One Chance, Fancy (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 5)

There would be no escaping her unless I was at work, and even then my mind gave me such a vivid picture that I still couldn’t forget her—even if I wanted to.

Nope. There was no forgetting Fancy.

Not at all.Chapter 1How to have the perfect body while eating like a fat piece of shit.

-a book every woman wants

Present day

Phoebe

“Ma’am?”

I looked up at the guard that was standing there looking at me like I was out of place.

Funny, but I felt out of place as well.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Just drop all your stuff in that locker right there.” He pointed to the locker at my back. “Then you can walk through the detector.”

I did as he asked, then returned with nothing but my body.

Walking through the metal detector, I blew out a relieved breath when it didn’t ring out that I’d had contraband metal of some type on me.

I had no idea why I was always nervous when I went through them.

At the airport, courthouse, or even a prison—it was all the same. I got panicky even though I knew that there was nothing on my person that would set it off.

“And you said you’re here to meet with the warden?” the guard asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “For an interview.”

He looked at me skeptically, and I barely contained the urge to bare my teeth at him.

“The guard at the door there will escort you to the next station.” He pointed.

I looked up to find another guard standing there, his eyes hyperaware of everything that was happening around him.

“Thank you.” I smiled at the first guard.

He winked and turned back to the woman that’d followed in behind me—a young blonde that was exceptionally beautiful.

A young blonde that I’d seen at Benson—Bayou’s house quite a bit.

A blonde that Bayou had thrown his arms around and protected from my sister all those years ago.

A blonde that was stalking my sister because she didn’t like Hoax’s—her cousin as well—choice of female company.

I hated her.

“Oh, do we really have to do this every time, Caden?” Brielle asked in that whining tone that never hesitated to put me on edge.

“Yes,” Caden, the guard, answered. “It’s protocol. Every guard that works here even has to go through it.”

Brielle sighed loudly, sounding extremely put out to be treated as she was, and did as she was asked.

“You may sit.”

I sat down in the seat the guard indicated and looked around the room he’d taken me to. It was a waiting room of sorts that had one door leading back out into the hallway, and one door leading into what I assumed was Bayou’s office.

There was a desk in between the inner door and the outer door, but it looked like it wasn’t manned and that it’d been empty for quite a while thanks to the dust that was collecting on the phone that sat there.

Five minutes later, Brielle arrived with a flurry, and walked to the inner office door and started to knock.

The guard that’d escorted me in stopped her before she could. “Don’t. He’s in an interview right now. Just sit here and wait.”

He pointed to the seat next to me and Brielle narrowed her eyes.

In blatant disregard of her instructions, she dropped her arm from where she’d been about to knock, and walked to the desk that was between the two doors, taking a seat at the abandoned rolling chair.

“You may go now.” She flicked her wrist at him in a shooing gesture.

My brows rose.

Wow, she was a complete bitch!

I squirmed in my seat.

Today was a big day. My first ever big girl job interview.

I’d graduated with my bachelor’s degree in nursing no less than twenty-four hours ago, and I took my state test that would issue me my nursing license three days from now.

I’d been wracking my brain, trying to figure out just what in the hell I wanted to do with the rest of my life when the job that I was about to interview for had popped up on a job-search website.

Thinking it couldn’t possibly be as good as it sounded—which was pretty awesome—I’d applied.

Did it occur to me that he’d be here? Sure.

The moment he came back into my life again, things were tough.

I wanted things that I knew he wasn’t willing to give me, yet that didn’t stop me from wanting them.

But then I’d have to tell myself that this man and the one I’d known all those years ago weren’t interchangeable.

The sweet, caring, odd boy that I’d been thinking about for the better part of my teen years and all of my technically adult years wasn’t the same one I was reintroduced to.

It was like he was a completely different man.

The young man that I’d met all those years ago wasn’t there anymore. In his place was a man that I didn’t recognize.

Not that the man changing, becoming more confident in himself, wasn’t epic.