Hatchet stood there for a long moment, just staring at the half open bathroom door. He watched the steam tumbling from the shower and heard the familiar pattern of water hitting the tiles from the special rain spout he had installed.
It was all too easy for him to picture Elsie in there, naked and wet and beautiful, her sweet skin soaked and glistening, her hands running over her lush wonderland of a body. Heaven. That’s what was waiting for him in there. Pure and unadulterated heaven. And he wasn’t sure if he deserved it.
No, strike that. He knew damned well that he didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve to be with anyone as sweet and naïve and as fucking innocent as Elsie McLaurel. He was getting in over his head. The fact that it didn’t even sting that much to think about her last name told him so.
But damned if he knew what to do about it either. He couldn’t just walk away and leave her, not with Mad Dog snapping at their heels. He knew there would be consequences for going against the Roadburner’s president, and he knew that neither of them would be happy if they fell into Mad Dog’s clutches again. He was going to do everything to make sure that never happened.
Just the thought of Elsie being back at Mad Dog’s dubious mercy had Hatchet pushing the door open the rest of the way and shedding the jeans that he’d put on but hadn’t zipped up. He needed to reassure himself that she was still there, that she was still alright. It was a need that drove him forward, a need that made him open the glass door enclosing the shower and step into the steam.
He reached out blindly, searching for her. When his hands found her silk-soft skin, his world was right again. Hatchet puffed out a breath. He really was fucked. There was no doubt about that. But, at the moment, as Elsie turned to him with a smile shining in her bright blue eyes, he couldn’t make himself care all that much.
“Hey,” he whispered softly against the skin of her shoulder. He watched as the droplets of water pearled and slid down the curving expanse of her body. His cock twitched and tightened in automatic response, but for the moment he ignored it, savoring her presence there with him. That was all. Nothing more. Just to hold her in his arms and have everything feel right for once.
“Hey back.” Elsie turned and smiled as he wrapped his arms around her from behind. She let out a soft laugh. “It looks like you’re happy to see me.”
Hatchet smiled back at her. “I am.”
An easy silence fell between them as Elsie leaned back in his arms. Hatchet felt something react deep inside his chest at the simple movement and all that it represented. He knew she shouldn’t trust him. He knew he should tell her to keep her distance and that he should take his own advice.
But that didn’t stop him from nuzzling the top of her head and pulling her even closer into the warmth of his body.
The silence between them changed. It grew deeper, heavier, thickening in the air like the steam itself.
That was when he felt her shoulders hitch against him.
“Elsie? Els?” Hatchet asked, turning her in his arms until she was facing him.
Tears swept down her cheeks, mixing with the water from the shower, and he saw the effects of the past twenty-four hours finally catching up to her and hitting her with the force of a runaway train.
“It’s okay, Elsie. It’s okay. I’ve got you,” he murmured as he held her close. He didn’t know what else to do. He wasn’t good with crying women, didn’t have a lot of experiences in that area, so all he could do was stand there and hold her and try to contain his own panic rising in the back of his throat.
He found himself talking again. Just talking, not really saying anything at first. But then, as the words continued to tumble out, he knew what he needed to say, what she needed to hear.
“I promise, Elsie. I promise that I’ll keep you safe. No matter what. I’ve got you now. I promise, baby. I promise.” The words kept coming, over and over, until it felt like a mantra, a spell he was casting that would somehow come true. He would make sure of it.
They stood like that for a long time, their arms wrapped around each other, as Elsie sobbed out the trauma of what had happened and Hatchet comforted her. Something inside both of them began to heal, something that neither had even realized was broken until that very moment. Together, they began to grow whole again.
Hatchet wasn’t sure if he could even put a word to it, but he felt lighter, different somehow, as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. And he knew it had everything to do with the woman he held in his arms.
He shivered, realizing suddenly that the water was starting to turn cold, and leaned forward to turn the water off. He grabbed a towel and quickly dried himself off before securing it around his waist. He reached for another of the oversized cotton towels that hung on the towel rack to wrap Elsie in. When he turned around, he sucked in a sharp breath at her beauty as she stood there, naked, with rivulets of water tracing her full curves. She was so gorgeous that it made it hard to exhale again.
“Hurry up, Hatchet,” Elsie said, pushing wet locks from her face. “I’m freezing over here.”
With a small, dangerous smile he stalked towards her, wrapping the towel around her shoulders and slanting his mouth across hers at the same time. A long moment later he pulled back, both of them breathless and panting. A smile still tilted up a corner of his lips.
“Better?” His voice was low and rough.
An answering smile drew across her mouth. “A little. I suppose.” She tucked the towel around herself. “I’ll be better when I’m dry.”
She moved to step out of the shower, but he was there before she could and lifted her effortlessly in his arms.
“I can help with that.” He carried her into the living room where he already had a fire started in the big stone fireplace. He walked straight to the cushy armchair pulled up in front of it and sat down, holding her close in his lap as the fire warmed them both.
They sat in silence for a long moment, but then Elsie’s quiet words reached him.
“Who were those guys, Hatchet? Who… who is Mad Dog?”
He hated that there was still a hint of a tremor in her voice when she spoke about the man, but he imagined that the tremor would remain for a long time to come.
“Mad Dog is… well, he’s my boss, I guess you could say.” He sighed, knowing he owed her more of an explanation. “He’s the president of the Roadburners.”
“And the Roadburners are what exactly?”
“A motorcycle club.”
“A gang, you mean,” Elsie interjected. “A criminal gang.”
“We’re enthusiasts,” Hatchet said quickly. “It’s complicated.”
“I’ve got all the time in the world, Hatchet. Explain it to me.” Elsie looked up at him, her sapphire eyes shining in the light from the fire, and all he could tell her was the truth.
“You remember I told you that Jackrabbit helped me find a new job? Helped me get my life together?” He waited for her to nod before he continued. “Well, he was the one who introduced me—and our mutual buddy, Finn—to the Roadburners. The three of us served together in Afghanistan. Look, I didn’t know at first what the Roadburners did. And, yeah, some of it’s illegal. But I was all right with that. You have to understand that about me, Elsie. I’m not a good person.”
“Is that why you kidnapped me, Hatchet? Because he ordered you to?”
“No,” he admitted reluctantly. “No, I took you because I didn’t want to risk my own neck. We were just there to take the cattle. That’s it. You weren’t supposed to be there. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“But you were going to let me go. Before… before everything else happened,” Elsie argued, trying to make it make sense of it all, trying to reconcile the biker who kidnapped her with the man who rescued her.
“Cattle is one thing, but selling a woman is another thing entirely. Rabbit felt the same way. That’s why he gave me the key to the warehouse.”
Elsie slowly nodded as he continued to talk, continued to explain, But one thing didn’t make sense to her.
“But why, Hatchet?”
“Why what, darling?” He held her closer in his lap.
“Why did you join the Roadburners in the first place?”
“After we got back from Afghanistan, we were real messed up, all three of us. Went on a little bender and ended up on the wrong side of the law. They said we were suffering from PTSD and that we needed help. Well, Finn found help in an illegal boxing ring that led him to Mad Dog, and Rabbit found help in the bottom of a bottle that he didn’t crawl out of for three years. I tried to hold it together but, with the record, it was hard to find work. But I did, finally.”
Elsie waited quietly, not saying anything, while he took the time he needed before telling her the rest of the story. The whole story.
“We came home from war as broken men,” Hatchet said after a long pause. “But I got a job at Gold Creek Ranch, herding cattle, and something about the open air… I don’t know how to explain it, but I finally found peace, you know?”
“Wait, Gold Creek? As in… ”
“I had just started to get my shit together when some big corporate rancher from up north came in and bought out the place. Fired everybody. Well, almost everybody. And I was fucked again. Back to the bottom, trying to claw my way up. But I couldn’t, not again. I was broke, starving, and on my way to becoming just another homeless vet that society had forgot about. Rabbit offered me a job. Some quick cash. And the rest, as they say, is history.”
“Who was it, Hatchet?” Elsie asked and her big eyes where wide on his. “Who was the rancher?”
But, from the intense look of anger on Hatchet’s face, Elsie knew exactly who the rancher was.
***
“It was my father.” Elsie answered her own question, but her voice was soft and sad. “That’s why you reacted the way you did when you found out my name was McLaurel. That’s why…”
“I hate him,” Hatchet said plainly, and the words almost made her flinch. But a part of her had known. She’d overheard him talking about the McLaurel ranch, about her daddy, and she’d heard the hatred burning in his voice, just as it did now.
“Do you hate me?” she asked, dreading the answer but needing to hear it all the same. “Do you hate me for being Mark McLaurel’s daughter?”
She always knew her father’s business ethics were less than lily white. But it was different now, seeing it first-hand, seeing how it had ruined someone’s entire life.
“I told myself I should.” Hatchet cupped Elsie’s cheek in one hand as his dark eyes travelled over her features. She could see the honesty shining in them as he continued. “But I just couldn’t make myself do it. After all the years I spent hating Mark McLaurel, I go and…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “It’s a little too much irony for me.”
“Well, maybe it was just what you needed,” Elsie said hopefully, and he tipped her face up until it was just inches away from his own.
“Yeah, maybe you are.”
Elsie thought he was going to kiss her again, but at the last moment he sat back again with a sigh, staring intently at the crackling fire.
“He’s probably wondering where you are by now.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” Elsie sighed, remembering the last conversation she’d had with her father. If you call that a conversation. “Before you found me out in the fields, before you so rudely kidnapped me…”
“Hey, I already told you, I didn’t have a choice.”
“Uh-huh. Likely story,” Elsie said with a grin playing around her lips. She still wasn’t sure how she could joke about what had happened, especially after how terrified she’d been. Maybe she truly was becoming a new, braver Elsie. “As I was saying, before everything happened I got into an argument with my daddy.”
“Mark McLaurel didn’t win father of the year award? Color me surprised.”
“Hardly,” Elsie snorted. “It’s not totally his fault, I just… I wasn’t ever really the daughter that he wanted.”
“Hey, don’t say that.”
“It’s true. It’s alright, Hatchet. I’ve know my entire life. He wanted the son, the heir, the man that would take over the business, but instead he got me. A flighty, too-cautious daughter, whose only dream is to go to vet school and help animals. Not exactly his dream come true.”
“Listen to me, Elsie,” Hatchet said, pulling her close again. “You are perfect just the way you are. Don’t let anyone else ever tell you differently, okay? Myself included.”
Elsie looked over at him then, their eyes locking together. “I think you’re wrong, Hatchet.”
“I’m not. Don’t ever let anyone make you feel like you’re less, or that you’re wrong or not good enough…”
“No, not about that. About you being a bad man. I think you’re wrong,” Elsie said, interrupting him. “You really are a good man, Hatchet. Deep down. You really are.”
“Now, don’t think that just because I…”
“Hush, I’m not done.” Elsie stopped him again, this time with a finger to his lips, and she could feel his smile.
Finally, he nodded. “Go on, then.”
“You saved me. Granted, you were the one who kidnapped me in the first place…” Hatchet tried opening his mouth to speak but Elsie didn’t give him the chance. “But still, you saved me. And I want to do the same for you. I want you to come back and work on the ranch. I want you to find that peace you were talking about.”
“Elsie, I can’t,” Hatchet started, shaking his head, as he took her hand in his and brought it down to her lap. “Your daddy won’t give me a job. And besides, after all the years I spent hating him, how could I work for him after that?”
“Well, don’t think about it as working for him. Think of it as working for me.”
“For you, huh?” Hatchet said smoothly. “I could think of a few very interesting things I could do working for you.”
“Oh, I just bet you could,” Elsie said with a laugh as Hatchet leaned forward, nuzzling in the curve of her neck, tickling her with the two-day growth of stubble that shadowed his jaw.
She’d just opened her mouth to suggest moving to somewhere a little more comfortable when the sound of motorcycle engines cut through the night. A lot of them. And they were getting closer and closer with every second.
“Fuck!” Hatchet cursed. “I know that sound.” He glanced at her, and the look she saw gleaming darkly in his eyes had that ball of ice forming again in the pit of her stomach.
“It’s Mad Dog.”