I lie there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, listening to the silence of the clubhouse settle around me. And I think about the woman on the other side of that door. The way she looked at me. The way she felt pressed against my back for three hours, her hands gripping my jacket, her body slowly relaxing into mine like she'd decided to trust me whether I deserved it or not.
She's beautiful. That's the first problem.
Not the polished, plastic kind of beautiful I expected from a pop star. Something warmer than that. Realer. The kind of face that makes you want to keep looking. The kind of mouth that makes you think things you shouldn't be thinking about a woman you met four hours ago.
She's smart, too. Sharp. Figured out it was Harris before I even had to say it. Didn't fall apart when most people would have. Didn't scream or cry or demand I make everything better. Just looked at me with those dark eyes and asked why I was helping her, like she genuinely couldn't understand why anyone would.
That's the second problem.
The third problem is the way my chest feels tight every time I think about her. The way I want to go back in there and make sure she's okay, make sure she's sleeping, make sure nothing in the world can touch her while I'm still breathing.
I've protected people before. Plenty of them. It's what I did for years — keep the asset alive, get them from point A to point B, don't get attached. Simple. Clean. Professional.
This doesn't feel simple.
This doesn't feel clean.
This feels like the beginning of something I'm not going to be able to walk away from.
I stare at the ceiling and count the hours until morning.
She's Nate's client. She's a job. She's sixteen years younger than me and lives in a world that has nothing to do with mine.
None of that matters.
She's been under my roof for twenty minutes and I'm already gone.
CHAPTER 3
INDIA
Iwake up in a bed that isn't mine, in a room that smells like leather and something else — something warm and masculine that I'm absolutely not going to think about.
Except I am thinking about it. I'm lying in Ghost's bed, surrounded by his sheets, breathing in a scent that's already doing something to me I don't want to examine.
Get it together, India.
I sit up slowly, pushing the covers back. The events of last night come back in fragments. The necklace on my pillow. Nate's face when he told me about his brother. The man himself — Ghost — all hard edges and silence, giving me nothing.
The motorcycle. The desert. His body solid and warm in front of me for three hours while I held on and tried not to notice how good he felt.
I noticed.
And now I'm here. In his bed. In a biker clubhouse in Tucson.
My life has gone completely sideways.
I find my bag and dig out something clean to wear. Jeans, a t-shirt, sneakers I'm grateful I thought to pack. I wash my face in the small bathroom attached to his room, brush my hairinto something presentable, and try to make myself look like a person who has her shit together.
The mirror says otherwise, but I've worked with worse.
When I open the bedroom door, the couch at the end of the hall is empty. Blanket folded, pillow stacked on top. He was here all night, just like he said he'd be.
Sleeping ten feet away from me. While I was in his bed.
I follow the smell of coffee toward the main room.
Ghost is at the bar, cup in hand, scrolling through his phone. He looks up when I walk in, and there's no surprise on his face. Like he knew exactly when I'd appear.
