Chapter 1
Black Knights Inc., Goose Island, Chicago
Eliza breezed into the TV room, a lotion bottle in hand. “If I leave my favorite hand cream in the half bath downstairs, will it remain unmolested? It’s expensive. And I don’t want you guys using it for…other purposes.”
Sabrina Greenlee hid her smile behind her can of sparkling water.
Welcome to Black Knights Inc., she thought. Home to elite operatives and leather-clad degenerates. They can dismantle a two-ton bomb before breakfast and spend the night debating lotion etiquette.
Arranged around the space on the third floor of the old menthol cigarette factory were the men and women who’d opened their homes and hearts to Sabrina when she’d had nowhere else to go and no one else to turn to.
Some were her roommates there at the shop.
Others were coworkers who’d moved out of the old brick building to live with their significant others.
Speaking of the significant others…
Hannah Blue was a computer whiz working for the D.O.D.
Grace Jackson and Julia O’Toole were both FBI agents employed at the local field office.
And when you added the Black Knights, basically the real-life versions of Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible, Sabrina couldn’t help but sometimes feel she was living inside a spy novel.
James Patterson, eat your heart out.
The television was tuned to an episode of M.A.S.H.
—Graham Coleburn’s choice, no doubt. But the volume was muted so that she couldn’t hear Hawkeye's words. Bowls of popcorn filled the hands of half the room’s occupants, and the scents of salt and butter overpowered the smells that usually permeated through the three floors of the shop: grease, molten metal, and automotive paint.
“I’m looking at you,” Eliza pointed to Graham while Fisher, her fiancé, dragged her down to join him on an adult-sized beanbag chair. “You don’t have an amorous outlet other than your hand, so I figure you’re the most likely culprit to engage in lotion molestation.”
“Please.” Graham gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head while his big body took up every square inch of the large, leather La-Z-Boy shoved into the corner. “Just ’cause I’m not datin’ anyone in particular, that don’t mean I gotta tug my own pug.”
“Speaking of pugs,” Frank “Boss” Knight said as he bent over the pool table at the room's far end. His wife, Becky, eyed his ass appreciatively. “Didn’t Sabrina catch Eliza doing something interesting to Fisher’s pug right before you all left for Cameroon?”
Sabrina winced when every head in the room swiveled in her direction. “Don’t.” She pointed a menacing finger toward Boss’s craggy face.
“Sorry.” He shrugged, but he didn’t look the least bit contrite. “It’s too good not to share.” He turned to Fisher and Eliza and announced, “She saw what the two of you were doing to the treadmill.”
“Not to the treadmill,” Sabrina was quick to clarify. “On the treadmill. We should hang a Do Not Disturb sign on the gym door, by the way.”
“Saw what? What did ya see?” Graham demanded, his green eyes shining with prurient delight. When Sabrina refused to answer, he turned to Boss. “What did she see?”
“Our sweet Sabrina was woefully short on the details,” Boss admitted with a sorrowful shake of his buzzcut head. “She just said I should wait to work out because Fisher and Eliza were in the gym using the treadmill together.”
“If the lady throws her legs over the handrails,” Fisher explained, “it puts her in the perfect position to receive—”
“Fisher!” Eliza slapped a hand over his mouth.
“But…is the treadmill movin’? Like, are ya walkin’ while also…” Graham made a motion with his big hand.
“This is no longer a conversation,” Eliza groaned. “This is a hostage crisis.”
Graham’s tone was serious, but he was clearly biting the inside of his cheek. “I’m just tryin’ to make sure I have the correct mental picture. Was the treadmill on or not?”
“No,” Eliza hissed. “There was no motorized movement. We’re not weirdos.”
“That’s debatable.” Graham shrugged noncommittally.
Eliza’s invitation for the big former SEAL to shove it where the sun never shone was issued and ignored as Graham turned his attention to the doorway.
Hewitt Birch stood briefly on the threshold before sauntering into the room with Peanut, BKI’s onsite feline mascot, doing figure eights around his jean-clad legs.
“What about him?” Graham pointed an accusatory finger at Hew as Hew dropped onto the sofa beside Sabrina.
He brought the smell of the outdoors with him. Hot pavement and wind-lashed freshness clung to his T-shirt thanks to his motorcycle ride home from Red Delilah’s. Underneath all that, though, she could detect a hint of his cedar-and-sage aftershave.
She would always associate that smell with everything that was good and kind and right in the world.
The cushion sagged under his weight, so her shoulder slid into his. When he touched her, she wanted to curl into him like Peanut curled into a sun-warmed patch of floor because he was like the sun. Big. Steady. Warm. And with a gravitational pull that had drawn her to him from the beginning.
“What about me?” he asked around a mouthful of yogurt while lifting an eyebrow that matched the color of his short beard. His facial hair was two shades darker than the thick mop on his head.
“He’s flying solo these days.” Graham pointed at Hew but looked over at Eliza. “Shouldn’t ya give him the hand cream lecture too?”
Eliza glanced at Sabrina. But the look was so fleeting that Sabrina had no idea what it meant and thought maybe she’d imagined it.
There was no reason Eliza should look her way when discussing Hew’s amorous impulses. Everyone knew she and Hew were only friends.
Not that she hadn’t tried for more. In fact, for a while, she’d dropped enough hints to form a breadcrumb trail straight into her panties.
But either Hewitt Birch was so slow on the uptake that she would have had to reach down his jeans and grab his balls to make him realize she was open to the idea of them exploring something beyond friendship, or he’d intentionally ignored her overtures.
Since Hew wasn’t an idiot, she’d had to accept it was the latter.
She’d been disappointed, of course. But having Hew as a friend was a far cry better than having him as nothing at all. So it’d been three weeks since she’d batted her lashes at him or slid him a smile meant to entice.
“I’m putting this lotion down in the half bath.” Eliza held up the bottle to show Hew what would heretofore be off-limits to him. “It’s expensive. I don’t want you single men using it for alternative purposes.”
“Speakin’ of utilizin’ things for alternative purposes,” Hew said casually in that delicious Mainer accent. “Thought I heard something ’bout you and Fish usin’ the treadmill for activities other than exercise. Remind me to take a pack of sanitary wipes the next time I head to the gym.”
“We’re better off hosing the whole place down with bleach,” Sabrina quipped. “I still have plenty left over from when I had to pour some into my eyeballs after I caught them in flagrante with the cardio equipment.”
Hew chuckled. And the sound made her stomach dip like she stood on the roof of one of the city’s skyscrapers.
Fisher lifted a contradictory finger. “What Eliza and I were doing qualifies as exercise. It certainly got my heart rate up.” Eliza smacked him on his chest. “And are all social media gurus as snarky as you, Sabrina? Or did we just get lucky when you arrived on our doorstep?”
Before Sabrina had landed in Chicago, the Black Knights hadn’t known they needed someone to run their social media accounts. But within four weeks of taking over the job—the least she could do to repay them for her upkeep—she’d shown the Knights what they’d been missing.
Using every ounce of know-how she’d gleaned from ten years in the business, she’d taken Black Knights Inc. from a well-respected chopper shop known to the ultra-wealthy inside the custom motorcycle community to a household name.
Because of the photos and videos she posted to Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok, not to mention the YouTube channel she’d started, everyone who was anyone now wanted a custom BKI creation.
“We’re all this snarky,” she informed Fisher. “It’s dark times on the internet, and we who must enter into the abyss tend to find humor where we can.”
Fisher snorted, and the gang splintered into little knots of conversation since it appeared all the tea involving Fish and Eliza and the treadmill had been well and truly spilled. Sabrina used the noise as cover to sneak a surreptitious look at Hew.
Since they’d returned from the bar, something had seemed slightly off with him. She might have thought it was her introducing him to Martin. But Hew had been nothing if not polite.
I mean, she thought back now, he was polite after he stood up and made Martin wince like every man winces when presented with so much…Hew.
At six feet two inches, Hewitt Birch loomed.
Broad-shouldered, square-jawed, with dark green eyes and hair that lived somewhere between red and brown, he looked like a younger, hotter version of Sam Heughan.
Add a gym-sculpted body and an ability to focus like a predator stalking prey, and no wonder Martin's first reaction had been to flinch.
To his credit, though, Martin had recovered quickly.
Probably because Martin was wildly handsome himself. His jet-black hair was cut by someone who knew exactly how best to frame his face. The cleft in his chin gave Superman vibes. And a personal trainer had honed his body to physical perfection.
Plus, he was smart as a whip, rich as Croesus, and…for reasons she was still a little confused by…he seemed to really like her.
So why didn’t I go home with him tonight when he asked me to? she wondered.
They’d been on a handful of dates, and she liked him well enough. She was certainly attracted to him—because who wouldn’t be? But when he’d whispered that invitation, she hadn’t been able to tell if the flutter in her stomach was anticipation or fear.
Ever since Eddy Torres had tortured her in the back room of her brother Cooper’s place, the thought of sex felt…foreign. Stomach-churning, even. Terrifying?
She’d lost more than her only sibling back in Charleston last fall. She’d lost the part of herself who laughed easily, flirted freely, loved her body, and let others love it too.
She liked to think she’d been healing since then, though. Working through the trauma. Meditating and reading all the self-help books and even attending a weekly online support group. With the Black Knights’ help—with Hew’s help—she finally felt ready to get back in the saddle.
So why did I freeze when the moment came?
She didn’t know. She needed to know. Because Martin was a good man, and if she wasn’t ready, she shouldn’t lead him on.
“I’m going for a drive,” she blurted, setting her half-full can of sparkling water on a coaster atop the coffee table.
Hew’s head came up. A deep line formed between his eyebrows. “What do ya mean?” His glance slid to the big window. “Why?”
“I have a lot on my mind and do my best thinking in the car.”
Her new-to-her Prius was her sanctuary. With the music on, road ahead, thoughts untangling mile by mile she could almost convince herself that she was back to normal.
“It’s rainin’ cats, dogs, and every other animal ya can imagine.” He nodded toward the rivulets racing down the glass.
“I’m not made of sugar. I won’t melt.”
“I’ll come too.” He started to stand, but she blocked him with a hand.
“No. The whole point is peace and quiet. Besides, the last time you rode with me, your knees were practically touching your nose. I kept picturing a head-on collision where your kneecaps ended up in your skull.”
His frown deepened, eyes going almost black. “Ya might still have enemies out there.”
Enemies. Right.
A chill raced down her spine and made her shiver.
What a strange thing it had been for her to have enemies.
Before her brother got mixed up with a Charleston cartel, before Eddy Torres changed the course of her life, the only enemies she’d had were the mean girls in middle school who’d teased her mercilessly about her hand-me-down clothes and dime-store shoes.
“Eddy Torres is dead,” she said with a decisive dip of her chin. “And the cartel’s kingpin and top lieutenants are behind bars. It’s over. I’m safe.”
The FBI agents in charge of her case had assured her the danger to her had passed and she could resume her regular life.
“But it’s dark out.”
But it’s dahk out.
That accent—lord help her—it always made her melt. It was almost enough to make her let him come with her. But she needed to think. And if there was one thing that was impossible to do with Hew near, it was think.
“I adore you for worrying.” She smiled softly. “Truly. But I’m fine. Even in the rain. Even in the dark.”
She blinked, a little surprised—and a whole lot proud—to realize she meant it.
She was fine. For the first time in months, she felt like herself. Like maybe what had happened to her back in Charleston was simply a chapter in her life and not the whole damn book.
Fifteen minutes later—and after more arguments from Hew that she handily batted aside—she cruised past BKI’s gates, waved to Toran Connelly on security duty, and turned right into the night.
Rain whispered against the windshield as she navigated the city streets. Ella Fitzgerald crooned “Dream a Little Dream.” And her thoughts unspooled in a long ribbon of questions.
Am I ready to take a lover?
Can I be with a man without panicking?
Is it fair to Martin to even try if I’m not sure?
She was so caught up in her own ruminations that she didn’t see the black van slip in behind her. Didn’t notice it match her speed.
Didn’t realize she was followed out of town.