LOGAN: The Fallen Thorns MC Read online

  Alicia blushed and looked at me.

  “It was five DVDs, all two weeks late.” It was a hell of a fine for a library.

  “No one will know. Mister…”

  “Frost.”

  She smiled. “Mr. Frost won’t tell if we drop the fines. Come now, Selena, don’t be such a prude.”

  She just called me a prude in front of Annoyingly-Handsome. I stifled a groan, fought the urge to roll my eyes and clicked the button that said the fines were paid. Of course, the computer would have no way of knowing it wasn’t paid. It wasn’t a cash register.

  “Thank you so much,” Logan said to Alicia in a syrupy tone. Syrupy. On a biker. It sounded terrible but he made it look good. I had to remember that - maybe I could work it into my book somehow.

  “It’s nothing,” Alicia said. She was gushing all over him. It made me sick. I liked to think I was down to earth. I knew where I belonged in life, I was under no illusion about my looks and I wasn’t about to indulge anyone else in a fantasy about theirs. I was also not hard-up for a lay.

  Alicia, on the other hand, was guilty of all of the above, especially the latter if her reaction was anything to go by.

  “Will that be all?” I asked, scanning the book.

  He nodded. “I’ll be sure to have it back on time.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” I said, mocking Alicia’s flippant tone. “We’ll just waive the fines again for you when you’re late.”

  Alicia glared at me before smiling at Logan again. He nodded at me and smiled. I looked away. I wasn’t interested. Especially not now that I’d seen manipulation at its best. I had no time for people who used their looks to get somewhere in life.

  “I have to get to a meeting. Will you escort me out?” Alicia made her eyes big and batted her eyelashes again. Logan hesitated for a moment, that smile frozen in place as if he really wanted to say no. Of course, with all his charm he’d poured out a moment earlier, it wasn’t like he could say no now. Karma was such a bitch. He nodded. Alicia smiled and turned toward the door. He looked at me.

  I deliberately looked away. Logan turned and followed Alicia to the door, his swagger just a little less energetic than before. Good. I hoped Alicia made his life miserable for as long as he spent time in her company.

  I turned back to my manuscript and paged back through it until I found the scene with the love interest that Kylee would end up with once she was divorced from her murderer husband. Right now Francis was a lawyer, the scatterbrained type with the scruffy suit and the skew tie and the ability to come up with genius resolutions in the face of adversity. I edited his sections, changing his character a little. He was still a lawyer, but instead of being scatterbrained he was witty and quick, charming, clothed in leather and driving all over the show on a Harley.

  He was attractive but he didn’t seem to think so, he liked Kylee because she was so down to earth, not because of her mind, and he had ways of getting answers and saving the day that didn’t fit in an ordinary novel.

  I read over it again. Francis was a lot more interesting now, except his name didn’t fit, either. Now he seemed more like a Butch or a Duke or a Jack.

  I looked at the door where Logan and Alicia had disappeared.

  Or an Asshole.

  I couldn’t see them through the partial glass of the doors with the lights on inside and the darkness outside. Just as well - I wasn’t in the mood to see my boss sucking face with the idiot biker who thought he had everything coming to him because he knew how to smile in a way that made woman rethink the purpose of their existence.

  Chapter 2

  Logan

  I escorted the manager outside. She kept trying to flirt with me, fluttering her eyelashes and twirling her hair and swinging her hips this way and that and nothing about her was attractive. She was practically throwing herself at me and I wasn’t going for it. No guy went for the woman who was that easy to get. We like to work for it and if we don’t have to we wonder who else had gotten in there.

  “Thank you again for getting me out of those fines,” I said to her when we reached her car.

  “Oh, it’s nothing. I’m the boss around here so I call the shots.” She said it with a voice that was supposed to be seductive, but it was just annoying. I opened the car door for her, hoping it would make her get in. She slid into the driver seat and looked at me, an invitation to come with her.

  Not happening. I smiled and closed the door. She looked disappointed through the window but that wasn’t my problem. Life was full of disappointments and I wasn’t about to walk down the road where I was the one who ended up disappointed. She started the car and drove away, finally.

  I pulled out my box of cigarettes, pinched one between my lips and lit up. I sucked in the smoke, ignoring the vile taste that never went away and turned to look at the library.

  I’ll admit it, biker boys and books don’t go together. The fact that I’d set foot in a library at all was something people thought was strange, but I’d stopped caring what people thought ages ago. I wasn’t the first biker in my gang to go to a library. We had our reasons.

  When my smoke was done I threw the butt on the ground and stubbed it out with my toe. I started my bike and it growled into the quiet night. It was almost closing time for the library and I contemplated waiting until the blonde came out but I decided against it. I had things to do with my time.

  The girl behind the counter had been cute. Cute but a pain in the ass. She didn’t fall for my charm even though I knew she noticed and she treated me like any other customer. Women didn’t usually react to me that way. Which meant she was hot as hell in my books. There is nothing more attractive than a woman who is hard to get. And this was a bonus after her looks.

  That boss of hers…meh. She was okay. She could be sexy, and I didn’t doubt she would be eager to perform in the sack, but who wanted a woman who threw herself at you? We could take whatever we wanted. We wanted someone who made that impossible for us.

  Like Selena.

  Just the name gave me shivers. It was an exotic name, something that would fit into the mysteries I loved. Like figuring what a woman was all about when she really wasn’t interested in me, finding ways I could make her interested.

  I would have to wait for that, if it was going to happen at all. Selena was a tough one to get to. I could tell, already. She thought I was attractive, sure, but she wasn’t going to just fall for my looks. A woman with even half a brain was attractive. Sex was great but a good conversation trumped that every time.

  I had been to the library a couple of times to check out books for the kids and I’d never seen her there. Strange. She didn’t seem like she was new. Maybe it had always been bad timing. I was going to see if I could change that, if for no other reason than to get on her nerves. She was hot when she was irritated. What could I say? I was full of shit. She was even someone who might fit into the gang if she ever decided to dip her toe into my kind of waters.

  I was the leader of the motorbike gang and I worked hard to stay there. I was a badass son of a bitch who would do whatever it took to stay in power and my men not only respected me but they feared me. It was a good combination to have and a very big responsibility to have.

  There were almost fifty of us, a very big group, and all those lives were in my hands.

  Just because we were badass bikers with bad histories and worse pasts didn’t mean we couldn’t be good people. We did everything we could to fix what we’d fucked up a long time ago and we were doing well. There were gangs that laughed at us, rivals that thought we’d become pussies, but we didn’t really care about that. It took one bout in jail to realize your life was going down the gutter and you had to do something to fix it.

  Every single one of us has had a really bad wake up call in some way or another.

  Yes, it was a paradox. Yes, we were strange. Yes, we wanted to break a bottle over someone’s head when they laughed at us and asked us how long we’d been searching for our manhood. But I liked b
eing a biker who looked for shit and stirred up trouble. I liked being the boss everyone looked up to. I liked my leather and my tattoos and my bike that was the pride of my life.

  I also liked books and silence and doing the right thing, too. If being a bleeding heart made me a loser then maybe I was the biggest one out there. I cared for the right things and, for the rest of it, I was still a biker.

  Being able to get women to eat from the palm of my hand was the most thrilling. My gang looked up to me but they had their free will and they did it because they wanted to. They followed me because I did things that earned their respect and their fear. It was a give and take situation. With women, it was all about getting them to respond without offering anything in return. It was power at my fingertips.

  In this case, I had lost. I’d gotten those fines canceled, which had been great. It wasn’t like I didn’t have the money to pay them, but getting out of something was a small victory and it was addictive. Still, I hadn’t gotten what I really wanted. Which was a) the damn repair book that that little librarian was now keeping for me, and b) that little librarian eating out of the palm of my hand.

  Which brought me back to the fact that she was the one that ran circles through my mind now. Not the easy-to-get manager who would fall into bed with me in a heartbeat, but the lady behind the counter who looked like she had all types of standards and maybe I didn’t exactly fit the bill.

  That was what got me. Having to fight for something. Having to look for ways to make it work and having a chance of failing. That was what intrigued me about mysteries and that was what got me about her. Selena.

  I was going to see her again. Thursday night seemed to be one of her shifts. Mental note. I would swing by this time more often then.

  She’d been so angry that I’d been able to get her boss to reverse the fines. Maybe it was the principle of the thing. I didn’t think at all that it was because she might be jealous. She didn’t look like the jealous type, especially not if the guy wanted the attention he was getting. She seemed like she was better than that.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket and I pulled it out at a red traffic light. It was a number that linked to a messaging system.

  Logan Frost, your wallet has been found at Branciforte Library, 230 Gault Street. Please arrange for it to be picked up.

  The message was very impersonal but I was willing to bet she’d sent it. She was the only one left. I looked at the time. It was almost seven. I had things I needed to do, places I needed to be, but I wanted to see her again. I made a U-turn and drove all the way back to the library.

  When I got there it was just after seven and the doors were locked when I pushed against it. The light inside was still on and I saw her through the glass sitting behind the counter. She was typing, her eyes locked on the screen and a look on her face suggested she were somewhere else.

  I knocked on the door and she looked up. When she saw me she tapped her wrist where a watch should have been, and carried on typing. I looked at the time.

  It was after seven. The library closed at seven. Dammit.

  I knocked on the door again. She ignored me. Ignored. She carried on typing like I wasn’t there. I rattled the door and knocked again, getting irritated. She was doing this on purpose. I’d been right about her: she was a pain in the ass.

  I banged both fists down on the wooden part of the door before turning away. I walked down the few steps and sat down. I was going to wait right here until she came out. She wouldn’t be in there forever; it was past closing time already and I knew she had a home to go to. Screw the gang and our meeting. I was going to wait for her to come out. I took out another smoke and lit up. I had a box to get through - she could take all night. I would be here.

  It took her a good half hour to finally decide it was time to leave. The door clicked open behind me and a moment later it closed again. I stood up and turned to watch her. She was a slight thing. Her back was to me and blonde hair hung over her back and shoulders and it looked silver in the moonlight. I followed her body down. Her waist was narrow and her ass was really something to look at.

  She turned and froze.

  “You shouldn’t be alone this time of night. There are all sorts of creeps out there.”

  Her face was a mixture of fear and surprise for a moment before it melted away and she looked vaguely irritated instead. Great, she wasn’t scared of me. I wasn’t sure if I liked her courage or if I was annoyed by the fact that she was possibly the only human being in the world who didn’t find me remotely charming.

  “Are you going to sit on the steps until opening time?” Her voice was neutral, her face was neutral, and still I had the feeling she was mocking me. Her eyes shimmered in the night. What color were they? Blue? Green? I hadn’t paid enough attention when we were in the light and suddenly I wished I had.

  “I’m here for my wallet.”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry, we’re closed now and it’s inside in the office. You’ll have to come back when we’re open to get it.”

  I was a little irritated but her indifference and her calm were fascinating. “You have keys. Why don’t you just run in there and grab it for me?”

  She smiled at me and it was beautiful. She was beautiful. Judging by the way she carried herself and the way she talked she wasn’t aware of it. Her lips were perfect - not too full but plump enough to kiss and nibble on. Her eyes were big and round and full of what I’d thought was naïveté but I might have been wrong. She didn’t seem naïve at all when she spoke to me.

  “I’m sorry. The alarm is set now.”

  She wasn’t going to budge on this, was she? Of course, it wouldn’t have been impossible for her to go in there. She was just planning on being difficult. Punishment for earlier, I was guessing.

  “What do I need to do to get that wallet?”

  I was willing to seduce her. Wine her, dine her, recline her. She tipped her head slightly to the side and it only added to her beauty.

  “I’m sure I just explained it. Come back in the morning.”

  I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Are you always this difficult?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not difficult. I’m just doing my job. It would have been great if I could wiggle my way out of it with a nice line to my boss the way you had but I don’t think I’m her type.”

  She said everything with a straight face like we were having a normal conversation, but I knew she was messing with me. She was making me pay in other ways now that the fines were gone. And I liked it. I liked her having at it, making me pay. There was something very erotic about being at the mercy of a woman like this.

  She was sex on a stick and she didn’t even know it. I was willing to bet she didn’t know what she was doing to me.

  “I’m sure if we phoned your manager we could clear this up right away,” I said.

  Her face closed. “If you want to phone her at this hour and ask her to come bring out your wallet, you be my guest.”

  There was nothing humorous about that statement. I’d pushed it too far. I felt like an idiot, rubbing someone else’s attraction in her face.

  “I just want my wallet.” I wasn’t going to apologize.

  Selena shrugged. “I can imagine how frustrating it must be to lose a wallet.” She walked around me, down the steps and into the parking lot. It was empty aside from my bike. She walked to the street and looked left and right, looking for a taxi.

  I jogged toward her. “Let me give you a ride home.”

  She glanced at me. “No thank you.”

  Just like that? “Come on. It’s late. Let me spare you the cab fee.”

  She smiled at me sweetly. “That’s not necessary, thank you. I have my wallet.”

  Was that a joke? Was she playing with me again?

  She waved at a taxi and when it stopped in front of her she opened the car door. “We open at eleven and I’m on duty again in the morning. I’ll be sure to have your wallet ready for pickup. If you wait until n
oon before you come in you’ll be able to catch Alicia. I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you.”

  She climbed into the car and closed the door. I watched her give the driver an address I wished I could hear and the car pulled off. I watched it until the taillights disappeared around a turn before I turned around and walked to my bike.

  Dammit, that woman was something else. She was a like a dog that was cute and cuddly and bit the shit out of your hand if you came too close. She was feisty and beautiful and I wanted to see her again.

  I was going to come back here in the morning. I was going to be there the moment they opened and I was going to be out of here again before Alicia came back. I had no intention of seeing her again. It was Selena I was after.

  I pictured her in my mind’s eye. Blonde hair. Eyes that were the color of gems, I just didn’t know which ones yet, a curvy body and absolute ignorance about how sexy she was.

  That was the thing that got me the most about her. She was sexy - she moved with fluid grace when she walked, she had a regal posture and her hair was like a golden veil around her shoulders - and she had no idea how stunning she was. She didn’t come across vain or airy or anything I usually saw in women. She was completely and utterly herself.

  And she didn’t fawn over me either, which just made her all the more attractive.

  I was definitely going to see her again, even if it meant I might run into her boss again who was as regular and average a woman as they came.

  My phone beeped. I was very late for a meeting and the boys would be getting itchy. We tried to walk the straight and narrow - every single one of the gang was someone who had gotten out of a life that wasn’t worth living. Still, there was always the chance that one of us might be picked up for something that still hung around in our past and we needed to check in with each other regularly.

  Chapter 3

  Selena

  I was part of a writing group. It was something we’d started up ages ago. We were a handful of women who critiqued each other’s writing and we set deadlines that we had to stick to. It was easier keeping to a writing schedule when we had someone to answer to. Otherwise, we would sit and think about our novel and rewrite and daydream about the pages we’d already written without ever finishing the book. When we had to show each other what progress we’d made, it actually pushed us to make any progress at all.