Corrupting Cinderella (43 page)

“Caught her out with—”

“With Blake? We know. So what? Where is he?” I ask. I need to calm down and compose myself. Put my lawyer game face on. Act like a professional.

The officer cocks his head at me and motions me closer. “We got a call about an underage girl out with Mr. O'Callaghan, spotted them, pulled them over. She told us her family was here, so we brought her here. Her brother is her guardian?”

“Yes. He shares custody with their grandmother.”

“Okay, so why’s she out with this older guy?”

I really don’t care for his tone. “He’s a family friend. You’re interrupting the birthday party we were having for Heidi. Mr. O'Callaghan has known her since she was a kid and takes her out for a ride every year on her birthday. Nothing more, officer.”

He nods and finally looks a little embarrassed. “That’s the same story she gave us.”

I finally spot Murphy sitting in the back of the car with Heidi.

“Then why are they in the back of your patrol car? I’m sure you’ve run Mr. O’Callaghan’s license by now and discovered his record is clean. They weren’t doing anything wrong, so this seems a bit…excessive, don’t you think?”

The officer frowns, and I tell myself to tone down the attitude. Except I’m seriously pissed. Who do these guys think they are, scaring the shit out of a seventeen-year-old girl?

He looks behind me, and I can tell that Rock and a bunch of other people are standing there now.

“Officer, what’s the problem?”

“And you are?”

“Rochlan North. This is my house. Heidi is my goddaughter. Why is she in the back of your car?”

“Heidi! What the fuck?” Teller shouts from behind me.

“Easy, brother,” Rock mumbles under his breath, and I sense he must be holding Teller back.

“You the brother?”

“Yes.”

Finally, the cop opens the door and lets Heidi out. Thankfully, they didn’t cuff her. She’s red-faced and sobbing. Ignoring all of us, she runs over the lawn into the house.

Crossing my arms over my chest, I eye the officer coolly. “Mr. O’Callaghan? You’ve got no reason to hold him. And I hope to God you didn’t cuff him.”

Rock’s gentle touch grazes my arm. Whether he’s telling me to calm down or encouraging me, I’m not sure. I just know that I’m livid right now.

Another officer who’d remained quiet this entire time lets Murphy out and uncuffs him. You’ve got to be kidding.

“Where’s his bike?” I ask in my sharpest courtroom tone.

“On its way to impound.”

“You can’t be serious,” I argue. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

Murphy’s busy flexing his arms and rubbing his wrists. “It’s okay, Hope. I’ll take care of it.”

Never a dull moment around here. Not even for a seventeen-year-old’s birthday party.

Unreal.

Watching my woman get all fired up and take on two of Empire’s finest over the way they treated one of my brothers?

Un-fucking-real.

Christ, after all the shit we’ve gone through, that she’s ready to tear into two cops like that? I fucking love her.

What a night. And it’s not even over yet.

First, we need to go inside.

Hope finds Heidi and calms her down. After a lot of reassuring, she convinces Heidi to join us in the kitchen where we’re all waiting to sing happy birthday to her and cut into her birthday cake.

Poor Heidi bursts into tears when she gets a look at the giant pink and leopard spotted cake Trinity made for her. She gives Trinity a big, sloppy hug, which seems to shock Trin, but she handles it well.

Everyone applauds Heidi for handling her first ride in a cop car like a pro.

Axel and Heidi disappear into the backyard right after cake.

Trinity drives Murphy down to impound to pick up his bike. Wrath paces around the house like a gimpy, caged animal waiting for them to return.

Axel walks Heidi back inside and then takes off for the night. Hope sets the girls up in the living room with more cake, sodas, and the scary movie they picked out.

After she’s done with the girls, she pads into the kitchen. Her gaze darts around the room as if she’s trying to figure out what to do next. “Wow. What a night,” she says at last.

Wrath’s finally sitting down. He’s busy shredding the label off his beer. Hope settles her hand on his shoulder.

“Need anything, big guy?”

He glances up, and I see several asshole-ish answers flash across his face, but he just shakes his head. “I’m fine. Thanks, babe.”

She squeezes his arm and he captures her hand. “You did good tonight, Hope.”

Obvious surprise crosses her face. “What do you mean?”

“With the cops. Sticking up for Murphy. Taking care of Heidi.”

An uncertain smile curves her lips. “Thanks, Wrath,” she says before making her way to me.

Wrapping her up in my arms, I press a kiss against her ear.

“You done?”

She lets out a soft snort. “Hardly. I’m going to make them some popcorn. Then I’ll probably sit up with them for a while. You can head to bed if you want?”

Not likely.

I hold onto her for a minute longer, resting my chin on the crown of her head. My gaze lands on Wrath and he nods at me.

Hope pulls away and plants a kiss on my cheek. “Are you okay, Rock?”

“I’m good, baby.”

She rubs her hands over my back for a minute, then wriggles out of my embrace.

I sit with Wrath and watch Hope prep more snacks for the girls.

“Hey, did I ever get to tell you I had lunch with Lilly the other day?” she asks over her shoulder.

“No,” I answer honestly. She didn’t tell me, but I know because I had Hoot watching her. “How is she?”

“Well, it was weird seeing her in professional mode. But she brought a friend of hers along. He works for this lobbying firm and was telling us how all these tech firms are throwing a lot of money into marijuana reform in New York. Isn’t that crazy?”

Across from me, Wrath almost chokes on his beer. I shoot a glare at him before answering Hope.

“Yeah. It’s interesting.”

Hope hums an affirmative noise and continues working at the counter, giving me a chance to reflect on things.

A bunch of bullshit has gotten in the way of what’s important to me lately.

A handful of stupid secrets and lies almost threatened to blow us apart.

And yet, there’s still a few things I’m hiding.

One very major thing. After this conversation, I wonder if Hope already suspects the big, green elephant hiding in the clubhouse basement.

In time, it will all be out in the open and I’ll deal with the fallout then.

Until then, there’s the whole issue of getting Hope’s property patch. Can’t think of a woman who’s ever deserved it more.

I’m glad I finally explained the significance of the patch to her. Now, there’s nothing holding me back from bringing it to the table the next time we sit down for church.

As I’m sitting here watching Hope’s every move, she turns and flashes a sweet smile at me.

I love her so damn much.

The club needs to vote her in.

Now.

Yeah, we’ve got a lot of things to take care of.

Very soon.

NOTES FROM THE AUTHOR

I had a lot of anxiety about including a “Notes from the Author” last time, but since most people seemed to respond favorably to it, here’s another one.

Thank you for returning for the second installment of Rock and Hope’s story. Corrupting Cinderella was originally all about Rock drawing Hope into his shady world, but it ended up being so much more. I hope you loved reading it as much as I loved writing it! Their story will conclude with Deepest Gray (Lost Kings MC, Book #3) to be released in February 2015 and possibly some sort of novella after Wrath’s book—Tattered on My Sleeve (Lost Kings MC, Book #4).

I received a number of interesting responses to the end of Slow Burn that I didn’t expect. I ended it on what is known as a “Happy for Now Ending” but I had a lot of…criticisms about that. By the way, I took this as a compliment, because it just meant people had a lot of love for Rock and Hope. But it got me thinking—what constitutes a Happily Ever After anyway? Marriage? Babies? My own parents were married for eight years and divorced three years after having me, so I’ve never really thought of marriage and babies as being a HEA. But I consider myself a romance writer and one of the things I love so much about reading romantic fiction is that you are always
guaranteed
a happy ending of sorts.

Although I’m crafting romantic fiction, I also like to strive for some realism. Relationships are hard work. Happy endings don’t magically happen. You still need to work at them after you ride off into the sunset together. To me, exploring the reality of a lawyer and an unapologetic-yet-somehow-honorable criminal getting together was going to have a lot of twists, turns and compromise. Especially if I was going to keep both characters true to themselves. Honestly, Hope wouldn’t be very likeable if she just accepted every single thing about Rock’s strange world without some resistance. And no one would like Rock if he ditched his club to become an upstanding citizen in order to be with Hope. So, they both needed to work out some middle ground. I found their muddling through that thorny clashing of their very different worlds interesting and fun to write, and I hope you find it fun to read.

Once again, I strived for accuracy in any medical, legal and law enforcement scenes. But once again, I also bent things to suit my needs when required.

When I started writing this in January 2014, I only expected it to be one book about Rock and Hope. But as I kept writing, the other characters (Wrath especially-I had to take a good three weeks in July to get a chunk of his story down because he just won’t shut up!) became much clearer and demanding. People who read it kept telling me it needed to be a series because they wanted to know more about Wrath, Trinity, Z, Murphy and Sophie.

With Corrupting Cinderella, I tied up some loose ends from Slow Burn. I also intentionally (and probably unintentionally) created some new ones that I plan to tie up in later books. Those little threads are what make it fun for me to read a series, and I hope you feel that way about my series.

What made me happiest about the responses to Slow Burn was how many people embraced my version of an MC Romance that was heavier on the romance and lighter in grit than most. I heard from a
lot
of people who agreed that they too were tired of the abusive treatment of women in fiction these days. The wonderful response to Rock’s special brand of loving alpha hero also made me a little misty-eyed.

Thank you for reading!

Autumn

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