Barely Undercover: Legal Heat Book 2(18)

Jackie rolled her eyes. “Uh-oh.”

“Can you imagine?” Lana shook her finger at her friend and lowered her voice to a deep, menacing James-like growl. “‘You are not going anywhere near that clubhouse’, he says to me. ‘No fucking way.’ He swears a lot now that he’s a biker. I mean a lot. He said ‘fuck’ more times in our two meetings than I heard him say in the six months we were together. And his hair is deliciously long. And he wears hot biker clothes. And he has a mouth-watering bike.”

A grin spread across Jackie’s face. “You’d think after going out with you for almost six months he would know he was pretty much waving a red flag in front of a bull by telling you how it is.”

“Actually, we never talked that much when we were dating. He was always busy, and I was busy, and when we got together we usually had wild sex and then went to sleep, and then one of us would have to leave to go to work in the morning.”

“Sounds rough. Where can I get some of that?” Jackie’s eyes dimmed for a heartbeat, and then she looked away.

Lana immediately regretted bringing up James. Although Jackie always had men panting after her and took a fair number to her bed, she couldn’t sustain a relationship. Something had happened to her during her years on the streets that made her run whenever she thought things were getting too serious. Lana had tried to drag it out of her, but Jackie had always kept that vault firmly closed, hiding it, like her other secrets, behind her infectious exuberance and outgoing personality.

Lana handed over the chip bowl and rolled her eyes as Jackie nibbled on a crumb. “We don’t have to talk about him. I mean, you must be sick—”

“So you told him you were going?” Jackie cut her off with an admonishing eyebrow, and then licked her lips as if she’d just eaten a family pack of chips instead of a fingernail-size morsel.

Lana shrugged. “Of course I did…for Angel’s sake.”

Jackie snorted. “Sure. For Angel’s sake. Even if I did buy that line, what’s the problem? Go to the barbeque. Get the pictures. Stare at Heartless Bastard’s leather-clad ass. Case closed. Move on.”

“I don’t think I can do it.” Lana’s voice dropped to a hoarse rasp. “I haven’t been in a biker clubhouse since I escaped from Levi. After I cooled off this morning, I almost had a panic attack. What if someone recognizes me? What if I freeze up? What if my heart explodes from terror?”

Jackie sat up and squeezed her hand. “I can’t even imagine what you went through. Bad enough that Levi abused you, but to let the other bikers beat you…” She choked on her words. “I don’t know if a person can ever really recover from that. But I do know you haven’t really dealt with it. If you had, you wouldn’t still be jumping at every shadow, wondering if one day he’ll come for you. And you wouldn’t mistrust every man who shows an interest in you.”

Lana cringed. Jackie was right. She still shuddered when she heard a certain timbre of voice, and froze when she heard the roar of a motorcycle. She had dated since James, but the minute her dates expressed an interest beyond a casual fling, she broke it off. James had been the only person who had ever made her feel safe.

Grabbing a whole chip, Jackie continued. “I never told you this, but after we hooked up and you pulled me off the street and I pulled your sorry depressed ass out of the ice cream tub, I went back to the area in East Van where I used to hang out. I walked down the streets. I talked to the people I used to know. I sat in the place where I used to beg. I found the people who used to harass me and I showed them the new me. I faced it down.”

“Jackie…” Lana’s voice broke.

Jackie swallowed and shook her head, cutting Lana off. “After that day, I wasn’t worried I would wake up one morning and find myself there. I could see I’d changed. Maybe going into the clubhouse will do the same for you. Think of it as…therapy.”

Lana snorted her derision. “I was outside the clubhouse with James wrapped around me and his tongue halfway down my throat. Can’t get much closer to a biker than that. Do I look healed to you?” She stuffed a handful of chips in her mouth then washed them down with diet soda and an Oreo chaser.

Jackie’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “First time you’ve used his name since I’ve known you. I was beginning to think maybe his momma had christened him Heartless Bastard.”

“Slap me next time I slip up. I don’t want to start thinking of him as anything but the heartbreaker he is.”