Keeping Her Close Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Keeping Her Close

  C H A P T E R O N E

  C H A P T E R T W O

  C H A P T E R T H R E E

  C H A P T E R F O U R

  C H A P T E R F I V E

  C H A P T E R S I X

  C H A P T E R S E V E N

  C H A P T E R E I G H T

  E P I L O G U E

  JUST UNTIL MORNING

  Other Titles by Dani Wyatt

  FOLLOW ME

  Thank You.

  K E E P I N G H E R C L O S E

  BY

  Dani Wyatt

  Copyright © 2017

  by Dani Wyatt

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places,

  events and incidents are either the products

  of the author’s imagination

  or used in a fictitious manner.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  is purely coincidental.

  www.daniwyatt.com

  Cover Credit PopKitty

  Editing Nicci Haydon, Lisa Hollett

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Keeping Her Close

  C H A P T E R O N E

  C H A P T E R T W O

  C H A P T E R T H R E E

  C H A P T E R F O U R

  C H A P T E R F I V E

  C H A P T E R S I X

  C H A P T E R S E V E N

  C H A P T E R E I G H T

  E P I L O G U E

  JUST UNTIL MORNING

  Other Titles by Dani Wyatt

  FOLLOW ME

  Thank You.

  A NOTE TO MY READERS:

  I appreciate every one of you.

  This one’s for you Mee. You inspire

  me every day.

  Dedicated also to those of us

  who think wrist and ankle restraints

  are the perfect way to say I love you.

  .

  Stalkers welcome.

  Sordid fun and other dirty shenanigans

  Follow me here: FACEBOOK AUTHOR PAGE

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  Dani Wyatt on Amazon

  C H A P T E R O N E

  Black

  “Black.” The newest waitress enunciates it like we’re fucking and she’s about to come. “Awesome. Name.”

  She maintains eye contact, licking her bottom lip and crossing her arms under her tits, conspicuously pushing them up until they are all but spilling out of the uniform black tank top. The name of the bar, The Long Draw, is printed in silver glitter across the front.

  Even in the middle of the day, this place is almost at capacity. But my ears are trained so even with the noise coming from the band rocking a Steely Dan cover and the hundred or so patrons yelling over each other in order to be heard, I still hear Ransom, the bartender, snort a chuckle behind me.

  I clench my teeth. In here, I’m all business. “You got your paperwork?” I feel my jaw pop.

  I’ve never touched a single one of the girls who works here. This newb will quickly get the lowdown from the staff, that’s for sure. If she continues, I will shut that shit down so fast it will make her bleach blond head spin.

  I’m not going to say I don’t touch the men who work here. It’s a rare occurrence, but I do not hesitate to shut their bullshit down as well, usually with a foot in their ass. A place like this, every night you gotta come in like a warrior. Ready for anything and prepared for everything.

  The staff and the patrons here smell weakness like a shark on blood.

  The irony is, with this iconic biker culture and all, you’d expect the man who founded it to be a biker. He’s not and I’m not.

  I’ve never even been on a bike. Never wanted to. Not that everyone who comes in here rides up on their custom Harley, but when you own a bar in Hell, Michigan, you are going to attract your share of bikers from all over this country. All over the world, in fact.

  My newest hire leans back in disappointment, checking her manicure, barely hiding her irritation that her flirtation met with my frigid demeanor. But I don’t care. She’ll learn that. I’m a son of a bitch, and it doesn’t bother me in the least.

  I flip through her new-hire packet, making sure all the critical components are in order. I may not look it, but I’ve got a sharp eye for details. Running a business is all about the details and who ever thought a fuck like me would be good at anything? Let alone running a successful as hell bar that’s given me and the owner bank accounts to envy.

  I don’t miss her eyes running me up and down as she stares, though it draws nothing from me but increased irritation.

  “Looks good.” I hand the stack of papers her way, running a hand from my forehead to the back of my head, pushing the hair that’s constantly falling down back into place. “Take that and give it to Stella in the back. She’ll set up your section for tonight, give you house rules again, and you’ll train with Rita.”

  She gives me a snarky eye roll as she comes back, “I don’t need to train—” But I cut her off without ceremony.

  “There’s the fucking door.” I jerk my head to the left, where the bouncers are checking IDs and collecting the ten-dollar cover just to walk in. “Got it?”

  To my surprise, she proves she has something between her ears, because without another word, she’s spun on her stiletto toward the back hallway.

  Another snort from Ransom and I turn to see him squirt 7UP into four rocks glasses lined up on the worn wooden bar.

  “If I had one tenth of the tail you have wagging in your face, I’d die the happiest man on the fucking planet.” He shakes his head as he tops off each of the four glasses with Seagram’s and a maraschino cherry, then lifts two in each hand onto Trina’s waiting tray. “Table six, beautiful.”

  She rolls her eyes, but a wry grin plays on her lips as Ransom tops off his compliment with a wink.

  “Shut the fuck up.” I stand from the barstool, arching my back.

  I toss back the last bit of my smoothie with a satisfied grunt, then slide the glass to Ransom, smacking my lips together.

  He knows I don’t poach; he and everyone else in this place. In fact, my lack of interest in anything resembling the opposite sex has become more than just whispers and speculation to the staff, but I don’t give a fuck. Think what they want, gossip all they want...sticking my dick in any pussy that offers was never my thing to begin with. And in the last six years, it’s not only just not my thing, it’s impossible.

  “How do you drink that shit?” He shakes his head with a disdainful squint as he picks up my empty glass with his fingertips, as though it is tainted with Ebola.

  “I don’t taste it. I just drink it. Mind over matter.”

  “Hemp seed and pea protein?” He looks like he’s going to vomit as he turns to put the glass in the sink. The sides are coated with the grainy remains of my daily regimen. “If I could refuse to make that for you, you know I would. There’s gotta be some rule about making some hippie health drink behind the counter of the biggest biker bar in three states.”

  I choke out a laugh. “This isn’t a biker bar. It’s a tourist attraction.”

  “That it is,” he agrees, tending to the next in an endless line of waitresses that will come and go from the service station on his twelve-hour shift.

  Just at t
hat moment, my senses prick, and I feel my back straighten. They say grizzly bears have the olfactory capacity to pick up scents from up to eighteen miles away. I think when it comes to Roxie, I’ve got that shit beat.

  She’s not even around the corner yet, but I know she’s coming. It’s not even the scent. No, after all these years, it’s as though I see her with some sixth or seventh sense, something bestowed upon me by hell itself.

  Because seeing her, smelling her, knowing she’s close and never being able to touch her has been my own personal living hell. But I’d take this torture every day until the end of my days just to know she’s close. Safe.

  Having her in my life in any way has given me purpose.

  But today, things are different. I want to hold her more than usual. Because she’s hurting and I can’t fix it. Fuck, I’m hurting, but that doesn’t affect me. I’ve learned to put away my emotions for her sake. Most people who know me think I’m a black hearted son of a bitch. And I can be. I am about a lot of shit, but truth is, when it comes to her, I’d give my right nut just to hold her in my lap.

  Brush her fucking hair.

  Listen to her tell me every thought and dream in that amazing mind.

  My dick is hard as lead just knowing she’s about to step into my day, same as she has every day for the last six years. Only today, she needs me to step up into her world. More than ever. More than was allowed before.

  And I intend to do just that, even if it kills me.

  C H A P T E R T W O

  Roxie

  Some days, I wish I had followed wherever it was my mother went when she left me with a bowl of Cheerios and a kiss on the forehead fourteen years ago.

  Today is one of those days.

  It’s hotter than my Clinical Strength Secret can handle in here, the body heat from the gathered patrons only adding to the summer swelter. Not that summer in Hell, Michigan should be this hot. But I guess when you live in Hell, you oughta be prepared to roast.

  And it’s not just the fact that the A/C in this stupid office has never worked that has me challenging my deodorant, either. It’s him. Black.

  He’s here, going over the final details with my dad to put through the transfer of ownership on this place, and all I can think about is my own lust.

  “Don’t worry.” He scribbles a signature on the bottom of the contract and pushes the paperwork over to my dad. “When you get back, it will be here, the same as when you left. Or better. You have my word.”

  Black’s baritone rumble grips me around the throat and refuses to let go. I’m the most self-centered daughter in the universe. My father is turning himself over to the Talbot Correctional Center for eighteen months today, signing over the business he’s spent his life building up, and I still can’t stop the visions of Black’s lips trailing kisses up my quivering stomach on their way to meet mine.

  A shiver shakes me, and I squeeze my legs together involuntarily, trying in vain to quell the tension growing there.

  Truth is, I hate feeling like this. I hate that I can’t help these thoughts that swim around in my head whenever I’m close to Black.

  Or far away.

  Any distance, really.

  I hate the fact that I get all goose-pimply as I watch him run his hands back over the strip of hair along the top of his head, salivating as they draw two lines along his jaw, rippling the deep brown beard that covers his face. I hate that my eyes are drawn from the uniform black T-shirt and Levi’s to the glint of silver belt buckle at his crotch, threatening my underwear with another hit.

  I hate that I know every bit of ink on his arms. Chest. And I wonder so often about the parts I can’t see.

  I hate it, because for all my school girl crush, all I get back is cold indifference.

  “I trust you, you know that.” My father straightens the papers into the manila folder and pats a reassuring hand on Black’s shoulder. I get that they’re friends. If they weren’t, I would have made a big fuss about this deal. But with my dad going away, it makes sense. “Roxie, there’s something we need to discuss.”

  The sound of my name snaps my head up to look at my dad. He’s tired. But the worst is over. The uncertainty of his sentencing aged him ten years in the last few months. I want to kill his accountant. In this world, you never know whom to trust.

  “What?” I lick my lips, instinctively covering my hardening nipples with my arms, trying not to think about the way my body is betraying me in front of my father.

  He’s getting his affairs in order to spend the next eighteen months in a minimum security prison for tax evasion. This is the one time when I need to be attentive.

  “The thing you asked me for.” He nods, assuring he has my attention. Which he does. “The cabin.” He limps over to the chair next to me and settles down with a huff.

  He quit smoking two years ago, but after forty years of that habit, he’s paying the price. Add that to the extra hundred pounds he carries, and my heart tightens watching him struggle with such simple movements.

  “Yes?” I stare at him. “You said no. It’s fine, I’m not going to disobey you. So you can quit worrying.”

  “I’ve adjusted my thinking.” He smiles a rare, full smile through his Grizzly Adams beard, and my heart races.

  I’d asked my dad if I could please move up to our hill country cabin for the eighteen months he will be gone. It’s the only place in this world that I want to be right now. Away from here. Away from Black too. I lie in bed every morning, waking up thinking about him. Go to sleep thinking about him. It’s unhealthy, and I need something to break me away from my obsession.

  I’ve decided it’s time to wipe away my Black addiction with profiles on Match.com and eHarmony. Although, in my heart, I know no one will ever make me feel the way I do when I think of him. But a girl’s gotta move on. Black’s never shown one second of interest in me, and I’m a stupid girl for thinking anything will ever change.

  Growing up in this bar, in this small, shitty town, I never felt like I belonged exactly. But when I’m at the cabin, it’s different. It’s freedom for me. The air. The trees. The wide-open space. I don’t feel trapped the way I do around here.

  I can write. I can paint. I can work on the novel I’ve been plotting for two years.

  Here, I’m just the daughter of the bar owner. It’s a small town, and I’ve been pigeonholed as far back as I can remember as a spoiled princess. Truth is, my father has treated me like a princess, but shouldn’t every dad? But I’m not spoiled. Not even close.

  I’ve washed dishes. Mopped vomit and god knows what else off these floors for years. Nope, I am not spoiled.

  At the cabin, it’s a place where I feel I belong. But, even though I’m twenty-three years old, when Dad said he wouldn’t let me go there alone, I knew I would honor his decision. One thing you learn being around bikers your whole life is respect. And I have that in spades for my dad. When my mom disappeared, he didn’t miss a beat. Never missed a ballet recital, was homecoming chaperone, and even bought me my first box of maxi pads. Now that’s a dad.

  But now, my heart is thundering around in my chest, and it’s not just because Black is radiating more sexual energy than a Magic Mike strip show.

  “Really?” I clap my hands and stomp my feet like an excited toddler, feeling the freedom wash over me.

  My dad holds up one huge hand. “One condition that goes with it.”

  “What? Anything!” I’ll scrub the rooms and clean out the sewer drains if it means I get to go there.

  “Black is going with you.”

  All the air in the room disappears.

  What. Just. Happened.

  My eyes drift slowly to the man who has filled so many of my dreams since I was seventeen, when he walked into my dad’s little dive bar. The funny thing about Black—he didn’t ask for a drink that day. Or a job.

  He walked in, found my dad, and told him he was going to be there every morning, sweeping the entryway. Keeping things looking clean and picked
up outside and around the building.

  For nothing. And he kept his word. He did that for a month before my dad gave him his first paid job here as a bouncer. The rest is history. My dad just signed the entire bar ownership over to him. He’s become a son, a friend, and a business partner. And he’s the one thing I want in this world I know I’ll never have.

  I see Black’s eyes darken, then he looks down, crossing his arms over the black T-shirt pulled over his chest. I want him so badly it hurts. Knowing he wants nothing to do with me hurts more.

  “I don’t need him to go with me.” I grit out, feeling my core tighten.

  “That’s the deal.” My dad nods toward Black then back at me. “Take it or leave it.”

  “But—” I start.

  My father’s face darkens, and I know when to shut up. “That place needs work. You need to be safe. There’s no one around for miles. Four hundred acres in the hills, angel. He’s going with you. Just for two weeks. Make sure you’re comfortable. He’s got contractors lined up to get some improvements done. Get you fitted with supplies and settle you in. Whatever you need. Two weeks.”

  Dad looks at Black, who nods back.

  I wiggle in my chair as I turn to Black. “How long have you known about this?”

  “Couple weeks.” He blinks slowly as he answers. I’m using every superpower I can muster to read anything warm into his words, but there’s nothing.

  No surprise.

  I roll my eyes. Anger boils inside me, alongside an anxious lust that I swear must be seeping out of my pores in red glitter, obvious to anyone within visual distance.

  I don’t know what I ever did to garner his indifference toward me. I’d rather he hate me. At least that’s some emotion.

  But in the next moment, something shifts. He glances at me for a split second, and a chill rakes down my spine like it’s ten below zero.

  My pulse races. Something just changed. I struggle to find the words. “Fine,” I say, my mouth dry, my brain scrambling for answers. “When are we...?” I steal a glance at Black, but he’s looked away.