Luke

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She was worked up, I could tell. She was hot as hell, too, but that was Emily Parker.

She had that same hot body, those curves, those hips, that ass in jeans. That sexy tousled blonde hair. She was annoyed, sweaty, her shirt tied around her waist, her hair twisted back in a damp, messy, wind-blown ponytail. Her brows were drawn down over her dark-lashed gray eyes, her mouth—fuck, I’d done plenty with that mouth—was set in a firm line. Her movements were quick and harsh. Ed had annoyed her, and now I annoyed her. She was gorgeous, but this was Emily heading into full-on bitch mode.

Fuck, I loved bitch mode.

Eight years. Jesus. Eight freaking years. And now, today of all days, when I was finally taking the road back into town, here was Emily Parker. Like a welcome home present. Hey, asshole, this is what you could have had if you weren’t who you are. If you weren’t Luke Riggs. If you were better.

I followed her out the door—Ed was still protesting, which I ignored—and into the parking lot. She’d stopped at the edge of the concrete, staring at my car, her purse hitched over her shoulder. Emily might be a cop’s daughter, one of the goody-two-shoes Parker sisters, and far too good for me, but she’d always been able to appreciate a nice car.

“Yeah,” I said, walking past her, letting my shoulder brush hers as I headed for the jet-black Dodge Charger. “That’s mine.”

It was her turn to follow me, which I heard her do. “Jesus, Luke,” she said. “Where the hell did you get that?”

“This particular car?” I thought back. “Omaha.”

“When were you in Omaha?”

I beeped the doors open and looked at her as I opened the driver’s door. “It’s a long story,” I said. “Eight years long.”

She bit her lip, then circled around to the passenger side. “I know.”

I didn’t have anything embarrassing in my car that I could think of, even though I’d been on the road for days. No fast food wrappers, because I didn’t eat that shit. No condoms, because I never fucked girls in my car. No other shit. There was a sweatshirt I’d tossed in the back seat, and a couple of my duffel bags in the trunk, and that was it. Dad had drilled it into me and my brothers since birth: You can treat your house like shit, you can treat the people in your life like shit, but you always, always take care of your car.

So Emily got in, settled back into the leather seat, and looked around, and that was fine with me. She looked good there. She did up her seat belt and did a little shiver as I started the engine, and right then I wanted her. Wanted to put my hands on her, like I had when we were eighteen. And man, I had had my hands everywhere when we were eighteen. A dozen times. A hundred. The two of us in secret, with no one ever knowing. Not her family, not my brothers. No one.

I’d had a vehicle back then, too. A pickup truck, a junker someone had left at Dad’s shop in exchange for a few hundred bucks. I’d bought it off Dad and spent my spare time fixing it, making it run, and souping it up. That summer after high school finally ended, I’d spend my days working on my truck, and the nights I got lucky, a blonde named Emily would sneak into my bed and we’d fuck until dawn.

That had been a good summer. Until she left for college, and it was over. Because I was a Riggs, and I had no way of going to college, and we both knew it, while she was Emily Parker. She was a cop’s daughter, destined for good things.

The breakup hadn’t been messy or angsty, because it was always going to happen from the first. We had our hot, secret fun, and we both got off, until she packed her bags and left to start her actual life.

I hadn’t seen her again until today.

“You want your stuff out of your car?” I asked her as I reversed out of the parking lot, my arm over the back of the seat.

She seemed to lean away from me, but I didn’t take it personally. I’d caught her smelling me in the store a minute ago. “How do you know I have stuff in my car?” she said.

“Because every chick has stuff in her car.”

Her eyebrows crashed down again. “God, you’re an asshole,” she said. “And yes, this chick has some things she needs to pick up.”

I pulled out onto the highway and headed back the way I’d come, toward her car. “Don’t leave anything valuable in it,” I said. “Darren is reliable, but he tends to take shit if it’s lying around.”

“Excuse me?” Bitch mode on. “Who is Darren?”

“The tow truck guy who works for Dad’s body shop,” I said. “I’m calling him while you get your stuff.”

“I can take care of this, Luke,” she said. “Even though I’m a woman, and all. I didn’t ask you to call a tow truck driver.”

“No, but I’m calling one anyway,” I said as we spotted her car and I did a U-turn on the empty road, pulling over behind it. “Because your phone is still dead, and I know Darren’s number. I’m just that kind of guy.”

“Believe me, I know exactly what kind of guy you are.”

“Pretty much,” I agreed. Emily was a lot of things, but stupid was never one of them. “You have five minutes,” I said, pulling out my phone as she got out of the passenger seat. “Take too long, and your ride is taking off. You can go torture Ed to pass the time while you wait.”

She had been about to slam the passenger door, but she turned and leaned in instead. “Leave me by the side of the road, and I am calling the police,” she hissed. “Just try me, Luke Riggs.” Then she slammed the door and walked ahead to her car.

Yeah, bitch mode still turned me on.

I called Darren while she thumped her bags into the back seat of my car—and no, I didn’t help her. She’d made it clear that she could do it, being a woman and all. When Emily got like this, it was best to let her work it out. By the time she finished she was sweaty again, so I turned over the engine when she got in and turned up the air conditioning. “Iced tea?” I said, handing her my unopened bottle.

She took the bottle and downed the whole thing, then leaned back in the passenger seat as I pulled off the edge of the road. “Okay, I’m calm now,” she declared. “What are you doing on this road, anyway?”

“Coming back to town,” I said.

“From where?”

“Most recently, Florida. Before that, lots of places. I’ve been traveling around.”

She seemed to think that over. “And why are you coming back now?” she asked.

“You really want to know?” I hesitated, but only for a second. Screw it. “Dad’s in prison,” I told her. I glanced at her from the corner of my eye, checking her reaction. “I know. Shocking, huh?”

Because it wasn’t. Everyone—especially everyone in Westlake—always knew Mike Riggs would end up in prison. The only surprise was that it took so long.

But Emily bit her lip. “Jeez, Luke, I’m sorry,” she said. “What—what is he in for?”

“He hit a guy with his car,” I said. “He was half in the bag when he did it, and he was arguing with the guy, so it was sort of intentional. In the end he went down for attempted murder and impaired driving, so he’ll be in for a while.”

She was silent, not saying the words anyone else would say: What do you expect from the Riggs family? Westlake had an actual set of railroad tracks going through it, and we lived on the wrong side of them. Literally the wrong side of the tracks. Our mom had bailed on Dad, me, and my three brothers when I was four, leaving Dad to raise us alone. And Dad had done a shit job of it.

We’d run wild, my brothers and me. Fighting, stirring up trouble, doing whatever we wanted. We had no curfew, no one expecting us home to dinner, no one checking that we did our homework—or went to school at all. Dad ran a garage, where he mostly hung out, smoked weed, and shot the shit with his pothead buddies. When he remembered he had sons, it was usually to give one of us a few punches to the head—and then he’d ignored us again.

And no, we didn’t call the cops when Dad belted us one. We didn’t call Social Services or CPS or whoever the fuck. Because Dad was bad, but whatever came after that phone call would be worse, and we all knew it.

In the meantime, we lived like stray cats. It didn’t make us look good. That was why Emily, the precious daughter of one of Westlake’s cops, should never have let me put my hands on her. She should never have gone near a Riggs boy at all.

But she had. For a little while, anyway.