~

 

 

Rayner Andrews yanked the backward baseball cap down over her auburn hair and tucked the last of the auburn tendrils that were trying their damnedest to escape behind her ears.

She was in the middle of nowhere on some shitty mountain on the edge of nothing-ville, but she had a reason to be there, and that reason – was money.

Her green eyes narrowed slightly as she stared out of the windscreen and took in the large weathered board that was once white, and the big black letters – that by the looks of things, might have been painted by a five-year-old in a temper tantrum, and put up wet with the fresh paint still able to run downward in places.

It reminded her of one of those macabre black and white horror movies that her Grandma used to watch when she was a kid. That was before Grandma had died and left her with only her parents for company.

Everything had gone downhill from that day, and she still wasn’t fine with good old mum and dad. But, she didn’t like to dwell.

There was no mistaking the intended malice from whoever had placed that board. The words were pretty explanatory; KEEP OUT OR DIE.

Rayner had to chuckle to herself. If she’d had a penny for every sign like that she’d ignored over the last few years while she’d been working for Bute, then she’d have been rich and wouldn’t need to work for the asshole a day longer.

Bute would have kicked her backside right out of the door if she’d come back empty handed any one of those times, or with some sob story of how there was a warning sign, or a big guard dog that she couldn’t get by, or around, or go through.

Her job wasn’t easy or glamorous, but she’d learned a few things over the years.

Rule one; laws were made to be broken especially if it got her what she wanted.

Rule two; it was always good to carry something hard to hit a big guy with, and Bute usually sent her after the biggest, meanest assholes that he had on his books.

Rule three; the lower the front of her top; the more places she could get into because breasts were one hell of a great distraction. Especially, when you were dealing with assholes.

If they were looking at her breasts, then they really weren’t paying attention to much else that she was doing until it was way too late. She needed that edge.

Rayner lived by those rules because anything else could get her killed – really fast.

She pulled the lever and punched open the door of the pickup truck, and held it in place with the steel toecap of her work boots wedged against the frame. A kick from one of those puppies and it was bye-bye balls for a good twenty to thirty minutes or so, that’s if they ever managed to drop again.

Either way; it was only ever going to be a plus in her line of work when dealing with assholes.

Rayner reached for the roll of taped up coins that acted just as good as any cosh, but with the added advantage that they could be untapped and scattered after use. No evidence, no crime, just the way that she liked it. She tucked them into the waistband of her jeans.

Then all five foot four of her dropped to her boots on the muddy, uneven track, and she took in a long, hard breath of fresh and chilly mountain air that felt just a little too damn clean for a city girl, and she concentrated on trying to steady her thumping heart.

The adrenaline was already pumping through her veins quite nicely; it always did at times like those, and she didn’t need to have a damn heart attack at her age.

It wasn’t just the thought of the big, mean, unfriendly, and soon to be pissed off guy that awaited her that made her heart thump. The scent of pine was all around her, and it reminded her of Christmas, just without the screaming, crying, and the general lack of presents or parenting that went into that holiday with her folks.

Christmas in her parent’s house had been all about the booze. Not that they needed a holiday for that. It had been an all year round thing.

Rayner was ready to face another new challenge in a day that had been a pain in the backside already. There was nothing new there – to Rayner it was called life.

First, her butthead of a landlord had hammer on her front door and got her out of bed – that was after she’d been up tailing some jerk that had been giving her the run around for days, thinking himself clever and patting himself on the back, but she’d managed to catch up to him at his girlfriend’s house, dumbass’s always ran to their mother’s or their girlfriend’s.

Easy pickings.

Still, she’d finally fallen into bed around four thirty, and Chet, the landlord, had woken her at eight – just to tell her that he wanted her out in two weeks because he was selling the whole damn building. Lucky Chet, unlucky her, she’d have to find somewhere else to live.

That probably wasn’t a bad thing. Chet’s place stank of urine in the hallways, vomit on the stairs, damp in the bedroom, and booze – always booze.

Rayner had dealt with Chet and grunted accordingly before slamming the door in his face. Then, when she’d gone for coffee, some idiot had literally slammed right into her, spilling the hot coffee that she’d been waiting ten minutes to get her lips around, right down the front of her shirt – and he’d had the nerve to say that she’d been standing too close to him.

Needless to say that he’d be walking like he’d shit in his pants for a few days. She could still feel the slight throb around her kneecap from where it had met his balls.

To add to her misery, when she’d gone home to change her clothes, she’d found her neighbor, Maggie, literally blubbering in the communal, urine stinking hallway about being evicted and having nowhere to go and no deposit to put down on a new place, even if she could find one.

She wasn’t good with weeping women, or weeping guys for that matter, but she’d bit the bullet and said a few nice things and that seemed to do the trick.

Then Bute had yelled down the phone at her, really laying into her for whatever reason, she didn’t know because she’d put the phone down on the passenger seat and waited until he’d finished giving himself an ulcer before she picked it up again.

That man was going to eat a roll of coins one day.

Yeah, all in all, she’d had a really shitty day so far, and judging by the sign that she glanced at once more; it was not going to get a whole heap of better anytime soon.

In a way, she kind of hoped that she might get to take it out on this guy, and yet, she just wanted to get a beer and close her eyes to the world.

Rayner reached into her back pocket for her phone and swiped the screen to see the information that Bute had finally sent through.

Bowie – she only saw one damn name – she was going to have to have words with Bute about that.

Who lends money to a guy with only one name?

Rayner slammed the door to her truck and set her sights on the muddy track ahead. It was time to get paid.

 

~

~

~

 

Rayner lifted her hand, made a fist, and hammered it against the front door of the first cabin that she’d come too. Apparently, there were more, but the file said that they were interspersed among the thick, overgrown woods, and, helpfully or not, the file hadn’t pointed her to any particular cabin.

She didn’t see a door number anyway, and the place didn’t have a mailbox with the guy’s name on it, neither did the place have a white picket fence and flowers. No surprise there.

The whole place looked like a damn dump, so, if she was wrong, then she’d move onto the next cabin until she found her man. That was the way of it if she wanted to get paid.

“You can’t read?” The deep, dark tone of his gravel filled voice hit her ears, and her body changed up a gear into high alert.

Rayner swiveled on her boots towards the owner of that voice as he came around the side of the cabin, but it was no shock to her that the man was built like a brick shithouse, they usually were in her line of work, and it was a sight that she was used to.

Now, if the guy had been pencil thin with bookish glasses and a nice disposition, yeah, that would have shocked the hell out of her.

But, she guessed that she couldn’t complain because if they were all sweet little choirboys, then Bute wouldn’t need her, and sweet little choirboys would probably pay up on time and kiss their granny on the cheek. Nope, from the look of things, she was going to earn her money on that guy.

Rayner took him in from head to toe. She estimated that he had a good foot on her height wise, and in the weight department, well, that was all packed into hard muscles that were trying really hard to escape the black tee that clung to his body in all the right places, and, give or take, he’d probably have made another one and a half of her in size.

Black sweatpants and black boots completed his Mr. Mysterio look, and with the mane of dark hair on his head, he was a sight to behold. So much so that she kind of wished that she was carrying a crowbar instead of a cosh.

From the size of the damn behemoth, she knew that she probably had speed over his brawn, but she also knew that might not be enough.

When he folded his large arms across his broad chest, those biceps looked even bigger. She’d have bet that she probably couldn’t wrap both her hands around one of his muscles and have her fingers touch.

The man looked dangerous. Too dangerously sexy for his own good as well.

He reminded her of one of those bad biker boys that were usually covered in ink with a dark attitude to match, and she did like a broody guy, but she wasn’t there to pick the man up, and from his attitude; she didn’t think he was shopping for sex.

“You mean the sign?” Rayner kept her voice innocent and sweet, and she didn’t smile, that would have been way too obvious.

She liked to keep things civil until it was time not to be civil anymore. She’d know it when it happened, she always did.

Besides, sweet little her couldn’t possibly be a threat to big old him, now could she?

“Yeah, the sign,” Bowie sneered back.

He eyed her from her baseball cap to her boots. He didn’t like the look of the human female.

She looked like five foot odd of trouble all wrapped up in an innocent tone that he could tell was damn fake.

“Yeah, I saw that, but it was written in Klingon, and I don’t speak the language.” She gave a small shrug of one leather-clad shoulder and eyed him right back.

His bear grumbled within him. The female was looking him right in the eye like she was offering something of a challenge to his beast, and he didn’t like it – not one bit.

He needed to get her off his land before his bear went bat-shit crazy, and it would. He could feel the fur just under his skin.

Hell, he didn’t want to kill her, not unless he had a reason, but his bear didn’t always see things the right way.

“Leave – now,” Bowie growled out.

He watched her eyes narrow as the realization of what he had within him dawned in those pretty green eyes of hers. From the way that her body tensed, he had a notion that she only just got exactly how much trouble she’d landed herself in by fronting up to his door.

Yeah, she was trouble alright. He’d bet his life on it – or hers.

“A man of few words. I like that,” Rayner offered back, and still, he stared at her.

She couldn’t back down, not now.

“Get the fuck off my land,” Bowie growled back.

Rayner mentally cursed Bute for landing her up shit creek without a paddle. A damn word of caution would have been fitting, and she promised herself that she was going to kill her damn boss as soon as she got back to town.

He’d sent her on this rat-shit of a job knowing full well that she was dealing with shifters, and he didn’t even have the decency to warn her about it first.

Asshole.

She should have known.

Everything pointed to shifters.

The mountain. The track road. The keep out sign.

The one damn name – shifter’s tended not to have two, at least, not that they admitted to anymore.

And the fact that his voice was like velvet over gravel and his body looked as if he’d been downing steroids by the fistful. She’d say bear.

Damn, she was an idiot of epic proportion.

There he was; all lean mean grizzly death machine, and she had what? A damn coin cosh.

She might as well have been standing there with her dick in her hand, not that she had one, but her fellow debt collectors did credit her with having really big balls.

That was a source of pride for her. She had the best damn collection rate on record.

Now Bute had sent her after an asshole shifter with anger issues and all the social graces of his bear. She should turn tail and go back to the office and shove this guy’s file right up Bute’s backside.

But … she also had bills to pay and a new apartment to finance. Like it or not, this was the job.