Page 77 of Shine: Sins of the Father
“Sit down, Cody.”
I feel like I’m being set up. Fiona looks just as surprised, but I know all too well she’s good at playing along.
She leads me through a door and into a hallway. Once the metal door slams shut behind us, I realize how dark and quiet the hall is compared to the main room. Light bulbs at twelve-foot distances illuminate circles of light dotted down the linoleum floor toward another set of doors at the end.
I hadn’t realized how huge this place was.
Fiona clicks down the hall in her sexy heels, and I trail behind a step, watching her ass as she walks.
We get to the end and push through the double doors and into a cavernous dark space that looks like it once was a manufacturing floor, but all the equipment is long gone. I see a spotlight across the room shining on an honest-to-God MMA cage.
She leads me to it and lifts her hand. “This is it. The guys hold fight nights about once a month. They bet on the outcome. It’s all kind of barbaric if you ask me, but…”
Her voice trails off, and she drops her hand. I take in the cage, not really as interested in the damn thing as I am in her.
“So, you’re not a dancer named Desiree from Sonny’s. I guess you had a laugh about that one.” There’s bitterness in myvoice I can’t hide. Maybe I don’t want to hide it. I’m still pissed about being lied to by this woman.
“I want to apologize. I’m sorry about that. I was just…”
“Just what?”
“Trying to protect myself.”
“Right.” I turn and hook my fingers in the chain link of the circular cage.
“I didn’t know you were coming tonight,” she whispers.
“Well, it was a surprise party. Daytona said we were heading to Cali, and I had no way to get out of it.”
“Is that what you wanted? To get out of it?”
“Don’t like being lied to or being made a fool of.”
“That’s not what I was doing, and you’re no fool, Shine. Not at all.”
I turn to face her, fold my arms and lean against the cage. “Do you know when the real Desiree told me you were connected to the club, I thought you belonged to one of my brothers. I thought I’d fucked someone’s ol’ lady. Do you know how bad I felt? How pissed I was?”
“I’m sorry. I never meant for any of that to happen. Everything just spun out of control.”
“Do you know when I asked Reckless who you were, he warned me off you?”
“Did he?” she whispers, looking away.
“But lately, it seems like he’s plantin’ seeds in my head about us, like he’s pushin’ this thing between us.”
“Is he? I believe Harley Jean is doing the same thing.”
“Odd, don’t you think?”
“I suppose.”
“So why would they do that?” I swear by the subtle shift that flickers across her expression that there’s something I don’t know. “What’s goin’ on, Fiona?”
She shrugs. “Harley told me if her father, Crash, could get over her being with a brother from Nevada, why couldn’t mine?”
“Why, indeed?”
“Because my father is overprotective, reactive, and likely to fly off the handle. You don’t mess with my father.”
