Epilogue #6
Both collectors scattered into the darkness, footsteps pounding across the parking lot toward whatever vehicle they'd hidden nearby. An engine roared to life somewhere in the shadows, tires squealing as they fled.
Duke didn't chase them. He stood in the middle of the parking lot with his chest heaving and his knuckles split and his eyes fixed on Jolene like he was cataloging every scratch, every mark, every tremor in her hands.
"Are you hurt?"
The question snapped something inside her. The fear, the relief, the fury at needing to be saved—all of it crashed together and came out as rage.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
Duke blinked. Clearly not the response he'd expected. "Saving your life."
"I didn't ask you to save my life." Jolene pushed off the truck, ignoring the way her legs wanted to shake. "I told you no. I told you I didn't want your help. And now you're—what? Stalking me? Waiting outside my diner in case I need rescuing?"
"I was—"
"You were watching me." She jabbed a finger at his chest, close enough to feel the heat radiating off him. "Like I'm some kind of damsel who can't handle her own problems. Like I need some biker in a leather vest to ride in and throw punches on my behalf."
Duke's eyes narrowed. The controlled calm he'd shown at the counter was gone, replaced by something harder, something that looked a lot like the temper she was currently throwing at him.
"Those men were going to hurt you."
"I know what they were going to do." Her voice cracked on it, and she hated herself for showing even that much weakness. "I've known men like that my whole life. I can handle—"
"You can't handle this." Duke stepped closer, crowding into her space with the kind of physical confidence that should have scared her.
It didn't. "Vann has twelve enforcers and fifteen years of practice taking what he wants from people who thought they could handle it alone.
That man—" he gestured at Purcell's unconscious form, "—is just the beginning.
You think he won't come back with more? With worse? "
"I think it's none of your business."
"It is now." Duke's voice dropped, and something about the way he said it made Jolene's breath catch. "Vann's people put hands on someone in my territory. That makes it club business."
"Your territory?" She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "I'm not in your territory. I'm not in anyone's territory. I own this diner free and clear—or I will, once I figure out how to deal with the debt your 'club business' just made ten times worse."
Duke glanced at Purcell, still motionless on the ground. Blood seeped from a gash on his temple where he'd hit the pavement. "He'll live. Unfortunately."
"Great. So he'll wake up and tell his boss that some biker knocked him out defending the woman who owes them a hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
" Jolene's hands were shaking now. She couldn't stop them.
"You think that's going to make them leave me alone?
You think they're going to see this and decide I'm too much trouble? "
Duke reached for her arm. "Jolene—"
She shoved his hand away. "Don't touch me."
He froze. For a long moment, they stood there in the parking lot—her trembling with rage and fear and something else she didn't want to name, him watching her with those hard eyes that had probably broken a thousand men and were currently looking at her like she was the most confusing thing he'd ever encountered.
"You're right," he said finally. "This is going to make things worse. Vann's going to escalate. He's going to send more people, meaner people, and he's not going to stop until he has what he wants."
"Then why—"
"Because I couldn't watch them hurt you and do nothing." The words came out rough, torn from somewhere deep. "Because you feed Marine families in my territory and you don't flinch when a cut walks through your door and someone. Put. Hands. On you."
He said the last four words like they were crimes punishable by death.
Jolene stared at him. At the blood drying on his knuckles. At the patch on his chest that said PRESIDENT. At the man underneath the leather and the violence who'd just admitted something that sounded almost like caring.
"I didn't ask for this," she whispered.
"I know." Duke held her gaze, and for just a second, the hardness in his eyes cracked. "But you've got it anyway. The club's protection. My protection. Whether you want it or not."
She should argue. Should tell him to take his protection and his motorcycle and his ridiculous territorial claims and get off her property. Should handle this the way she'd handled everything else in her life—alone, stubborn, refusing to depend on anyone who might leave.
But Purcell was groaning on the pavement now, starting to stir, and somewhere in the darkness those two collectors were probably already calling for backup.
"Fine," she heard herself say. "But if you're going to protect me, we do this my way. I'm not some old lady sitting at the compound waiting for news. This is my diner. My fight. You want in? You follow my lead."
Duke's lips twitched. It might have been a smile. "You always this stubborn?"
"You always this territorial?"
"Yeah." He held out his hand—not grabbing, not demanding. Offering. "Come on. We need to get out of here before his friends come back."
Jolene looked at the hand. Looked at the man attached to it. Looked at the unconscious enforcer bleeding on her parking lot gravel and thought about everything she stood to lose if she kept fighting alone.
Then she took his hand, and her entire world tilted sideways.
His fingers closed around hers—warm, rough, certain—and something electric crackled up her arm that had nothing to do with fear. His grip was firm without crushing, possessive without demanding, and when he tugged her gently toward the bike, she went.
"I've never been on a motorcycle."
"First time for everything." Duke swung a leg over the seat and looked back at her, one eyebrow raised. "Unless you want to wait here for round two."
Jolene climbed on behind him. Her arms went around his waist because there was nowhere else to put them, and suddenly she was pressed against a wall of muscle and leather that smelled like motor oil and something darker, something that made her pulse hammer in her throat.
The bike roared to life beneath them.
And as Duke pulled out of the parking lot, leaving Ray Purcell bleeding on the gravel and her old life in the rearview mirror, Jolene realized her problem had just gotten a lot bigger than a debt notice.
She was in debt to a loan shark, under the protection of a motorcycle club, and wrapped around a man who made her feel things she'd spent six years pretending she didn't need.
God help her.