COME WHEN CALLED (Billionaire & Biker Menage Romance) Read online

  She cried all the way to her car, big snuffling heaves of sobs. Reaching into her gym bag for a towel to dry her tear-streaked face, her fingers encountered the solid heaviness of her throwing knives. Something about feeling the hardness of the steel blades pulled her back together.

  She took a moment to settle her core, the same preparation she’d done a thousand times before releasing a knife sailing true toward its target. Her muscles were suddenly steady and her mind organized, as was necessary to throw a knife accurately. Her heartbeat slowed and her breathing evened. She was strong and she was capable of taking care of herself. She always had, and she’d come through worse than this. Now she just had to find a way.

  She cleaned up her tears, her mind working overtime. What did she have to be humiliated about? Every woman at that law firm wished they’d been her. Everyone lusted for Ford—all of the women and some of the men. They were not going to make her feel like a failure or a whore. For what? Because she’d gotten carried away? Because she’d allowed herself to have some fun? To do something crazy? To be seduced? It wasn’t like she was the first person to screw around in the office.

  It wasn’t even the first time she’d screwed around in the office. During the good times of their relationship, she and John had gone at it many times in his office when the rest of the firm thought they were working on some big project. Evie shook her head—she wasn’t going to think about John and what he might do to her when he found out she’d lost her job…and why.

  She shuddered, shoving those thoughts into a mental box to think about later. The fear they would inspire would only distract her, making things worse. Right now, she needed a plan. Taking a deep breath, she took inventory. She had three major problems to manage—protection from John, a job and money—in that order.

  Banging the steering wheel with her fists, she let out a frustrated scream. There was no one she could turn to. There never had been. Dating John had been the first and last time she’d let herself believe in the fairy-tale, let herself believe it could happen for a girl like her. She’d been wrong. And she should have known—she wasn’t the right kind of girl for those kinds of happy endings. She didn’t have the right hair or the right friends. She didn’t come from the right family or have the right size on her jeans’ tag. She was going to have to find her own way.

  The cold reality of that was no different than what she’d known all along—the same thing she’d learned growing up in her mother’s home—no one was going to take care of her. If she wanted a happily ever after, she was going to have to forge it herself with her two bare hands. She could do that. She would do that. Counting on other people would only get her screwed, in more ways than one, she’d discovered.

  She couldn’t just sit there and wait for John to come looking for her. Snapping down her vanity mirror, she fixed her makeup. When everything went to shit, she could at least make sure she looked good as she was watching it go. Tucking her hair behind her ear she flipped the mirror back up. She set her jaw, her chin raised. She had no regrets. Ford had taught her something about herself and uncovered desires she’d never known she had. Desires she wanted to fulfill again. Pushing that thought aside too, she concentrated on the larger issue. She needed a job.

  If she wasn’t working at the firm under John’s thumb, he would want the money she owed him right away. She didn’t have it. She still owed him thirteen thousand dollars, and he was making her stay at the law firm until she paid him back…or else. And after what she’d seen John was capable of, she wasn’t willing to risk the “or else”, especially once John found out why she’d gotten fired.

  She couldn’t even go home because John would go there looking for her. Heart pounding, her throat swelled as tears threatened again. This job and her apartment were all she had. She beat back her fear and distress out of sheer survival instinct. She could fall apart later. What she needed now was to take care of herself.

  Somehow she had to find safety until she could figure out how to get John his money. Then she could disappear. One thing she was thankfully certain of was that John wasn’t fixated on her. No, he’d made that painfully clear back when she cared.

  He’d conned her good about the relationship, but she was at least smart enough to learn the lesson. Men with money and power like John couldn’t be trusted. They had the world for their taking, so they took.

  John would leave her alone once she repaid him. Her certainty of that was solidified by the blackmail he had on her. It was his genius little insurance policy that ensured Evie’d never rat him out.

  Not knowing where she was going, she attempted to put the keys in the ignition but dropped them to the floor in a tinkle of cheerful, metallic jingling. Looking down at her hands, her eyes widened. Her fingers shook as if she were in the first stages of hypothermia.

  Clasping her hands together so tightly they hurt, she pulled them against her stomach, curving her body around them and rocking in her seat.

  I’m going to be okay. I’m going to be okay.

  She muttered it fiercely over and over until she’d succeeded in pushing out the helpless feelings of fear invading her body.

  A fresh wave of hatred for John iced through her veins. She’d worked so hard to learn to control her fear of him. Safety and security were the aspirations that drove her since she was a child, yet somehow no matter how she arranged things, she could never seem to find them. When would she be able to achieve the feeling of peace that came from knowing everything was going to be okay? She pounded her hands on the steering wheel again, gritting her teeth, a frustrated groan escaping her raw throat.

  Was safety and security a fairy tale too?

  Comfort. Peace. Just for once in her life she wanted to stop being afraid. Was that too much to ask?

  Suddenly she was eleven years old again, pretending to sleep on the broken down couch that was her bed. Curled into a small ball under the thin blanket, she jumped when the front door slammed open. Grateful for the cover of darkness, she lay very still, as she’d learned to do whenever her mom finally came home.

  “Shh, don’t wake her up or we won’t have no privacy.” Her mom sounded like she had a mouth full of marbles. Drunk? High? Evie never knew from day to day.

  “You got a kid?” The man’s voice was coarse and his words sounded wet, as if there was too much spit on his tongue. Evie stilled in her ball on the couch, willing her body to be as motionless as a statue, as unremarkable and unworthy of attention as any piece of shabby furniture in the room. Her heartbeat sounded like a freight-train in her head as she heard his clumsy footfalls coming closer.

  “Stop screwin’ around, Jimmy.” She heard her mom stumble and giggle. “Wait for me in my room. I have to get my stuff.” Evie allowed herself to breathe again when their lurching footsteps moved down the hallway and away from the couch. For the next two hours she didn’t sleep until she’d finally heard them fall into silence. Passed out.

  At that point she couldn’t stand it. She’d finally gotten old enough to have her eyes opened to the stress and danger she was living with. Slipping off the couch, she found the keys to her mom’s broken down car, pulled on layers of clothes from the black trash bag that served as her dresser—easy to pack when they got kicked out of whatever shit-hole they were currently in—and slipped out of the house. She slept in the car for the rest of the night, shivering in the chilly fall temperature, but grateful to be behind locked doors to which only she had the key. A place where she could lock out the world.

  It was the first time she’d ever remembered feeling safe, and the feeling had been so powerful that at twenty-six she could still reach out touch that memory like it had just happened. After that, she had slept in the car every chance she’d gotten. Her mother had never even noticed.

  It was moments like these when the fear crawled back up Evie’s back, needling into the darkest parts of her brain to try and suck that scared little girl back to the surface. But Evie had spent years becoming the woman she was now, and
she wasn’t having it.

  Bursting from the car, she fumbled her keys again. She dipped and snatched them up from the concrete with still-shaking fingers. She couldn’t stay there a moment longer—not with her mind working overtime to reminisce about all the times she’d felt most helpless.

  I need to pull myself together.

  Panicking would not help her situation. Neither would crying and neither would sitting around and feeling sorry for herself. What she needed was a drink—a lot of drinks. Once she felt calmer she’d come up with some way to save herself. She always did.

  Grabbing her purse, she locked the car and slammed open the nearest stairwell door, desperate for fresh air. When she hit the sunlight-bathed city sidewalk, she paused, bracing a hand on the grimy brick facade of the parking garage. The open air soothed her burning throat, hot from pent-up emotion. While she waited for her eyes to adjust, her heartbeat slowed to normal.

  Frustration welled in her chest. Couldn’t her life just be simple? Boring? She clenched her teeth against the weight of her concerns and straightened her back. Pivoting on her black patent-leather, Ford-bait pumps, she headed toward the center of the city and the nearest bar.

  This was not going to beat her.

  Evie’s nerves steadied more and more with every solid click of her five-inch heels against the sidewalk.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THERE IS AN interesting group of folks at a bar at ten o’clock in the morning.

  Four men in drab and rumpled shirts were already bellied-up and drinking with their heads down. She was one of them now. Nowhere better to be.

  Not wanting to talk to anyone, Evie took a seat at the far end of the bar, ordered a beer and sat down to think.

  An obvious solution was to ask Ford to loan her the money, but she wasn’t a complete idiot. She’d be borrowing from one man to pay another, and she didn’t know Ford that well. It could be jumping from the proverbial frying pan straight into the fire. Besides, she’d learned her lesson the hard way about borrowing money from men.

  By noon, she was three and a half beers in and had come up with a list of exactly zero places to look for a job. The legal community was a small one and gossip this juicy would travel like wildfire. She’d be lucky if any legitimate law firm in the state would even talk to her.

  All this trouble and she hadn’t even gotten to have sex with Ford. Screwing herself with her vibrator while she thought about Ford obviously didn’t count. She did that all the time. Groaning, she dropped her head into her hands.

  The stool beside her scraped across the floor and she smelled the mouth-watering vanilla and leather of Ford’s cologne.

  Oh god.

  It was the last thing she needed. John was going to come for her and she had to have a plan before he found her. Ford was a distraction she couldn’t afford right now. Lifting her head, she peeked at him through the fine strands of her light hair, now a bit disheveled.

  Ford tucked his stool in beside hers, all smiles, all dimples. His skin was lightly tanned and he wore pale linen trousers with a breezy, untucked shirt that looked expensive, of course. He looked just as he always did—fresh, handsome, as if he just stepped out of a men’s nautical cologne ad. He was breathtakingly gorgeous and the last person she wanted to see.

  The bartender had noticed him—everyone notices Ford—and came over to get his drink order.

  “Ah yes, bourbon, please. Give me the finest you’ve got.” Ford smiled expectantly.

  “I got Jim or Jack.” the bartender growled, polishing a glass with a dingy towel and glaring at Ford. “Which one you want?”

  “Black Label?” Ford asked, hope in his voice. The bartender glowered.

  “Right, of course. Jack please, and a cola, and one more of whatever the lady’s having.” Ford turned and smiled at her, tilting his head in a charming greeting. “Hello, Evie,” he drawled.

  She burst out laughing. Seeing Ford in the shabby bar, watching him try to order some fancy liquor, and the bartender’s reaction to him…Evie lost it. She laughed so hard tears streamed down her face. Ford watched her, a pleasant smile on his face, until her giggles began to abate.

  “Are you quite done?” he asked amiably.

  “Yes, yes, I believe I am…quite.” She wiped at the tears on her cheeks then dissolved into laughter again.

  “I believe I’ve caught you after a few drinks, love.” Ford smiled and his dimples made her breath catch. Her giggles died quickly and she had a sudden and powerful urge to kiss him, to have him wrap his strong arms around her and make her forget her trouble. She turned toward him, drawn by that urge, when he asked, “What are we celebrating?”, as if he’d walked into a party.

  She glared at him. Easy for him to be glib, he didn’t have any of the worries she did. “You’re right. I’ve had a few drinks. In fact, I think it’s safe to say I’m drunk in the middle of the day because I got fired. Apparently there are cameras in the library and they recorded every single minute of what we did last night. Mr. Northland called me into his office this morning and played me a charming video of me sucking your dick.”

  Crossing her arms over her chest, she waited for his reaction to the news, but Ford kept his pleasant smile steady, and without moving his head, flicked his eyes up behind her at the row of men five seats away at the bar. Wincing, she whispered, “I said that too loud, didn’t I?”

  Ford pursed his lips, obviously trying to suppress a smile. Giving the men a friendly nod of his head, he met her eyes again. “No worries. I am now officially the most envied man in the place, a position I quite like to be in.” He tipped his glass toward her and gamely took a sip of his bourbon, grimacing.

  She groaned again and dropped her head back into her hands.

  “I have a sex tape?” He sounded amused and proud. “Scandalous.” She raised her head to glare at him and he beamed back at her.

  She huffed. “What are you doing here, Ford?” She’d never called him by his first name before, but he wasn’t her client anymore. Plus she’d had his dick in her mouth, so some liberties with formalities were probably justified.

  Tilting his head, he studied her for a minute and then finally answered. “Looking for you.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “How did you know where to find me?”

  “I haven’t stopped thinking about you since last night, so I called the firm, but instead of putting me through to your office, I was transferred to Mr. Northland. He apologized to me and told me you’d been dismissed. I felt terribly about it and came looking for you. I followed my instincts to the nearest bar.” He slapped the back of her barstool, an easy smile lighting his face. “And here you are! It wasn’t hard,”—he leaned forward, glancing back down the bar again and adding conspiratorially—“you do stand out here, love.”

  “No more than you, Mr. Country Club.” Evie finished her drink and moved on to the one Ford had bought her. She should stop, but even through the fuzz in her head, something Ford had said caught her attention. “Wait, you talked to Mr. Northland?”

  “Yes.” Ford gave up on the straight bourbon and poured it into the cola entirely.

  “And he apologized to you?”

  “Yes, he did. He was quite apologetic, actually.” Ford set his drink down and looked at her good-naturedly.

  “What for?” Her voice rose in pitch. “Was my blowjob not up to his standards? That I didn’t do it twice? What in god’s name did he apologize to you for?”

  Ford turned toward her and pulled her stool closer to his, swiveling it so that her knees were between his spread legs, just like the night before. Leaning in, he spoke softly. “He apologized to me for your seriously unprofessional behavior…behavior that I very much enjoyed.”

  Leaning closer, he put his hands on her thighs, wrapping his fingers around her legs, bare due to her short dress. His voice was low and seductive and she found she couldn’t look away from the snare of his darkening eyes. “Behavior that I replayed in my head when I woke up this morning and enj
oyed myself again.” His lips curled in a sexy snarl of a smile. “Can you picture it, Evie?”

  Squeezing his fingertips into her thighs, he made shocks of pleasure ripple up her legs. Her pussy began an enjoyable throb as she was distracted by the thought, picturing his hand wrapped around his thick cock, stroking it while reliving the memory of fucking her willing mouth. Masturbating just as she’d done to the same memory, in her own bed last night.

  Very nice.

  She tried to focus on the immediate matter. “My unprofessional behavior? Did you defend me? Did you tell him you insisted? Hell, did you tell him you struck a deal with me for it? You’re the firm’s biggest client! If you demanded I not be fired they might take me back.”

  Her mind flashed on the idea and she leaned toward him. “Wait, is that why you’re here? To tell me you got them to give me my job back?” She searched his eyes, hopeful that, for once, things had taken a turn for the better.

  Taking advantage of her closeness, Ford leaned in and put his face against hers. She held her breath as he nuzzled his nose against her cheek and moved in to kiss her neck. When she felt his lips on her skin, she forgot what she’d asked him, alcohol and lust fogging her brain. Letting her head fall back, she closed her eyes, and her pulse quickened under his lips.

  She trembled as his mouth moved up her neck to her ear, his tongue sending desire crashing through her. His silky voice came right against her ear, “Mmm, now that I’ve tasted you, I can’t seem to be in the same room with you and behave.” Evie’s breathing was becoming erratic. “Sorry love, I didn’t ask your law firm take you back. I didn’t want them to.” Ford sucked her earlobe into his mouth and she bit down on a moan, trying to remain cognizant that they were in a public place.

  Then she processed his words. Shoving his hands off her legs, she pulled away from him and shot to her feet, knocking her stool backwards. It crashed to the floor, the ear-splitting sound reverberating through the otherwise quiet bar. Everybody who wasn’t already watching them turned to stare.