Gentle Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 4) Read online

  Mirrie stared down at her coffee and Mac was blindsided by the sudden urge to hold her hand. Christ, the woman had kept things from him and he now saw with dawning horror that none of what she’d hidden was any damn good.

  For the first time since laying eyes on her the day before, Mac began to feel more worried about her than angry at her. Maybe she’d had genuinely good reasons to not tell him any of this… maybe telling him now was hurting her. Maybe what she still had to tell him was worse, even more disturbing. And no matter how furious he was, he didn’t want her to hurt any more. She’d done enough of that in her life already; he knew that first-hand.

  “Hey,” he said softly. She started at the gentleness in his tone and glanced up at him, surprised. “Hey, you OK?”

  She blinked. “Uh… yes. Well, no. But sort of.”

  “Mirrie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is it OK if you tell me the rest of it?”

  She choked on her coffee. “What – now you’re asking me?”

  “Yes.” He sighed and felt some of the rage leave his body on the exhale. “Now I’m asking. I’m even asking nicely.”

  “Oh.” She peered at his handsome face, trying to read the expression she saw there. Shane looked – regretful? But why? He wasn’t the one who’d just vanished without a trace four years before. What did he have to be sorry about?

  “So.” He pushed his long hair back with both large hands. “Will you tell me? Please?”

  “Well, since you said ‘please’…” Despite herself, she grinned at him and to her utter shock, he grinned back.

  Damn, it looked good on him. Back when they’d been together, she’d often had her breath smashed clean out of her chest when he’d smiled at her. The man was nothing less than breath-stealing, with that shining blond hair and those clear blue eyes, that strong jaw and those sensual lips. Mirrie remembered all too well how that mouth had felt on her own, on her breasts. Between her legs.

  She flushed, looked away. Now wasn’t the time to take a horny trip down memory lane. Today was all about offering up the explanation and apology that Shane so desperately wanted and totally deserved and then walking on out of his life again. This time for good, hopefully. And maybe even with a clear conscience.

  “Ummm.” Mirrie struggled to regain her train of thought. “What was I saying?”

  “AA.”

  “Oh. Oh, yeah. So, I got myself sober and I decided that to really reclaim my life, I needed to walk away from my family and the MC.”

  “But you did that when you were eleven, right?”

  “No.” Mirrie bit her lip, trying to think how to explain this to him. “When I was eleven, I ran away from my life. I – I escaped it by avoiding it. But what I really wanted to do was take it back by facing it.”

  “Ah. I get it.”

  “I’d come back to Denver after I finished high school and I was working in an office. Just as a receptionist, nothing amazing, but still. I was earning my keep and I was making it work… with a monster hangover most mornings, but when I stopped drinking, I knew I could make a real go of my life. All I needed to do was cut off all my MC ties officially, once and for all.”

  “So you were still in contact with your family then?”

  “Sure. They’re my family and no matter how bad it was with them, I saw them sometimes. Birthdays and things like that. And of course, I drank with the MC at their clubhouse. It was free booze which was like a dream-come-true for me and they’re assholes, no doubt about that, but I was welcome and I was safe there. Well, I was until I wanted to be totally free. Then welcome and safe were just about the last things that I was with them.”

  “Tell me.”

  The same two words he’d hissed mere minutes earlier, now asked in a gentle tone. A request, this time, not an order. And since he was asking like this, she told him. She took a shuddering breath and got ready to be more honest with him than she’d even been with anyone in her life.

  “I took almost every penny I had saved and I bought a whole new identity,” Mirrie said. “With my family connections, it wasn’t hard to find a guy who’d do it. He was expensive but he was fast and the documents were excellent. So, that’s how I became Miranda Campbell… I had the birth certificate, driver’s license and passport that said so.”

  Mac nodded. “OK.”

  “My plan was to tell my family first, then the MC. I was still considered property of theirs, in a way, and I wanted to figure out a way to leave the whole thing behind that was mutual. But… but it all went wrong.”

  Mac waited and when she stayed silent, he prompted her. “How?”

  “I’m still not totally sure, but I suspect that the guy who did my new ID ratted me out for a price. I think he took my money and then turned around and told my Dad and the club about what I’d done. Double payday for the dickhead, right?”

  Mac caught his breath at the bitterness in her voice. “Yeah. I guess.”

  “So when I showed up at the clubhouse to talk to Dad and Mom and Donovan, the club already knew,” Mirrie said. “They were – very angry.”

  He gazed at her, sure that this had to be the understatement of the century. “That’s why they beat you up?”

  “Not quite.” She turned her coffee cup around and around and Mac saw that her hands were trembling. “They took my new documents away and then they gave me a choice.”

  “What kind of choice?”

  “They…” Again, she faltered and again, Mac wondered if he was doing the wrong thing by pushing her to talk.

  “Mirrie? Babe?”

  She jumped at the achingly-familiar, sorely-missed endearment and she saw that Shane looked equally stunned to have used it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have… I have no right to call you that. Not anymore.”

  “It’s alright,” she whispered, trying not to cry at the unexpected sweetness. “Anyway, Trigger had just been made President and he was hell-bent on being taken seriously as a tough leader who wouldn’t accept any disrespect. He told me that if I wanted total freedom from him and the boys, then I had to earn it.”

  “How?” Mac’s voice was gravel.

  “I had two choices. I could either open my legs and take every one of them – except my Dad and brother, obviously, though they’d get to beat me afterwards for being such a slut – while the others watched. Or I could give everyone a chance to hit me. Each member got two punches and they could hit me anywhere they wanted, as hard as they wanted. If I survived the beating, they’d drop me and my ID off at the hospital. And then I’d be free.”

  Mac sat stock-still. “You… you had a choice between being gang-raped or beaten near-to-death?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you obviously went with door number two.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you survived.”

  She looked at him. “Barely. But you know that, Shane. You know what they did to me.”

  He thought about her smashed, destroyed body; about the months and months of recovery that she’d suffered through. “I know.”

  “So… that was who hurt me,” she said quietly. “My own father and my own brother and a group of men who had known me from the time I was a newborn. That was how I ended up in the hospital that night. That was the price I paid to get out.”

  He was silent, trying not to imagine what it had been like for her to stand there, waiting for those punches. Knowing that once one man had finished, another one was waiting to step up and take his turn. Even when she’d been down on the ground and bleeding and half-conscious, they’d have carried on hurting her. He hoped that at some point, Mirrie had just passed out and found some peace in blackness.

  Even if she had, though, Mac was sure that she remembered a lot of her ordeal: he thought about the times that she’d woken up next to him, screaming and shaking
. She’d never talked about it, but now he thought he knew what she’d been dreaming about.

  He stepped down hard on his rage, tried to stay focused. “And they’ve left you alone since then?”

  She looked away and his stomach clenched.

  “Mirrie? They’ve kept their word, right?”

  She almost snorted. “They’re a criminal MC, Shane. A bunch of one-percenters. They’re not men of their word.”

  “So… what? They beat the crap out of you and almost killed you and then they didn’t leave you alone after all?”

  “They did for a while,” she said slowly. “But then they came back.”

  “When?”

  She hesitated. “When we got serious.”

  “You mean you and me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They knew about us?”

  “They did. They knew… everything.”

  “Why did they care?” he asked. “They’d had their pound of flesh and then some.”

  “They didn’t want me to be happy,” she said simply. “They wanted to make sure I was alone in my new life… no close relationships, no real ties to anyone. They wanted me to pay for making my choice to leave them – I was out, but I wasn’t going to be allowed to have a whole, entire life. I wasn’t free, not really.”

  “Fuck.” Mac leaned back, floored by about the tenth thing to kick him in the balls that morning. “And what? They told you to stop seeing me? End things between us?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Tell me.”

  “That weekend,” she said. “That weekend that we were supposed to spend up at your cabin. The one where I never showed up…”

  “Yeah.” Mac stared at her. “That’s when they made their move?”

  “They had you surrounded,” she told him. “They were watching you when you were alone in the cabin and waiting for me.”

  Mac was horrorstruck. God, the thought that those animals had been right there outside his front door and he’d been totally unaware of it was chilling. “And – what?”

  “And they met me on the road leading up to your cabin.” Mirrie took a deep breath. “My brother explained to me that I had two choices.”

  “Fuck,” Mac growled. “Not this bullshit illusion of choices again.”

  “Yep. Donovan told me to turn around and drive away and never see you again. Never contact you, beyond an uninformative e-mail breaking it off. Never tell you why. Never go near you ever again.”

  “And if you didn’t do what they said?” Mac asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Then I could watch as they stormed in to your cabin and killed you right in front of me.” Her breath caught as she remembered her brother’s threat and her eyes prickled. God, she’d been so, so scared for Shane in that moment. It had been nothing short of pure, shrieking terror. “Donovan said that the pack of them would drag you outside and he’d make sure I got a clear view of them kicking you to death.”

  “So that’s why you never showed up.” Mac felt a surge of guilt and shame at the things he’d said to her the day before at the art centre. “You were keeping me alive.”

  She nodded, the tears rolling down her cheeks. “I – I’m sorry I left you sitting there and wondering. I’m sorry for all of it… for everything I did and didn’t do.”

  “Fuck, no.” Now he did reach for her hand, held it tight. “I’m sorry. God, the things I’ve thought about you over the years. And this whole time, you walked away to help me. To keep me safe.”

  “Yes.” She wiped her eyes impatiently. “I loved you.”

  “Goddammit.” He was rough and angry again, furious about all the time he’d wasted being wrong about her. “But why did you stay? In Denver?”

  “I wasn’t going to,” Mirrie said. “I was planning to leave but I… I stopped by a bar first.”

  Mac’s chest felt tight. “You relapsed.”

  “Yes,” she said in a small voice. “It was… it was bad. It set me off drinking again.”

  “What do you mean?” Mac was horrified at the implication. “You mean that it wasn’t just the one time?”

  “Oh, no.” Mirrie bit her lip. “I relapsed completely.”

  “Fuck.” Mac spoke softly now. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  She tried to smile. “Anyway, after I drove away from you, I went on a two-day bender. I was so desperate to avoid thinking about you sitting up in that cabin, waiting for me to show. I was trying to get up the fucking guts to send you that e-mail and then to just get the hell out of Denver.”

  “You sent me that e-mail when you were plastered?”

  “Yeah.” She looked down and Mac saw shame on her beautiful face. “I don’t remember writing it, but I obviously did.”

  “So what happened to change your mind about leaving?”

  “I stopped to say goodbye to a friend of mine before I left, but I was a fucking hungover wreck. He saw how upset I was and he pushed and prodded until I finally broke and told him everything. He told me to stay if I wanted to, that he’d take care of the Fallen Angels.”

  Mac’s eyebrows shot up. “How’d he do that?”

  “I still don’t know.” Mirrie opened her hands, palms-up. “Spider sat me down with a pot of black coffee, told me not to move a muscle. He left and when he came back about two hours later, he told me that it had all been sorted out.”

  “All what?”

  “All of everything to do with me.” Mirrie shook her head and Mac saw her confusion. “He said that he’d arranged everything with the Fallen Angels and that I could stay and live under my new name, no problem. Hell, he even offered me a job in his café.”

  Mac stared at her. “A – a café owner negotiated with an MC? And got everything that he wanted?”

  “Yeah.” She smiled at the look on his face. “Believe me, I begged him to tell me what he had on the Fallen Angels, but he said it was better that I didn’t know. Together, we changed my appearance pretty dramatically and I lived with Spider for a while, just until I got my shit together. It took me almost a year and I stumbled and relapsed a few times, but eventually I got totally sober.”

  “Good for you, Mirrie.”

  “But the thing is that Spider’s never told me what he said or did or threatened the Angels with, and I’ve stopped asking.” She shrugged. “I mean, it’s been four years and even though I’d bet that they keep an eye on me, they haven’t come near me that whole time that I know of.”

  “Right.” Mac puzzled over all of that for a minute, dropped it. “So that’s what you do now? Work for Spider?”

  “Yeah. In his café.”

  “Which one?”

  “Why?” She was defensive now, he saw, and his heart sank. “What does it matter?”

  “How can you ask me that?” he said. “It matters because now I know that you didn’t leave me because you wanted to… you didn’t just fuck off on me. It matters because it changes everything, Mirrie.”

  “How?”

  “How?” Mac echoed.

  “Yeah. How. I agreed to one conversation with you and then we’d go our separate ways. I said I’d tell you the truth because you deserved to know what happened. That’s it.”

  “Not for me, it’s not.”

  “What?”

  “Now that I know what really happened, I want to try again,” Mac said doggedly. “I want to try to make us work.”

  “You – for God’s sake, why?”

  “Fuck, babe, I never stopped loving you, no matter how hard I hated you. I want you back in my life… I want you back.”

  Mirrie was literally unable to speak for a few seconds. She stared at Shane, incredulous and bewildered. Finally, she managed to get her throat to work.

  “Have you not been listening to a single goddamn thing I’ve been saying?” she demanded.
r />   “Yeah, I have.” He shifted in his seat and despite her shock, she couldn’t help but run her eyes over his body with appreciation.

  Shane was muscled and rugged, with a build better-suited to a boxer than a neurologist. Throw in the tattooed arms and the broad chest and the killer eyes, and you had a drop-dead sexy man with an intimidating brain and a smart mouth. She’d never known him to be serious about a single goddamn thing – except her. When it came to her, Shane had always been serious and right now, that scared her to death.

  “No,” she said, trying to fight down her panic. “No, you haven’t because if you had, you’d have heard the part about how they told me to never make contact with you again. Donovan specifically told me to never tell you any of what I just told you.”

  “So?”

  “So?” Mirrie raised her voice. “So if they are still watching me, then they’ll notice that you’re hanging around, right? And they’re going to figure that I’ve told you everything.”

  “Again, I say ‘so’?”

  “So?” Mirrie repeated. “So… they’ll kill you. Both of us.”

  “Maybe not,” Mac said. “Maybe this time we can stop that from happening.”

  “How?”

  Mac fell silent, his mind racing. He was thinking about his friend Aidan Carter, Gabriela Torres’ boyfriend and the bartender at Curves. Like Spider, Aidan had something on the Fallen Angels – or at least on one of them. Mac had no earthly clue what the hell it was, but it had been good enough to get the MC to tell Aidan and Matt Kingston where Gabi had been buried alive. Maybe Mac could use it too, to get a second chance with Mirrie? To keep them both safe? But if Mac was going to go for the fucking jugular and take on a bunch of MC dickheads, he had to make sure of one thing.

  “Do you still love me?” he asked her abruptly.

  “What?” she stammered. “Do I – Shane…”

  “No.” He ground out the word, his voice low and almost angry again. “Just answer the fucking question. Do you still love me?”

  “I – I –”

  Her breath was coming too fast now and worry flared in his chest as he reached for her hand once more.

  “Breathe, babe,” he murmured. “Just breathe and answer my question. Do you? After all this time? Do you still?”