Worth The Battle (Heaven Hill Series) (18 page)

Steele nodded. The cave was the place he most loved to be in the world. “I’m on it.”

As he got up and walked out of the room, Tyler and Liam looked at each other, disbelief on their faces.

“Can you believe this shit?” Liam asked, a laugh rumbling up from his stomach, because now the only thing he could do was laugh.

“With us? Anything is possible, but just to be on the safe side, I’m going to have some of the guys make sure that the outer fenced-in property is good. I’ll make sure the security cameras are all working properly too. We can’t get lax apparently.”

“No we can’t. Keep this under your hat until we know for sure what’s going on. When Steele has some more info, I’ll call a meeting, but right now I don’t need everybody freaking the fuck out.”

“We got this, pres,” Tyler grinned as he used the nickname that the other guys had been using.

“Fuck you
and
kiss my ass, VP,” Liam laughed as the two of them got up and walked out of the room.

Pretty soon they knew they might have much more serious decisions to make.

When Steele got to Jessica’s room, Layne was leaving, and he looked at the other man, his eyebrow up in question.

“I gotta get her cell. She asked me some questions on how some of the apps worked, and I’m cleaning it for her. She’s got a lot of stuff on when it doesn’t need to be, and it’s draining her battery life,” he lied smoothly, hoping to calm down the ruffled feathers he saw prickled up.

“I didn’t ask anything,” Layne told him.

“Didn’t have to,” Steele grinned as he knocked on the wall since the door was open.

“Hey,” Jessica grinned up at him. “Did you find out what was going on?”

“Maybe, can I see your phone again? I need to do a couple of things to it,” he told her as he held his hand out for it.

“Sure.” She swept her finger across the bottom, put in her passcode, and handed it to him.

“I’ll get back with you soon,” he told her, backing out of the room.

Jessica nodded. “That’s cool, just let me know. There are a few calls I need to make.”

He didn’t have the heart to tell her it might be longer than he had actually lead her to believe, but the safety of the club had to be put first. Quickly, he made his way back to the dark room he used to monitor all safety issues with the club. Not many people ever came in here, and he liked it that way. It let him do what he loved without being bothered. Taking a stick of gum out of his pocket, he popped it in his mouth and began delving into the parts of a cell phone that not many people even cared about. He hoped that in the back end, in the code, he would be able to find out just who in the world thought it would be okay to fuck with someone under Heaven Hill’s care.

Chapter Seventeen

T
he next morning, Jessica sat on the back porch of the clubhouse, enjoying her coffee. Layne had already left for the shop by the time she had woken up, and not many people were around the clubhouse on this day, so she decided to take advantage of the quiet and pulled out a well-worn notebook from her bag. She sat with her coffee on one side, the notebook in front of her, a pen in her mouth.

If there was one thing she kept hidden from most of the world at large, it was the fact that she loved to write. The fact that she liked to write wasn’t what was embarrassing, what was embarrassing was the fact that she wrote erotic romance. She never even wrote it on a computer for fear that someone would find it and trace it back to her. Every story she had ever written was written by hand, and she always took them with her, no matter where she went. This particular notebook that she was working on filling up was number ten. Two of them had been stolen in the burglary, and that was making her extremely nervous. Glancing around, she made sure that no one was out there with her; no one was around or could read over her shoulder, before she opened the notebook and began writing.

She wanted him to take her hair in his hands and pull. Harder than he ever had before, harder than she had ever asked him to, so hard that it would hurt. It was a secret fantasy, one that she hadn’t ever been able to share with him, no matter how many times the two of them had been in this exact situation with each other, no matter how many times he stripped her and took control of her body, this was something she couldn’t put into words. Why? She wasn’t sure, but wanting him to cause her pain embarrassed her.

“Hey, Jess.”

Jessica fumbled, closing the notebook as quickly as possible. “Hey, Bianca.” She smiled brightly up at the other woman, hoping like all hell that Bianca hadn’t read the words on the page. She had absolutely no clue how long Bianca had stood behind her before she announced her presence.

If Bianca thought it was weird the way she all but lay across the notebook on the table, she didn’t mention it. Instead, she rolled on ahead in what she had come out onto the porch for. “So, I start my teaching job in August, and I need to buy some new clothes. I’m thinking of heading down to Goodlettsville. They have a bigger selection of stores than what we do here, and if we’re feeling real adventurous, we can head to Nashville. You want to come with me? Meredith’s coming, and I think she’s letting us steal Tyler’s truck, which I love. You feel up to a girl’s trip?”

A shopping trip with the girls? She was so excited for that. “Yes, I would love to!”

“Awesome, let me go grab Mer, and we’ll be heading out.” Bianca grinned.

“Yeah, I just need to put some stuff in my room, and can you text Layne and let him know where I’m going? Steele’s doing something to my phone, and he hasn’t given it back to me yet.”

That struck Bianca as odd, but she didn’t say anything about it, just nodded. “Sure, Jagger knows I’m going, so I’ll tell him to tell Layne too.”

Jessica hopped up from the table, grabbing her notebook and her coffee as she did so. Quickly, she made her way back to her room and hid the notebook with the others. On second thought, she made a note on the pages of the book to ask Bianca about some of the stories from her strip club days. There had to be an erotic romance in there somewhere. Ten minutes later, she had run a brush through her hair, applied some light makeup, and put on a pair of jeans and a thin t-shirt. As she left the room, she grabbed her wristlet that she used to keep her money and pertinent cards in before walking back to the main room. Meredith and Bianca were talking animatedly and laughing when she saw them.

“I’m ready.”

“Then let’s go, ladies,” Meredith said, twirling a key ring on her index finger. “I’ve stolen the man’s truck, that way we don’t have to get lead foot over here to drive us.”

“It’s not my fault that Rooster knows me by name,” Bianca grumbled.

“Who’s Rooster?” Jessica asked, but she recognized the name from somewhere. It was sometimes hard to follow along with their conversations because they all knew the same people. When they did that, she felt like such an outsider, but she had to be honest with herself, she was an outsider.

“He’s a local sheriff’s deputy. He has a problematic relationship with the club, but a few months ago he helped get me out of hostage situation,” Bianca swallowed hard. “And since then, I’ve been just a wee bit reckless when I drive. I feel like I’m lucky to be alive and I should embrace it. He may or may not have pulled me over roughly five times since that happened. Either way, I still have no piece of paper that says I’ve been ticketed; I think he has a soft spot for me now,” she grinned.

“That’s not to say that another officer
will
have a soft spot for you,” Meredith argued. “Plus, you know, Tyler and I have been trying to have a baby, so I would like to stay alive to do that.”

Even though Meredith joked about it, Bianca knew that it was becoming a sore spot with the other woman, so she reached over and put her arm around her friend. “Okay, I’ll let you drive. You didn’t have to call me out in front of our new friend, here.”

Jessica realized that this is what she had been missing in Hollywood. She didn’t have real friends like this. Yes, she had people that she could meet for dinner, but most of the time, it was just so the paparazzi could see them together and publish a picture. It was all about networking, it was nothing about developing real friendships with people.

“Y’all ready?” Meredith asked as she grabbed her purse and led them out of the clubhouse.

“Sure are, I can’t wait to shop. I haven’t done it in a really long time,” Bianca said as the group of them made their way to Tyler’s truck. Bianca couldn’t help but think of all the years she had worked her ass off just to put herself through school. But she would keep to herself the fact that Jagger had done some jobs on the side for Liam and made an obscene amount of money that he had loaded on a gift card for her to shop until she could drop. Four figures was probably not much to the Hollywood starlet sitting in this vehicle with them, but to Bianca, it meant the world.

“Have you heard from any of the girls today?” Layne asked Jagger when the two of them sat down at the shop for lunch. It was unusual that he hadn’t heard from Jessica all day. He knew that Steele had taken her phone, but surely to God he had given it back by now.

“I left my personal phone at home today, just got the prepay on me, and B hardly ever texts or calls it. I haven’t heard anything from her, but I know she was supposed to go to Goodlettsville today. I bet she invited Jess,” he told his friend as he took a bite of the burger.

“It makes me nervous when I can’t get in touch with her, especially since she came here because someone broke into her house.”

“If she’s with B, she’s fine,” Jagger told his friend, trying to smooth over what he saw becoming very ruffled feathers. “Both of them are smart women, and I don’t think they would do anything to get themselves purposely in trouble. You need to calm down about this.”

Layne didn’t understand why he was getting so pissed off about Jessica’s silence. He could feel the anger seeping into his body and taking over his personality. It was a rage that he couldn’t control, didn’t even know how to begin to cope with. “But she needs to tell me where she’s going.”

“How’s she going to do that if she doesn’t have a cell phone? You told me earlier that Steele took her phone. Do you want me to call B and make sure that Jessica is with her?” Jagger asked.