Page 23 of My Secret to Protect

‘No,’ I say, not giving him an inch, and he smirks.

‘I might see y’all there.’ He steps back as my heart races and my blood heats. ‘I need to feed my dog, so I’ll leave y’all to it. Great to meet you, ladies.’

And then he’s gone, and the girls, one by one, turn to me.

‘Really?’ I say. ‘You should get Bree to give you the tour. You should join us at the bar,’ I mimic, and they laugh as we turn and head back to my porch.

‘Breanne, that slice of prime man meat is still into you,’ Missy says, and Zoe cackles.

‘Stop it.’

‘Oh, take a bite, Bree. Please, for me,’ Cara whines, surprisingly.

‘Should I tell my brother you said that?’ I snap, and Cara shrugs.

‘Once he sees him, he’ll understand.’

‘Jesus.’

‘He is very,verynice to look at, Bree,’ Missy says, still gazing towards Arlo’s cottage.

‘Girls, please, just let it be, okay?’ I meet all their gazes in turn.

Zoe holds my gaze, and I know I’ll be hearing more about this in private, but for now, I just want to snuggle my niece and nephew and forget that the only man who ever got close enough to break my heart is right next door.

Nineteen Years Ago

‘Mornin’shortstuff.’Arlogrinned as he leaned back against the van, his muscular arms folded across his chest. Shit, he was hot.

‘Quit calling me that.’ I held out the plate. ‘Grandma asked me to bring you this and said to tell you there’s lemonade in the fridge.’

He took the plate and turned to place it on the hood. ‘What would you prefer I called you? Fairy? Little bug? Pixie?’

‘How about Breanne, or, since we don’t know each other, Miss Campbell.’

I popped my hip and folded my arms to match him, and he laughed, throwing his head back, and, damn, I loved that sound. I loved the way he teased me because it always ended in him laughing like that. It had been a couple of weeks of this, me trying to hate him, trying to keep up the defenses and keep him at arm’s length, and a couple of weeks of Arlo smiling and winking and laughing in a way that made my stomach jump and twist.

‘Or I could just get to know you better?’

My cheeks heated, and I knew he would notice. It’s not that I didn’t know how to talk to boys. I’d been doing just fine back in Forest Falls, but he wasn’t a boy. Arlo was a man, regardless of how old he was, though I didn’t think he was much older than me. He was drop-dead gorgeous with those stupid ice-blue eyes and that stupid sharp jawline, stupid muscles, and stupid perfect hair. He was a man, and he made me feel like an inexperienced, clueless little girl.

‘Aren’t you too pretty to be a part of some big bad motorcycle club?’ I said without thinking, and he grinned widely—shit.

‘You think I’m pretty, pix?’

‘Shut up,’ I growled, turning on my heel to stomp away. He called me pix. He’d shortened pixie and gave me a fucking nickname, and I should hate that, but something about it has me fighting a smile.

‘I think you’re pretty too, short stuff,’ he called out, laughing as I threw up my middle finger before disappearing back into the safety of Grandma’s house.

Inside, I closed the door and leaned back against it, my heart pounding in my chest as I covered my face and my smile with my hands. I shouldn’t like this guy. I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help it.

Ever since I could remember, that goddamned van had been parked outside Grandma Dee’s house. Random men in leather vests, dipping in and out of her house to use the bathroom or drink some of her insanely good lemonade, and it was just part of life. I started questioning who they were when I was about five but was just told they were friends of Daddy’s. Once I was old enough to know what the stupid vests meant, that these men were bikers, they were part of a club, I had more questions. Daddy told us he used to be part of a motorcycle club, and when he left to become our dad, the club wanted to look out for his parents, and that was that. Zoe just accepted it. Doug, too, and maybe the fact that they were in relationships from a young age, so they didn’t come up and stay with Grandma Dee for weeks on end in the summer or as often on weekends as I did, meant it just didn’t get under their skin like it did mine. Or maybe it was because I wanted to be a cop, and the idea of my dad being involved in anything illegal ate at me. I hated that I didn’t know all the details of his time with the Bone Roses. I also didn’t want to know. I’d heard stories, okay, fine, I’d searched and found stories, and I didn’t always like what I saw… But, then along came Arlo.

This man, with his glacial eyes and electrifying smile, was crumbling my walls to dust. I’d made a promise to myself to stay away from the stupid bikers in their stupid van, but each day I was at Grandma’s, I was fighting the urge to climb up in there with him a little more.

I heard Grandma’s chuckle and lowered my hands to find her shaking her head at me and laughing.

‘He is a handsome one, Breanne,’ she said as she walked away.

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