Drug Lord: A Bad Boy Baby Romance (2 page)

A
s soon as
I walked inside of Finn McCool’s, I realized that it was packed wall to wall. There were way too many people in a very small space.

In the US, it would probably violate the fire code to have so many people crammed together.

Did they even have fire marshals here?

I had no idea where I could sit. I looked around, totally lost.

“Hey,” a guy said. “Are you looking for a team?”

I was startled to hear someone talking to me in English.

“Yeah.” I realized that everyone in this section had pieces of paper in front of them.

“Welcome to the Fruitbats.” He motioned to the table.

I didn’t ask about the name, but I pulled up a chair at the edge.

“How do you even order here?” I looked around, but I didn’t see anybody with a menu.

“Oye,” one of them shouted at one of the waitstaff. “Menu!” He gestured at me.

The waiter gave him a nod and went off, a tray of discarded glasses in his hand.

A half minute later, the waiter came back with a menu.

“What do you want?”

I looked at him. He was American and probably working his way through South America.

“Could I have a burger?”

“Sure.”

He plucked the menu out of my hands. I blinked as I watched him walk away. I knew that the service industry outside of America was different, but wow. He barely stopped to take my order. I’d just ordered the first thing that I saw on the menu. I guessed that they got a lot of homesick Americans here.

“What’s your name?”

“Naelle,” I told the guy who had flagged down the waiter.

“Pretty name for a pretty girl. I’m Emilio,” he said, extending his hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

It was hard to see very much in the dim light of the bar, but he looked like he had killer cheekbones and a sculpted jaw.

“Have you ever played trivia here before, Naelle?”

“No.”

“Here are the stakes: if we win, we get a $100 bar credit.”

“So…we want to win?”

“If we win, we’ll get a jirafa.”

“A giraffe?”

There were a lot of good-natured chuckles around the table.

“No,” Emilio said, amusement clear in his voice. “It’s a name for a very large container of beer.”

“Can’t you just call it a pitcher?”

“It’s a lot bigger than that.”

“So…what’s at stake is just getting blackout drunk?”

“That’s why the team is so big. The bigger, the better.” He winked at me.

I took a good look around the table. We had the largest table in the whole place. It was actually the fewest tables pushed together.

“We have the biggest team here.”

“That’s why we always win.” He gave me a killer grin, the pure whiteness of his teeth catching the dim light of the bar.

I blushed. He looked like a charming pirate, the kind that could convince young lasses to run away with them in some kind of historical romance. I’d be his stolen treasure any day.

I blushed even harder when I realized that I was a little bit wet between my thighs, thinking about the little bit of scruff on his cheeks rubbing against the soft skin of my inner thighs.

So inappropriate! I’d barely met this guy. I had only just broken up with my fiancé, the man whom I had believed would be my forever.

I wasn’t the kind of girl who picked up men in a bar. I could count on my fingers how many times I’d even gone inside of one. I was just looking for food when I came inside of Finn McCool’s.

The trivia contest started. Everyone at my table had been talking and laughing with a lot of beer bottles on the table. But when everything started, I realized why they normally won: they were ultra-focused.

Everyone talked quietly, trying not to have neighboring tables hear our answers. It was very hard when we had so many people at our table, but somehow we managed it.

Emilio was in charge of the sheet. I realized that he was somehow the leader of the group. He was dressed just like everyone else — polo shirt and slacks — but there was something about his attitude that made it seem like he should be in charge. He wore competence and cool intelligence like a shield.

He knew a lot of the answers, and when he didn’t, he asked the group. We all played a fun game of Telephone.

Nearly everyone in our crew was American or Canadian, but nobody felt uncomfortable whispering in anybody else’s ear. Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was the late hour. But all of us were feeling pleasantly relaxed.

My burger came at some point during the competition. I pulled it as far away from the trivia answer sheet as I could.

Fortunately, they brought a set of silverware with it. I cut the burger into bite-size pieces and ate it carefully. I couldn’t think of anything worse than spattering grease over our trivia answer sheet, the culmination of the whole group’s work. If I messed it up, I would make a horrible first impression.

The waiter took it away pretty much the instant that I was done. Maybe the staff paid a lot more attention than I thought.

When the contest was done, Emilio brought the sheet up to be counted by the organizer.

Within 10 minutes, all the scores had been tallied.

The whole team held hands as they announced the winners.

“Third place is the Exploradoras. Second place is Wicked Wombats.”

Emilio gripped my hand tightly as we waited for the announcement of the winner.

“And with a perfect score, the winners tonight are the Fruitbats.”

My whole team erupted in cheers, meanwhile I was afraid that they were going to overturn the table.

“Campeones,” they chanted over and over again, sounding like a tune that I didn’t know.

Everyone’s hands were on each other’s shoulders. The camaraderie was so sudden and utterly charming. These people had only met me tonight, yet I fit into their group instantly, as if I had known them for years.

T
wo jirafas later
, I was weaving a little bit when I went to the bathroom. I was grateful for the long line, since there was only one toilet for every woman in the bar. Needed its support, I leaned against the wall, not caring if it was clean or filthy.

When I was done, I made my way back to the table. I felt a little nauseous. There were still two mostly full jirafas on the table, but I couldn’t take anymore.

“I’m gonna go,” I slurred softly. “Nice to meet you all.”

They all waved to me while carrying on their conversations.

I walked outside. It was cold at night. I wrapped my jacket a little more closely around me.

I was barely down the block when I felt a hand grab my upper arm and haul me into an alley.

There were two of them. Both of them were armed.

“La plata!” he shouted at me. The second guy just cocked his gun. The safety was off.

Plata? Wasn’t that silver? I didn’t have any.

“I don’t have any,” I told him in Spanish.

They snorted and pointed the business ends of their guns at me.

“La plata,” they insisted.

I was going to die just because I didn’t carry silver.

I heard the crack of two gunshots and closed my eyes in the split second.

When I opened my eyes, I looked down at my chest, expecting to see two bullet holes.

But there wasn’t anything there.

I looked at my attackers who were now flat on the ground. One of them was wearing a white shirt that had a growing bloodstain on it. It looked like a blossoming red flower that grew exponentially.

I looked behind me.

Emilio was there, kneeling next to me.

He reached for me.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Cut? Bruised?”

“Just a bump on the head.”

“Let me see.”

He touched my head gently.

“Shouldn’t we turn those guys into the police? I mean they tried to mug me.”

“They won’t try to mug anybody else, so, no, I won’t involve the police.”

I looked back at the two of them. Neither of them were moving.

“Are they dead?”

Instead of answering my question, he pulled out his phone.

“Hold still.” He put his hand on my chin.

All of a sudden, a bright light was shining right in my eyes.

I tried to flinch away, but his hand held me in place.

“What are you doing?”

“Checking to see if you have a concussion. Your pupils aren’t dilating properly. One of them is bigger than the other.”

“It’s not a big deal.” I shook my head. “I’ve gotten minor concussions before. I’m fine. I don’t need to go to the hospital.”

“You don’t need to go to the hospital, but you do need to stay with someone who will wake you up every two hours.”

“Why do you know so much about concussions?” I asked.

He didn’t answer me.

“Come home with me.”

It wasn’t a question.

I tried to joke, “I wasn’t expecting to go home with anybody tonight.”

I earned a small smile from him. “Is there anybody else who can take care of you?”

I thought about it. I didn’t even know if the hostel owners had a first-aid kit. I doubted that they would be willing to wake me up every two hours to make sure that I was still breathing. It might be bad business if I died in their hostel.

“No.”

“Then it’s settled. You’re coming home with me.”

He pulled me into his arms.

“I can walk,” I protested, even though it was really fun to be carried as if I didn’t weigh anything. It was a new experience. I hadn’t been carried since I was 4.

“I can carry you.”

And that was the end of it. I wrapped my arms around his neck and leaned my head against his hard shoulder as he walked further down the block.

“I’m going to let you down now.”

I slid to my feet.

He took out a key fob, and then the car next to us beeped.

“Get in. Watch your head.”

I opened the door and thought about getting into a car with a stranger. My mother had not raised a naive fool.

“Wait. Maybe I should just go to a hospital.”

“Naelle, please. If I wanted to hurt you, I’ve had enough opportunities already. You could be dead in that alley.”

He was right. I knew he had a gun, but I wasn’t afraid of him. He’d saved from those two thugs.

I got into his car.

I
looked
at Naelle in the backseat of my car. She didn’t look like she had a concussion.

I could easily have my driver take us to a clinic. With a phone call, I could wake up a doctor and have her properly checked out.

If I really thought that she was hurt, I would do that immediately. I had a doctor on speed dial, but it wasn’t necessary.

I meant what I’d said about checking on her to make sure that she didn’t have a severe concussion. I could keep her up all night.

I was willing to take her home, of course, but I’d check her out first. I’d done my time in the military after going to military boarding school. I was trained as a medic, so I knew the basics, although I was a little better at tying a tourniquet than I was at caring for a concussion.

And then we were finally at my house.

“Is that your house? It’s huge.”

I looked at my home, trying to see it through the eyes of a stranger. I had lived here since I was a tiny child.

“It’s okay, I guess.”

She curled in on herself a little bit, and I frowned. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable.

I gave a nod to my driver, who took the car around the back. The garage was next to the servant’s quarters.

“Come on in,” I said. “I can check you out properly.”

The two of us went inside of the house. I went to the medicine cabinet of the downstairs bathroom.

She sat on the toilet seat cover and waited.

“Did he touch you? Are you bruised? Any lacerations?”

“No, I don’t think so. He grabbed me by my upper arms.”

“Show me your arms.”

She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, and she tried to roll the sleeves up, but she couldn’t roll them high enough.

“I think that I’d have to take off my shirt if you needed to see that area.”

I looked at her. “I promise that I’ll never touch you in a way that you don’t like.” I couldn’t promise that I would view her as dispassionately as a health professional. My mother had pressured me towards becoming a doctor, given my rudimentary medical training, but my father had expected me to go into business, which I did.

She took off her shirt.

I stared at the angry marks on her upper arms.

“I’m going to kill them.”

“No…they’re long gone.”

I didn’t want to touch her bruises. I knew that it would hurt her, so I knelt beside her and got a very close look at them.

They were clearly hand-shaped, and it made me insanely angry to see the marks.

“Anywhere else?” I forced my voice to be normal.

But it must’ve been on my face, because she backed up half an inch.

“I’m not angry at you,” I said in the gentlest voice I could manage. “I want to go out there and find them.”

“They just wanted silver,” she said softly. “I grew up in DC. I can take care of myself.”

“They wanted your wallet, and they wouldn’t have hesitated to hurt you. You’re not used to the rules here. It’s not safe for a young woman to be alone at night.”

Her back straightened a little.

“I’m capable of taking care of myself.”

“Hm.” I didn’t say anything else.

She didn’t seem to be badly hurt.

“Let me get you one of my shirts, something sleeveless so that nothing brushes your bruises.”

“Okay.”

I quickly left the bathroom and ran up the stairs to grab a shirt. I took one of my softest undershirts out of its package. I should’ve had my housekeeper unpack it when I ordered it, but I’d been too lazy.

I brought down the undershirt to her and she put it on. What fit my torso was very long on her. She was much smaller than I was. She looked very good in my clothing.

“Do you feel okay?”

She nodded.

“Just tired.”

“You can come upstairs and stay in my guest bedroom. I can check on you every hour.”

“Sounds good.”

She yawned.

We walked up the stairs, and I couldn’t stop myself from checking out the slow sway of her hips as she went up them.

I mentally kicked myself for checking her out. She was hurt. I should be focusing on making sure that she didn’t have a real concussion.

I opened the door to the guest room that was closest to mine.

“I’ll come by and check on you, okay? I’ll set a timer to wake me up every few hours.”

She yawned and leaned against the wall.

“Sure.”

She walked slowly into her room and closed the door.

I went to my own bedroom and changed into more comfortable clothing. I set an alarm on my phone to wake me up in two hours.