“Shut the fuck up.”
“Dad!” Holly threw her hands in the air and pulled out of LJ’s grasp, marching toward her father. “You need to stop this,” she hissed under her breath when she was inches from him. “Now, I have a date to get to, and LJ seems to have plans as well. Since he hasn’t done a single thing to warrant a police visit, I think you should let him pass by. You still haven’t told me why you’re here.” Red tinged her cheeks whether from embarrassment or anger, LJ couldn’t tell. Probably a bit of both.
Finally, the sheriff’s attention shifted from LJ to his daughter. LJ held his ground, hands on his own hips now that Holly’s weren’t available.
“Came to see if you needed a ride to the restaurant.”
It was probably wise if LJ did not snort at that moment, so thank fuck Holly did it for him. “Well, Dad, since it’s been almost a decade since I was fifteen, I’ll have to pass.” She cast an apologetic look over her shoulder right before linking her arm through her father’s. “Tell you what, though. I’d love an escort to my car.” As she stepped forward, she gently tugged on her pop’s arm in a sort of come with gesture.
The sheriff didn’t budge. “Go on, honey. Have fun with Richard tonight. Just gonna have a quick chat with your neighbor, before I head on home to your mother.”
Holly opened her mouth, but LJ gave her a quick shake of his head. Sexy as it was watching her get all steamed up, he didn’t need her fighting his battles, and he sure as fuck didn’t need anyone saving him from the small-town sheriff.
She nodded once in his direction, that biteable lower lip back between her teeth before walking toward the stairs.
“Let’s get a few things straight, shall we?” The sheriff asked, closing the distance between them.
LJ smirked. “Sure thing, Sheriff. What’s on your mind?”
“Sheriff Coleman is gone. That means whatever bullshit backdoor deals you had running with him are also gone. Money doesn’t turn my head or make me hard. But you know what does?”
“Fucking someone who ain’t your wife?”
“Nah, what turns me on more than anything is watching the scum of the earth rot away in prison. And there’s no one lower than bikers, in my opinion.”
LJ wrapped his hands around the rungs of the railing behind him to keep from lunging forward and slugging the arrogant son of a bitch who had the power to make life very uncomfortable for his club.
With a chuckle, as though he knew what the restraint was costing LJ, the sheriff turned and strolled toward the stairs. “Stay the fuck away from my daughter, asshole. She’s way too clean for your kind of filth. Be seeing ya.”
In his mind, LJ started to count. A little trick a therapist had taught him to keep from lashing out or losing his sense of reality. Focus on the numbers. Stay in the moment. By the time he hit thirty-seven, the sheriff’s motor was running, and he was pulling out of the parking lot, ignoring the slurs yelled from LJ’s brothers.
He jogged down the stairs to his waiting bike.
“You good, brother?” Screw asked, slapping him on the back.
“Yeah, no worries.” A lie if he ever told one.
Nothing irked him more than being treated like trash. He’d served his country for years as a special forces operator. He’d saved lives, earned a purple heart, and was honorably discharged after a mission that left him scarred on the inside and outside.
To be looked at like a piece of garbage who was seconds away from raping and murdering the sheriff’s daughter chapped his fucking ass.
With a laugh, Mav said, “You’re about as shitty a liar as they come, Little Jack.” Then he grinned. “Speaking of coming. Let’s get you plastered and find a willing mouth to give you a good suck tonight. Yeah?”
With a grunt, LJ started his bike. As luck would have it, his dick had no interest in any mouth beside the one he’d been drooling over five minutes ago.
Goddamn fuckin’ shame is what that was. A nice kick in the nuts. A woman walks right out of his dirty fantasies and into the apartment next door only to turn out to be the daughter of the cop who’s fucking with his club.
Just his fucking luck.
CHAPTER SIX
“AND LET ME tell you, we were so goddammed wasted,” Richard—Rick as he’d requested she call him—said with a hearty laugh right before guzzling nearly half his wine glass in one long gulp.
What she found most impressive about this date so far was a toss-up between the magic trick in which he’d made three generous glasses of wine disappear in a span of thirty minutes, or how he’d told four stories in the same amount of time all containing the sentence, “We were so wasted.”