Dani

We got up just after dawn and showered, packed, got in the car. We didn’t talk. I put on my jeans, a t-shirt, the sneakers Cavan had bought me. I raised my hands a dozen times to tie my hair back before I remembered each time that I’d cut it all off.

I looked like a different woman in the mirror; I had faint purplish shadows under my eyes, and I wasn’t wearing any makeup. But when I looked at this woman, I realized I liked her better. Her eyes didn’t flinch. The haircut framed her face differently. She looked, I thought, like a woman who was confident. A woman who had started pleasing herself instead of pleasing other people.

I picked up my bag and walked out of the room, to where Cavan was already in the parking lot, leaning against the car. His familiar figure hit me: jeans, boots, dark gray t-shirt, the easy line of his hips as he leaned with one ankle crossed over the other. He was turned away from me. I could still taste him, could still feel how his body had flexed when he came. My body responded with a rush of heat, low in my belly, making my nipples sensitive against the lace of my bra.

Pleasing myself, instead of others. It was definitely an idea.

I came closer and realized he had his phone to his ear. He was giving someone a set of numbers, and then he paused. “How much do I need?” he asked the person on the other end. “I don’t know. How much money do you think I need to get myself and my woman out of trouble?”

I nearly dropped my bag. My woman. McMurphy’s words. I’d been his woman for seven months. The words made me cold, made my stomach drop.

My woman doesn’t leave me, Dani. It doesn’t happen. My woman doesn’t disrespect me and make me look like a fool.

Cavan wasn’t like that. At all. But still, I fought back the fear that crawled up my throat. God, I needed to get a grip. Get it together.

“Fine,” Cavan said into the phone. “Tell Devon to wait. I have to clear up some things first.” A pause. “Just give him the warning, Max, like I told you. I don’t know if the Black Dog is going to try to get to him, but he needs to know it could happen. And as for me, tell him to wait. I’ll come when I can. That’s all.” He hung up and turned to see me standing there. “Hey,” he said. “Ready?”

I hesitated, searching for words. There was a bruise forming above his eye.

Cavan Wilder was sacrificing for me. He could be on his way to San Francisco right now, to see his long-lost brother and claim his inheritance, but instead he was at a motel on the Nevada border, fighting off bikers. Now he was obviously taking money from his friend Max in order to keep us going, instead of claiming his fortune and buying a closet of custom suits, a Malibu mansion, and a private jet to take to his private island.

“What?” he said to me.

“You called me your woman,” I said. “Just now.”

His gray eyes swept down me and up again. That one look was devastating, and every part of me went on alert. Fuck, he was the sexiest man I’d ever seen. I wanted to be possessed by him, and I wanted to run away at the same time. I was in horrible trouble.

“You don’t like that?” he asked. And then, as he always did, he surprised me. He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “All right, I won’t say it.”

I opened the car door and tossed my bag inside, throwing it harder than I needed to because some traitorous part of me didn’t like how easily he’d given up. God, I was fucked up sometimes. “Thank you.”

“But you’re not going to like it.”

I rounded the car and opened the passenger door. “I’m not going to like what?”

“The next part of the plan.”

I paused. “What plan?”

He smiled at me, and for the first time I noticed that despite the bruise he seemed easier this morning, as if a weight had been lifted off his mind. That smile sliced into me; I was helpless against it. For a second, my knees actually weakened.

“My plan,” he said. “This will be interesting. Let’s go get breakfast.”

* * *

We ate at a restaurant on the outskirts of Rio Verde, where the tourist strip thinned out on its way out of town. We hadn’t stopped at a restaurant since we’d been on the road, relying on snacks and fast food to keep us going. Now, with some of the urgency strangely lifted after last night, I found I was ravenous. Bacon, eggs, coffee, toast—I wanted it all. Maybe it was an aftereffect of the panic; maybe it was an aftereffect of a night of incredible sex with the man sitting across from me. Either way, I was hungry.

“Okay, so tell me,” I said to him when I’d devoured half my plate and my stomach had started to settle. “What’s this plan of yours?”

He’d eaten less than me; he was already finished, leaning against the back of the booth, watching me. He opened a small creamer and dumped the contents into his coffee. “First off, we need money,” he said. “I took care of that this morning.”

“I heard you on the phone.”

He nodded. “Max is putting money in my bank account.” He raised his eyes to mine and held my gaze. “A lot of money. And you’re taking some.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think—”

“End of story,” he said. “I heard you. You’re not my woman. That’s clear.”

I put my fork down. It had been a gut reaction, my denial of those particular words. But what was last night? I’d been his woman then, at least while we were naked. What if his plan was to leave me?

Cavan continued, “But you’re still stranded, with no funds and nowhere to go, and you’re taking my money to help yourself out. Conversation over.”

I bit my lip, thinking. The hard truth was that I was broke, and I needed cash to get me by. But as soon as I landed on my feet, I would get a job. I’d treat this as a loan; I just wouldn’t tell Cavan that. “Okay,” I said to him. “Thank you. But money doesn’t solve all of our problem.”

“No,” he agreed. “That’s why when we leave here, we’re going to Vegas.”

“What for?”

“Why does anyone go to Vegas?” he replied. “To get married.”

My stomach dropped. “What?”

“Married,” Cavan said again, as if we were discussing the weather. “You and me. Legally wed. It’s the best solution.”

For a second I was so shocked I couldn’t speak; I just stared at him. “You’re insane,” I finally said.

“I’m not, actually.” The crease appeared in his forehead as he assessed my reaction. “It’s a means to an end, Dani. Don’t be alarmed.”

I pushed my plate away. I wasn’t hungry anymore. “And how exactly is it a means to an end?”

“If you’re my wife, McMurphy isn’t going to want you anymore,” Cavan said. “It’s all about possession with him. If he sees you as mine, then he’ll no longer see you as his.”

“That’s because I will be yours,” I said. “We’ll be married.”

That got me a ghost of a smile. “You know what year it is?” he said. “You won’t be anybody’s. We’ve established that. You don’t have to take my name, and you don’t have to live with me. Hell, at the moment I don’t even have anywhere to live.”

I sat back in my seat. I had the feeling this wasn’t the whole story. “And that’s it?” I asked him. “We just get married for McMurphy’s purposes? That’s all?”

His gray eyes flicked away from mine, then back again. “There’s more,” he said. “That guy last night. He could have gone after you, but he didn’t. He came after me.”

I didn’t like to think about that. It had been awful, waking up to the sound of bikes outside my door, Cavan gone. I’d fallen asleep so happy in his arms. “He saw you,” I said. “He didn’t come after me because he didn’t see me.”

“Dani, he knew where we were,” Cavan said. “He knew what room we were in. He came for me the minute I walked out the door. If he wanted you, he could have walked right in and got you.”

I swallowed, trying not to think of some strange biker walking in and yanking me naked out of bed. The fact that Cavan had been targeted didn’t make me feel any better, either. We were lucky it had been only a warning. I had come so close, so horribly fucking close, to losing him. “What are you getting at?” I asked.

He looked at me calmly, and then he dropped the bomb. “If anything happens to me, as my wife you get it all.”

Everything stopped.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I said.

He didn’t flinch, just held my gaze with eyes gray as steel. “You think I’m kidding you, Dani?”

“I—” He was serious. He was actually serious. I scrubbed a hand over my face. “I don’t want your money.”

“Yeah?” Cavan said. “Well, I don’t want it either. But if I die, I want to know you have it. That you’re going to use it to get on a plane and get out of Dodge. Or hire lawyers to put McMurphy away. Or take some time and go to school. Whatever you want.” He leaned forward across the table. “Dani, think of it as an insurance policy. If the shit hits the fan, you can go to Devon. Show him your marriage certificate, and there’s no way he won’t take you in. I let him down ten years ago, but you never did. I know my brother. He wouldn’t let my wife stay in danger.”

“You asshole,” I said in a low voice, suddenly angry. “You’re talking about dying. About dying.”

He shook his head, his eyes hard. “It was always a possibility.”

He was right. Damn him, he was. McMurphy was fully capable of murder when he was this enraged; I knew it better than anyone. When I’d left with Cavan I hadn’t been thinking past the next hour, the next four hours, the next twelve hours—and neither had he. We’d been living by getting to the next rest stop, the next town—the next bed, at least on my part. Because beyond those things, it could all be over.

And he was still thinking that way. That we would try to make it further down the highway, but one of us might not get there. And the odds were, the person who might not get there was him.

That was true. All of it was technically right. But last night had happened, and I’d been to bed with him—in all the ways that mattered. I’d done things with him, felt things with him, that I’d never imagined I could have. I didn’t want to think only about the next hour anymore. I didn’t want to think about the fact that he might leave me. I was mixed up—I didn’t know what I wanted, but it wasn’t that.

Cavan reached across the table and took my hand. He gripped it in his, just hard enough to make me feel it. “Don’t be pissed at me, Dani,” he said, his voice low and intense. “Just tell me straight up what you’re thinking. Even if it’s to tell me to go fuck myself. We’ve come this far, but we can’t get any further if we’re fighting. It has to be you and me.”

I looked at him. Scruffy, tired, unromantic asshole—he was still so beautiful it hurt my eyes. His hand was warm on mine, his grip sure, his reach making his forearm flex. Behind him, waitresses served breakfast to tourists and truckers as the sun came up. For a moment, everything hung in the balance.

Him and me. Married.

I had the feeling there was something more to this crazy idea, something he wasn’t telling me yet. The question was, did I trust him enough to believe in him? To follow him anyway?

There had been guys before McMurphy. I’d stayed a virgin, but I’d played around. And I definitely had a type: the bad boy. The guy who was a little bit wild, who broke the rules. My mother had raised me to stay away from boys like that, probably from her own experience, so I’d taken pleasure in rebelling. Bad boys were my weakness.

The fact that those same boys always treated me like dirt was lost on me—I didn’t take the warning. I thought the right woman could change them, make them different. Until I learned my lesson in the hardest possible way with McMurphy, who took everything from me, made me hate myself, put his boot heel in my thigh, and called me a slut while he did it.

I understood it now. Bad boys were a bad idea. Bad boys were pain and nothing else.

Yet here I was, with Cavan Wilder.

He should be the type. He had no family; he lived with a motorcycle club. He didn’t date. He didn’t break rules, because he barely even acknowledged that rules existed. He’d run off with me after a single conversation, and he’d defied a man who was hell bent on killing him without a second thought. He only owned jeans and worn t-shirts and boots, and he didn’t shave. After what I’d been through, I should be running away screaming.

But I wasn’t. I didn’t want him to leave me, and I didn’t want him to die, and it wasn’t because I was desperate or because he was my type. It was because he was him.

He was still holding my hand, watching me think it over. Waiting.

He was a bad boy maybe, but he’d showed up in that parking lot and saved my life. He hadn’t judged me. He listened to me; he paid attention to me. He’d dropped everything, risked his life, been attacked. He was offering me money and protection and asking nothing in return. Even the sex had been about my pleasure. He was my white knight.

I found my voice. “You told me,” I said, “when we first left, that you were doing this for yourself, and not for me. Was that true?”

“Don’t ask me that,” he said.

“Why not?”

He frowned. “Because I don’t know the answer.”

“And what do you get out of all of this?” I asked him. “It looks like I get money and protection. What do you get?”

“I know that if McMurphy or one of his goons kills me, it wasn’t for nothing. My money goes somewhere useful. I know that I did at least one good thing.”

That was a good answer, but it wasn’t enough. “And you get sex. Right? Is that the deal?”

He laughed, and I knew he was remembering last night, just like I was. “Sweetheart,” he said, “what’s going to happen between us is going to happen whether we’re married or not.”

“So would this marriage be in name only?” I asked.

His gaze darkened, and I felt my heart speed up. “I don’t think we should lie to ourselves. Do you?”

I still wanted him so badly. Last night hadn’t even been close to enough, and he hadn’t been inside me yet. No, we would probably fuck, and I would enjoy it. But we didn’t have to be married for that.

“If we do this,” Cavan said, “and everything works out, we can get a divorce if you want. You won’t get a contest from me. This isn’t about owning you, Dani. It’s a piece of paper that protects you for as long as we need it to. And if you want out, you get out. What do you say?”

I stared at him. I’d come in this man’s arms while he whispered in my ear. I had his ink on my skin. I’d been awake with him. I didn’t want to let another man touch me like that, put his hands or his mouth on me. I didn’t want to let another man do the things I wanted Cavan to do. That I’d practically begged him to do.

And I’d be fucked if I was going to watch him drive off into the sunset with divorce papers, ready to find someone else.

I wanted Cavan Wilder, my white knight, for as long as we had. And it was my lucky day, because that was exactly what he was offering me. I didn’t care if there was more he wasn’t saying. Maybe I should please myself for once.

I nodded, and I watched him smile. “Okay,” I said. “You have a deal. Let’s get married.”