Bad Company Read online

  Here in the bedroom that just left the window. Jump feet first and she might get through without cutting herself to shreds and she might then land on her feet and she might then be able to run and dodge their bullets, but... this wasn’t a movie.

  She had to face it: there was no way out.

  She stared Brady down. “So what now?” she said.

  “I wonder how Denny dressed it all up for you?” he said, ignoring her question. “I bet it was a good story and he came out of it well. The sympathetic victim, am I right? Did he blame me? I always suspected he’d blame me if it came to it.”

  “He said you made some bad deals and tried to cover it up,” she said, her brain spinning.

  Brady nodded.

  “He said he tried to sort it all out with one of the people whose money you’d blown.”

  “That figures. And you believed him, of course?”

  She had. Why shouldn’t she? But now... Brady didn’t have to say anything more than that for her belief in Denny McGowan to vanish in a puff of smoke. That simple question – And you believed him, of course? –was like pulling a loose thread and watching her trust unravel.

  Somewhere deep inside she felt a hollow ache. Denny... Another in her long line of bad choices.

  “Last night at Pappy’s,” Brady continued. “It was no accident Denny turning up there.”

  She stared at him, waiting for him to go on.

  “You see, our big investor – the bad money Denny roped in to try and save us – his name is Billy Ray Dane.”

  It got worse. It just got a whole lot worse.

  “So no, Denny turning up at your door last night was no accident. He was just doing the same thing I am: trying to find favor with Billy Ray Dane by delivering him his estranged daughter...”

  §

  She’d successfully shut him out of her life until that night three years ago. She had a room then, a place in one of the nicer parts of Brownsville where the crack-dens actually had doors, as one of her friends had once put it. A room, three jobs, night school when she could manage it. She’d started to feel that a corner in her life had been turned. She was doing okay.

  A banging on the door and Cindy yelling through that it was for her and there were two guys there. Black suits, skinny ties, shades – they were either something from the Blues Brothers or gangsters and she knew it was the latter when one of them said, “Billy Ray sends his regards,” then reached into a pocket, revealing a gun in a shoulder holster, and produced an envelope.

  This was Billy reaching out to her.

  She took the letter and the two heavies stayed there.

  “Was there something else?”

  They stared, impassive, and then finally the guy who’d handed her the letter said, “Billy said there would be a reply.”

  Cassie gave him her best Don’t fuck with me look and the guy actually blinked, which she took as a small victory. “You give him any reply you like,” she said. “Just get off my doorstep, you hear?”

  With that, she stepped back and slammed the door. She was actually surprised the door shut – shouldn’t the guy have put his foot in it to stop it closing or something? Maybe he’d thought the better of it.

  She leaned against the door and gave a great big sobbing, shuddering breath. Had she really just slammed the door on an armed gangster sent by Billy Ray Dane? On two of them!

  The letter...

  She’d opened it, eventually, much later that evening. She’d almost burned it straight away, but she’d never have been able to live with the curiosity. She hated the way Billy could insinuate his way back into her consciousness so easily: ignore the letter and it’d eat away at her; open it and she’d be drawn deeper into whatever game he was playing now.

  Cassandra,

  You know how many times I’ve written this? Too many. That’s how many.

  All the fancy ways of saying it but they just don’t work. “I’m sorry” “I’d do things differently” “Just give me a chance” It all sounds like the biggest BS when you try to put it down.

  So Cassandra. I’m sorry. I’d do it differently. I’ll be out soon. I’d like to meet up someplace and get to know you. I’d like you to find it in yourself to get to know me. I’ve changed. Jail does that to a guy. Just give me a chance.

  See what I mean?

  Lets meet. It sounds much better face to face.

  Billy Ray

  He’d included a number for her to call.

  She held herself in check. Didn’t do anything for nearly a month. Gave herself time to get over the shock, to calm down and think rationally. And then she hit that point: the one where you just know. She didn’t want him in her life. She didn’t have that need. And whatever his need was that had prompted this, she didn’t care. He was a stranger and you can’t screw up your life just to satisfy the needs of a stranger.

  So she’d screwed up her life by fleeing.

  She didn’t want him to track her down again. Didn’t want to go through this another time. She’d left Brooklyn, left New York for the first time in her life. A new start in Vermont, then up here to the White Mountains where she’d found Marshall and Sally and something that had felt more like home than anywhere she’d been in the longest time.

  §

  “So what if his daughter doesn’t want delivering?”

  She didn’t expect Brady to just shrug.

  “I’m no kidnapper,” he said. “Denny might try to trick you back into daddy’s arms, but then Denny McGowan is, much as I regret to say this about my old buddy, a liar and a crook. That’s his call to make, though. Me? I can tell you Billy really is a different man. He wants to meet you so you can find that out for yourself and I’m happy to pass that message on, but I’m no gangster. Sure, Al and Luis can get a little heavy-handed and I genuinely apologize for them if they’ve scared you. But Billy only wants to meet you of your own free will.”

  It was all too much. She didn’t know what to believe. Had Denny really just been conning her? Was it all a trap?

  Nothing about Brady inspired trust but, perversely, that made his version seem even more credible: she didn’t have to believe him because she liked him.

  “Billy Ray Dane has been all kinds of bad in his time,” said Brady. “But in my dealings with him I can tell you he’s a good man at heart and there’s a place in that heart for you. That’s all I have to say. He said to find my own words and that’s it.”

  That priestly spreading of the hands again.

  “It’s your call, Ms Dane,” he said. “If you really don’t want to let your pop back in then just walk away right now. I’ll tell him I gave it my best shot and I’ll cover your back. I’ve settled with Billy: he asked me to do this one thing and he’d write off my debts to him and that’s it. So make your choice, Ms Dane. It makes no difference to me. From now on this is just between me and Denny McGowan.”

  Billy Ray Dane had done it again: insinuated himself. By giving her the choice he’d made it even harder for her to just walk away.

  She opened her mouth to speak and–

  The cabin door burst open and Luis was backing towards the bedroom, his gun hand half-raised, suspended in mid-air as he stared down the barrel of a hunting rifle.

  At the other end of the rifle was Sally, the smallest person here but easily the most fearsome.

  At her shoulder was Marshall, looking almost as fierce, his rifle swinging steadily from side to side as the pair advanced into the room.

  Oh God no!

  She loved them, and she so desperately didn’t want them hurt.

  She stepped out from by the bed and moved to the doorway, coming to stand in the line of fire in front of Al and Brady. “It’s okay, guys. It really is okay.”

  Sally and Marshall looked at her.

  “It’s okay.”

  She was in control.

  It was a strange realization, particularly now, when she was the only one in the cabin not packing a gun, but she really was the one calling the shots
, probably for the first time in her life.

  She stepped out of the bedroom, and slowly Marshall and Sally lowered their rifles.

  “We just...” said Marshall, before trailing off.

  “I know. You just... and I really appreciate it, but I’ve got this, okay, Marshall? I’ve got this.”

  She reached up and put an arm around his shoulder, turning him, guiding him. Her other arm around Sally’s shoulder, they crossed the room, then stepped out into the New Hampshire night, passing one by one through the doorway. Out on the porch they paused. The view here, from Red Maple, was dark smudges beneath a breathtaking starry sky, more and more stars emerging as your eyes adjusted.

  They stepped down onto the track, and Brady Lowe was true to his word: he let her walk away from it all.

  Epilogue

  But if Brady Lowe was prepared to let her walk away, not everyone else was.

  She stayed the night at Marshall and Sally’s lodge at the foot of the hill. They wouldn’t have it any other way. “You’re not going back up there alone, Cass,” Sally insisted. “Who knows what kind of trouble you might draw in?”

  They sat her down at the kitchen table and fed her a plate of leftovers. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said. “And I sure don’t know how to repay you.”

  For the second time in twenty-four hours she was left with only the clothes she was wearing: everything else had vanished with Denny in the Lexus when he’d abandoned her. And this time she didn’t even have the benefit of his roll of hundred dollar bills to help her get by.

  “She’s doin’ it again,” said Marshall.

  Sally nodded. “She is. She does that a lot.”

  “Doing what?” asked Cassie.

  “Talking stupid,” said Marshall. “Ain’t no repaying us, Cass. You don’t owe us a thing. You’re family.”

  She welled up then. Had to look down and pretend she was studying her plate so they wouldn’t see. Of all the dumb choices she’d made, not appreciating what she had with folks like Marshall and Sally, and Lou back at Pappy’s, was perhaps the dumbest of all.

  “I’ll stay in touch this time,” she said softly.

  “You do that.”

  She nodded, staring down at her plate again.

  §

  She thought that was it. Before she retired to the pull-out bed in the spare room, she arranged for Sally to drive her into Conway in the morning where she could work out what to do next, and how to do it.

  She was surprised how easily she slept. She lay down, she closed her eyes, and that was all it took. She must have been riding an adrenalin high for the past twenty-four hours and now she just crashed.

  She woke almost immediately, it seemed, to sunlight streaming in through blinds she’d forgotten to close last night, and to a folded note on the pillow by her head.

  Another note to screw with her life. She knew immediately who it was from, and it wasn’t Billy Ray this time.

  Babe,

  I’m so glad you’re safe.

  I felt so bad leaving last night. It was spur of the moment. Two guys pointing guns at me and I’m sitting at the wheel of a fast car? What does every cell in your body tell you to do in a situation like that? And the worst thing was you thought I’d left you.

  I came back. I listened in. I heard what Brady said. He has a way with the story, that one.

  What he said wasn’t true, though.

  Yes, I went to Pappy’s to find Cassandra Dane and do whatever I could to turn her over to her father. I’m not proud of making bad choices like that, but it’s what I did. Remember the bit way back when we’d agreed I can be a bit of a shit sometimes?

  But that night... I got to your bar and I saw you and you were the girl in a bar who took my breath right away, you weren’t Cassandra Dane. All of that became irrelevant from the moment I set eyes on you. From that point on I gave up any intention to hand you over, or do anything you didn’t want to do. I fell for you, baby. Hook, line and sinker. From that point on we weren’t heading for some secret rendezvous with your long-lost father, we were heading anywhere we could figure that would give us a chance to be together. You have to believe that. It was all I wanted. All I will ever want.

  Right now you’re probably thinking it’s all very well with the fine words but where were the actions? Why didn’t I stop Brady last night?

  Well yes, I could have tried, and it took every ounce of strength in my body to stop myself from doing exactly that. Yes, I had a gun, but there were three of them. And, baby, even if I’d been able to overpower them, I’d heard what Brady was saying. I’d seen the look on your face. The doubts. So tell me: if I’d managed to overcome all the odds, if I’d burst in there and overpowered them, would you have come with me then?

  No. Not when the doubts were so fresh in your mind.

  That’s why I’m doing this. The coward’s way. The note. It gives you time. Time for it to sink in. Time for you to make a choice.

  It’s 4am now and you’re sleeping like a puppy. I’ve been out to a place called Conway and found an all-night store: I have a new cell phone now. Call me, babe. Any time. Now. Tomorrow. Six months from now.

  Give me a chance and call me.

  D

  She screwed the note into a ball and hurled it across the room. Then she looked around, suddenly feeling vulnerable. He’d been here. He’d broken in, left the note, gone again. It made her feel exposed and violated, even.

  She shouldn’t have to feel this way.

  She shouldn’t have people messing with her head like this, either. Pulling and twisting at anything she believed, so that she ended up doubting everything.

  She found the note and re-read it.

  So what do you do? Believe the guy who breaks in on you with his two armed sidekicks? Or believe the guy who has done everything in his power to make you distrust him but still you just can’t shake off how he makes you feel?

  She had time. All the time she wanted.

  Or she could do something right now.

  She read the note yet again, swallowed, stood, and then went downstairs to where Marshall and Sally had a phone.

  Why was she like this? This thing for the bad guy. She never had been able to resist the bad boy.

  All the bad luck she’d had, all the even worse choices she’d made. Was she forever trapped in that cycle, or was this really the right thing?

  There was only one way to find out.

  She reached for the phone.

  Afters

  Writing under other names, PJ Adams is a successful novelist, with several novels published by major publishing houses and optioned for movies. As PJ Adams, she writes in the genre closest to her heart, erotic romance – love stories with that added heat, including the international bestseller The Object of His Desire. Working as Polly J Adams, she writes best-selling erotica, relationship stories crammed full of explicit sex. Among Polly's most popular stories are the Girls’ Club series, and Wings of Desire, the story of a young woman's relationship with the wealthy owner of a New England sex club.

  You can find out more about Polly and her writing on her website, on http://www.facebook.com/pollyjadamswriter and on Twitter as @PollyJAdams.

  Join the PJ Adams mailing list for all the latest news and offers.

  www.pollyjadams.com/about.php

  More from PJ Adams

  Winner Takes All 3: All or Nothing

  Cassandra Dane has issues with Denny McGowan. He's lied to her, he's set her up, he's abandoned her when the chips are down. But worst of all, he's stolen her heart.

  It should just be a simple matter of trying to work out whether she can ever trust a man like Denny. But there's still unfinished business to deal with, involving his ex-business partner, and Cassie's father, freshly out of jail. Pretty soon matters of the heart become matters of life and death, as the gunmen close in and Cassie has some tough choices to make.

  And foremost among these: just how many chances do you give a guy like Denny McGowan?<
br />
  All or Nothing: the explosive climax to bestselling erotic romance author PJ Adams' Winner Takes All three-part serial novel. (The first two volumes in this serial are Trading Down and Bad Company.)

  More information and purchasing links for All or Nothing are available from the author's website.

  The Object of His Desire

  When Trudy goes to her estranged brother's wedding, the last thing she expects is one of those moments: a handsome stranger, their eyes meeting across a crowded room... a tempting, but dangerous stranger. Determined to find out more, she discovers that dark secrets bind him to her brother; she also learns that he's the kind of man who gets what he wants, and what he wants right now is Trudy.

  Introducing her to the world of the super-wealthy, he showers her with designer clothes, shoes, and diamonds, whisking her off to dinner dates by private jet... what more could a girl want?

  But as she finds out more about him, Trudy begins to wonder if she can ever love a man she can never fully trust. A man involved in murder and blackmail, who may just be using her as an alibi. Should she run or let herself fall for him? And will he give her a choice?

  A passionate erotic romance, where scandals buried away in the past lead to murderous intrigue in the present, in the intensely steamy world of the super-wealthy and powerful.

  More information and purchasing links for The Object of His Desire are available from the author's website.

  Excerpt

  Even now, I’m unsure whether it was a genuine Jane Austen moment or the worst of clichés: eyes meeting across a crowded room, for heaven’s sake.

  What can I say?