Wanted: A Bad Boy Romance (19 page)

Two
Years Later…

Titan pulls into the driveway of
the little ranch house we rent in Carlton, Nebraska. We’re smack dab in the
middle of the state, surrounded by a whole lot of nothing, and still, it’s a
beautiful life.

“Hey, babe,” he says a moment
later, shutting the back door behind him. His keys drop in a ceramic bowl on a
nearby console table, and I hover over the sink, peeling potatoes for tonight’s
dinner.

He leans in, kissing
me, and drops
his leather messenger bag to the ground. He’s
a civil engineer for Thomson County. Got hired fresh out of college thanks to a
professor who took it upon himself to get to know Titan and not judge him for
his past. This professor saw Titan’s talent, had numerous connections, and wrote
the most amazing recommendation letter. A few phone calls and a couple weeks
later, Titan was interviewing for a job that was always meant to be his.

“Do you have practice tonight?” I
ask, sweeping the slippery peels into my hand and dumping them in the trash.
He’s been coaching a local, aspiring MMA fighter named Cash Delacruz. Rumor has
it he’s going to be the next big thing in the MMA world.

There’s no doubt in my mind Titan
will be the one to take him to the top.

“No practice tonight,” he says.

“That’s weird. I thought you
always practiced on Thursdays?” My brows meet as I chop the potatoes and dump
them in a pot of boiling water. Mama would be proud to see me cooking right
now, but I haven’t seen her in a month or two.

We made up shortly after Titan
and I finished school, and after it was confirmed that KJ, did in fact, murder
my brother. Mama got the closure she needed and the time she needed to get over
the fact that I’d run off with a convicted felon.

She and Lewis went their separate
ways shortly after Jerome’s case was closed. All that time she was clinging
onto him like a leaf in the wind, afraid to stand on her own, but she never
needed him. She just needed healing.

I wish I could say Titan and his
father made up, but for now, they’re still a work in progress.

“I thought we could stay in
tonight,” Titan says. My back is toward him, but I detect a bit of a smile in
his words. “Celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?” I ask, turning
around.

Titan’s on his knees in the
middle of our humble little kitchen, a white ring box in his hand cracked open
to reveal a dazzling diamond solitaire on a shiny platinum band. My hands rise
to my mouth.

“Really?” It’s all I can manage
to say. My heart flutters like crazy.
My mind races.
I
can’t stop grinning.

“Jordana Perry,” he says. “Two
years ago, I was convinced I didn’t need anyone. I was determined to spend the
rest of my life alone, protected from all the things that could possibly be
taken away from me. And then I met you. I didn’t want to like you at first, but
you kind of grew on me.”

I laugh.

“And after a while, I found
myself addicted to being with you, addicted to the way you made me feel,” he
says. “And then I realized I liked you. But after a while, those feelings grew
a little stronger and a little stronger.”

I nod as he takes my hand.

“And I realized, a life without
you by my side isn’t any kind of life I want to live,” he says. “I don’t want
to be alone, Jordana. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life cut off from
the one thing that will make me the happiest man in the world. I want to spend
it with you. Will you marry me?”

My eyes gloss, happy tears
streaming down my cheeks.

“Yes, Titan.” He slips the
beautiful diamond on my finger and rises, pulling me into his warm embrace. “I
will marry you.”

THE
END

ABOUT
MAYA HAWK

Hello, hello! I'm Maya Hawk,
full-time mom and part-time word slinger. I love to put my own twist on trendy
romance. I’m Nebraska born-and-raised, though I regularly fantasize about
picking up and moving to someplace far off and exciting. Writing is my escape
and my passion, and I sincerely hope you enjoy my work.

I love to hear from readers, so feel free to email me
anytime at
[email protected]
or ‘like’ me on Facebook
here
.

My next book,
Inferno
– A Bad Boy Romance
, will be out in January/February 2016. It will
focus on fighter Cash Delacruz – the up and coming MMA fighter Titan
Blackstone coaches! Be sure to *
SUBSCRIBE*
to my newsletter if you want to be in the know about new releases, ARC
opportunities, and hear about sales...
http://eepurl.com/br6va9

Page
ahead for your bonus novel!

PIERCED

A
stepbrother romance of epic proportions…

MAYA
HAWK

DESCRIPTION

Paging Dr. Pierce…

If you’d have told me my
arrogant, man whoring stepbrother would grow up to become a doctor, I’d have
never believed you. That is, until you mention he specializes in caring for the
opposite gender. Then it makes perfect sense. He always did have a way with the
finer sex.

Wielding a Prince Albert
piercing (don’t ask me how I know) and a whole mess of muscles and tattoos
beneath his white lab coat, his power lies in his ability to incinerate my
panties with a single smile, the way he knows exactly what to say to melt my
resolve like rain on chalk, and his decision to tell me, after a decade of
estrangement, that I’m the only girl he’s ever truly loved.

But we can’t be together, and
there are a million reasons why. He’s obnoxious and insufferable. He’s my
stepbrother – the son of the woman my asshole father cheated on my mother
with. Sutton Pierce is off-limits. Bad news. Wrong in every sense of the word.

But it’s going to be my heart
that needs convincing…

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is a standalone romance with no
cliffhanger. Please be 18+!

There’s nothing like a cold, hard pap smear on a hot, sweaty day.

“Right this way, Ms. Hudson.” A middle-aged nurse dressed in hot pink
scrubs with a pink breast cancer awareness ribbon pinned to her lapel leads me
down a long, humid hallway to exam room number four.

I’m tempted to ask if her if the AC is working today, but she’s not
sweating. It must just be me.

I thought moving to Miami would feel like a tropical vacation. So far
it’s scorching, muggy, and best enjoyed while looking out the floor to ceiling
windows of my downtown apartment with the air cranked at full blast.

I hate it, and that’s the understatement of the century. I hate the heat
that sends my sensitive, caramel skin into a state of heat rash the second the
sun comes out. I hate how the black leather of my car causes second-degree
burns on my ass cheeks every time I forget to put my tin-foil sunshade up. I
hate how my naturally curly hair frizzes up the second I step outside no matter
how many horribly expensive “anti-humidity” products I work into it.

Thank God it’s only temporary.

I climb up the exam table while she types my name into a nearby computer
and rattles off a bunch of standard questions.

“Do you smoke?” she asks.

“No.”

“How many alcohol beverages do you enjoy per week?”

Is this relevant to my gynecologic health? “Um. Three or four?”

“How many sexual partners have you had?”

“I don’t know.” Lie. “Four or five?” It was nine. Wait. Ten. I went
through a phase my sophomore year of college. So sue me.

“Are you taking any other medications right now?”

“I’m on the pill. And I take a women’s multi vitamin when I remember.”
Which is never.

She types my answers in before pulling the stethoscope from around her
neck and making her way back toward me. Her overdone floral perfume mixes with
the humid air to launch an assault on my lungs, but I suffer silently like the
polite, well-mannered girl I was raised to be. After listening to my chest, she
wraps a blood pressure cuff around my lower bicep. We sit in awkward, stiffened
silence as she pumps and listens.

“One-twenty over eighty,” she says, as if I would know what that means.
She returns to her keyboard and punches a few keys, scrunching her nose and
scratching it with the inner corner of her elbow. “The doctor will be in
shortly. There’s a gown on the table. Please undress from the waist down.”

I wore a maxi skirt that morning because anything tighter causes a fiery
furnace in my nether-region that no amount of ice cold AC can extinguish, but
regardless, my curved thighs still stick together as if someone super-glued
them with sticky sweat.

Sliding off the table the second she leaves the room, I tug off my skirt
and neatly drape it across the back of an empty chair. I unfold the paper gown
and then refold it in order to optimize the amount of coverage I can get from a
see-through piece of paper. Climbing back up onto the table, I squeeze my knees
together and wait.

And wait.

Five minutes pass and then ten. Then twenty. Then thirty.

This is ridiculous.

I watch the second hand on the wall clock make circles, and then I count
the ceiling tiles. I grab
a Hi-
Lites
magazines
from the rack and mentally solve five children’s riddles
before tossing it back where I got it.

But I shouldn’t be frustrated. I’m used to waiting on doctors. I do it
every single day five days a week as a pharmaceutical sales rep. My drugs are
gynecologic specialties, and OB-GYNs have some of the most brutal and
unpredictable schedules of all the specialists. Even with modern medicine in
all her magnificent glory, we still can’t predict exactly what sends a woman
into labor.

I lay back against the paper-covered the exam table, each move I make
underscored by a crinkling sound. Counting the ceiling tiles overhead for the
fourth time, I think about grabbing my phone and texting my fiancé, James.

Okay, so he isn’t technically my fiancé, but we’ve been together for
years and we’ve been engagement ring shopping, so it’s going to be any day now.

Though I’m there for my annual exam, I make a mental note to ask the
doctor about my fertility. I’d done some research and spoken to other doctors
who all said Dr. Elizabeth Brown is the best fertility specialist in the area.
James doesn’t want to have kids until we were closer to forty, and I want to
make sure that, at twenty-nine, I can afford to gamble my fertility over the
next decade.

A quick knock at the door barely gives me time to declare “Ready!”
before the door swings open and a man, who was clearly
not
Dr. Elizabeth Brown, ushers himself into my exam room.

I sit up, pressing my thighs together and repositioning the paper drape
over my lower half. The second he lowers his clipboard and our eyes met, my
breath catches in my throat and my mouth fills with cotton.

It can’t be.

There’s no way.

How
?!

“Sutton?” God, it’s so weird saying his name out loud again.

His champagne eyes crinkle in the corners as his full mouth arches into
a half smile accented by two perfect dimples. His chestnut hair, still as thick
and dark as it was when we were teenagers, is impeccably groomed into place and
contrasts sharply against his white lab coat.

“
Lauryn
.” He places the clipboard next to a
sink and washes his hands. The way he says my name sends an unwelcome fire to
my core until I strengthen my façade and force it away.

“You’re not examining me.” I make it clear before I breathe another
word. “Where’s Dr. Brown?”

He smirks, drying his perfect, callous-free doctor hands and turning
back to me. “In this room, I’m your doctor,
Lauryn
.
Nothing more. Nothing less.”

“You’re still my stepbrother, Sutton.” Sure, I haven’t seen him in over
a decade, but that doesn’t change the fact that his mother is married to my
estranged father. Once upon a time, before we were stepsiblings, he was my best
friend.
My first love.
My first
everything
.

Sutton Pierce was my first
everything
…

Until he became my
nothing
in
one fell swoop.

“You’re not getting anywhere near me.” I press my knees together once
again, but my leg muscles shake and tire out almost immediately.

Sutton rakes his hand against his jaw and cocks his head. “I’m not going
to examine you,
Lauryn
. I was only kidding. I noticed
your name on the patient roster, and I had to come see if it was really you.”

My jaw slacks. I deliberately ignored his attempts at reconnecting over
the years. I ignored his Facebook friend requests back in college. I ignored
his random texts every six months asking if it was still “
Lauryn
Hudson’s number”. No part of me wanted anything to do with him. Not after what
happened.

I still want nothing to do with him.

“God, that would be so weird if I…” He grabs a speculum and clicks it
open. He’s doing it to torment me. “Never mind.”

“Still tactless after all these years.” I roll my eyes. “Good to know
that even becoming a medical doctor hasn’t changed the man you are at the heart
of it all, Sutton.”

“You know I like to tease.” He places the speculum back on the tray by
the exam table. “I wish you’d lighten up a little,
Lauryn
.
Has anyone ever diagnosed you with a big, fat stick up your ass?”

“Why are you here?” I cross my arms until the paper gown slides down my
thighs and then I quickly retrieve it. “When I made my appointment with Dr.
Brown, I didn’t notice your name listed on the physician roster.”

And I made damn sure to check too. I knew he was an OB-GYN, and I knew
he was living in Miami. I did everything I could to ensure our paths didn’t
cross, though it took some careful maneuvering from time to time.

“I thought you were a hospitalist anyway?” I add, quickly realizing I’m
giving away the fact that I’ve checked up on him.

“I fill in for doctors every now and again.” He slips his hands into the
front pockets of his lab coat and subsequently pulls it against the
ever-present bulge in the front of his pants. “We do that for each other.”

His piercing.
Oh, God. Completely forgot about that. His enormous cock. And all those
tattoos.

I wonder if anyone else knows what lies beneath his doctor
McHottie
façade. Knowing Sutton, every hot nurse within the
greater Miami area probably knows exactly how he looks beneath his white coat.

Ugh
.

“How’d you know I’m a hospitalist?” he asks.

My lips part before the words come out, and I try to buy myself time to
think of an excuse. “I’m a drug rep. I know a lot of the doctors and practices
in the area. I’ve seen your name come up.”

Boom. Perfect.

Never mind the fact that I know his schedule. He works overnights
– the weekend package.
Mostly delivering babies and
performing emergency gynecological surgeries.
Who’d have thought my
tatted up, muscled, cock-pierced stepbrother would grow up to deliver
babies
? I both love and hate that fact
more than I’ll ever admit to anyone out loud.

“Uh, huh.” He doesn’t buy it, and the phone in his pocket starts ringing
with some God-awful metal music.
Same old
Sut
.
Our eyes lock as he
retrieves it. “This is Dr. Pierce.”

I glance up at the clock on the wall, silently cursing Dr. Brown for
taking so long.

“More overtime,” he says, shaking his head. “We’re in the thick of baby
birthing season at the hospital.”

My lips press together as I stifle all the questions I want to ask him.
Why didn’t he want his own practice? How long had he been working at Miami
General? What brought him here? Was he seeing anyone? For a split second, I
nearly forget all the reasons I hate him. For a split second, I’m simply
staring across the room at the guy who’d once been my best friend.

“You think Dr. Brown will be in here soon?” I change the subject. “Kind
of need to get back to work.”

“Want to get dinner sometime?” He ignores my question. “Catch up?”

Yes. No? I don’t know. “Um…”

“Fine,
Lauryn
. We can catch up right here.” He
takes a seat on a rolling stool and pulls it up to my table with the most
obnoxious smirk on his face. I can’t imagine any woman in their right mind
letting him near their vagina for medical purposes.

“This is so inappropriate, Sutton.” I refuse to make eye contact with
him. My hands hold down the paper sheet, and my sweaty palms melt what little
coverage I have left. “Please send Dr. Brown in.”

“Lighten up,
Laur
,” he teases me again,
standing up. I almost wish he’d stay. I almost wished he’d bug me a little
longer. I was just beginning to realize I kind of missed it. “How long have you
been in Miami?”

“A little over two months,” I say. “It’s just temporary.
For work.
We’re launching a new drug soon, and they have me
stationed here because apparently there’s an overabundance of women’s medical
centers in this city. Highest per capita in the nation.”

Maybe that’s what drew him here? Well, that and the overabundance of
beautiful women in Miami.

“Come over sometime.” He isn’t asking. “I live downtown, not too far
from here.”

Me too.

“I don’t know, Sutton. I get busy with work, and my boyfriend flies out
every other weekend…”

“Boyfriend.” He stares off to the side for a second as if he has to
digest the fact that I could even possibly be with someone. “I’d love to meet
him sometime. Welcome him into the
family
.”

Rolling my eyes, I say, “Won’t be necessary.”

“What’s his name?”

“James.” I say his name with a quick huff, as if Sutton’s question is
invasive. It kind of is. “If you must know.”

“James, eh? God, that’s so safe and boring.” He rubs his full lips
together and spreads them into a subdued smile, though his eyes aren’t smiling
in the least.

 
“For your information, he is
anything but safe and boring,” I lie. I lie so hard. James is the epitome of
safe and boring, and that’s why it only makes sense for me to wind up with
someone like him. He is everything my father isn’t and everything Sutton isn’t.

Sutton rolls his eyes playfully and releases a full breath. “Anyway.”

I glance up at the clock again. “Can you please send my doctor in now?”

He rises from the stool, unwilling to take his penetrating stare off of
me, and smiles. “I’ll leave you alone. But I would like to see you sometime.
We’re different people now,
Lauryn
. I’d love to get
to know the person you’ve become.”