Entangled Heart (Ashby Crime Family)

“You know what I mean, Jamie. Don’t try to put this on me. I finally heard from Molly after more than a year with no contact, and she told me to stop calling her. Why?”

He didn’t have answers and I didn’t expect him to, so I went to the kitchen and grabbed a roll of paper towels to clean up the spilled beer. “I’m sorry. Sorry I ever came here.”

“Oh, no, sweetheart, I don’t fucking think so.”

Before I could get to the door, Jameson had his big hand wrapped around my arm, yanking me backward.

“Sit your pretty little ass down, right here, and read the rest of the file. Read the whole goddamned thing so you know the whole truth of what Molly’s been through, of what Mueller did for her.”

I stood and shook my head because there was something in his tone that made me uneasy and slightly nauseous. “No, I don’t need—”

He put his hand on my shoulder and pushed me back down. “Sit. The. Fuck. Down. Read the fucking file, Maddie. You’re so sure that I’d take Mueller’s side, the FBI’s side without proof, so you sit your ass right there and read every fucking page.”

Guilt twisted in my gut. I shook my head. “You know I didn’t mean that, Jamie. I was upset. Hurt.”

“Just fucking read it!”

His words came out on a menacing roar that pulled a shocked gasp out of me.

My shoulders fell, and I nodded. “Okay. Fine, I’ll read it. Just one thing.”

“Read it, Maddie.”

“I will, but I’m sorry for questioning your loyalty, Jamie. You’ve been nothing but good to me.”

Maybe I was too fucked up in the head to appreciate that the way I should. Maybe he was just too good for the likes of me.

“Despite that, you don’t trust me.” He shook his head, a whole cast of emotions played across his face—anger, sadness and betrayal at the top of the list—and sighed. “I love you, Maddie, I really do, but this, us, will never work if you act up when you don’t get your way. If you can’t find a way to trust me, then yeah, maybe we are just fuck buddies.”

I was stuck on the I love you part of his little speech, and I stared at his handsome face for a long time, wondering if I’d imagined those words. Jamie Ellison said he loved me. Me, the tomboy from the shitty end of the trailer park. I shook my head, unable to believe it, no matter how desperate I was for it to be true.

“Jamie. I do trust you. I do.”

“It’s easy to say, Maddie. Read the fucking file and then show me.”

He walked away, pouring beer down his throat. Jamie let the back door smack shut and left me alone with the Mueller file.

And a lifetime of trust issues.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Jameson

What the fuck was I thinking, falling for woman so tangled up with the Ashbys? Couldn’t shit ever be simple? Couldn’t just one fucking thing in my life be simple? Easy? At least un-fucking-complicated?

No.

That wasn’t my life, apparently. So I sat on the back deck brooding. And drinking. Wondering if my trust was misplaced and would come back to bite me in the ass. Or would Maddie prove me wrong? I wanted, more than anything, for her to prove to me that while she might feel some kind of loyalty to the Ashbys, it would never top her loyalty to me.

What a fucking pussy. That was probably what Charlie’d say if he were here right now. But he wasn’t. It was just me and my thoughts. Thoughts that wouldn’t stop because I fucking loved Maddie. I loved her goddammit, but as long as she was part of the Ashby family, it would always be an obstacle between us. How in the hell did I manage to fall in love, for the first time, with a woman who lived with one of the biggest crime families in Nevada? Hell, in the entire goddamn U S of A?

The same way you thought you could become a good cop coming from the baddest MC in the state.

“Fuck,” I growled to myself. Ma was right. I didn’t know how to do anything easy in my life. I would have to fight every day as a police officer to prove I wasn’t in the pocket of the Reckless Bastards or criminal families like the Ashbys. Every partner I had would look at me sideways until I proved myself. So why should loving Maddie be any different?

Because it just is.

I took a long pull of my beer and sighed my frustration. Maddie was perfect for me. She was exactly what I needed after a day of dealing with the dregs of society, the people the world forgot about, if the world ever gave a fuck in the first place.