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  There was pushing at my back and I had the sense of being hemmed in, caged. No one had made a move on me yet but Willie looked ready to explode and I was betting he had some buddies in the crowd. I had already made up my mind to scream like an animal if anyone grabbed me, but I wasn’t sure it would make a difference. This was the nightmare that Faithful girls were warned about. This was what we were told awaited us in the Common world.

  I sensed movement behind me, the heat of a large body, and then a voice in my ear.

  “Had enough, little one?”

  I whirled around to face the man who had scared off Adam Doria in the parking lot. He was regarding me with something pretty damn close to amusement but I saw the way his gaze flickered sideways as a silent warning to anyone nearby. More importantly, I noted that the other men had cleared a respectful space around him.

  Willie, however, scowled. “Mind your own shit, Gentry.”

  The man smiled but didn’t look over when he answered, as if the hapless Willie wasn’t even worth the trouble of a direct stare. “Clean your fucking pants up while there might still be a little something left in there for you to protect.” Then, without awaiting an argument, he wrapped a thick arm around my waist and lifted me from the bar stool. He snapped his fingers at the bartender as he set me on my feet and I ended up against his chest with a face full of his leather jacket.

  The bartender tossed him a set of keys and he caught them smoothly. A strange electric guitar version of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” began playing as I craned my neck to see the tattooed demon who was firmly guiding me through the crowd. When I skidded to a halt he turned with a frown and gave me a comforting pat on the arm.

  “Trust me, kid. I’m the only one you don’t need to worry about in here.”

  It went against my better judgment to follow him into the back room where he was leading me but I was rather short on options. He unlocked the door and held it open as I paused for a moment. He winked and I went inside.

  The room was tiny and I immediately backed myself against the wall as the man closed the door. He casually crossed his arms and I got my first real good look at him. I was average height but he was at least a foot taller. It was difficult to estimate his age. He couldn’t have been more than thirty but there was a kind of shrewdness in his expression which led me to guess he was either more intelligent or more world weary than most men. There was also no way to avoid noticing his physical appeal. This black-haired man who had been called Gentry was broad and strong with an intense gaze and a ridiculously handsome full-lipped face that would rival any movie star’s. His wide shoulders seemed to take up half the closet-sized room. I resisted the itch to squirm and look away as his dark eyes conducted a more thorough appraisal. I had never been comfortable under the scrutiny of men and this one radiated an immense raw power mixed with sexual energy. He scared the living hell out of me.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he finally said.

  I clasped my hands to keep them still. “You brought me in here.”

  He clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Wiseass, huh? How old are you, sweetheart?”

  “Twenty four,” I squeaked.

  He knew I was lying. “And I’m the governor of Arizona.”

  “Nice to meet you, Governor.”

  He held out his hand. “Give it to me.”

  “What?” I was afraid of what the answer would be.

  “Your identification, proving your ripe old age.”

  I thought about telling him where he ought to stick his demands but I figured he would only laugh and grab my purse to root out my ID anyway. I plucked the card from my wallet and handed it over to him. It proved I was twenty-four. Well, it proved that someone named Bianca Cornwall was twenty-four and lived at an address in Flagstaff. Ally had scored the thing for me. So far it had worked because no one had glanced twice at the face of the overweight blonde in the picture and compared it to mine.

  The man stared at the driver’s license for about three quarters of a second and then broke it in half. He let the pieces drop on the dirty floor. The only furniture in the room with us was a shallow desk with a rickety chair. With one smooth movement he pulled the chair out and straddled it backwards, resting his arms on the back and gazing at me like he was prepared to wait indefinitely.

  “Are we done bullshitting each other?” he asked in a cheerful tone.

  Despite the fact that he hadn’t done a single threatening thing, had in fact gone out of his way to keep me from harm, I had the sense that I was utterly cornered. The feeling was probably heightened by the fact that I was literally standing in a corner. His bemused expression made it clear that he thought he had me all figured out.

  He was wrong.

  Despite all the shocks and heartaches of my short life, I had never cowered. I wouldn’t start now.

  “Maybe if you at least tell me your name it would be easier for me to be honest,” I said, somewhat haughtily.

  His expression didn’t change but he nodded as if my words had some merit.

  “I’m Deck Gentry.” He smiled. “That doesn’t mean a damn thing to you, does it?”

  “Should it?”

  “It would if you were local.”

  “Well I’m not.”

  “No shit.”

  I cleared my throat and shoved my hand into my purse once more, withdrawing my real identification. He took it without moving his eyes from my face. When he finally looked at my California driver’s license he stared for a long time.

  “Jenny Smith,” he muttered.

  I tried to take my license back. “I’m glad you can read.”

  Deck ignored my reaching hand. He looked at my license for another full minute and then relaxed a little. “Well, even if you don’t belong here, at least you’re not a minor.”

  “No. I’m nearly twenty.”

  He finally handed my license back. “ASU student?”

  I threw my ID back in my purse. “How did you know that?”

  Deck lit a cigarette. He took two inhales before answering. “You’re from out of state and you seem as flatly clueless as every other dumbass college chick I’ve ever met.” He sighed and shook his head. “You girls, your fucking brain cells get hollowed out by trying to cram too many credit hours next to the school fight song.”

  I snapped at him. “Do you consider politeness a character flaw?”

  He thoughtfully exhaled a plume of smoke. “You’re right. I’m a tasteless fuck. You prefer to hang out on the other side of the door with your pal Willie?”

  No, I didn’t. I set my hands on my hips. “He doesn’t have any right to touch me. None of them do.”

  “Right?” He found the word rip-roaringly hilarious. He laughed so hard he dropped his cigarette. “Jenny, do you think your rights are worth a pile of desert roof rats to any of those guys?”

  I looked around the small room. The suffocating sensation was increasing. As was the realization that we were alone together and no one seemed to give a damn.

  “Do they matter to you, Deck?”

  He stopped laughing. “They do,” he said quietly. “I may be an asshole in most ways but as long as I’m around you can expect that no one will fuck with you unless I tell them it’s okay.”

  Deck Gentry was worlds beyond me. I couldn’t guess if he was being flirtatious or sincere. But I did know that twice tonight already I was better off for the fact that he happened to be nearby and I wouldn’t have been honest if I didn’t admit I was a little grateful.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, choosing to stare at my feet. I was wearing Ally’s shoes. They were uncomfortable.

  “Who are you down here with, Jenny?” Deck said and his voice had changed. He sounded strangely gentle. “Didn’t look like you were real cozy with that blonde ape in the parking lot.”

  “I wasn’t,” I admitted, looking up into his eyes. They were so dark they were nearly black but I didn’t detect anything more than a curious sort of concern in them. “Ally Do
ria is my roommate at ASU and we drove down from Tempe yesterday. The jerk you saw manhandling me was her brother, Adam. He doesn’t take a hint very well.”

  Deck nodded. “Doria,” he said to himself and chuckled.

  “Oh, you know Ally?”

  “I used to know her mom.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  He stood up. “Don’t try to talk tough, little one. You can’t handle it. It’s not important anyway.”

  Damn, he was enormous. I swallowed and tried to avoid sinking further against the wall as he loomed over me. “And how old are you, Deck?”

  “Too old for you,” he said with a note of regret as he brushed me under the chin with a rough finger.

  I jerked my head away. “I wasn’t extending an invitation.”

  Deck didn’t seem to hear me, or else he didn’t care what I had to say. “So this bitchy roommate ditched you and now you’re stranded eighty miles from town?”

  “That’s right. Can I use your phone?”

  He didn’t budge. He stared at me. Then he noticed that his dropped cigarette was still burning away on the floor so he moved over to step on it.

  “Please?” I tried again.

  Deck reached into his back pocket and passed his phone over. It was warm from being right next to his skin. I searched my memory for Ally’s number and then dialed.

  “Freaking voicemail,” I muttered and gave up. Even if I was able to find the Dorias’ house in the cold darkness, going there seemed out of the question if Ally wasn’t around and Adam lurked nearby.

  Deck apparently recognized my dilemma. “I’d toss you on my bike and drive you back to Tempe except for the fact that I just rode all the way down from Tempe and the roads are slick as hell’s runway.”

  “Thanks but I wouldn’t ask in any case. I’ll just call my sister. I’m sure she’ll send her husband out. You two would get along; he’s a biker like you.”

  Deck was amused. “A biker like me, huh? So your sister’s in the valley.” He sounded relieved that I might be taken off his hands shortly.

  I struggled to remember Promise’s number. “No, she’s in Quartzsite.”

  He laughed and then cursed. “Jesus, Quartzsite! Are you talking about the Quartzsite that’s two hundred fucking miles from here or is there a closer one I don’t know about?”

  “There’s only one Quartzsite,” I admitted.

  “And you expect your brother-in-law, this legendary biker who might be my BFF if he had the chance, to drop everything and travel hundreds of miles in shitty weather to rescue your ass? Christ kid, he wouldn’t even get here until morning. What the hell are you going to do until then?”

  I lowered the phone. Grayson would drop everything and drive out here for me. He would do it even without Promise begging him. But it suddenly seemed like an awful thing to ask a man to leave his family on Christmas night and ride for several hundred miles in frigid temperatures to retrieve a wretched in-law.

  “Maybe I could just hang around here and figure it out tomorrow.”

  Deck crossed his arms. “Am I supposed to spend a sleepless night guarding you the entire time? Honey, if I walk out that fucking door you’ll be considered fair game to a pack of lonely drunks who possess the morals of stray dogs.”

  Deck sure had a way of making the alternatives sound unappealing.

  I cleared my throat and tried to control my voice. “Is there a hotel around?”

  It wouldn’t make a difference because I didn’t have the money for it anyway.

  “Only one and it’ll be packed. People travel from all the place over to say ‘Happy Holidays’ to their loved ones in lock up.”

  “Oh,” I said because I was out of suggestions for the moment.

  Deck let out a thick sigh and shoved the chair back against the desk. His hand was on the door. He appeared to be mulling something over internally.

  “I’ll let you crash at my place,” he said rather wearily. “Then in the morning I’ll drive you up to Tempe.”

  My mouth fell open. “Are you serious? I can’t go home with you!”

  He smiled, slow and sexy. “Quit your little tantrum. I’m not interested in fucking you.”

  Now on top of being stunned I was a little insulted. “Well what are you interested in then?”

  Deck cocked his head to the side and regarded me for a long, silent moment. “Jenny,” he said seriously. “I’m just trying to help you out. You seem like a nice girl and I won’t be able to sleep tonight if I have to think about you getting a bad time from some of the trash out there.”

  Going home with any man I’d just met would be a bad decision regardless of the circumstances. There had to be another way. I wasn’t a little girl anymore. What’s more, I had a free will. There were no orders requiring me to be subject to the urges of men.

  “Jenny, do you think your rights are worth a pile of desert roof rats to any of those guys?”

  Deck Gentry had already summarized the problem. There was no point in arguing right and wrong if the situation was beyond your control. You could cry about the unfairness of it. You could scream into deaf ears that you were being wronged. It wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. The balance of power wasn’t always on the side of justice.

  I looked Deck Gentry in the eye because he was the best choice I had.

  “All right,” I said.

  He nodded. He didn’t look surprised.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DECK

  I’d stopped for a beer and wound up with a girl. It was rather ironic because by the time I walked through the door of the Dirty Cactus I’d already decided against hauling some chick home on the back of my bike for a few rounds of slap and tickle. My shit would have been ready and willing, but after spending the day watching the warmth of love and family, a nasty screw just wasn’t appealing.

  As my eyes adjusted to the dim interior, I noticed there were a few ladies present who lit up at the sight of me. Some of them I’d already had the privilege of riding until raw but I didn’t offer any of them a single look of encouragement. I sat down at the bar and waited for Charlie Royner to shove a draft under my nose. Unlike a lot of Gentry men I wasn’t a big drinker, at least not anymore. Having watched my father struggle with the stuff until he wound up as road pizza after riding around shit-faced for decades, I took a hint from the universe and backed off.

  “Merry Christmas, Deck,” Charlie said when he delivered my beer. I’d tossed a twenty dollar bill on the bar but he shook his head and pushed it back at me.

  “Thanks,” I said, shrugging. I still intended to leave the twenty. If Charlie didn’t want it, he could let someone else have it, although I wished he would take it. Charlie was an Emblem fixture. His wife ran off about two years back while he battled Hodgkin’s. The disease was in remission but every time I saw him he seemed a little more sunken and numb. Charlie could surely use a good tap better than anyone else around here but he just shuffled around robotically and wiped the bar down.

  My hands were beginning to tingle as they thawed and I flexed them a few times before I took the glass and sipped slowly. All I meant to do was get warm, nurse this thing for a little while, and head on home. There were a few dipshits getting loud and I could have made them shut up but I didn’t duck in here for trouble.

  “I didn’t fucking ask to be touched by you, that’s all.”

  The thought of that lively little trick in the parking lot made me grin. If she hadn’t been such a kid I might have forgotten my holiday restraint and gotten dirty with her. I glanced around and noticed she’d come inside after all. She was sitting at the bar and Willie O’Melia was drooling on her. That had me worried right away since he was more intense than most of these dipshits. Ever since he started riding with a club out in Coolidge he’d become way too fucking full of himself, cracking skulls and drawing blood when he could get away with it. If I stood up he wouldn’t be getting away with a thing but at that point I was still hoping for a quiet end to the
night. When the girl dumped a shot glass in his lap I saw the violence in his face and the way he painfully grabbed her arm. So I did need to stand up after all.

  Willie knew right away he’d lost. His club Prez and I went way back and Willie was so low on the club totem pole he may as well be buried. I wouldn’t need to put him down forcibly, although it wouldn’t have bothered me if it came to that.

  “Mind your own shit, Gentry,” he said but it was a weak protest and he let the girl go.

  The look she gave me was a cross between fear and relief. I needed to get her away before Willie had second thoughts about backing down.

  After a quick gesture to Charlie he understood what I wanted. When he tossed me the keys to the back room he probably figured I wanted to hit this honey quick but that wasn’t it at all.

  The girl was scared and trying to hide it as she followed me to the back of the bar. She was a mouthy thing, and smarter than her predicament would indicate. She did try to bullshit me with a fake ID before she came clean and I was glad to see that at least she wasn’t under eighteen. If she was then I didn’t know what the fuck I could do with her. I sure as hell wasn’t taking a chance on dragging a minor around.

  Jenny Smith. It sounded like an alias, something a girl would throw out there if she didn’t want to tell you her real name. She was obviously on her own here and she seemed like a clean kind of kid. I felt sorry for her.

  Pretty little Jenny asked to use my phone. I watched her fuss with it and try to sort things out by herself at first. I told her the truth when she asked me about a motel. I also told her the truth when she asked if she could just hang out in the back room of the Dirty Cactus until morning. When her shoulders slumped with dejection I decided to make her an offer, hoping she had a little intuition and could tell I didn’t mean her any harm.

  Any other soft college chick would have burst into tears by now but Jenny didn’t. She wasn’t going to. She faced me, clear-eyed and strong. Something besides my dick was actually impressed. Jenny didn’t especially want to go with me but she was practical.