Point of Surrender Read online

  I followed, my head drooping like a puppy in trouble.

  Ryker was happy to see us—I could feel it—but under the calm was a storm raging, urging to burst free.

  We hit the porch and I watched as Ryker shuffled the bags so he held both in one hand. With his other hand, he opened the screen door and yelled, “Give us a minute!”

  Then he tossed the bags inside. They landed with a loud thump on the hardwood floor entryway and the screen door slammed shut.

  I jumped back as the door swung so close to my face that I felt the small gust of air blow my blond hair back from my cheek.

  “So,” Ryker said. He took a step and returned to his original post—arms crossed, lips pinched, eyebrows pulled in, as he rested against the white beam he’d stood by earlier. “Want to tell me why Pete’s been fucking callin’ me, wondering where in the hell you snuck off to?”

  I cringed. In my haste to get away, I had forgotten that Pete came back on Friday night from his two-week stint on the oil rig. He always stopped by on Saturdays, first thing in the morning. “What’d he say?”

  One eyebrow slowly rose, pinning me in place. “Why don’t you tell me what he should have said? And why you scared the hell out of Faith yesterday?”

  I shifted on my feet, unused to Ryker’s intense interrogation stance and stare. I needed time to stall, time to think of a viable excuse, even though I knew none would come. “Can I get cleaned up first? Give Brayden some food, maybe?”

  “So you can keep evading my questions?”

  My lips fought a smile and lost. Slowly, I brought my eyes to Ryker’s. “Yes. Sounds perfect.”

  His small grin matched mine. Then he sighed, giving in, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before I had to answer those questions. He unwrapped his arms from his chest and snagged me around the neck with one of them. He pulled me into his chest, a low laugh rumbling from him, and he yanked me toward the door. “Come on in, you little shit.”

  My arm wrapped around his lower back as he led me inside. “It’s good to see you, Ryker. It really is.”

  * * *

  Wrapped in a warm, cream comforter and catching Brayden’s light squealing coming from a floor away, I realized things seemed better as I slowly opened my eyes and took in the room where Faith and Ryker had directed me earlier. I hadn’t meant to take a nap, but when Faith saw me barely keeping my eyes open she insisted I lie down and rest after the long trip.

  I knew the room I was in used to be Olivia’s when she was a kid and teenager, but with the pale blue walls—which seemed more smoky gray than blue—and the cream bed coverings and minimal decoration, I couldn’t tell. It looked like it’d always been a rarely used guest room, not some little girl’s or teenage girl’s room.

  If I could, I would have burrowed under the covers, safe in the knowledge that for now, Brayden and I were somewhere Maurice couldn’t find us or get to us easily, and sleep for the rest of the day.

  I knew, even as I heard laughter and a deep, masculine voice filtering under my closed door, that Ryker was waiting for answers, and not only did he deserve them after I scared the two of them with my frantic phone call and drop-by visit, but I needed to give them to him.

  Ryker and the Nordic Lords MC might be the only people who could help keep my home, even if the thought of how they would pull it off chilled the blood in my veins.

  With a deep sigh, I threw off the covers and swung my feet to the floor. A quick stop in the hallway bathroom had me fixing my shoulder-length blond hair into a messy ponytail, but it looked better. Marginally.

  I tried to focus on Ryker and Brayden, who were wrestling in the middle of the living room floor. Coffee tables and furniture had been pushed close to the walls to give them space. I glanced at them, saw Brayden’s blond hair flying through the air as he jumped on Ryker, who was lying on his side, hands in the air in order to brace Brayden’s fall.

  But I couldn’t watch them like I normally would.

  My mind was too muddled, trying to piece together how to even begin explaining the mess I’d made.

  I watched as Brayden squatted, preparing to launch himself onto the man all over again.

  “Enough, Brayden,” I said, and forced my lips to pull into a smile so he could see I wasn’t angry.

  I swallowed a thick lump in my throat and forced my feet to move as Ryker rolled and hopped to his feet.

  “Mommy! I went four-wheeling and we went super fast!”

  “Oh?” I asked, one eyebrow raised to Ryker in question. “Did you, now?”

  Ryker smiled and held his hands up, palms out, in defense. “Fast for a five-year-old, Meg. I take Sophie all the time.”

  I winked at him and bent down to scoop Brayden into my arms. “Where’s Faith?” I asked him, ruffling his hair.

  He dodged my hand and pointed toward the kitchen. “Making dinner.”

  I smiled, liking the idea of getting to put this off for another day. “I’ll just go help her.”

  “Not a chance.” Ryker frowned and pointed to Brayden. “He can help her. You and I need to talk.”

  “Ryker—”

  He took a step forward, towering over me with his dark eyes and dark hair, and looked more menacing than I’d ever seen him look. I inhaled a sharp breath at his scowl and the lines in his face that told me he’d changed a lot in the several months since he’d returned home.

  He was no longer an oil rig worker. He was a biker. An outlaw. A man who murdered.

  My arms still holding Brayden shook with the realization.

  “Put him down and sit your ass on the couch.”

  He wouldn’t hurt me, I knew that, but I still blinked and looked away.

  “Can we wait until tomorrow?”

  Ryker leaned in and gently but firmly wrapped his hands around Brayden’s waist. “No,” he said, setting my boy on his feet. I watched as Brayden took off to the kitchen without a look back in my direction. “We’re talking now. Sit.”

  Reluctantly and with pursed lips, disliking the scolding look coming from Ryker, I took a spot on the couch and sighed when he pulled up a chair and faced me.

  His face softened as my fingers twisted together, fidgeting in my lap.

  Heavy air, thick with tension and fear, filled the room as Ryker gave me time to start explaining.

  I didn’t know where to begin. Words lodged in my throat, and the shame I’d experienced over the last several years began clawing at me from the inside out. Wasn’t it enough that my husband had died? The grief from Byron dying on his oil rig was enough to send me over the edge. But a month later, when Maurice Moscoe sent one of his goons to my house for the first time—at a time in my life when I was barely getting out of bed, only doing so because Brayden was an infant and needed his mom functioning, that visit—those claims he’d tossed on my doorstep that night—changed me irrevocably.

  They made me question everything I’d known about the man I’d loved forever. After the man left, my shaking hand closing the door behind him as I watched him climb into a large, black SUV, that was the first time I ever remembered being furious with Byron. It soiled my memories of him. The nights he’d claimed to be blowing off steam with the oil rig guys. The nights he’d claimed friends needed him.

  He hadn’t been doing any of that. He’d lied to me for years. The anger I’d felt knowing that—learning it at a time when I couldn’t scream at him and force him to confront the truth—wrecked me.

  I had lost him twice: once in death, and once in the memories of the man who made me question if I ever knew him at all.

  Tears burned my eyelids and I blinked, looking away from Ryker and out the front window of his house. I stared at nothing until I felt the weight on the couch next to me shift. His warm, strong arm wrapped around my shoulder and he pulled me to his side.

  “It’s okay, Meg,” Ryker crooned in my ear. His fingers tightened on my shoulder and I shifted, turning my face into his neck while the tears began to fall. My back shook, and neither of us spoke
until my eyes were drying and I felt like I could breathe again.

  Slowly, I pulled back and straightened, wiped the tears from my cheeks, and regained my control.

  “How much did you know about Byron gambling?”

  Ryker’s head snapped back at the question and his eyebrows pulled in. “What are you talking about?”

  I sighed and rolled my eyes. I had never had to tell this story, wasn’t sure how to begin. “Byron was in trouble, Ryker. Huge trouble.”

  Giving myself a moment, I inhaled a long, slow breath and exhaled, puffing out my cheeks. “A man came to see me about a month after he died and demanded payment for his debts.” I said the words quietly, but as each word fell from my lips, Ryker stiffened next to me.

  “That was years ago, Meg.”

  “I know.”

  “How much?”

  I snapped my head toward Ryker, stared at his clenched jaw and the way he’d just gritted the words out. I resisted the urge to shrink back under his weighted expression.

  “How much did he owe?” he growled, and I saw his hands had tightened into fists.

  “More than his life insurance. More than I’ve been able to pay back even with working,” I admitted, my voice mousy. I squeezed my eyes shut, hating not only the weakness in my voice but what had to come next. Before I could continue, Ryker jumped to his feet and threw his hands through his black, inky locks. He paced the room, cursing like a sailor—or a biker, which made sense.

  “What the hell, Meg!” He spun around and faced me, and his chest heaved and dropped with each frantic breath. “This is why I was fucking there! To take care of you and Brayden and to watch you. Why didn’t you tell me this shit?”

  “What was I supposed to do?” I shouted, my anger beginning to pulse in my veins. “You didn’t have money. You worked on a damn rig with Byron and I knew how much you guys made!” I jumped to my feet, my stance matching Ryker’s. “What in the heck could you have done to help me?”

  “I could have killed him!” he roared, and I jumped back, stunned at his admission—that he’d do it so freely and easily. Ryker didn’t give me time to compose myself before he continued ranting. “Fuck, Meg! How much do you owe, and why am I only now fucking hearing about this shit?”

  “I’ve been paying him off slowly with what I can make from work and still pay the house, but he wants the rest of his money in three weeks, Ryker. I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t need the help.”

  When Ryker turned back, his eyes had once again softened and he exhaled a harsh breath. “Okay, let’s start over. Who came to see you?”

  My body shivered thinking of the name. I hated the man who had put me in this position. My fingers entwined together turned clammy and cold.

  “Maurice Moscoe,” I said. “He essentially runs New Orleans’s world of prostitutes and illegal gambling.”

  “And how much do you owe?”

  My lips twitched nervously and I shifted on my feet.

  “Meg. Tell me.”

  I sucked in my bottom lip between my teeth. “I still owe him fifty thousand dollars or he’s going to take my house.”

  Tears welled in my eyes again and I fought them back. My house was the least of my concerns. What terrified me most was what he wanted in addition to the house.

  Ryker’s hands flew to his forehead and then he scrubbed his cheeks before looking back at me. “Shit. There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  I looked away from him.

  “Meg…”

  “Because he wants more than my house.”

  “And that is?”

  His hands clenched into fists so tight his knuckles turned white. I blinked and looked away, unable to watch Ryker trying so hard to restrain his fury.

  My mind went back to my last conversation with Moscoe. The way his cold finger ran down my jawbone.

  “What do you want with me?”

  His slimy smile made my stomach churn and I had to work not to flinch from his touch.

  “You’ll become whoever I want you to be—my worker in any way I see fit to use you. But since you’re young, I might just keep you for myself—at least for some things.”

  “And if I do this?” I asked, doing my best to ignore the way his finger trailed down my collarbone to my shoulder and then down my left side, skimming my full breasts and leaving an icy trail of goose bumps in its wake. What he was suggesting wasn’t part of his original plan or what he’d been threatening me with for months. But I knew based on the guards at the door and the way his seedy eyes raked over my skin that his plan had changed.

  His finger paused at the bottom of my bra and he grinned.

  He shrugged, the move full of nonchalance and indifference. “Then your son will live.”

  I blinked away the painful memory.

  “Me,” I said, turning back to Ryker. “He wants me.”

  2 Meg

  I woke up in the morning with my hair tangled over my cheeks. As I brushed it out of my face, I stretched and groaned, loosening my muscles, which ached from spending far too long in a car.

  The talk with Ryker the night before had been good.

  Not great.

  A little scary.

  It hadn’t been easy to finish telling him about Moscoe or the note he’d left for Brayden at school. Immediately after that, Ryker had taken off for the club, his cell phone in his hands and calls already being made to men I didn’t know, before the door closed behind him.

  But even with that, I felt more settled than I’d been in a while. A long while.

  I swung my feet off the bed, shivering as they hit the cool wood floor.

  Hurrying to my duffel bags, I rifled through mine, grabbed a University of New Orleans gray hooded sweatshirt, and threw it on. The sweatshirt was three sizes too large for me and fell past my pajama bottoms.

  But I loved it. I used to wrap myself in it and pretend I could smell Byron’s cologne for years after he was gone. Now it was simply a security blanket of sorts, even if the elbows were worn out and the hem around the wrists and collar were frayed.

  I didn’t care. It was warm and comforting and I was chilly in the house. Besides, there was no one to impress.

  Making my way out of my room, I vaguely noted the bedroom door at the end of the hall was wide open, so I figured Ryker and Faith were already awake. Making my way across the hall, I slowly turned the doorknob and smiled when I saw Brayden sleeping peacefully.

  I shivered, remembering the card he had brought me with Moscoe’s threat, but resisted the urge to climb into bed next to him and hold him.

  He’d had a hard few days and needed his sleep.

  With a sigh, I quietly closed the door to his room and made my way down the stairs. They creaked and shifted beneath my weight on every other step. I was in search of coffee and of Ryker, mostly so he could tell me what was going to happen to next.

  Although that was a conversation I wanted to avoid for as long as possible. Seeing Ryker the day before, watching his rage flash across his face as his eyes glittered with restrained fury and his features tightened and hardened, I was easily reminded that he was now a completely different type of man than the one who had left New Orleans last summer.

  He had changed.

  But I knew more than anyone how life could do that to a person.

  So I tried to stop thinking about that, too. About the fact that he had probably killed people since coming back to Jasper Bay—a town that looked small and quaint and friendly but was the home of motorcycle men who did despicable things with little to no remorse for their actions.

  I had come willingly into their den for help when no one else could do that for me, and at some point I knew I would be faced head-on with the realization of what they were capable of.

  But that day wasn't today.

  This morning I simply needed coffee—maybe some eggs and bacon or sausage.

  My feet stumbled over a small, uneven bend in the floor as I hit the kitchen.

  I
cursed my klutziness before righting myself and then I inhaled a quick gasp.

  Sitting at the table was a man I didn't know.

  "Mornin'," he said, his hands wrapped around a coffee mug that had steam wafting from it. I stared at the steam. Then I stared at the large hands that seemed to dwarf the oversized mug.

  Then I stared at his leather cut, and the heartbeat that had stuttered in my chest began beating again.

  "Um, hi," I said, feeling an embarrassed heat creep on my cheeks, although I had no idea why. When I pulled my eyes up, I was met with the most stunning pair of eyes I had ever seen…on the face of the most insanely handsome man I had ever encountered.

  Square, stubbled jaw.

  Lips pressed into a thin line.

  Sharply defined cheekbones.

  Short-cropped, light brown hair.

  Honey-colored eyes that were squinted in my direction.

  It was his eyes that made my breath catch.

  His eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, and a muscle in his jaw ticked when he met my gaze.

  He kept looking at me, not moving a single muscle besides that cheek tic thing he had going on, before he finally looked away.

  And again my heart did something strange—something so foreign I hadn't felt it in years. It skipped a beat and my stomach flip-flopped.

  "Name's Finn," the man made of gorgeously carved marble said. "You must be Meg."

  My knees almost buckled from the accent.

  Faith had told me about Finn. She had whispered his name in girly conversations as we'd grown closer over the last several months, so Ryker couldn't hear her swooning over another man.

  In my entire life, I had never swooned.

  Now I knew why Faith giggled whenever she mentioned him.

  And her descriptions had been spot-on. Besides the hint of his accent, which I knew was Australian, his cropped lighter hair against tanned skin, and his deep-set eyes had me almost reaching for the doorframe to steady myself.

  I had no idea what was coming over me. I had never had this type of reaction to any man since Byron.

  I wasn't here to lust after an outlaw biker.