1

Dolly

The band was playing our song—or the song I had decided was ours since it had been playing the first time we kissed. Canyon pulled me tighter to him, and I closed my eyes and relished the moment.

Once upon a time, I hadn’t imagined a man like him would ever notice me. In fact, I was sure I was going to die alone with an apartment full of cats as my only companions. Not that I even owned a cat, but I had seen it looming in my future once.

Thankfully, time had been good to me—or like Momma said, I had been a late bloomer. A really late bloomer, if you asked me. Canyon had been my first kiss, which was sweet and all, but I was also twenty-one years old. It touched on embarrassing. What girl was twenty-one when she got her first kiss? It was just pathetic.

I wouldn’t think about that right now or perhaps ever again. I was on the arm of a handsome man who smelled of cologne and leather—maybe a slight stench of cigarette smoke, but I could overlook that. He overlooked my complete lack of experience with all things sexual. But I knew tonight was the night. We were going to finally have sex. It was about time too. The only thing worse than dying alone with an apartment full of cats was to die alone as a virgin with an apartment full of cats. That had to be remedied.

I’d been waiting patiently because Canyon had said he wanted me to be sure. My comfort was important to him, and that was the sweetest thing I had ever heard. However, today, when he’d picked me up, he had said something about taking me back to his place, and I had known then that this was it! I would no longer be a twenty-one-year-old virgin.

“Fuck,” Canyon muttered as his body tensed up.

For a brief moment, I worried that I had stepped on his toes. I wasn’t the best dancer, but then when had I been given much time to learn to dance? When one did not have a boyfriend, they didn’t get to dance very often.

He stopped dancing, and my eyes flew open to stare up into his rugged, chiseled face. Even the burn scar on his neck, which looked like someone had tried to brand him, was sexy. There was that swagger that few men had, but Canyon had managed to be blessed with it in abundance.

His jaw was clenched tightly as he stared over my head at someone or something behind me. I started to turn around, but his hands grabbed my shoulders and held me in place. He barely glanced down at me, but the brief moment that he did, I saw the apology or perhaps concern in his hazel eyes.

“What’s wrong?” I asked as his grip began to hurt me somewhat, not that I would complain.

I wasn’t one to draw attention to myself. I preferred not to annoy anyone. My best friend, Pepper, had said that she was going to shake that out of me one day. She hated that about me, but it was just because she loved me and felt as if I let others walk all over me.

“You need to go to the back, call your momma to come get you, and leave,” he said in a low voice.

“What?” I asked, blinking in confusion.

Call my momma? To come pick me up at a bar? No way in heck. I wasn’t about to send my momma into an early grave. She’d be madder than a wet hen, and it didn’t matter that I was twenty-one years old—I was not telling her I was at a bar. I had worked two jobs for over two years to be able to afford my own apartment just to get her out of my business.

“Your momma, Dolly. Call her. You need to leave. Now.”

Typically, I would do as I had been told. Not pitch a fit and be difficult. But he was asking something of me I could not do. Not today or in fifteen years. At no point in my life was it gonna be okay to tell my momma to come pick me up at a place like this. I could, however, call Pepper. She’d come and get me.

“Okay,” I replied. “But my phone is in my purse, and I left it at the booth with Bolt.”

Bolt was one of his friends, he let Canyon boss him around. Which was why he was watching my purse—Canyon had told him to.

“Fuck,” he growled.

His body had gotten so tense that I started to apologize for being a problem when he moved me over and then stepped in front of me, shoving me behind him.

I stared at his back, not sure if he now wanted me to stay here or leave.

“You lost, Abe?”

I didn’t recognize the threatening sneer in Canyon’s tone. I shivered. That didn’t sound like the man I knew at all.

“Tread carefully,” the other voice replied.

Whoever he was, I couldn’t see him due to Canyon being six foot two, and even with my heels on, I was only five-six. And oddly enough, the other guy’s first name was my best friend’s surname.

“Don’t think you can come inside my territory and make threats,” Canyon said, holding out his arms, as if to show him something. “This place is packed with Crowns.”

A low, amused chuckle came from the other man, and I tried to peer around Canyon’s body to see who that voice belonged to. There was something familiar about it. It felt as if I knew that voice.

“Perhaps prison slowed your already-addled brain,” the man said in a deep drawl.

I stopped trying to see him then. My heart began to speed up, and my eyes swung back to the leather vest covering Canyon’s back. Had he said prison? As in Canyon had been in prison?

“The building is surrounded by Judgment, and the parking lot is filled with the rest. Did you really think I wouldn’t come for you when they let your sorry ass out?”

My hand flew to my mouth as I covered the gasp. This was bad. My eyes scanned the area that I could see. Men stood with their hands on the guns at their hips. As if, at any minute, the place was going to erupt in gunshots.

“You really want to do this? After five years?” Canyon asked.

“Yeah, it seems I do,” the man replied.

He seemed much more relaxed about this entire thing. Although I couldn’t see him, his voice never rose. The tone didn’t change. He could have been having a polite conversation.

A gunshot rang out then, and I screamed before grabbing Canyon’s vest and burying my face in it.

“The next time you reach for your gun, I’ll put the bullet in your skull,” a deep, menacing voice said.

Trembling, I closed my eyes tightly, trying to decide if this was a dream, or if I should run for the door, or if I should start asking the Lord for forgiveness now, in case I didn’t make it out of here alive.

“Gage Presley?” Canyon’s tone made it hard to tell if he was asking a question or not. He seemed shocked. The tremor of fear I detected in his voice didn’t make me feel better about any of this.

Who was Gage Presley?

“You were locked up,” the familiar voice said with amusement. “Not living under a fucking rock. Surely, you know about The Judgment’s connection to the family.”

Canyon’s arm reached back, and his hand wrapped around my arm. I wanted to jerk it free and run. Maybe scream at the top of my lungs for help.

“I thought it was a rumor.”

“You thought wrong,” the scarier-sounding man said.

Canyon pulled me around to the front of him, and my heart slammed frantically against my chest. Tears filled my eyes, and I began to silently repent for my sins. There were more than I’d realized when I got started. I had a list of things to ask God to forgive me for. Starting with lying to my momma about who I was dating.

“Dolly?” the other man said.

My eyes snapped up at the sound of my name, and although the waterfall about to unleash from my eye sockets was making it hard to see clearly, I recognized him. It had been years. Six years, four months, and fifteen days, to be exact, but I was ashamed I still knew that. I had tried to stop keeping up with it when I started dating Canyon, but that was easier said than done. It was a habit. I liked numbers, and I often kept count of days when attached to things I liked. A long time ago, that had been Micah Abe.

“Micah,” I choked out in disbelief.

That was why I had known his voice. Of course I would recognize it. How could I not? When I was younger, he had been my sole obsession. Not that he cared.

Canyon’s arm came around me and pulled me back against his chest. “How do you know Dolly?” he demanded.

The possessive way he’d said my name would have made me giddy if there wasn’t a good chance I was going to be shot. Intentionally or not.

Micah ran a hand over his face and groaned in frustration. As if I was in his way and not terrified out of my mind. Why was it again that I had harbored a crush on this man for most of my life? Oh yeah. Because he was ridiculously beautiful, and once, a long time ago, he had stood up for me when some guys were making fun of me at school.

“Let her go, Canyon, or I’m letting Gage put you down before I get what I came for,” Micah told him.

I swung my eyes to the other man, not liking the idea of someone pointing a gun in this direction. If I wasn’t plumb scared to death, I would have laughed. The man was smirking, and his eyes seemed to dance with merriment. He looked like a model. The kind you saw on a billboard in Times Square.

“It’s okay,” he said to me. “I don’t miss.” Then, he winked.

Canyon’s fingers dug into my flesh as he held on to me. I whimpered in pain and turned my gaze up to him pleadingly. It felt as if his nails were breaking my skin.

“Did you set me up?” he snarled, glaring down at me.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. What did you say when the man you thought you were in love with accused you of something like this? I started to shake my head.

“Dolly isn’t involved in this, but she’s going to be splattered with your fucking blood in seconds if you don’t let her go,” Micah warned him.

“Maybe sooner. I have a twitch in my finger,” the man named Gage said, then chuckled as if he’d told a joke.

“Did you lie to me? Was this sweet, innocent shit an act?” Canyon asked me incredulously.

There were many things I should be thinking right now. Like how to survive this. But my cheeks heated from the words he’d just shared with a room full of men…and Micah.

“I didn’t,” I managed to say.

“Last warning,” Micah said.

Canyon’s gaze was searching, as if he was looking for the answer. He wanted to believe me, but there was doubt. Uncertainty. Even hurt in his eyes. When he shoved me away from him, I stumbled backward and caught myself by grabbing on to a table.

“You’ve got ten days,” Micah told him as he walked over to me and held out his hand for me to take.

I stared down at it, then up at him. Was he serious? He wanted me to just walk out of here with him?

But what other choice did I really have?

“Come on, Dolly,” he urged, and the gentleness in his eyes was what had me slipping my hand into his.

He pulled me to him and wrapped an arm around me before turning and heading toward the door. I started to look back.

“Don’t,” he warned me. “If he reacts, Gage will kill him.”

I nodded and let him lead me away. I felt numb as the door closed behind us and we stepped into the abnormally cool spring evening for Florida.

What had just happened?

“I’m gonna guess Pepper doesn’t know you’ve been dating him,” Micah said, and I lifted my gaze up to meet the magnetic blue eyes I had once compared to the color of a raindrop.

“No,” I admitted. “She’s been busy.”

He sighed and nodded. “Yeah, she has been.”

I turned my head to look at anything but him.

A tall man with broad shoulders, light brown hair so long that he had it twisted up into a bun at the nape of his neck, and hazel eyes approached us. He studied me for a moment, then shifted his attention to Micah.

“You’re picking up women? Right now?” he asked him, looking annoyed.

“I’m not picking her up. I’m saving her. She was with Canyon,” he replied.

The guy narrowed his eyes. “So?”

Micah tensed, and I watched as his expression hardened. “So, this is my little sister’s best friend.”

The guy’s eyes widened, and he looked back down at me. “Well, damn. That’s gonna fuck shit up.”