Burn It Up

Book 3: A Desert Dogs Novel

by Cara McKenna

Genres: Contemporary Romance; Romantic Suspense; Western Romance

Synopsis

In the latest from the acclaimed author of Give It All, mount up and ride a roaring motorcycle to Fortuity, Nevada, where the heat is rising…

After a decade spent chasing shadier pursuits, Casey Grossier has come home to the badlands to settle down in Fortuity. Vowing to put his days of dirty money behind him, he’s cleaned up his act and become co-owner of Benji’s Saloon. But despite his efforts to be a better man, he can’t shake his crush on his sweet-faced bartender, even though the woman screams trouble.

Abilene Price hopes she can outrun her mistakes and build a safe, respectable life for herself and her baby. So she’d be wise to keep her distance from her boss, Casey, and the rest of his roughneck motorcycle club, the Desert Dogs. But she just might need their help. The return of a violent figure from Abilene’s past ignites a powder keg—and it’s only the beginning…

Release date: November 3, 2015

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 352

Sample

Praise

Also by Cara McKenna

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Excerpt from Lay It Down

Chapter 1

James Ware strolled into the prison yard alongside a couple hundred fellow inmates, welcoming the weak February sunshine on his shoulders and scalp. Normally the sensation would amount to a tease, a mere hour’s escape from the cinder block and noise of the inside, but this afternoon it felt different. Felt manageable.

“Two days,” came a voice from behind him. It was the young guy everybody called Tugs, for reasons James didn’t care to know. He was skinny, hyper, a little too wide-eyed and loudmouthed for this place where bluster required muscle to command any respect. James didn’t mind him, though. They worked in the kitchen together, and the kid was all right.

“Two fucking days,” James agreed, slowing until Tugs was at his side, the both of them heading to the far corner of the yard.

“Lookit that wall, man.” Tugs pointed to the fourteen feet of concertina-capped brick that penned them. “Two days from right now, you’ll be on the other side. That’s gotta feel good.”

“No doubt.” They reached the corner known as the gym—though a couple weight benches and a rusty collection of barbells weren’t exactly worth a membership. James snagged a bench and Tugs stood by, always eager to spot. Kid was like one of those little fish that stuck close by a shark, grateful for scraps and a taste of protection.

“What’ll you do, first thing after they let you out?” he asked James.

“Pray to God my sister remembers to pick my ass up.” James hefted a thirty-pound dumbbell and began to curl. “Then eat a hot meal off an actual plate and get a decent cup of coffee.” No more plastic trays, no more brown sludge-water.

“Bet you’re gonna get so shitfaced on Tuesday,” Tugs said wistfully.

“Sure.” James didn’t drink, but neither did he go into details about his personal life. He didn’t need to drink, he thought, feeling the chemicals moving through his blood as his muscles woke up. His temper was a thrashing, snapping dog while he was stone-cold sober, and he kept it on a short leash. Get him drunk and that tether got real slippery, real quick. He hadn’t had so much as a beer in two years or more. And he hadn’t been as pissed as he was now in almost too long to remember.

“Bet you got a girl waiting for you,” Tugs said. “Get wasted, get laid—that’s what I’m gonna do the second I get out of here.”

James didn’t reply.

Yeah, he had a girl waiting for him. Two of them. An ex and a daughter. A four-month-old daughter he’d never met, and hadn’t even known about until recently. He aimed to see her, as soon as he could track her down. And his ex . . . well, time would tell how difficult she might decide to make that for him. If the girl knew one thing, it was how to run.

The last time he’d seen her . . .

The last time, things had gotten out of control.

The two of them had always been out of control, but that afternoon it had all boiled over. Their relationship had only ever been a messy, staggered succession of fucking and fighting. Normally James prided himself on resisting other people’s bait, but that girl could tempt his anger like nobody he’d ever known. She could rouse his softer side, too, and they’d had some good times. But that last blowout had rasped all the shine right off what they’d briefly had together in a roof-rattler of a fight that must’ve left them sounding like a pair of feral rednecks to the neighbors.

She’d wanted that fight, too. She’d goaded him until he’d lost control enough to clasp her shoulders and shake her. She had poison inside her. Other people had put it there, but she knew just how to strike out and weaponize that shit. She’d also had their baby inside her, during that fight. Neither of them had known it then, but it had already been growing. Just a tiny little speck, invisible to the eye, yet since James had found out about it, it had grown big enough to eclipse the whole of his world.

He’d never known a woman like Abilene. A seeming kitten, except catch her on a bad day, pet her wrong—she’d scratch and bite you like a fucking wolverine. She’d been all claws when they’d met, all claws when they’d parted less than three months later. In between there’d been good times, but stress had never brought out the best in her, and if a baby was one thing, it was stressful. If there were claws drawn now, he needed to know. Needed to see for himself that his kid was in safe hands.

As his muscles worked and his blood thundered in his temples, anger flared with every pulse. He wasn’t a good man—there was no doubting that—but she was no saint herself. And if she decided he needed to be blocked out of his own daughter’s life, that he was the one that child needed protecting from . . .

You’ve got a fucking nerve, you little bitch.

And in two days’ time, he’d find her. In two days’ time he’d see his kid, come hell or high water, and he’d decide precisely what needed to be done about it all.

Chapter 2

“Motherfuck—”

Casey froze, eyeing the baby asleep in his lap.

“You didn’t hear that. Just keep sleeping. Sleeee-pinnng,” he pleaded, rising gingerly from the couch to reach for his ringing phone. He shifted Mercy’s weight to one arm and checked his screen.

Unlisted—no shock there. He hit TALK. “Hello?”

“Grossier?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s Emily. Why are you whispering?”

“It’s three a.m., man.”

“And this has been a problematic hour for talking business since when, exactly? Oh, wait.” He could hear a smile in her voice now. “You got a girl next to you?”

Casey glanced down. “Sort of.”

“I’ll keep it quick, but you’ll want to hear this—I’ve got the perfect job for you.”

“I’m not taking any more contracts, Em. I told you that in October.”

“There’s some policy bullshit on this one,” she went on, ignoring him. “Has to go down by March fifteenth.”

“Em—”

“Which is soon, I know, but it’s so fucking easy. Commercial, super remote, no neighbors for half a mile. You’re in and out and it’s all over before the good guys even get the call. You could do this in your sleep.”

“No, I can’t—”

“Your slice would be twenty, minimum.”

Twenty thousand bucks? Casey wasn’t broke, but a payday like that would certainly make his life a hell of a lot easier . . . He felt sweat break out under his arms and at the small of his back. He eyed the mounted antelope head on the wall above the fireplace, feeling as frozen as that poor bastard.

“Mi-ni-mum,” Emily repeated.

Casey took a deep breath, glanced at Mercy, and screwed his head on straight. “I can’t. I’m in Nevada, for one.”

“Vegas? That’s not far.”

“No, fu—frigging way up near Idaho.”

“Okay, so what? Get in your car and drive. You’re the best, but four weeks is tight, even for a cake job like this.”

“Shit’s changed.” He eyed the baby again. Not shit—crap. Crap’s changed. “I have responsibilities now.”

A pause. “You? Have responsibilities? What kind of responsibilities?”

“I own a bar, for one.”

“A bar? Do tell.”

“Don’t even think about it. I’m not laundering a penny for you.”

“Spoilsport.”

The baby began to fuss. “No, no, no . . .”

“Are you talking to someone else?”

“No, I— Listen, I can’t. We had a great run, but I’m out. I can’t be doing that shit anymore. I’ve got a business partner to think about. I go down and it’s not just my ass on the line now.”

“This doesn’t sound like the Casey Grossier I know. Plus you won’t go down—you’re too good.”

“You’ve got other guys.”

“None like you. Bunch of dumb-ass punks. But you—you’re a fucking artist, Case. Just this one job. Come on, please? For old times’ sake?”

“I’m telling you,” he said, gently bouncing the now-pissed-off-looking baby, “I can’t.” Even as he said it, he pictured that money. Pictured the scene—smelled it, felt it . . .

No. No fucking way.

A sigh came through the line. “You’re breaking my heart, mister.”

“I have to get out of that line of work sometime, Em. So do you, for that matter.”

“Twenty grand says I can put off retirement for a few more weeks. And you—the Casey I know would have taken a job ten times trickier than this and for half the payout, just for the fun of it.”

“Well, I guess I’m just not the—”

Mercy woke, squawking and angry.

“Is that a baby?”

“It’s not mine. It’s complicated. Anyhow, I have to go. Nice working with you, Em.”

“I’m keeping you in my Rolodex. I know you—you can’t quit that easy.”

“Watch me.” Casey hit END and tossed his phone on the couch.

“Shush,” he told the baby. “Shush your beautiful face, please. Your mom hasn’t slept in, like, three days . . .”

At four months, the infant book had said, both Abilene and her daughter might soon be getting eight hours a night, but this baby clearly had no designs on higher achievement. Casey had spent a lot of time in Vegas, and he’d known alcoholic insomniac gamblers who were more lovable at three a.m. than this baby was.

Above him, footsteps.

“Shit. Please be Christine, please be Christine.”

There was a chance it was—he was in Christine Church’s home, after all, and she often rose at ungodly hours. Christine and her husband, Don, and their son, Casey’s good friend Miah, lived in this big old farmhouse at the western edge of their cattle ranch. Casey was here about every other night, checking in on Abilene, helping with the baby as best he could, when he really ought to be home, in bed, asleep.

Hell, I shouldn’t be in Fortuity at all.

Or anyplace in Nevada, for that matter—not when he could be back in Texas, saying yes to that contract, looking forward to meeting Emily for a drink to go over the logistics, salivating to get the project going. He shouldn’t be co-owner of a bar. In the light of day, he was glad he was, but just now, when he was sleep deprived and missing his old paydays, his old freedom . . .

Above, on the landing to the second-floor rooms, a door opened, spilling soft light. Shit, Abilene.

“What’s the matter?”

“We’re fine.”

She padded down the steps and into the den in her sleep clothes—pajama pants with a pattern of stars and moons, an oversized and faded Dolly Parton concert tee. Her long, dark ponytail was all cockeyed, her normally wide eyes squinty and bleary. Cute as fuck, really.

“Sorry,” Casey said, bouncing the angry baby. “I’ve got her. My phone rang. She’ll be back to sleep in no time,” he lied. He didn’t know much about babies, but he was steadily coming to understand this one, and when Mercy was pissed, she stayed pissed.

“Give her here.”

“No, go back upstairs.”

“Try giving birth to a baby and then ignoring the sound of her crying,” Abilene countered. “Sit.”

He dropped back on the couch and Abilene sat beside him. He passed the squirming bundle into her arms.

Casey stretched his neck from side to side, feeling the hour. Feeling, as he often did these days, half-incompetent at most everything he was attempting to do—run a bar, help out with his family’s issues, care for an infant. The one thing he was truly exceptional at was off the table. He’d grown used to feeling capable, used to knowing without a doubt that he was the only man for the job. But with that job shelved, and maybe for good, he couldn’t say he much enjoyed the alternative. It roused an old, familiar restlessness in him, the same one that had driven him out of this town to begin with. His self-serving side wanted to run straight back to Texas, except he was all in now. For the first time in his life, he was neck-deep in responsibilities, with others seriously depending on him. Running wasn’t an option . . .

Not unless he felt like turning into his old man, that was, which was about the only thing that scared him worse than commitment.

Warmth broke through his worries—the warmth of Abilene’s thigh through his jeans, and her upper arm against his bare elbow. She was short, maybe five-two, small framed but . . . plump? Casey didn’t know what the acceptable term was to use in front of a girl, but you could say she was a little chubby, and had been even before her pregnancy had begun to show. It didn’t bother him one bit. Her skin looked crazy-soft. Soft like her heavy Texas accent. When his dick got the better of him, he’d imagine how his hands would look on that skin, how she’d feel like heaven under his palms. Casey didn’t discriminate when it came to women’s bodies, and Abilene’s was everything essentially feminine to him. Petite and . . . and lush.

It did things to him, even now. Always had. Probably always would.

Though it really shouldn’t. She was too young, for one, and she was his employee to boot—she tended bar at Benji’s three afternoons a week. And on top of all that, she’d gone into labor nearly two weeks early, while they’d been closing up together, and had given birth in the back of Casey’s car, halfway to the nearest decent hospital in Elko, in the dead of night.

He’d had a crush from the second he’d laid eyes on her and hit on her and asked her out a hundred times—fruitlessly—before he’d found out she was pregnant, but he’d never so much as kissed her. Never really even touched her in any meaningful way before he’d found himself kneeling between her legs, getting screamed at, trying not to hyperventilate as a squalling baby had been born into his shaking hands.

Still, that had been four months ago, give or take, and since then his old desire had crept back in—and worse than ever, if he wasn’t mistaken. No matter that he knew Abilene was over whatever she’d once felt for him. Motherhood ate up all her energy, and it really ought to have desexualized her in Casey’s eyes as well . . . but in truth, he was straight up in awe of her now. And protective, as well, a sensation that always wired straight between a man’s legs, it seemed.

So for a half dozen excellent reasons, Casey pretended he felt for Abilene what she now did for him—a brother-sister-type affection, nothing more.

He’d always been a goddamned good liar.

“Sorry,” he said again. “I was really hoping to give you a decent night’s sleep for a change.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Abilene murmured, soothing Mercy. “Phones ring. Babies cry. I got four whole hours in. That’s more than I would have if I was on my own tonight.”

“You’re not on your own—you’ve got Christine, too.”

Abilene and the baby had moved here to Three C a week ago. Trouble was on its way, in the form of Mercy’s father getting paroled. Guy was a gunrunner with a quick temper, the story went, and their breakup hadn’t been pretty.

“Yeah, Christine’s great for a couple hours’ babysitting in the afternoon, but that’s all I can bear to ask of her.”

True. Miah’s mom put in sixteen-hour days around the ranch, same as the men. “She frigging loves Mercy, though,” Casey said.

Abilene smirked. “Miah better get busy and make her some grandbabies before she steals one . . . Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. That was mean.”

“No, that’s true. She’s broody as fuck. Oh, shit—shoot. Sorry.”

Abilene shook her head. “You and that mouth . . . Would you fix me a bottle? That might calm her down.”

“Sure.”

Casey went to the kitchen and turned on a burner under a pot of water. He mixed the formula with a few good shakes of the bottle, switched off the stove, set the bottle in the pot to heat. Mercy preferred it warm, especially at night. So weird that she could have preferences, and a personality, when at four months old she was still little more than a good-smelling fat loaf—alternately angelic and livid. So weird that he even had this skill set, when four months ago he’d never so much as held an infant. Not that he was much of a natural. He still wound up putting on her diapers backward half the time.

When the bottle’s temp seemed about right, he emptied the pot down the sink and swirled the formula as he headed back into the den.

Abilene accepted it, giving it a feel. “Perfect, as always.”

“I’m like a human thermometer.”

“Between you and the human poop machine,” she said, nodding to the baby, “I’m starting to feel left out of the superpowers club.” The baby took the nipple and Abilene broke into a smile that Casey knew way too well—a quick grin, stifled by a shy bite of her lip. Relief.

“Tell me about the house,” he whispered.

Abilene’s dream house, that was, an ever-evolving vision of the kind of home she’d like to move into with Mercy someday, if she could ever afford it.

“Nothing fancy,” she murmured. That was how it always started. “One story is fine. With a little yard, at least, big enough to run around in. And a white fence.”

“What color’s the house?”

“Also white. With red shutters and a red mailbox. And a red door.”

“How many bedrooms?” he asked, and absently reached out to squeeze Mercy’s tiny foot in its yellow sock.

“Just two. Plus a living room, and a kitchen big enough to eat in. And a washer and dryer—I never want to step inside another Laundromat for the rest of my life.”

Casey laughed, smiled to himself. He’d ask her this question again, the next time they found themselves side by side this way, late at night. Each time, something new—the shutters, the fence, the mailbox, now two rooms and a washer and dryer. Next time, maybe curtains. And someday, he imagined, a Mr. Right to fill out the scene. Something hot squirmed inside him at the thought. Something hot and deeply pointless, as Casey was about as wrong for such a gig as a man could get. Even if some hint of Abilene’s old crush still lived inside her, he couldn’t be what she needed. He had no business promising anything real to anyone, and a kid raised the stakes a hundredfold.

He gave the suckling baby’s wispy hair a faint stroke. “She has my eyes, you know.”

Abilene straightened and rolled her own blue eyes. “Now, that would be a miracle of genetics.”

In more ways than one; Casey didn’t expect he’d ever have kids of his own. He wasn’t cut out for it, for starters, and he also didn’t entirely trust his own DNA. His mother had gone crazy in her early forties, and he had good reason to suspect the same fate might be in store for him. Like her, he suffered from occasional spells, like seizures. What exactly was wrong with him, he wasn’t certain, but he knew for damn sure he had no business making promises he couldn’t keep, not to a woman, and certainly not to a child. It wouldn’t be fair to them, and it wasn’t fair to him, either. Why torture yourself with a taste of that stuff, if it was only going to get ripped away?

Still, there definitely was something to babies. He’d never thought about them much before meeting this one, but they were good. Squishy to hold, infinitely simple in their needs, entertaining, nice to look at.

“You remember when she was born,” Casey asked, “the very first words she ever heard anybody say?”

“‘Bleeping hell, Abilene,’” she quoted, laughing, “‘I’m on a mother-bleeping lease.’”

“In retrospect, ‘Welcome to the world’ might’ve been nicer.”

“At least your insurance covered new seats.”

Casey nodded. “Good to know emergency birth counts as an act of God.”

“It ought to, considering all the blasphemy involved.”

They fell quiet, and Casey studied her once her eyes had shut. He’d known her since the previous summer, worked with her on and off at the bar, both before and after he’d become co-owner of the place. Granted, he’d known her mostly while she was pregnant and stressed-out, but he still couldn’t say he’d ever seen her as calm as she’d been since the baby had been born. Exhausted, sure, but at peace, too, he could tell. Like someone who’d found what it was they were supposed to be doing. He knew that sensation himself—missed the shit out of it. But he was happy for her. It was only a shame this peace was about to get disrupted. It was technically Monday now, and that meant her ex was out on parole tomorrow.

Just looking at her, with those worries nagging . . . Goddamn, his body didn’t even know what to do with it all. How did men even survive having wives and children, Casey had to wonder, when he felt this mixed-up and protective over a woman he could only really call a friend, and a child who wasn’t even his? That shit must feel deep enough to drown in some days.

Though to a better man than me, he thought, it might feel like a nice way to go.

Chapter 3

The old farmhouse was chilly, winter finding Abilene’s feet through the broad floorboards and her socks. She shuffled out of the guest bedroom around seven with Mercy strapped to her chest in the baby sling. She may have failed at breastfeeding, but the scoldy-mother brigade couldn’t fault her efforts on the wearing-your-infant front. What the benefits were meant to be, she couldn’t remember. It felt like there were a dozen differing ways to be a good mom, and a million ways to mess it up.

“A woman’s highest calling is to be a good wife and mother,” her father’s cool voice echoed. She shivered. He’d be horrified to see her now, but no matter—she had no wish to see him ever again.

Am I a good mother? I couldn’t breastfeed. But what was that shortcoming, really, compared to getting involved with Mercy’s father to begin with? I was a different person when we met. She’d grown up a lot since finding out she was pregnant. She might not have everything figured out—not remotely—but she had her priorities in order, at least.

And she was a good mother, besides. Maybe she was unmarried, maybe she had no clue what she was doing half the time, but she loved her daughter, and she showed that love. It was more than her father could claim to have done for her. And I’m protecting her. Abilene’s mama had never protected her—not from her father’s judgment and suffocating beliefs, and not from the perils and temptations of the larger world, after she’d run away from home.

The guest bathroom was cold, the lightbulb seeming grumpy as it flickered to life. She brushed her teeth, eyeing herself in the mirror. Eyeing Mercy, and only half comprehending how it was she was here.

Same as how everything happens to me—I screwed up.

At least this time, there was a gem to be found in the rubble of the fallout. She smoothed her baby’s soft hair and watched her tiny lashes flutter. It seemed unreal that someone as messed up as Abilene could have created something so perfect.

It hadn’t even been Abilene who’d told her ex about Mercy—it had been Casey’s older brother, Vince. Vince had done time with James, a year before Abilene had moved to Nevada.

Well, not moved to. Not exactly. Abilene tended more often to simply find herself in new places, more a matter of mishap than intention.

That was the story of her life, right there, she thought as she headed downstairs. Flight following mistake, following flight, following mistake, again and again and again. She’d screwed up, getting involved with her ex, and been swept here to the Churches’ ranch for her own safety. She entered the empty kitchen, finding coffee warming in the pot and a plate of muffins on the oversized trestle table. She helped herself to both, settling on the long wooden bench.

She wanted better for her daughter than all that aimless wandering. She wanted her to have dreams and to make plans, and to move through the world with intentional steps that led her toward her goals. To carry herself to the destinations she chose. She didn’t want her to be a brittle, helpless leaf, blown from place to place, propelled only by a need to escape, and never by desire.

Freedom—that was what she wanted for her daughter. Freedom of choice, and freedom from the guilt and shame and repression Abilene had grown up shackled by, and from the oppressive environment that had driven her to such extremes in the name of rebellion.

She glanced down and found muffin crumbs on Mercy’s head. Catching footsteps creaking from the direction of the den, she brushed them away.

“Casey?” She’d left him sleeping upright on the couch and found him in the exact same position when she’d crept through the den this morning.

He strolled in, rubbing his face. “Morning. Again. When did you two ditch me?”

“A few minutes before four, I think. You passed out. So did Mercy.”

“And you?” Casey asked, pulling a bowl from a cabinet. “You get any more sleep?”

“An hour or so.”

“I don’t know how you do it, man. I get less than six and I might as well be drunk.”

Abilene checked him out while he was distracted, fixing himself a bowl of cornflakes. Her libido had begun to return, if tentatively, and she was starting to take note of certain things for the first time in months.

Case in point, she was discovering all over again how much she loved Casey’s arms . . . and probably because that was the most of his skin she ever got to see. He wore button-ups and T-shirts, and while they fit nicely, they didn’t give much away. A fine pair of normal-guy biceps—lean and muscular, but not beefy like his brother’s or her ex’s. His forearms were just as nice, with blond hair and about half as many freckles as he’d had back in the summer. The hair on his head was a bit darker than when they’d met, more strawberry than blond now, but his beard had stayed the same—a brazen shade of red. Where he got that from, she couldn’t guess, nor those bright blue eyes. He looked nothing like his black-haired, hazel-eyed tower of an older brother. And that suited Abilene just fine.

Casey was a nice, normal-sized man, with better things to do, she imagined, than spend his spare time lifting weights.

What those things might be, however, she couldn’t guess. He was awfully cagey about what he’d done for a living before he’d return