Chapter Two
Elle
Parking my bright red Toyota Tacoma on the curb in front of my friend’s apartment, I readied myself for step one in my master plan to win the only baby I wanted—Jackson Bonds. My high school bestie, Jessica, would help me nab a $100,000 bounty tonight, if I could go through with it.
I knocked and Jess threw the door open wide.
“Honey, I have found the perfect dress for you.” She embraced me in a huge Texas hug before dragging me inside. I hate dresses because there was nowhere to stow my gun, and running, or worse, fighting in heels was impossible. Give me jeans and tees every damn day.
“You make up with your daddy yet?” She narrowed her eyes at me.
I rolled my eyes. “He’s turned crazy. You can’t fix crazy.” I flopped down on her soft leather sofa.
He’d tried to talk to me three times since our blowup, but he’d stopped two days ago when I sent him an email. Simple and to the point, it had read: Take back this crazy challenge, sign the business over to me, or leave me the fuck alone.
Silence had been his response. Yup, we understood each other perfectly.
“Doris stopped by to see me today.” I stood and followed Jess.
“Offering an olive branch?” She hiked up her right eyebrow, stopping on the stairs.
“Maybe.” I snorted, still unable to believe Doris’s advice. “Her solution to Daddy’s crazy is for me to get married to some random fuckwad and then divorce him when I get the company.”
Jess stared at me. “You doing that?”
“No,” I shouted, not even meaning to shout. “If I need a dick to get the company then what’s the point?”
She frowned at me. “I know some guys who’d do the whole marriage for a few thousand. You know the in-name-only kind of thing.”
My eyes bulged. “Really? You think that’s what I should do? No. Never. And no.”
“More reliable than raising 500K in a month.”
I folded my arms and stared at her. “Not. A. Fucking. Chance. In. Hell.” Each word a staccato sentence of outrage.
“To my boudoir then. We got to fix you up.”
I followed her up the stairs to her huge bedroom done in dusky pinks and deep rose colors. It was so girly I think my ovaries went into high gear. My own bedroom was low key with neutral colors I liked. I was Walmart and Jessica was Nordstrom’s.
Laid out in the center of her bed was a bright red dress that caught the light. I’d never worn anything like it in my life. Maybe that was her dress.
She pranced over to the dress and threw it my way. “Go. Put it on.” She waved me toward her bathroom. I followed orders and put on the dress, although I left my bra on, even if I could see it’d have to go for the dress to fit right. The dress was slit down the front almost to my belly button. I grumbled to my reflection as I wiggled out of the bra and left it on my pile of functional clothing then opened the door to my doom, otherwise known as Jessica.
“You’re spectacular, those legs never quit.” She clapped her hands together with obvious joy. “The right shoes, a touch of makeup and Joey won’t be able to resist.”
I hoped she was right. Joey DeRulo was the big bounty I hunted tonight. Jessica was a friend of the family and often partied with the five DeRulo brothers—all criminals. But then Jess earned her keep as one of the most elite call girls in Dallas. She’d modeled when I was in college and then three years ago had made the crazy leap to call girl to the rich, powerful, and sometimes illegal.
When she’d told me of her plan, I’d argued, cajoled and even begged her not to do it. This wasn’t a career choice you could take back. She’d ignored my logical reasons for her own compelling reasoning—all she had to earn her way was beauty. She planned to make money while she had the beauty. Three years later, I couldn’t detect even a hint of unhappiness with her choice, so I swallowed my doubts and supported her. Bonus for me, her new career gave me loads of intel for my bonds business.
“Now we get you polished up.” She knelt on the floor with a yellow highlighter in her hand.
“What are you doing?” I squealed as she tickled me by marking the inside of my thigh.
“You’re going to want a gun?”
“Yeah.” I wasn’t taking any chances.
“I marked the lowest it could go on your thigh. I bought some duct tape too.” She winked at me as she stood. “But it’ll hurt like a bitch when you remove the tape.”
“Thanks for the thought, but I do have a thigh holster.” Duct tape was getting nowhere close to the sensitive parts at the v of my legs.
However, I did worry about flashing a view of my gun when I sat in the scrap of satin. This was why I never wore dresses, let alone scraps of cloth that pretended to be a dress. “Remind me why I’m doing this?”
Jessica arched a perfectly manicured brow at me. “Daddy issues. You could just let the company go or get hitched.” She grinned wide, knowing damn well neither one was an option for me.
“Fuck that.” I fought for what I wanted.
“That’s my girl.” She patted my back. “Now go sit in that chair.” She pointed to her girly vanity chair that spun in a full circle. I prepared myself for a Jessica Ann Beaumont primp session. The woman loved makeup and she knew how to apply it with a mastery I’d never developed. Okay, so I’d never attempted makeup mastery, but she’d never qualified at a gun range. We were opposite in all the ways that didn’t matter, but in our core was a Texas grit any sane person should fear. Unfortunately, all my daddy saw was babies and boobs, but I’d show him what he so carelessly overlooked.
“Okay, war paint is on, now I’ll touch up your hair and you strap on the gun.”
“The plan—lay it out for me again.” Jess and I had gone over the plan too many times but I believed in being prepared.
“I go into Lucky’s first, and you follow forty-five minutes later—9:15 sharp. You say you’re a good head girl to Santo, the bartender, he’ll direct you to the party room—one of three. At the door you repeat the phrase.” She stopped talking and gave me the hand motion to say it.
I didn’t want to say it. The words demeaned me by their very existence. I blew out a burst of air and straightened my spine—grit—that was the word for the night. Tilting my head in that come hither way all girls knew, I lowered my already husky voice. “Good head girl.”
Jessica gave me two thumbs up. “Damn you have a vixen’s voice and a body made for sin. Joey won’t be able to resist us—the one, two punch.”
“So I get in and then...” I needed to hear the rest, especially the payoff.
“You come in and prance around, ya know, show off the goods and I’ll intercept you. Kiss you, be prepared for tongue.”
I opened my mouth to protest the necessity but shut it without speaking. If Jess said tongue then we’d French kiss—it wouldn’t be the first time. Of course the first time we’d been 12 and practicing for our first real kiss with a boy. Disaster was the only word to describe that kiss. We’d grossed each other out on every damn level.
“I will introduce you to Joey, and here it may get dicey, we talked about this.” She squinted her emerald eyes trying to see if I was really serious about this act. She’d questioned me time and again about how far was too far. My line was clear—I wasn’t sleeping with anyone to get my collar. Short of that, I planned to do whatever it took to secure my fugitive.
“He may expose your breasts, play with them, suck them or even want me to do those things.” Her severe tone made it sound like this was the end of the world. True, I wasn’t an adventurous lover and firmly heterosexual, but this was work. Dirty work. The kind of work that showed I had what it took to run Jackson Bonds.
“The whole room can diddle me if he leaves with me and you.” I added emphasis needing her to understand that I was more than okay with our plan—I was committed.
“Fine!” She rolled her eyes. “The whole room diddles you and then Joey suggests we go to his place upstairs, but I’ll remind him of the toys he loves at my place. He’ll come with us—”
“If he doesn’t?” I bit the inside of my lip. This was the weak spot in our plan.
“He will. He loves my sex swing and he doesn’t have one.” She flipped her waist-length platinum hair behind her. “Then we help him stagger out to the cars—he’ll be lit, count on it. Once we get to the lot, we move toward your SUV. You pretend to stun me. Stun the bad guy and collect the cash!” She grinned at me with one of her crazy-ass smiles. “Simple.”
“Yeah. Simple.” There were semi-truck sized holes in the plan. But it was the best one I had, or anyone had. Joey had been outmaneuvering bail enforcement officers, AKA bounty hunters, which was my preferred name, for over four months. Word on the street said he’d be permanently gone in another week, so it was this desperate plan or nothing. Nothing was unacceptable now that my father was out to ruin my life.
I’d spent years planning my life and Jackson Bonds played a central role in my future. But nowhere in my grand life plan had I envisioned my father turning into a sentimental idiot who would be the biggest obstacle to my dreams.
I almost toppled down the stairs in the heels, but I made it to the living room and my purse. Grabbing the thigh holster from my bag, I hiked up the dress to my hips as I positioned the uncomfortable holster on my upper thigh. When I straightened, the cold metal of the gun pressed into the sensitive flesh of my right thigh. Yeah, that sucked.
“Damn girl, you are smoking hot, even sexier than me.” Jess whistled. “You’ll have Joey in the palm of your hand.” Her gaze trailed down me, stopping at my feet. “Walk back and forth, up and down the stairs until you have the balance right.”
Rolling my eyes I complied, walking in circles downstairs before ending up back in her room. I glanced across the room to the floor-length mirror on her closet doors. No way was the woman staring back at me—Ella Jane Jackson wasn’t a siren. At best, I’d describe myself as girl next door, but Jess had done some magic that made me not me. I shuddered and turned away, not wanting to think about how I looked or why I agreed to transform myself. I may never forgive my father, or myself, if I failed. But I wouldn’t fail—it wasn’t a possibility.
We left Jess’s place and headed across town to Lucky’s. In the parking lot, we bypassed valet and I parked myself. Jess squeezed my hand and met my eye. No words, just total confidence shone bright in her eyes. Her confidence built my own.
She hopped out of the car and headed inside. I studied the clock on my phone, hating each slow minute that passed until it was time for me to make my entrance.
My clock read 9:15—the magic hour.
My dress rode up revealing my gun as I tried to step-hop out of my truck. Damn tight dress. I rearranged myself behind the cover of my truck door. The gun chafed the sensitive flesh of my inner thigh and the too-high heels made the balls of my feet scream. Still, it was a small price to pay to capture DeRulo. Striding across the parking lot, I found a rhythm that felt sexy to me. Hopefully it looked like it felt, my luck I’d look like some awkward colt on these torture devices.
The bouncer eyed me with the kind of male appreciation that gave me confidence—definitely the type of look a sexy siren received. I let my thigh brush the bouncer’s thigh when I slipped passed him into Lucky’s Club, a nightclub where almost anything could be had for a price. Tonight I planned to be collecting. The smell of sweaty bodies and stale beer hit me in the entryway into the huge main room of the club. The room reminded me of a cave with dark walls and a smooth black floor. Neon lights ran along the black walls casting a strange glow across the dancers. The place screamed low-class, but then slime owned the club—the biggest drug pushers in Dallas, the DeRulo gang.
I squeezed through the maze of men and women who hadn’t yet joined the throng on the dance floor. A hand pinched my ass and I wanted to kick the bastard in the balls, but I was undercover, so to speak. If Joey DeRulo scented who I really was, he’d run the other way. Tonight was his first night back in Dallas, and it’d be the last night he enjoyed the freedom. I planned to collect the 100K on his head, or I wasn’t a Jackson.
I pushed through the people four deep who waited for a drink, landing in an empty place beside a badass biker with Jericho Brotherhood on his cut. Rusty-red hair and harsh jawline shouted stay away. He tipped his bottle of beer in my direction and one corner of his full lips tipped up into a smirk.
Normally, he’d be exactly my kind of trouble, but tonight I had a mission beyond the bits between my legs. And believe me those bits were already excited by his cut biceps, wide chest and don’t fuck with me aura.
“You’re sexy.” His gaze traveled down my tight dress and then back up to my eyes. His cinnamon eyes held an unspoken promise of all things sexy, but tonight was a work night. Dammit.
I held his gaze a long moment before turning to the bartender who appeared in front of me in seconds. Having most of my overly generous top half on display appeared to work for bikers and bartenders. Hopefully it mesmerized Joey too.
I crooked a finger at the young hunk behind the bar, and he leaned forward until my lips were less than an inch from his ear.
“Good head girl.” I spoke the code words just as I’d practiced.
The bartender sagged and stepped back. “Second door on the left at the top of the stairs.”
I winked at the biker then made my way toward my prize. After weaving through the edge of the crowd, I hit the stairs and moved up them with purpose, a hundred grand in purpose.
At the second door, a hulking goon stood at the door. He leered down at me and again I reminded myself not to knee anyone in the balls. I repeated the password but from a safe distance this time because I didn’t want to get too close to the creep. He opened the door which led into a huge room. Gathering my confidence, I stepped inside determined to see my mission to an end despite the nervous flutters in my stomach and the tight ball of apprehension making it difficult to breathe.
Low lighting and smoke made seeing difficult, but I spotted several groups gathered around sectionals and lounge chairs scattered across the room. The far wall showed the second-floor club room where women danced, that was a generous word, in front of the one-way glass. Few watched those girls because most focused on the center of the room where Joey held court.
Women displayed themselves in various levels of undress, artfully draped across the furniture like expensive trinkets for sale.
How would I compete with all of them? What would be so special about me?
Jess said my tits were the special sauce Joey craved. With no choice except to believe her, I sashayed through the room showing off my assets and casing the place. I counted ten guns and too many thugs to battle. Jess and I would have to play the game.
Jess stood up in front of me. Her dark eyes undressed me with frank appreciation. Suppressing a shudder of heebie-jeebies from her come hither look, I did my best to appear enthralled. Shit, maybe a stranger would be better.
“I like you.” She purred. “Come closer, chica.” Her finger trailed down my hair.
“Jess, bring your girl here,” Joey called in a hot second.
Wow. I hadn’t expected such a quick response. I could do this.
“Loosen up, Elle, you got this.” Jess caressed my ass. “We get him hot and then head to my place.”
I refused to give way to the nerves trying to overwhelm me. I could flatten an attacker in a half-dozen ways and kill without hesitation, but I freaked out over a bit of slap and tickle. Do the job, Jackson.
Jess pushed me down next to Joey, the better to get an eyeful. To me my boobs had always been pesky things I banded in sports bras to be able to do my job without pain.
Joey’s half-lidded gaze widened and his mouth went slack. “Aren’t you a sexy one.” The slurred words confirmed he was out-of-his-mind high, just like Jess predicted.
Jess slid her hands over my breasts and they popped free from the red dress. When she lowered her head to my nipple, I forced myself to relax and let my head fall back to better observe my prey. She bit my boob, I yelped, which reminded me I was supposed to be enjoying myself, not castigating myself.
Nope, girl, now wasn’t the time to be proud, but time to get the job done.
I focused on Joey, who ate up Jess’s every move. “Kiss her.” His hot, foul breath wafted across my cheek.
Jess grinned wide before she lip-locked me. Fuck, she was a damn good kisser. This I liked—a world better than our awkward attempt at twelve. I leaned back from the kiss, still on script.
“Baby, think of what we could do to you at my place. You love my toys.” Jess gave a sultry pout.
Joey’s eyes popped open. “Let’s go now.”