t all. I had thugged-out men stalking me with their carefully placed prison tats mingled in with the colorful and expensive body art if I knew where to look. And I, unfortunately, lived a life that meant I knew exactly where to look.

  It was that life that led me to a career as a government contractor via a short stint as a poorly paid lackey for said government. The Feds caught me using my foster family’s shitty wi-fi for things I shouldn’t have. Work for us now, they said, or it’s jail time for you. It was a rookie mistake, and I hadn’t made one like that since.

  Now I’d made much bigger mistakes with higher stakes than juvie. As a paid hacker for the good ol’ U.S. government, I saw some shit I shouldn’t have and now all kinds of bad guys were on my tail.

  With my eye on the clock, I went through the whole place, taking down my framed photos and replacing them with pictures of strangers. People who had no connection to me. Storage units and estate sales were great places to get real photos of real people, and I had plenty of them stacked in boxes for just this kind of emergency, another thing this life had taught me. I was in phase one of my exit strategy. The shit had hit the proverbial fan and splattered everywhere, so I was getting the fuck out of Dodge.

  A few hours later, I’d made sure I’d thoroughly burned the apartment. I’d packed up all of my emergency cash and IDs, personal mementos, and hidden USBs, and in their place I’d set special equipment that would infect, fry and distort any and all data on them and any device attempting to connect or sync with it. When the place was fully burned and looking totally spotless and unlived in, I grabbed my stuff and left through the back service entrance.

  Everything had turned into one big clusterfuck and it was my own goddamn fault. When Bob pulled Vivi in for some mandatory work in order to keep her man and his club out of prison, I should have hung up my keyboard then. The writing was on the wall but I’d been too arrogant to see it, or maybe I was stupid enough to think I could keep it up forever and none of the bad shit would ever touch me.

  “Look at me now, covered in bad shit.” Literally and figuratively. Ever since I’d said yes when Bob approached me for this fucking job, it’d been the bane of my existence.

  Yeah, it padded my bank account nicely but what the fuck difference did that make if I couldn’t sleep in my five thousand square foot New York City apartment, or live in it?

  The truth was, I took the job for the same reason I stayed in this line of work even after the government tried to sink their claws into me, because the money was too fucking good to pass up for a gutter rat like me. Foster care taught me one thing, survival.

  In this world, money pretty much guaranteed it so I’d said yes. And now all I had was a bunch of electronic equipment as I made my way from the Upper West Side up to Brooklyn where one of my well-seasoned aliases rented a crappy studio apartment.

  I rushed over there to pick up a few clothes, more cash and a quick scrub. I ran into an old friend on the front stoop.

  “Hey, Wallace.” He was an old homeless man who took advantage of the fact that I hardly ever went to the second floor studio apartment, which was located above a massage parlor, nail salon, and dry cleaners. Sometimes, I’d let him use it to stay warm and dry overnight.

  “Hey girl! I’d ask how you are but I think I already know.” His smile was wide but his words confused me.

  “What do you mean?” I asked him.

  He stood up from the bus bench, and God bless him, but he needed a shower. Bad. “I saw them spies sneak in earlier and tear the place up. Had the grace of a bull in a china shop!”

  I didn’t want to offend the poor homeless man, but I had to step back. The stench was real. “Did they say anything? Did you?”

  He smiled a toothy grin, “Naw. They tore up the place and left. Been a while ago. At least a week. If they come back I’ll tell ’em I ain’t seen ya.”

  I entered the building, pulled my piece out of my bag, and climbed up the flight of stairs. The overhead motion light was broken and the door was open. Not kicked in either, just open. I pushed the door slowly; my piece out front, ready to shoot. A girl could never be too careful.

  “Shit.” They’d already been here and tossed the place. Luckily, I’d left nothing here to find other than twenty grand I kept in a loose floorboard under the bed. I found it still there, so I shoved it in my bag with my gun and turned back to the door, leaving a few hundred-dollar bills on the table for Wallace.

  “Everything all right, girl?” he asked when I saw him outside again.

  “It will be. Hey, I won’t be back here, ever.”

  “Figured,” he mumbled.

  “The lease expires at the end of next month. You can stay here until then if you want. There’s some body wash in there. You look like you could use a hot shower.”

  He blinked. Shocked at first but a slow smile spread across his face, his smile bright, despite all the other signs of his life on the street, rugged skin the color of dirt, God only knew what under his fingernails and his layers of clothes. “I sure could. And you be careful out there.”

  “Thanks, Wallace. Stay safe now.”

  “You too,” he said with a grin and picked up a few dirty blankets on the sidewalk next to him. “Thanks for the pad. I really appreciate it.”

  I’ve been made to sign hella NDA’s to make sure I never told a soul about any of the operations I was involved in, too. I never told anyone that certain agencies who had no domestic authority operated within the boundaries of their country, and I wouldn’t start now. This was seriously dangerous shit, and I would never put anyone I cared about at risk by telling the Feds anything. Certainly not Wallace.

  But my morals and ethics and all the shit I thought didn’t matter because I operated behind a computer screen—not with guns or bombs—mattered. And it was all because of the fucking CAD. The Covert Affairs Division was technically part of the Department of Defense, but the truth was, they operated in a gray area that most people tended to overlook since 9/11, using plenty of contractors like me as well as foreign agents and mercenaries. Most of CAD was made up of current and former military from damn near every U.S. ally in the world. And now they were after me.

  I’d do my best to stay one step ahead of the fuckers out to get me. But first, I had to go to the last place I wanted to ever set foot in again. Jersey. I hadn’t been back since I left to pay off my debt to the government. Too many fucking memories there for me. Made it hard to think straight. I needed to focus more than I needed anything else right now.

  Except for what was in the safe deposit box at First Constitution Bank under a name that only a handful of people knew. And two of those people were dead.

  I’d get inside first thing
tomorrow, and then I’d disappear for as long as I needed to.

  Chapter Three

  Gunnar

  “Coffee and breakfast is already on the table,” Martha Bennett shouted from the kitchen. She was an angel. A saint. A lifesaver. She was the first person I’d hired because nothing else could happen unless I had someone to look after Maisie.

  “Thanks, Miss Martha, I’m starving,” I called from the bedroom. The scent of bacon and coffee had pulled me straight from bed, got me through a quick shower, and helped me get an energetic four-year-old dressed for the day.

  “Yeah, thanks Miss Martha!” Maisie beamed, dashing to her seat at the table, a smile at the older woman with kind eyes and a weakness for military men.

  “You are very welcome sweetheart. I hope you like biscuits.”

  “I do! I love them, right Gunny?” Big blue eyes stared up at me, and I confirmed her words.

  “She doesn’t just love ’em, Miss Martha, you’ll have to keep an eye on her because this little cowgirl will eat all the biscuits on the table.”

  Maisie giggled when I tickled her, bending all the way over my arm as her little body shook with laughter.

  Martha laughed along with us, a load of laundry in her hands. “What an adorable little cowgirl she is,” the older woman cooed and pinched Maisie’s pink cheeks. “I just need to get these sheets on the line, and I’ll come help with breakfast.”

  “No need Miss Martha, Maisie and I can manage to get the food into our bellies.” She insisted on pulling double duty as the nanny and cook, while her daughters were tasked with keeping the house and bunkhouse clean.

  “Nonsense. It’s been far too long since I’ve been around a sweet little girl. I admit to being a little bit excited.” Her cheeks turned a pretty shade of pink, giving her the charm of a woman half her age.

  Martha rushed off while Maisie and I followed the scent of bacon. And coffee. “Wow, look at this spread Maze.” I didn’t know how the table held up with all the food Martha had prepared. Scrambled eggs, grits, bacon and sausage, biscuits, pancakes, fruit, coffee and fresh butter. “Miss Martha you’ve outdone yourself.” Martha’s laugh sounded from the laundry room just as the back door smacked open and slammed against the wall. Two younger women walked in, far too dressed up to be Martha’s daughters. “Who the hell are you?”