Cash’s Trouble (Kingdom Come MC #4)

1. Lilly-Rose

LILLY-ROSE

At five minutes past closing, I finish the notes from my last loan appointment, send the application to underwriting and shut down my terminal.

The bank’s front doors have been locked to customers for an hour, and the lobby lights are dim.

I glance idly through the front windows and notice Cash, a Kingdom Come biker.

He’s across Main Street beside a black motorcycle, talking to another Kingdom Come guy beneath the shade of a sycamore.

His cut hangs open over a charcoal T-shirt fitted closely enough to show the hard shape of his chest. Dark ink covers both forearms, his hair is short, his stubble neat, and his face is unfairly good-looking for a man my father has spent years warning me to avoid.

Cash smiles at something the other biker says.

It’s barely there, a small tilt at one corner of his mouth, but my stomach still tightens.

“You know the windows work both ways,” Marcy says from the next desk.

I look down at my phone as though I’ve been doing something useful with it. “I’m checking the street before we leave, you know, precautions and all.”

“Of course you are.” She slips her purse over her shoulder and follows my line of sight. “The sheriff’s daughter is conducting a public-safety assessment that happens to be in the direction of a good-looking biker.”

I give her a look, but she only laughs. Marcy has two boys waiting for baseball practice and none of my sense of self-preservation. “Go home before Coach Daniels starts calling.”

“You really should try talking to him someday,” she says, looking out the window at Cash.

“You know that my father is the sheriff in this town and he’d have a stroke.”

“Your father has survived Kingdom Come for twenty years. He can survive you saying hello to one biker.”

Cash isn’t simply patched into the club my father has spent most of his career trying to put down.

He moves through Ransom like a man who knows what everyone wants and what it will cost them.

I’ve seen him settle an argument without raising his voice and watched a liar talk himself into a corner with one faint smile.

I’ve also seen him catch me staring. He never crosses the street or gives me more than a slow glance, which should make it easy to dismiss my inappropriate questions about his mouth, his tattoos and what all that control would feel like if he stopped using it. It doesn’t.

Marcy leaves through the employee entrance, and I finish the last of the closing routine with the branch manager.

Sensitive documents secured, offices checked, alarm set.

By the time I step outside, the late-afternoon heat presses against my skin.

July in this place smells like hot pavement, river damp and rain that may or may not arrive.

I lock the employee door behind me and look toward the sycamore without pretending it’s accidental.

The second biker is gone. Cash remains beside his motorcycle with his arms folded across his chest, and his gaze meets mine immediately, as though he has been waiting for me to come out.

My pulse skips. His attention moves over my pale-blue blouse, dark skirt and sensible heels before returning to my face.

The look isn’t crude. It’s deliberate, as if he knows exactly how much less careful my thoughts are. I lift my chin and start toward my car.

“Lilly-Rose.”

The voice comes from behind me. I turn and find two men beside a gray SUV I don’t recognize.

One is broad through the middle, with thinning sandy hair and a face reddened by the heat.

I know him, though we’ve never been introduced.

Mick Doran has spent enough evenings drinking at O’Malley’s with Chief Deputy Wade Corbin that I once asked Dad why a career lawman kept company with a man arrested for stolen property and assault.

Dad told me to stay away from both of them.

Doran gives me a friendly smile that reaches nowhere near his eyes. “Your dad needs you. Corbin sent us to bring you over.”

The second man opens the SUV’s rear door, and every part of my orderly day goes still. I take my phone from my purse. “Why didn’t my father call me?”

“Something happened. He didn’t have time.” Doran steps closer. “Come on. We’ll explain on the way.”

“I’ll call him now.”

He catches my wrist before I unlock the screen. His fingers clamp hard enough to grind the bones together, and the friendliness drops from his face. “Don’t make this difficult.”

I drive the heel of my shoe down his shin. He swears and jerks me forward. My purse falls, scattering my wallet and keys across the pavement, but I keep hold of my phone and rake its edge across his knuckles. He loosens his grip just enough for me to twist away.

The second man catches me from behind. One arm locks around my waist while his hand closes over my mouth, and panic hits so hard my world seems to tilt.

I bite down, hear him curse and throw my head backward.

Bone cracks against bone. His grip slips, and I wrench my mouth free long enough to scream.

Doran grabs for my legs as the other man drags me toward the open door.

The bank windows reflect the struggle back at me: my blouse pulled crooked, one shoe gone, three bodies twisting beside a vehicle that will be gone before anyone inside the pharmacy understands what they’re seeing.

Then Doran is ripped away. Cash hooks an arm across his chest and drives him into the side of the SUV with a metal-shaking impact.

He releases him and hits him once. The punch is short, brutal and perfectly placed. Doran folds to the pavement.

The man behind me lets go and reaches inside his jacket. Cash turns, and the smooth man I’ve watched around town disappears. His expression empties as his hand goes beneath his cut, and he moves between us before the other man can finish drawing the gun.

“Try it,” Cash says quietly.

The gunman freezes with a compact pistol half exposed.

Cash’s shoulders block most of my view, but I see Doran crawling toward the driver’s door and the SUV’s engine coming alive.

Cash could go after him. Instead, he backs me toward the brick wall with one arm extended across my body, keeping himself between me and the weapon.

The gunman jumps into the passenger seat.

Tires shriek, the rear door slams while the SUV is already moving, and the vehicle tears out of the lot hard enough to clip the curb.

Cash draws his pistol and tracks them for half a second, then lowers it because Main Street is beyond them and people are already turning toward the noise.

He doesn’t chase. Instead, he turns to me. “Where are you hurt?”

The question is calm, but his eyes aren’t. My back is against the wall and his body is inches from mine, broad and alive with restrained violence. The same hand that just put Doran down cups my jaw with startling care, turning my face toward the light.

“I’m fine.” My voice shakes enough to make the lie useless.

“He had you by the throat?”

“My mouth. The other one grabbed my waist.” I pull my sore wrist against my chest. Cash’s gaze drops to the marks Doran left behind, already reddening beneath my skin.

“Let me see.”

I give him my wrist because arguing feels more difficult than obeying. His fingers are warm and rough, his touch controlled as he tests the joint. Heat moves through me amid the fear and shock, proving my body has no respect for timing.

Cash looks at me, and I get the unnerving impression he notices. “Move your fingers.”

I flex them. “Nothing’s broken.”

“No, but he put marks on you.” His thumb brushes once beneath the bruise. The words are almost conversational. The promise inside them isn’t.

People are beginning to emerge from the neighboring businesses.

Cash holsters his gun, retrieves my purse and gathers my scattered belongings, then positions himself so the growing audience sees his back rather than my torn blouse.

The Kingdom Come patch fills my vision: a winged skull, bold lettering and thirty years of everything my father taught me not to trust.

I should feel safer when I spot Mrs. Tillman calling someone from the pharmacy doorway. Instead, I look at Cash. “That was Mick Doran. I’ve seen him with Wade Corbin.”

His head comes up. “Chief Deputy Corbin?”

“At O’Malley’s, more than once. Doran said Corbin sent them because my father needed me.”

Cash studies the road where the SUV vanished, putting pieces together without sharing them. “Your dad ever send civilians to collect you?”

“Of course not. He’d call me himself.”

“Then they knew enough to use a name you’d recognize. Your place isn’t safe, and neither are you until we know exactly what’s going on.”

The blunt certainty chills me more than the attempt itself. I tell him I need to call Dad, but Cash is already taking out his phone. “You will. First, I’m telling Kane what happened.”

Kane is the president of Kingdom Come. I know that much from my father too.

Cash doesn’t step away or lower his voice.

“Two men tried to grab Lilly-Rose outside the bank. Mick Doran and another guy. Both gone. Doran used Corbin’s name.

” He listens briefly, his gaze staying on me. “No. I’m not leaving her here.”

Whatever Kane says takes only seconds. Cash ends the call and holds out my purse. “Kane wants you inside the compound. Your father can meet us there.”

“Kingdom Come’s compound?”

His mouth shifts faintly. “The only one we have.”

My father’s warnings have lived in my head for years.

King, the old president, ran Kingdom Come for three decades, buying loyalty and burying evidence.

Kane has held the gavel only a few months, and Dad says dangerous men don’t become safe just because the leadership changes.

Cash doesn’t look safe, but he put himself between me and a gun and let the men escape rather than leave me exposed.

“Do I have another sensible option?” I ask.

“Not one I’d trust right now.”

The honesty decides it. “Then take me there, I guess.”

His eyes darken, and for one charged second the words seem to mean more than transportation. He retrieves my missing shoe from beneath the SUV’s former parking space and crouches in front of me.

“I can put on my own shoe.”

“I know.” He steadies my ankle while I slide my foot into it. His palm wraps almost completely around the back of my calf, and my breath catches before I can stop it.

Cash rises slowly. He knows that too. “Bike’s across the street. Stay beside me.”

The instruction should irritate me. Instead, I stay close enough for his cut to brush my arm as we cross Main. He gives me the spare helmet from his saddlebag, checks the strap with two efficient fingers and swings onto the motorcycle.

“I have my car, you know,” I protest.

“Safer with me.” That’s all he says in response.

Cash’s Harley is heavy, black and chrome, its engine vibrating through me. I climb behind him and place my hands cautiously at his sides. He glances over his shoulder. “That won’t keep you on.”

My cheeks warm despite everything. I wrap both arms around his waist and flatten my palms over the hard planes of his stomach.

His body goes still for a fraction of a second before the engine rises and we pull away.

Wind flows through my hair as Cash takes us through Ransom and onto the river road.

He rides fast enough to leave town behind, but every turn is controlled.

Each shift of his body moves mine with it, pressing my thighs around his hips and my chest to the patch my father despises.

Fear still sits under my ribs. So does the memory of Doran’s hand on me.

But Cash is solid between my arms, and the knowledge that somebody would have to go through him to reach me feels dangerously close to trust despite what my father told me about these men.

The Kingdom Come compound lies beyond town behind tall fencing and heavy steel gates.

Motorcycles line the gravel beside a long clubhouse, and light spills from an open garage where men in cuts turn at the sound of Cash’s bike.

Weapons are visible without apology, holstered at waists or laid beside tools on a scarred workbench. The gates close behind us.

Cash kills the engine. I release him reluctantly, hoping he can’t tell how much my hands resist leaving his body. When I climb off, he keeps one hand at my hip until I’m steady, then steps between me and the brothers approaching from the clubhouse.

A tall, dark-haired man comes first. PRESIDENT is stitched across his cut, with KANE on the opposite side. He looks at my bruised wrist, then at Cash. “Inside. The sheriff’s on his way.”

Cash’s hand settles at the back of my waist, not pushing, only claiming space around me, and my body reacts to the touch once again.

Headlights sweep across the closed gates before we reach the clubhouse steps.

A sheriff’s department SUV stops outside, blue lights dark but unmistakable, and my father’s silhouette appears behind the windshield.

This should be interesting. It’s the one place my father would never willingly set foot.