“Only when Laney is around,” Shooter replied.
“She’ll cut off your balls if she finds out,” Gauge added.
I watched them all talking between themselves for a moment or two, smoking and chatting like they hadn’t just woken me up on my day off, fired my godmother, and ordered me back to work. I was beginning to think I was delirious, or at least having a nightmare of some sort.
“I need to go,” I snapped, interrupting them. I wilted a little when they all turned to glare at me. “That nurse that was fired, that’s my godmother, so I need to go and call her and see what I can do to help.”
I turned to head back inside, ready to slam the door on these creeps, when a large hand wrapped around my bicep and pulled me back outside. I stumbled down the steps and fell into the chest of Gauge and his hands gripped me tightly around the waist, holding me in position, the smell of leather, smoke, sweat, and possibly whiskey washing over me.
“Listen here,” he snarled, his hands snaking down over my ass to cup it. “You need to get your stuff now. We wasn’t asking, we was telling you.”
I stared into his face, my eyes wide with fear and my mouth suddenly at a loss for words.
“Gauge, put her the fuck down!” Shooter bellowed. “It’s Belle, right?”
I nodded quickly, Gauge’s grip on me still tight. My hands were on his chest in a vain attempt to push him away, but it was futile. He knew it. I knew it. God himself knew it. If he’d wanted to, he could have snapped me like a twig, so the chances of wriggling out from under his grip were zero.
“Well, Belle, what I meant was, Jenna’s services are no longer required by the Devil’s Highwaymen for the recuperation of our brother, Beast. She still has a job at the hospital, but Beast was a side job paid for personally by the club.” He took a long drag of his cigarette and let the smoke trail out before continuing. “You are now on our payroll and we need you to be Beast’s personal carer. So go get your shit so we can get going.”
My cell phone was still ringing inside, and I realized that it was probably Jenna calling to warn me. I hoped she wasn’t too mad. She’d raised me from three years old and even now that I was a nineteen-year-old woman, she was still helping me.
I looked between the three men, fearful of each and every one of them. Could I work for these types of men—drug dealers and who knows what else they were into? The money would definitely come in handy, and I had wanted to find some way of taking away some of Beast’s pain—maybe this was it. I could give some of the money straight to Jenna so she wasn’t losing out, and I could prove to Beast that he wasn’t the big bad monster he thought he was.
I squirmed in Gauge’s grip, my breasts pushed up against his chest and his hands lightly massaging my ass like I was a piece of meat. “Could you um…”
“Gauge,” Shooter snapped, “put her the fuck down.”
Gauge set me back on the ground and I stumbled back from him. I was hungry, I was tired, and I was more than ready to have my day off. Yet the thought of going back into that room was definitely alluring. Especially if I was being paid for it.
“I’ll need to speak to Jenna first,” I said, going back up the two steps into my trailer to stand in the doorway. “I need to make sure she’s okay with this.”
“She’s been reimbursed already so she’ll be fine,” Shooter replied. “Pay is good, Belle, and the hours will be in with your normal workday.”
“And Doctor Collins is okay with that?” I asked with confusion, because Doctor Collins was a chauvinistic pig who worked people to the bone.
Shooter nodded and grinned. “Doctor Collins does whatever the fuck we tell him to. So yeah, you could say he’s okay with it.”
It was my turn to nod then, a little gleeful feeling in my belly that someone had put Doctor Collins in his place. My cell phone had stopped ringing and I had no doubt that Jenna was on her way over.
“Okay,” I finally said, “I’ll do it.”
Gauge snorted on a laugh and lit a cigar. “You didn’t really have a choice, sweetheart.”
I scowled at him and looked back at Shooter, who seemed the more reasonable of the three. “Is that so?”
Shooter shrugged, his expression neutral. He threw his cigarette to the ground and stubbed it out with the heel of his big black boot.
“Get your shit and we’ll take you to him,” Shooter said.
I huffed out my annoyance and turned around, looking into my crappy trailer, my gaze landing on my coffee mug. I turned back to them with one hand on the trailer door, my belly doing flips.
“I’ll be in tomorrow. Today is my day off,” I replied sternly, and slammed the door shut.
I pressed my back against it, waiting for the thumping of fists on the cheap metal, but nothing came. My heart was slamming in my chest and fear was coursing through me, but I couldn’t help but smile regardless.
I waited to see if they’d bang on the door and demand that I come in today. Order me back to work, because they could basically do whatever they wanted and clearly no one had any real say in it. But the sound of motorcycles starting up cut into my anxious thoughts and I listened as they drove away, wondering what the hell I’d just gotten myself into.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be enjoyable and I couldn’t get out of it now. Yet no matter how stupid an idea I thought this might be, I couldn’t help but be excited of the prospect of doing this.
