Damage: (Lakefield Book 5) Read online

  My mom had been a waitress for most of her life. That’s how she’d met my dad. One night, on her shift in a diner, he’d come in and swept her off her feet. Quite literally apparently, after tripping into her when he slipped on her freshly mopped floor. Then, according to both of them, the sparks flew, the sun rose, and they'd gotten married three months later.

  “I have the best mom in the world, so I don’t mind at all being just like her.”

  “Remember that when your back is aching at my age, sweetie,” she laughed. “Be safe and kick some ass.”

  “Sure will, Mom. Love you.”

  After I hung up, I grabbed my bag out of my trunk, and made sure I had what I needed.

  I hesitated, wondering if I should just blow this whole thing off and leave. Gary would be short staffed, but the need to just get in my car and drive as fast as I could in the opposite direction was overwhelming. It would be a statement to Cade that I was pissed if he didn’t know it already. I should have punched him and left. The other half of me wanted to be around him, growl at him, flip him off, and be irritating as hell. And if I was honest with myself, just be near him for a little while. My brain said leave, but my traitorous heart said stay.

  Grabbing my bag, I hefted it over my shoulder. My heart won out and I hoped I didn’t regret it. When I passed by the front windshield, I noticed a small envelope stuck between the wiper and glass.

  I pulled it off and examined it. There was a crude drawing of a heart on the front. Scanning the parking lot, I didn’t see any other vehicles with the same thing. No flyers advertising late night restaurants or strange envelopes.

  Opening it, small heart-shaped paper cut outs fell to the ground and over the hood. I grabbed a larger one and lifted it into the dim light of the parking lot. It had one sentence on it.

  I’ll steal your heart.

  Frowning, I turned it over several times. Some customer had clearly had a little too much to drink already and messaged the wrong woman. I put the larger heart back in the envelope and slid it under the wiper of the vehicle beside me. Both cars looked similar and it was possible someone had gotten them mixed up.

  When I re-entered, several people were crowded around Cade at his bar, and there were a few patrons wandering out from the sports room.

  I ducked my head and walked quickly to the breakroom to get changed.

  The aprons were fresh and I almost suspected that he might have ironed them. He’d always impressed me with his attention to detail, especially his tidiness. Ironing waist smocks was going a little far, though. I wouldn’t put it past him, but it was a little excessive.

  I glanced at myself in the bathroom mirror after I changed. I wasn’t eighteen anymore, but I felt like I was still young enough to attract some decent tips. A little flirting was the key. People didn’t just want a normal waitress. They wanted one they could either look at, or banter with. It took a certain attitude either way. I’d never had a problem, but I’d seen plenty of servers fail miserably.

  Giving myself a serious look in the mirror, I adjusted my ponytail like a seasoned veteran preparing for battle. Tonight, was going to be interesting. Especially with my new manager.

  Mark. Cade. Was it a middle name? Why was he being weird about it?

  He hadn’t seen me in the pair of cut off shorts that I was wearing. Actually, he'd really only ever seen me in what I always wore to Muse. Mostly conservative and professional attire. They weren’t so short that I would be embarrassed, but short enough that they cut off at my upper thigh. I hadn’t had the confidence to wear them much until three months ago. But they were awesome on me now. Paired with the cherry red top, the outfit was cute, and I was covered, but hopefully it still stirred the imagination.

  I changed out of my boots and into a black pair of running shoes. I tied the smock around my waist, shoved my bag in a random locker, and headed out to the main room through the kitchen.

  When I stepped through the doors, I bumped into one of the other girls.

  “Oof, sorry!”

  “It’s okay,” she said with a smile. “It happens, but luckily very rarely. I was too close to the door. My name is Michelle, and you’re Suzanne, right?”

  I nodded. Michelle was a bright eyed, brunette that I suspected was only a couple of years younger than I was. She’d been helping Duke get set up earlier.

  “Do you know where I’m assigned tonight or who has that information?”

  Her eyebrows raised in surprise. “Mark didn’t tell you?”

  “Uhm, no. When we talked earlier, he neglected to mention it.”

  He’d been too busy picking me up off the floor.

  She pointed over to where he was working. “He’s right over there, but I think you’re working around Duke’s side. I usually take the back. Mark has a map, though, so you can learn it. If we overlap a little, that’s okay.”

  She was very friendly, and I was glad to be working an area where someone knew the drill. Sometimes tables got mixed up on a night when a new server hit the floor. But based on her input, it appeared straight forward. It was nice of her to let me know, though.

  “Thanks, Michelle, I’ll go check with Mark, but I think I get the layout. If you need any help at all, let me know.”

  She winked at me. “You got it, girl.”

  I smiled and walked toward Cade’s bar. He was standing behind the counter listening to a woman as she leaned over in her seat. If her eyes were any more glued to him she would be flat against his chest.

  Whatever. It was the nature of the business. It’s not like I hadn’t seen it before when we were working together in Lakefield. It wasn’t likely going to be the last time if I stayed here.

  I checked the tables toward the front of the bar and didn’t see anyone that needed anything quite yet. Putting a practiced little swing to my hips I headed past Cade, and his doting fan, toward Duke’s counter.

  He smiled at me when I approached and gave me a chin lift.

  “Hey there, Red. You’ve come to work with the best.”

  He said this while opening his arms wide and motioning to himself. If he’d beat his chest and declared himself king of the jungle it wouldn’t have surprised me.

  I leaned against the countertop and laughed. “Jesus, you remind me so much of a bartender I just got done working with.”

  He leaned over the counter, resting his elbows on the wooden surface and wiggled his eyebrows.

  “Did he get lucky?”

  Normally I might have been offended, but he really was just like Pete. Flirtatious, but harmless.

  “Who got lucky?!” a deep angry growl demanded from behind me.

  Duke backed up and got serious suddenly. “Hey, boss.”

  I turned around slowly and leaned against the counter with my elbow on the bar. My other hand rested on my hip.

  Cade was standing a couple of feet behind me, with his arms crossed over his chest. He looked furious as his eyes skimmed down the length of my body.

  I gave him a bored smile and tilted my head. “Hey, Mark. We were just talking about frisky bartenders.”

  His eyes snapped back to mine, then glared over my shoulder at Duke.

  I motioned behind me, toward the poor man who was probably about to spontaneously combust from the glare Cade was giving him.

  “Duke here is smart enough not to mess with a redhead. Unlike other people,” I gave him an intentional look. “Right, Duke?”

  “Uh huh,” he replied from over my shoulder.

  Cade’s eyes swung back to me and his jaw twitched as he clenched it.

  I batted my eyelashes at him and studied him from head to toe, while arching one of my eyebrows.

  “Thanks for the talk, boss.”

  His frown deepened as I brushed past him, and I felt the slightest touch of his breath hitting my face.

  “Later, Suzie,” he growled quietly.

  Chapter Five

  Avoiding a dead man was harder than I thought.

  My shift at the ba
r was the usual hustle of drinks, carding underage twits who thought I wouldn’t notice how young they looked, and trying to avoid being knocked down by people who were too drunk to walk straight.

  All in all, it was a good night. The bar was just as full as Gary had said it would be, and I made more tips on a seven-hour shift than I’d ever made working Muse. It was also a different environment with a lot of different age groups.

  Every time I’d gone back over to Duke, he’d filled my orders nearly immediately and had done it with a smile. It was good working with him, and as the night wore on with fewer customers on hand, he’d made me laugh with his antics. Even Michelle made it fun by occasionally jumping in at a rowdy table and playing the situation down with me.

  By the time we were closing, I felt comfortable with my co-workers and I could readily admit that I really liked working at Rounders.

  Cade had been a different story.

  I’d tried to keep my eyes from wandering over to him. My plan had been to avoid the asshole, not stare at him. But when the man you'd crushed on, turned up alive, after mourning him for months, it was hard not to look at him.

  I pushed my emotions down and simply tried to focus on the job, but my eyes would inevitably find him again. Smiling, laughing, living.

  On my break, I’d retreated to the back to sit and think about everything, which didn’t help at all. I’d iced my lip, which was still tender to the touch, but healing. There was very little swelling now, and makeup helped cover the slight yellow spot on my jaw.

  Sitting and taking care of those things felt normal in a situation where normalcy didn’t seem to exist. The more I had time to think, the more I felt like calling Liv or just barging up to his bar and yelling at him.

  Rather than waste time on it, I’d finished my break early and was back on the floor sooner than I should have been. He’d scowled at me quite a bit and I’d ignored him.

  I needed some answers. There just wasn’t any way around it.

  The question was whether I could hold my temper in check long enough to hear the story he was going to tell me. And it had better be a damn good one.

  When the bar closed, Cade locked up the front door and I carried the last pitchers from my tables over to Duke’s counter.

  Duke smiled. “Thanks, Red. You kicked some ass tonight.”

  I smiled back at him. “I told you, I’m a pro.”

  He held out his fist and I bumped it with mine.

  When I turned around, I saw Cade heading toward the back.

  Michelle joined me as some of the other girls headed toward an exit door.

  “Hey, we’re out of here. You want to leave with us? Mark always wants us to head out together.”

  “Uhm,” I said. My eyes flicked to the double doors Cade had just disappeared through. “I’ll walk out with one of the guys. I still need to count a couple of receipts.”

  She smiled. “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow night then. It was a lot of fun tonight, and I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Well someone had to work with Duke I guess,” I replied sarcastically.

  Duke laughed then dramatically pretended to stab himself in the heart.

  Michelle giggled. “We’ll draw straws tomorrow. The short one for Duke.”

  “You’re killing me!” he exclaimed.

  She laughed again, then waved as she walked toward the exit.

  “Nice girl,” Duke said as he wiped down a glass on his counter. “You should get going, Red. It’s getting late and I’m about done here.”

  I gave a chin lift to Duke and made my way back to the breakroom.

  Cade wasn’t around when I stepped in the hallway, but the door to the office was open. I heard him talking on the phone to someone, and decided I was just too tired to pick a fight with him tonight. I needed some time to think.

  I gathered my things and was about to leave when I ran into a wall. A six-foot wall of chest. It was firm and felt fantastic when my hands accidentally brushed over his tight shirt.

  Off balance, I stepped back, and glanced up to find Cade smirking down at me.

  “Going somewhere?” he asked, catching me before I stumbled into the wall behind me.

  I pushed at his hand, but it didn’t move. “Yeah, home. Where I can sleep. I have a shift tomorrow with an asshole boss.”

  He chuckled. “You won’t be working with him. He fired you about seven hours ago, I think.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, well, too bad for him that I’ll be back at work tomorrow anyway. I know the owner and I’m not afraid to play that card.”

  “You can’t work here, Suzanne.”

  I pushed at his chest and gave him a sour look. “Fuck off, Cade. Dead men don’t tell me what I can and can’t do.”

  Before I could step around him, he grabbed my arm and started dragging me to his office.

  “The name is Mark, and we need to talk right now,” he growled.

  When we got to his office he shut the door behind us but didn’t let go of my arm. He hauled me to the chair I was sitting in earlier and deposited me into it.

  “I need to get home,” I protested, while defiantly glaring at him. “Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to hear why you’re walking around, with a pulse in your body, but I think I need to let this soak in. Maybe even call Liv. If she knew, then why the fuck didn’t she just say something? Did everyone know?”

  He ran a hand down his face in frustration. It was a habit I'd noticed on several occasions while I’d been working with him. This time his hand reached his chin and tugged on his new beard. He generally appeared so clean-cut back in Lakefield, that it seemed out of character. An attempt at a disguise for sure, that might have fooled most people. Unless you were me.

  I had to admit it looked good, though, and made him appear a lot more rugged. A little bit biker, and a little bit weight lifter with his muscled frame.

  My eyes slid down his body and I felt a pull in my belly. Maybe a little more bad-boy and dirty.

  Fuck. I shut my eyes and shook my head.

  He chuckled, and my eyes snapped back to his.

  He glanced away toward the clock, avoiding my stare for a minute, then looked back at me.

  “I can’t give you time to think, and don’t call Liv. She doesn’t and can’t know about this. The only person that knows I’m alive is Logan, and he hasn’t even told Kate. He doesn’t know where I’m at, just that I’m not dead.”

  “Why? I don’t understand.”

  He crouched down so that his face was even with mine and sighed.

  “I’m working with the Feds on a serial murder case. I’m undercover.”

  I tilted my head as I studied him. Searching his face for deceit.

  “But, why tell people you’re dead? Were you actually shot?”

  A frustrated expression passed over his face. “Look, I was headed to Colorado to help Logan and Kate get packed up. You know that story. Yes, I was shot. Neither one of us was expecting to walk back into that shitstorm when we got there. Obviously, I survived.”

  “Obviously,” I repeated a little harshly.

  “I was also headed up there to meet with a Fed named Mick. He needed some help on a case involving a double murder in New Orleans. Two women killed and dumped in an alley next to a bar that Aiden owns in that area.”

  “Oh, God! That’s awful.”

  “Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “The details are worse.”

  I thought for a moment, absorbing that and what he wasn’t saying. “I probably don’t want to know. And I didn’t realize that Liv’s husband owned that many bars. I thought it was just a handful.”

  He pursed his lips like he was thinking. “He owns a lot of different things including several bars all over the country. Not many in Texas, but several in other states. I’ve been managing a lot of them. Acting as his representative in a way when I check on them. Did you ever wonder why I went out of town so much? Why I wasn’t around?”

  I chewed on the inside of my cheek,
thinking back. He’d been away a lot, but his travel hadn't seemed that excessive. I’d often wondered if he’d taken vacation or had a woman he was spending time with. He wasn’t lacking in admirers back then.

  I shook my head. “No, I thought you were just off. Maybe had a girlfriend or something.”

  He gave a small smirk. “I’m never off. I like what I do and worked hard to keep it under control. I haven’t been involved with anyone since I met you. There wasn’t time, and I guess that was the biggest part of it. But frankly, I knew eventually I wanted to make a go of it. Working with you was hard some days. Knowing I couldn’t give you more time back then.”

  I ducked my head at his confession. Hearing that he’d felt something for me over the past few years left me a little shocked.

  Changing to a safe subject, I asked, “So, you were just travelling to different cities?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, although I will say that got tougher a couple of years ago when I hired a sassy redhead that I liked working with. That I found myself wanting to be around more than I wanted to travel for work.”

  My cheeks felt warm for a second, and I frowned at him in confusion. My mouth opened to respond, but I couldn’t speak.

  He glanced away from me, then dropped the subject. “Anyway, the bodies were dumped near Aiden’s bar, and Mick wanted to see if I would consider working with them since I knew the industry. I wouldn’t look like a total idiot managing a few bars for Gary’s organization.”

  “Why are you working for Gary specifically?”

  “A couple of the women have been taken from his bars then dumped. Mick thought it was enough of a reason to check out his employees and Gary himself.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. You’ve met Gary. He’s about as boy scout as they get, and his employees have all been checked out. It’s a dead end, but here I am. There was a woman taken about two weeks ago near a totally random strip club in west Texas. The body was dumped near one of Aiden’s bars again. They’re speculating it’s the same guy but waiting on conclusive tests. But, Gary doesn’t own the business where this woman was taken.”

  “If that’s the case, then why do they need you here?”