Vindication: A Motorcycle Club Romance (14 page)

“Bridget,” he said breathlessly. He
gripped her hips and thrust up into her, helping her rhythm along, until they
were both wracked with waves of pleasure, shuddering against each other on the
kitchen floor.

Bridget lay on top of Ghost’s chest,
both of them covered in sweat and breathing hard. Ghost pulled her up until she
was close enough to kiss, and he did so sweetly, deeply, and slowly. He wrapped
her in his arms and cuddled her next to him.

After some minutes of enjoying the
silence, Bridget said, “I think I have a plan.”

Ghost’s eyes widened and he smiled.
“Did my dick enhance your tactical prowess? Oh my God, I knew this day would
come.”

Bridget laughed and almost argued,
but instead she just tilted her head and shrugged. “I guess I can’t say it
didn’t…”

“You’re amazing. I’m amazing. Let’s
hear this amazing plan.”

“You’re right about confronting Cary,
and Toby isn’t responsible for any of this, so we should try to keep him as
much out of the way as possible.”

“Agreed.”

“So I want to try something else.”

“Are you gonna tell me what that
something is? I’m dying here!” He groaned and rolled on his back dramatically.

Bridget leaned over him and rubbed
his chest. She hovered over his lips. “Do you trust me?”

Ghost watched her for a second,
curious. He kissed her. “Yeah, I do. I just let you fuck me bareback, didn’t I?”

She grinned wickedly back him and
winked. “Then get dressed. The plan starts right now.”

~
FOURTEEN ~

Bridget

Bridget had heard it from dudes before—“Sure, babe, I
trust you!”—and so rarely did they back it up. Whether it was jealousy from
another guy, or insecurity at the way Bridget handled everything in her life
without necessarily needing a man, trust only seemed to go as far as their
weakest foundational pillar. Then, like a sandcastle at high tide, it washed
away under the pressure of their own bullshit feelings.

But Ghost didn’t question her, not
once as they got dressed and loaded up in Bridget’s car. She drove, and asked
Ghost to look up the address for the Cary estate on his smartphone as they
backed out of the driveway.

“You should probably take your cut
off, too. No reason to get your club in trouble if this goes wrong,” she
suggested.

As he shrugged the leather vest off
his gorgeous broad shoulders, Ghost said, “I love it when you order me around.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Don’t tell the guys, though, they’ll
like hearing it too much.” He leaned over and grabbed her face for a deep kiss
as she paused to change gears and head out. He looked down at his phone and
made a few movements. “Okay, it’s about ten minutes from here. It will be
faster if you take the highway.”

The estate was nestled on the feet of
the softly sloping hills where the mountain corridor ran at its narrowest, and
the rushing Spoke River made the soil verdant and the vegetation lush. The best
farmland in the area was here, and so were some of the mansions of the richest
families. Windows down, the warming spring air was full of fragrance as Bridget
followed the highway to the narrows and took the winding country road at
Ghost’s direction.

“Eww,” said Ghost as they rolled up
on the estate. “1980s faux Italian Renaissance with a squared-off sandstone
wall? Good God, I thought this guy was supposed to be some high-rolling
success.”

It
was
an ugly set-up, but
Bridget had to give Ghost an incredulous look and a laugh anyway. “Bit of an architecture
buff, are we?”

“Hey, a man’s gotta be able to
communicate his tastes,” said Ghost with a wink. “But this… this is a
monstrosity. Look at that wrought iron on the balcony; it completely clashes
with the spackle finish on that wall.”

“I didn’t realize the Carys had been
successful this long,” said Bridget. It was hard to see anything above the
sandstone privacy wall except the second floor of the villa-style mansion. They
passed by the closed front gate and she got a glimpse of the finely manicured
lawn, but no one was outside. Bridget pulled the car down the road a bit and
parked facing the estate before she turned the engine off.

“Is this a stakeout?” said Ghost
excitedly. “Ooh, should we make a bet how long until we’re naked in the back seat?”

She giggled and slapped his leg.
“This is serious business, c’mon.”

“Are we waiting for something
specific?” he said with eyes on the house.

“For someone to leave who isn’t Mr.
Cary,” said Bridget.

It took less than an hour. The gate
swung slowly open and out pulled a topaz-colored luxury sedan with a woman at
the helm who was not Mrs. Cary. Bridget had met the woman several times, and so
this was most likely one of the family’s housekeepers. Bridget twisted the key
in the ignition and, after giving the car enough space, pulled after it onto
the country road and followed.

The housekeeper drove into town and
toward one of the more upscale shopping centers, where the natural food store
was always bustling with local health nuts and rich people who could afford
their produce organic. Cars and people moved in a continuous stream around the
parking lot. Bridget carefully found a parking spot while Ghost kept an eye on
the sedan.

“There,” he said once she was parked.
He pointed out a short Latina woman in her early forties who was calmly
adjusting her beautiful leather purse as she headed into the store. “That’s
her.”

Bridget got a good look at the
pattern of her outfit before she disappeared inside. She looked at Ghost.
“Okay, I’m going to go talk to her.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I think this will go better if I’m
alone. A woman approaching her is a lot less intimidating without you around,”
she said.

“I don’t want to leave you alone,” he
said. “How about if I tail you, just in case? I’ll keep my distance and let you
do your thing. I just don’t want to be out here holding my dick if things go
wrong.”

Bridget smiled. She wanted to gush
emotions all over him at that moment, but instead she just kissed him again.
“Deal. Watch my six.”

“I want you to know that this is
seriously the hottest date I’ve ever been on,” said Ghost against her lips.
“Afterwards, how about we make it a perfect day and you sit on my lap in your
cutest undies while I clean my guns?”

Bridget laughed and kissed him again.
“I think we can make that happen.”

“Fuck
yes.
”

Bridget hopped out of her car and
headed into the store, dodging carts and people and wheeling around food
displays. She tried to look casual as she wandered around the aisles until she
spotted the Cary’s housekeeper in her high-waist seafoam slacks and powder blue
blouse. She scanned the aisles carefully, purse in the child seat, glancing
back to a paper list in her hand every few moments before she threw something
in the cart. Bridget gave a quick look around; she could feel his eyes on her,
but she couldn’t see where Ghost was watching her from. Even though she wasn’t
expecting trouble from the housekeeper, somehow Bridget did feel better knowing
he was out there.

Before she could lose her nerve,
Bridget walked down the aisle and straight up to the woman. The housekeeper
didn’t notice her right away, but when she looked over, her face went blank
like she was surprised, or worried.

“Hi,” said Bridget.

The woman looked around, as if
checking to see if Bridget was speaking to her. “Hello,” she answered
carefully.

“Look, you don’t know me,” said
Bridget. “But you work for the Cary family, right?”

The woman thought a moment before she
gave one silent nod. Her eyes darted around to every passing shopper.

“I’m not trying to get you into
trouble,” said Bridget, speaking softly and taking a few steps closer. “But I
know what’s happening in the house. I’ve seen the marks on Toby.”

The housekeeper went white. Her jaw
fell open. “No, please,” she said with a thick accent.

“Stephen Cary is beating them, isn’t
he?” said Bridget. Anger started to rise in her gut. “He’s beating his wife and
child on a regular basis.”

“No, miss, I am not speaking to you
about private things!” said the housekeeper with a firm shake of her head.
“This is inappropriate! No.” She tried to wheel her cart around Bridget with
her eyes down, but Bridget impulsively put a boot on the bottom rack and
slammed her hands down on the cart. The housekeeper gasped.

“You have to help me,” said Bridget. “I’m
not going to sit by and watch Toby get hurt or killed. Please, give me
something, anything that I can use to get him some help and get him the hell
out of there.”

“Let go!” said the housekeeper,
wrenching the cart. She was searching the aisles now with frightened
desperation, leaving Bridget to wonder if she had somehow spotted Ghost in the
crowd.

“Please,” begged Bridget. “Don’t you
want to help him? You have to care about him!”

“This is none of your business!” said
the housekeeper. A crowd was starting to get curious as the confrontation
escalated. She picked up her big beige purse with a huff and left her cart,
contents and all, swerving around Bridget in a quick-footed hurry for the exit.

Bridget followed on her heels as the
housekeeper walked right out to the lot without looking for traffic. She heard
the blare of a horn and ignored it. “Don’t walk away from me! This is a child
we’re talking about; you can’t just ignore what he’s going through!”

The housekeeper only quickened her
pace back for the sedan. Bridget broke into a jog, trying to catch up and stop
her from getting into the car, when a huge man in a fine tailored suit got out
of a big black town car parked two spots down from the housekeeper’s sedan.
Bridget came to a skidding halt; the man was staring right at her, a white
earpiece dangling from his right ear and down his neck.

The housekeeper’s expression told
Bridget she both recognized and feared the man. She stared at Bridget for just
a moment before she ducked into her car and fired up the engine.

It had been a long time since
Bridget’s lizard brain lit up like it was lighting up now. But the way the huge
man in the suit was coming around from the driver’s side of the car, everything
about it was flashing red lights of danger. She stood frozen there in the
parking lot with cheery, oblivious people moving around her. She and the man
almost existed in their own world, staring at each other, and about to have a
whole different kind of conversation than the people around them.

As her fists clenched, she saw the
distinguishing bulge of his suit coat that told her he was armed. The look on
his face as he came closer chilled her to her core, knowing he had a deadly
weapon on him.

Pieces began to fall into place. She
realized this was Cary’s security detail, trailing the housekeeper. Neither she
nor Ghost had noticed them, and now here he was to do his job, and protect the
Cary family secrets. Rage quickly bubbled up to replace the fear in Bridget’s
gut.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she
yelled at the man in the suit.

Whatever he was expecting out of her,
it wasn’t that, and he took an actual pause in his walk.

“You’re gonna get the fuck out of
that car and come up to intimidate an unarmed woman who is trying to save a
child from a
wife-beating psychopath?
” she said loudly, taking two hard
steps forward toward the security guard.

He frowned in angry surprise, but he
wasn’t scared of her. And why should he be, with a foot of height and probably
a hundred pounds of weight on her, even without the gun? He could kill her in a
heartbeat and probably find some legal loophole to slide right through when he
did it, courtesy of his rich, amoral boss.

Bridget was playing with fire. But
she couldn’t stop herself. All she could see was the bruise on Toby’s arm, and
that soft, sad look in his eyes. She could still hear his quiet crying in her
head at night.

“You fucking coward,” she spit at
him. “Do they seriously pay you enough to let you sleep at night, knowing what
you’re protecting?”

“You got a fucking mouth on you,
bitch,” said the guard in a deep, ugly voice. He wasn’t stopping his advance on
her—in fact, there was a shine in his eye that told Bridget he was actually
excited for it. His big hands reached out toward her, fearless of the lot of
eyewitnesses.

Bridget used her self-defense
training to toss his hands away and shove the security guard hard, away from
her space, but even with her regular exercise, his weight was like pushing a
boat away from a dock. He stumbled back three hard steps, gasping like he was
out of breath. His face turned beet red, anger boiling in his eyes. He
straightened up and advanced.

She took a side stance and braced for
his attack, hoping she would stay conscious.

From behind her right shoulder, a bag
of artisan ciabatta rolls flew through the air at the security guard. They made
hard impact on his face and spilled out of the brown paper bag, dusting his
fine suit with flour on their way down to the ground. The guard hollered and
sputtered curses.

“Objection, your honor!” yelled Ghost
from somewhere behind her.