THE OUTLAW’S BRIDE Read online

  Could she just leave without cleaning up all the trash these people left here? Sure, if she wanted to be fired. Victoria was working on overtime, without extra pay. It’s not like she agreed to anything like that. That was just the type of payment arrangement that came with working for seedy bars and a thrice-monthly paycheck. Who the hell paid out their employees once every week and a half anyway? The people at Lanterns did, apparently.

  And…she glanced around the room again, like she had so much earlier, and like she had so many nights before. The mess was even worse than it had been earlier in the day, and there was nothing she could do to put a description to it. Any way she could describe the horror would’ve been too kind, and she needed to get to work on this crap stat.

  “Alright, guys,” she said, sliding out from behind the bar. “Time to wrap it up. Bar’s closing.”

  The group laughed. Most of the people who had been there had left the bar some time ago, and now just this group remained. Men. Of course. Victoria didn’t have much good experience with this demographic either, but a string of names couldn’t testify as strongly to her hate as the state of this bar did. The remaining men were Darren Saylor (who takes themselves seriously with a name like that?) and some friends. Of course.

  One of the nameless dudes was the first to speak up, thinking that he was sassy or something. “What? You want us to leave?”

  This did no good. Victoria was about to open her mouth to say something, but Darren got a few words in edge-wise first. He looked to his friend and around the table, raising a finger. It was implied that the finger was intended for her as well: “listen and be quiet,” it said without speaking. But she ignored it. Why would she listen to a guy like that?

  After about a couple seconds of that, Darren turned to her. A smirk was on his face. His eyes paid more attention to her this time, resting on her body longer, leering like the typical dude that watched her as she leaned over the bar.

  “Sweetie,” he said, his voice dripping. Someone else might have described his voice as a purr. To Victoria, it was just an irritating voice, but the person it belonged to made her dislike it all the more. This was clearly a man who was used to getting what he wanted without qualms, and he clearly thought that meant he’d earned it. “Sugar. What’s your name?”

  She said nothing, only pointing to the name tag on her right breast. It said “Victoria,” written there in some black, blunt font. Originally, her manager Clarissa had wanted her to have her full name on there, but Victoria had refused. There were only two ways that could end: the first way, in perverted guys using it as an excuse to look at her chest longer with the “cleverer” ones using it to make puns about ports (cleverness was rare in this place, but nonetheless); and the second way, in which some creep went and stalked her, eventually finding out where she lived. Like the bar, she didn’t keep much social media either. That wouldn’t do much to deter an ill-intentioned creep armed with her full name, though, and those were usually the only people who would notice and remember her full name anyway.

  “Victoria,” he said, drawing out the “ick.” She thought that was a good representation of the way he made her feel, but there was something about his body that otherwise sung to her. She ignored it as best she could. Hot as this dude was, he was still a complete tool, and he and his friends needed to get the hell out of her bar. Because crappy as this place was – and never mind the fact that she didn’t own it – this was still her bar, until she moved on to somewhere new. Somewhere better. “What do you think you’re doing, sugar?”

  “Letting you know that closing time is coming up.” She scowled. “Finish up.”

  She turned on her heel back to the bar. She would check on them later, making sure they’d left. But first, she would need to make sure she had everything taken care of behind the counter: expensive liquor locked up; refrigerated things put up in the refrigerator; everything else in the drawer it belonged to; everything locked up. Everything back here locked, and she was glad for it. The door leading into the bar locked, too, and she couldn’t wait to get these fools out of here so she could clock out, lock that, and go the hell home.

  This was taking way too long, though, and she glared, feeling rage burning in her chest as she looked over at the group. They were too casual. She could tell by the way they slumped in their chairs that they had no intention of leaving soon, and Victoria Parker was a goddamned good reader of body language. She had to be, of course; growing up in the environment she did had ensured that. She preferred not to talk about it, but the gist someone special might get: abusive household, details withheld or not, depending on whom she was speaking to, and running away at 15 to this.

  Yeah, these guys definitely weren’t intending on leaving. But regardless of their intentions, they sure as hell were getting out of here.

  This might have been one of the things that brought out the manager and maybe her boss and maybe that old “hey, sorry, we’ve gotta let you go” spiel and the paper that came with it. Even if it didn’t, maybe this was the thing that would end up with someone actually putting a bullet in her head, instead of just threatening it. Sometimes she wondered if she should have been named Cat instead. She seemed to avoid death a lot. Maybe she had nine lives. Tonight probably wouldn’t lead to a brush with death, but, if that’s where yelling at these people took it, well, Victoria was still going to do it anyway.

  She gave the bar top one last run-over with her rag – the third one she’d used tonight; the other two were filthy and she still hadn’t even gotten around to cleaning the other parts of the bar. As she cleaned, she was glaring the entire while at… She wasn’t sure how to think of them in her head. Darren and club? They who must not be named because, quite frankly, were they even worth the effort it took to come up with one? No, they weren’t.

  She stood, throwing the rag down in a bin beneath the bar so hard that the bin fell partway off its shelf. Oh, well. She stormed out from behind the bar, unsure of what she was going to say but knowing exactly the message she was aiming to get across. She’d seen her watch when she was cleaning. It was 5 in the fucking morning. 12 hours since she’d first picked up her rag to try to force her mind out of this shift, and an hour after close. This was unacceptable.

  And that’s exactly how she started her rant.

  “This,” she punctuated the word by walking heavily towards the table, “is unacceptable.”

  She took a hand and grabbed a glass from one of them, picking it up and throwing it into a wall. That was a waste of a glass and she would have to clean it up later, but at least she was getting a message across this time instead of just cleaning up after some drunk losers.

  “And you,” she looked from face to face, trying to remember them in case they came back again so she could chuck them right the hell back out. “And you. And you. And you. All of you! You need to get out of here right now. It’s an hour –” her voice cracked, going too high at the last note, and she cringed at how it sounded to her own ears “– after closing, and you all need to leave.”

  Her voice kept getting progressively higher and higher, and she hated the way it did that. She was trying to come across as threatening and serious, but her own voice was betraying her. It wasn’t like it was something she could help, either. Where men’s voices tended to get low and dangerous when they were pissed – especially in here, the freaking capital of “trying too hard to be masculine” – hers just rose until it broke off shrilly.

  # # #

  Darren

  Darren heard this. They all did, of course. She was screaming right in their faces. How couldn’t they hear it? He took advantage of it, though. Throwing the glass had surprised him, sure, but there was nothing threatening about a squeaky little bartender who had a…nice rack, now that he thought about it.

  His eyes went back to it. He’d barely noticed it earlier, when he’d just been hell bent on getting a beer in this bar (the local bar, so pretty much just his bar) and she’d brought it over. She wasn’t b
ad to look at, after all, but she was just the bartender. Usually there were more babes frequenting, well, everywhere. There just hadn’t been any tonight. Nor had there been some for the past few nights.

  He ogled her, knowing exactly what he was going to say before he said it. “Babe,” he said, his glance flicking between her chest, her neck, and her eyes with every other word, “don’t you think you need to relax?”

  He leaned back in his seat, even as his friends around him widened their eyes in shock and whispered about the “fucking psycho bitch.” This only egged him on more, though. Taking on challenges that scared away other people was what made him who he was, was what made him exactly what he was today. This little girl clearly couldn’t know that, if she was talking to him like that. So he asked her just that. “Do you know who I am?”

  “Darren Saylor.” She rolled her eyes. “Like I care. Did you hear what I said?”

  He blinked then, too. That wasn’t the reaction he was expecting, so he decided to take a chance and make it about sex. If he went this way, either she would be so disgusted that she’d back off or she might take the bait and he might get laid. He didn’t hit women. If she had been a man, it would have been a different story. He bit his teeth together to keep from continuing that train of thought. She wasn’t a man, so it didn’t matter.

  “Yeah, you want us to leave. But have you thought about what other people might want?”

  Victoria was wearing a button-up shirt. It was still low cut enough that her cleavage was visible when she leaned a certain way; however, there would be even more visible if she unbuttoned just a button or two. And this was what Darren suggested, even when she ignored him and didn’t respond to his obvious taunt.

  “You have, what?” He knew how many buttons were on her shirt, but made a show of staring at them like he didn’t actually know. In truth, he was just staring at her tits. She was actually pretty hot. “Four more buttons on that thing? Unbuttoning another two isn’t going to hurt you, baby, it might actually do you some favors.”

  At his suggestion, she brought her hands up to her chest deliberately. Putting on her most flirtatious smile and staring right at Darren, she buttoned her shirt right back up to the neck. “Now are you going to take me more seriously?” She cocked her head at him.

  Chapter Three

  Victoria

  She shouldn’t have to button her shirt up just for this fool not to make comments about her chest, but here she was. It was to be expected, of course.

  Darren Saylor. She’d heard of him before, not that she’d cared enough to pay attention just because a few fools thought he was important enough to mention by name. The leader of the Bloody Saints MC. He was young, still, but over the last year he’d managed to make his way to the head of it, or so she’d heard. Most of the time, taking over a club meant that you got taken out just as quickly. Not with Darren Saylor.

  “Hmm.” He leaned back and raised a finger to his lips. “I think it might help if you got laid more often. I’m guessing by your sense of humor that it…” he paused again, leaning forward, “doesn’t happen often?”

  “Excuse you?”

  “I wouldn’t mind being the man to do it, if you’re offering.”

  “And if you’re offering, I’m going to have to sanitize everything you’ve touched in here before I decline,” she said. Talking to this guy was making her even more pissed off, and the glass she’d broken wasn’t working to her advantage like she’d hoped. He seemed like he was over it; in fact, the way he was smirking made it seem like he even liked it – liked the challenge of it.

  It seemed like getting physical wasn’t the way to go, especially considering there was no way she would win in a fight against any of these guys (or any combination of them, or, god forbid, all of them at once). So Victoria did the only thing she knew how to do. She started grabbing glasses and bottles despite the men’s protests, keeping them close to her even as they reached for them. Once the fragile objects were carefully brought back to the bar and put away haphazardly, she went back to the table.

  And then she flipped it. She didn’t bother screaming this time. In fact, she didn’t even bother looking at the men.

  Her eyes went to the ceiling. She closed them, breathing out of her nose, then in, and then out again through her mouth. In, out. In, out. It was almost calming, really, disregarding the murderous rage she felt pooling in her veins just from being around these assholes.

  “I said,” she repeated, her voice serene, “get out.”

  They left immediately.

  # # #

  It took an entire two hours for her to clean up the mess. Sure, a little bit of it was her fault, but that was it. A single glass and one overturned table. It took a few seconds to put the table back up, and maybe a minute to pick up the shards from where the glass she’d thrown had shattered. But the rest of the mess those others had made? Two. Hours.

  There was food and trash strewn everywhere. There was no way that all of that had come from behind the counter at Lanterns. Someone had to be sneaking food in; she would remember preparing and sending out all of that even if she was crazy high, and that wasn’t something she ever did anyway, so there was absolutely no excuse for forgetting. She’d put a sign up later…if she wasn’t fired.

  It was about 8 in the morning now. Sunlight was starting to seep in from the streets, even though the streets facing Lanterns didn’t get all that much light even on the sunniest day. Whoever had designed this patch of city had made it so that there were too many buildings in one space, leaving it so there were too many trees in all the spaces surrounding it. It looked awkward. This didn’t even take into consideration that the buildings on the side of the street opposite Lanterns were built to be way too high, and they blocked off almost all visibility from the perspective of Lanterns and the other business around.

  Although, now that Victoria thought about it, there were no other businesses surrounding Lanterns. Why would there be? Sure, there were a few signs hanging in the windows of the suites beside the bar: “Available to rent.” No one would rent them, though, and eventually someone would put them up to be sold. Once Victoria wondered why the club didn’t just buy them and use them for themselves, but Clarissa had assured her that that would be a bad choice. “Besides,” the blonde woman had said, “there’s no point in mixing business with fun.”

  All of the people working there – or remotely involved with the club – were high. They had to be. That was the only way their lifestyle could make any sense to Victoria, and that was saying something, because she hadn’t exactly come from the suburbs. She’d already made peace as best she could with the fact that she’d probably be fired for what she did on this last shift, but she didn’t care. Just meeting Darren that one time had been enough to set her off. If the way she’d acted ensured she’d never have to deal with that man again, that was enough.

  So of course, seeing him in the parking lot was the last thing she wanted.

  All of the motorcycles that usually took up the lot were gone, but her car wasn’t in any of those parking spots. No, she, as the employee, had to park in the back, by some dingy garbage can so that she could make her way through her shifts and not possibly “offend” any of the customers there with the sight of her car. Like her old piece of metal would offend anyone.

  But the guy leaning up against the fading red paint was a sight more offensive than any. He was standing comfortably against her car, as at ease as he had been when he leaned back in his chair and pretty much laughed in her face just last night. Not even last night. Two hours ago. He’d waited here for her. She couldn’t think of why. She’s worked to think about literally anything other than him since she’d kicked him out of the bar, so she’d made her way through the rest of her overly long shift slightly less pissed off, and was looking forward to going home and to getting a nice, long rest. She needed a few hours of sleep; a few days’ worth, even.

  And yet this guy was standing here doing everything in his po
wer to make sure that she couldn’t get that. She hadn’t actually come up to him yet and he hadn’t actually seen her, but just the sight of him was sending her stress levels through the roof. So, as soon as he noticed her and raised his hand in greeting, she started yelling. Businesses nearby would be opening soon, but there weren’t any businesses too close on this block. Even if there were, though, it’s not like the mental well-being of their opening workers was more important than yelling at this –

  “Asshole! Why the hell are you still here?”

  He raised a hand over his head, almost like he was covering his eyes in an attempt to see her better. It did nothing, of course; he was just being obnoxious. His hand fell from his face as soon as she approached, and he opened his mouth to say something.

  She didn’t let that happen.

  “Do you know what a terrible night I’ve had because of you? How late it is? I should be sleeping right now! I should be –”

  He couldn’t take listening to this anymore. Crazy as this woman seemed to be, he couldn’t stop staring at her mouth. He just wanted to go at it, to eat her up. So he did.