Give It All

Book 2: A Desert Dogs Novel

by Cara McKenna

Genres: Contemporary Romance; Romantic Suspense; Western Romance

Synopsis

A hot new Desert Dogs novel from the author of Lay It Down

Keep your friends close—and your enemies closer …

Bar owner Raina Harper can’t say for sure what Duncan Welch is to her. With her small Nevada town under siege by a ruthless casino development and still reeling from a spate of murders, she knows that trusting the public face of the corporate invaders is risky to say the least. Though, damn, it’s one fine-looking face.

Duncan may be a mercenary when it comes to getting the job done, but he’s no villain. In fact, the calculating fixer soon finds himself in the bad guys’ crosshairs, framed and facing professional ruin. To clear his name, he’ll need help from Raina and her roughneck motorcycle club, the Desert Dogs. Gaining their trust won’t be easy, and the molten sexual tension between Raina and Duncan only makes things more complicated—especially since Miah Church, Raina’s friend and ex-lover, would sooner strangle Duncan than shake his hand.

One thing’s certain, though: if they don’t deal with their incendiary attraction soon, the whole damn town might go up in flames.

Release date: February 3, 2015

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 352

Sample

PRAISE FOR CARA MCKENNA

ALSO BY CARA MCKENNA

SIGNET ECLIPSE

 

Chapter 1

Agent Ramon Flores eyed his suspect through the glass.

An average sort of man. Average height, a touch heavy, mouse-brown hair in need of a cut. His clothes were filthy, but that came as no surprise. He was sunburned to boot, scalp flaking where his hair was thinning, and the past weeks he’d spent as a fugitive had aged him—he looked sixty, not the forty-seven Flores knew him to be.

And Flores knew a lot about David Peter Levins. He’d memorized the man’s file in the month since he was assigned to finding the guy. Levins had a wife and two grown sons in Mesquite, and twenty-four years’ experience in construction. He’d been a foreman for a big commercial operation—Virgin River Contracting. And it seemed he’d thrown it all away in a fit of greed.

“He’s ready to spill,” said Dan Jaskowski, Flores’s colleague. “Some of these guys just aren’t built for the fugitive lifestyle.”

“He cracked enough to turn himself in,” Flores said. “No doubt he’s got some interesting shit knocking on the backs of his teeth, just dying to get let out.”

“Like whether he and Tremblay acted alone.”

Flores nodded. “And whether he had anything to do with Tremblay getting offed in the county jail.”

“Whole town’s gonna be curious to hear some answers, once his surrender makes the news,” Jaskowski said.

“I’m curious myself.” Flores grabbed his recorder and his fat file labeled LEVINS, DAVID P. and headed for the door. Let him fold. Let him break, and let Flores get back home to Spring Valley in time for his daughter’s sixth birthday party in two weeks. Combination pony and mermaid theme. Highly anticipated.

Levins was stooped in his hard plastic seat before the metal table, wilted by exhaustion, but he sat up straight at the click of the lock. Flores closed them in together, in this little cube of cinder block intimacy.

“David,” he said, and sat. He switched the recorder on. “I’m Agent Flores. Everybody’s been looking for you, son.” He tacked the diminutive on just to keep the guy on edge. No matter that Levins was eight years his senior. “Me especially. Can’t figure out if I’m disappointed I didn’t catch you myself, or relieved you finally decided to give us all some closure. You ready to talk?”

“Do I get my sentence lessened? Because I turned myself in?”

“That all depends on what comes next,” Flores said. “On how cooperative you decide to be. Because three people are dead. A fine deputy—Alex Dunn—and your accomplice, Chuck Tremblay. And this mysterious body we’ve heard about but not actually been able to get our hands on.”

“Tremblay handled the bones. I got no idea what he did with ’em.”

“How convenient for you. And how about Tremblay’s bones? You got anything to do with his unfortunate end?”

Levins shook his head violently. “No, no way. I was in Texas when I heard. But I know who did it—his creditors.”

“Creditors?”

“He had gambling debts. Huge ones—a hundred grand, at least. I dunno who with, but some real rough characters. Mob types down in Vegas, if I had to guess.”

Flores hid his surprise. He’d heard nothing about that, though it had a ring of truth to it. Tremblay had been an alcoholic—fifteen years sober, but one self-destructive compulsion often got swapped for another. He made a casual note, one that would prompt an intense investigation and probably ruin somebody’s weekend.

“That’s why he needed my bribes,” Levins continued.

“Bribes in exchange for what?”

“For overlooking some corners I had to cut, with the work.”

“Now, why would you be cutting corners, David?”

“’Cause all the foremen get big bonuses for hitting these crazy deadlines that the Virgin River bosses laid out for us. Shit they promised the casino developers to score the contract in the first place. Only way I could’ve hit those was to cut corners. And I couldn’t cut corners unless I had somebody in the department willing to rush and fudge my permits.”

“Why’d you approach Tremblay? Seems awful ambitious, going straight to the sheriff of Brush County.”

“I didn’t—Tremblay approached me. I was sweating over this blasting permit I needed, like, yesterday. They sent Dunn over, but no way was he signing anything without going through every goddamn check box. So I went straight to Tremblay. I was desperate, and I kind of knew him from other issues with the construction. I knew he was really pro-casino, and thought maybe he’d respect my worries about the deadlines. He told me, if he helped me out, would I maybe help him out? Slip him a percentage of my bonus? As a ‘show of appreciation,’ I think he called it.”

“And you said yes.”

Levins nodded, looking . . . sad. “I did. I had to.”

“Had to?”

The man shrugged. “Looking back, it sounds so trivial . . . But I got two kids, one in college and one about to start. My wife’s out of work. I needed the money. It was harmless shortcuts I was trying to take, just red-tape, bureaucratic shit. Nothing that would hurt anybody.”

“But now it has—Dunn, for one. Your old partner in crime, the sheriff. And who else, David? Whose bones did that migrant worker find on your site?”

“I dunno. I really don’t. Just a heap of charred shit, in a shallow grave. Some drug runner, Tremblay figured.”

“So you covered it up?”

“Yeah. We did. The way we saw it, if we obeyed the law, then construction gets halted. We lose our slice of the bonuses, hundred men lose a few weeks’ pay while guys like you investigate it. We find out in the end it was just some shit-bag narcotics mule, probably some illegal—”

Flores raised his eyebrows at that, and Levins blanched.

“Some undocumented migrant,” he said, backtracking. “Some criminal, not worth risking all that money, and all those workers’ paydays, to do right by.”

“That’s an awful lot to assume about some pile of bones, David. And there’s some folks who don’t believe you actually found bones. They think maybe those bones were still inside that man or woman or child’s body, and that you maybe burned them up yourself. Forensics thinks that’s real likely, matter of fact.”

Levins went pale beneath his sunburn. “No, it was bones. Just bones. Animals had started digging them up. I’ve never killed nobody in my life. Not Dunn—that was all Tremblay’s plan. Not Tremblay, neither. I was in Texas, like I said, too scared to risk coming back here. And not those bones. I never killed no one in my entire life. I wanted the money, that’s all. Wanted the best for my family.”

“Maybe you did. But that doesn’t change the fact that now there’s three human beings—with families of their own, I’d wager—dead. And what I need, and what you have to bargain with, is answers.” He consulted his notes. “These creditors of the sheriff. Now, why would they do that? Have the man murdered? Surely that’s no way to collect on his tab.”

“So he wouldn’t disclose who they were, I guess. When he went to trial. Their outfit didn’t sound too legal.”

Flores made another note, faking boredom, so Levins would stay eager to be of use. “These answers are all very convenient, David. You sure nobody else from Virgin River was in on your little arrangement with Tremblay?”

“Nobody I know of.”

“So there’s nobody else? Nobody with blood on their hands, aside from you and the late former sheriff?”

Levins swallowed, eye contact wavering.

“Tell me.”

“There is one other guy who knew about it all. Who got his slice, just like Tremblay.”

“Tell me who.”

Levins licked his sunburned lips. “Not from VRC, or the sheriff’s department.”

Flores leaned in, leveled the diminished man with his stare. “Tell me, son.”

Chapter 2

I’ve got to stop sleeping with Miah.

Raina shifted under the covers, feeling him all around her. His arm locked to her waist, the warm length of his sleeping body pressed along her back and legs. His bed beneath her, his scent in the pillow under her cheek.

She was surrounded by old smells. Familiar ones. Though strangely, until a few weeks ago, she’d never actually been in Miah’s bed. They’d been lovers for a few short, blazing months, two summers back, but the man was claustrophobic. They’d come to know each other’s bodies on blankets under the wide-open northeastern Nevada sky, on the grass, and in the bed of his truck . . . Closest she’d ever come to laying him indoors had been the cab of that F-150. She still remembered every moment. The radio had been playing. “Life in a Northern Town” had come on, and goose bumps had broken out all over her skin, Miah’s fingers on her clit and his mouth on her neck as she’d come.

This is different, she reminded herself.

Jeremiah Church’s long, strong body was dressed in a tee and shorts, and Raina still wore her jeans and tank and bra.

This sleeping together was strictly literal.

But it really had to stop.

They’d lost a childhood friend six weeks ago—Alex Dunn, a sheriff’s deputy. Raina hadn’t slept properly since the day she accepted that Alex’s death hadn’t been the drunk-driving accident everyone had believed it was. The same day, Sheriff Tremblay had been called out and incriminated himself. She’d shut Benji’s late that night—three a.m., probably—and even after that, she and Miah had sat together on the bar’s front stoop, nursing a whiskey between them. Miah had been too drunk to drive home, and too upset besides.

They’d fallen silent. It should have felt cold. It got down to the forties at night in Fortuity, even now at the close of summer. But Raina hadn’t registered the temperature, couldn’t even remember the minutes or hours passing, with the two of them just sitting there.

After a long time she’d said, “Well.” No other thoughts had come, no lament about the state of their town or the tragedy surrounding their friend.

Miah had said even less. Not a single word. Instead he’d gotten to his feet and taken her hand. He’d led her through the bar to the back stairs, up to the second floor to her apartment. Through the kitchen and den and into her room, where the dawn light was just beginning to slip through the front windows and swallow the aura of the neon sign flickering outside.

He’d thrown the covers wide and she’d taken his lead when he pushed off his boots. Whatever he’d needed, she’d have given. Any persuasion of sex that might have offered an escape for the both of them. But all he’d done was draw her onto the mattress and held her. Spooned her. Fully dressed. No words, no sex or kissing, just the jerky sound of his uneven breathing against her neck, and his strong arms clinging as though she were the only thing keeping him from drowning.

The same thing, the night after. And the night after that. Then they’d switched to meeting at Three C, Miah’s family’s cattle ranch, as his work demanded that he get back to his usual routines. And her new routine became driving over there once the bar was closed. She’d find him waiting on the front porch, and he’d lead her inside. Sometimes he held her, sometimes the other way around. Sometimes they lay on their backs, fingers laced on the sheets between them.

It was weird, and probably not especially healthy, and no doubt confusing. But so was everything about their lives just now. She was thirty-two and he was a couple of years older, but all the recent uncertainty had them feeling lost as teenagers.

She took a deep breath, ribs expanding and pressing her into Miah’s warmth. Everything was so fucked right now, fucked and shapeless, the mysteries far from solved. But their two bodies were solid, amid the chaos—something to hold on to.

This fraught spooning was what Miah needed, and Raina had gotten herself accustomed to offering far less to men, the past few years. It felt nice, being what a man needed beyond the mechanical release of sex, for a change. And this particular man deserved good. Which was more than she could say for most of the ones she’d known. Or fucked.

But she really had to stop sleeping with him. Last night, he’d whispered to her as they were drifting off, about how she was the only thing that let him sleep. His lips had moved against her neck as he’d said it, and heat had trickled through her. Something in those words or the caress of his mouth had her thinking, Sooner or later, this need is going to turn carnal. He was going to want more from her—the things she’d taken away when she broke his heart, two summers ago. The things she was promising now, frankly, by coming back every night. Things she wanted, too, in her body . . . but not any place deep enough to make it okay. Because he wanted far more than Raina had in her to give.

As another dawn rose, staining the sky dark aqua through the skylight above them, Raina’s thoughts turned to another man. The near stranger who’d helped her friends find some truth in the shadows obscuring Alex’s murder. A man who presented like an entitled prick, but whose reckless actions had been those of a reluctant hero.

The stranger was tall, also. But where Miah smelled of the ranch—of leather and sweat and earth—the other man smelled of civility. Linen and soap, and a hint of cologne that didn’t cloy, merely flirted. A man whose jaw was as smooth as Miah’s neglected one was now bearded. Whose eyes were clear gray to Miah’s near-black ones; his hair light brown and styled, versus Miah’s overgrown black waves. His voice cultured and British and velvet-dark to Miah’s down-home, plain-speaking one. Their accents, their hands, their shoes, their jobs—everything opposed. The Churches were well off—they came from old railroad money on Miah’s father’s side, and were rarities in that they still managed their ranch; most owners were rich absentees. Though you’d never guess Miah was wealthy, to look at him. He dressed like the ranch hands he oversaw, whereas that other man oozed privilege from every pore. Everything about the two of them was mismatched, but for the way they roused Raina. In that, they were perfect equals.

As the sky grew lighter, her instincts urged her, Go. Miah would be waking soon to start his long workday. She always slipped out before he rose, worried he’d try to kiss her good-bye. Worried one kiss would be all it took for them to tear aside this flimsy barrier and find themselves clawing at each other’s clothes, hungry hands moving over familiar skin. And tempting as the sex was, it wasn’t fair. Because he was a good man, and it meant far more to him than it did to her. He was rare, that way. Sex was an expression of his feelings for a woman.

For Raina, sex was merely the scratching of an itch. And that itch was all she felt, for men. All she wanted to feel for them. It made her think of that other man, one too cold to ever get truly close to. A beautiful shell, too glossy-smooth for the creeping vines of attachment to take hold. Safe. The man at her back? Dangerous.

For long minutes she willed herself to wake Miah, to get her balls together and rip off this Band-Aid, quit leading the man on. But the morning air was cold, his body and the covers so warm. And she was so goddamn tired from not having slept properly in what felt like forever.

But it had to happen.

Miah’s arm was draped along her side, his exhalations hot and lazy on the back of her neck. She touched his wrist, stroking softly until he stirred.

“Hey,” he murmured, then yawned into her hair.

“I want to talk to you, before you have to start work.”

“Talk away.”

She took a deep breath. “These past few weeks have been awful.”

“Yeah.”

“But this has been nice. Us, I mean.” She could sense his hopes rising, and realized her wording had been cruel in its kindness. “But it has to stop. It’s been simple, but it won’t stay that way.”

He rolled her over, and suddenly she was losing her footing in this talk, that handsome face like a punch to rearrange her priorities. Even after a few hours’ sleep, his breath was sweet. “What do you mean?”

“You and me, pretending like we can just spend night after night in the same bed together, and not take things too far.”

He smiled faintly. “Would that really be so awful?”

Reckless, tempting logic. But she knew better than to trust it. “Not at first, no.”

“We both know what we’re missing, Raina.” His hand closed around her wrist, and her breathing grew shallow as she let him lead her slowly, so slowly, between their bodies, then cup her palm to the front of his shorts. She swallowed, head swimming.

Too true. I know exactly what I’m missing. She could feel precisely that, stiff and hot against her hand. If any other man on the planet tried that shit with her—took her hand and showed her where to put it—she’d have torn him a second asshole. But she trusted Miah implicitly, far more than she trusted herself. She indulged him for a single, incendiary stroke, then gently escaped his grip.

“I won’t lie,” she said softly. “I do miss that. I want that, or my body does. But you need things I can’t give you. And you deserve those things.”

“You mean love.”

Intimidated by the eye contact, she drew closer to speak below his ear. “Love, for keeps, whatever you want to call it. Dating, marriage, kids, forever—all that stuff any other girl on earth would die to give you. The most I’m willing to offer you is sex, and I know that’s not enough.” And that was the cruelest part, because she knew how good they were. She wanted him so bad right now her body was begging her mouth to promise him anything, just to feel him inside her again.

He sighed, the noise thin with annoyance, steaming against her temple. “You think I can’t be selfish, too? Can’t make this just about sex?”

“I know you can’t. Not with me, anyhow.”

“Wow. Think that highly of yourself, do you?”

She pulled back to meet those dark eyes. “I’m not blind. I see how you look at me. And I felt what I did to you, when we were together—both the good and the bad.” The wonder of their chemistry, then the aching, dogging grief that tailed the both of them well after she’d broken things off. She kicked away the covers and left the bed. “You’re the most eligible man in Fortuity, cowboy. You should have moved on ages ago.”

“You’re not that easy to replace.”

“Well, try harder. Because this is never going to end with you and me and a farmhouse full of brown-eyed babies, Miah.”

As she pulled on her socks, he asked, “It’s him, isn’t it? Welch.”

She sought his gaze, held it. “No, it’s not.”

“Don’t lie to me. People in this town talk, and I’ve heard from plenty of them, asking me how I feel about the way my ex has been flirting with the developers’ corporate mercenary. The public face of the casino that’s brought nothing to this town so far except death.”

“Those murders have nothing to do with Duncan Welch—he risked his job to help us.”

“Doesn’t change how people think of him, though. And his personality’s not doing him any favors. He keeps strutting around town the way he does, he’ll wind up with worse than the broken tooth Tremblay gave him. You’d be a fool to get yourself associated with all that.”

“Welch means far less to me than you do, so trust me—my ending things between us, it’s nothing to do with him. It’s about me, and you know it. It always has been. We had the only break-up in history where the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ bit was true.”

“I’ve seen the way you two talk, in the bar.” Miah sat up. His black hair was rumpled, his arms tan against his dark gray tee. So handsome she had to turn away.

“And he can no doubt see the way you and I look at each other,” she said. “But Welch is nothing to me beyond a customer and a curiosity. But you—you’ve been my friend since we were kids. You’re my ex.” She chanced a quick glance. “The past few weeks we’ve been each other’s therapy. But I’m stopping it, because deep down I know I’m using you, and as good as it’s felt up until now . . . it’s starting to feel shitty.”

Miah seemed to hold in a reply.

“I hope you’re using me, too,” she added, and stepped into her boots, their leather cold and stiff. “Though I’m afraid I know you better than that.” He gave too willingly to possibly know how to exploit anybody.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, planting his elbows on his thighs. “Guess we’re going back to bartender and patron again, then.”

She took the elastic off her wrist and snapped it around a sloppy bun. “Bartender and patron—and hopefully friends, for both our sakes. And for the sake of the club.”

Before this summer, the Desert Dogs had been nothing more than the name they’d called their bygone gang of childhood friends. Back then, they’d spend long summer days hiding from the baking sun in the auto shop, dicking around on motorcycles, thinking high school would go on forever. They were in their thirties now, and life had lost its simplicity. Miah was married to his job, and Raina was tethered to her dad’s bar. Their friend Casey had disappeared to chase after shady money for close to ten years, earning himself a criminal record in the process, and not returning until a few weeks earlier. His older brother, Vince, had done time as well, for recreational felonies. Alex was dead. And the mysteries shrouding Fortuity seemed unlikely to lift any time soon, so the four of them—Vince, Casey, Miah, and Raina—had resolved to come together again, but with a purpose now. To protect their town from threats unknown, while the law was preoccupied with the more obvious ones.

Miah didn’t reply, looking more weary than annoyed. She sighed and stepped close; touched his dark hair, laid a kiss on the top of his head. “You always were too good for me, Miah.”

“Says who?”

“Everyone but you, I imagine.”

He caught her wrist, holding it until she met his eyes. “Whatever you are to me,” he said, “it counts for a lot. I ever hear about you going with some man who has the nerve to say that to you—that you’re not good enough for him or for anybody else—I’ll have more than words for him.”

She smiled sadly as he let her go. “I know you would. And I know I’m a fool for running from what you’ve got to offer. Again.”

His lips thinned to a tired smirk. “You always were good at running.”

She nodded, throat tight and hurting. “Watch me go.” She checked for her keys, grabbed her helmet off Miah’s dresser. As her fingers closed around the door’s cool knob, she heard words at her back, nearly too soft to make out.

“You know I will.”

The old farmhouse was quiet save for the muted sounds of Miah’s mom in the kitchen. She’d be starting the coffee, probably making pancakes or eggs and bacon or some other perfect, wholesome breakfast, fit for her hardworking husband and son. Some meal Raina never would have made as well, had she ever let herself get deep enough with Miah to wind up a cattleman’s wife. A Mrs. Church. She wasn’t built for that shit. For the softer sorts of nurturing. She’d been birthed by some flighty facsimile of jailbait, raised by a bachelor bar owner who’d needed as much caretaking as he’d offered. She had zero qualifications to be the woman Miah had coming to him . . . and zero interest in earning them. She slipped out the back, skirting the far side of the house like a coward, in no mood to run into the warm and lovely woman who’d never, ever be her mother-in-law.

Her little Honda growled to life between her legs in the cold dawn air, and as she exited the ranch’s big front lot, the grinding of rubber on gravel felt like the only noise in the world.

The wind bit, waking her quicker than coffee ever could. The closer she drew to downtown and home, the heavier the guilt grew.

Any sane girl who wanted something real, something good, would’ve taken what Miah had offered two years ago. Stayed with a man whose body roused hers and whose nature promised stability. She’d have fallen past lust and into love with him, got married maybe, had a kid or two, settled down for a life of relentless reliability. Raina had been given the chance to pick a guy worthy of acting as her anchor, and then what? Resent him for taking away her freedom? Or, worse—lose him, maybe, as she’d lost her dad? Care enough to cling, then lose him to an accident or another woman or a midlife crisis or who knew what? Miah was steady, but he was still a man.

“I can make you happy,” he’d told her once, back when they were lovers. “Why won’t you just let me?”

She hadn’t answered him. Hadn’t been honest and simply said, “I don’t want a man who’ll make me happy. I want to feel relief when things end, not grief. Why would anyone choose grief?”

Regrets were ugly, but they scattered like ashes soon enough.

It was attachment you had to look out for. Affection. Love. There was a certain line, where emotions were concerned, past which experiences ripened to memories, and it couldn’t be passed over lightly.

Love had bones to it. Solid, rattling things bent on cluttering you up long after the soft parts melted into the ether. You had to carry those bones around with you. Make room for them, dust them, trip over them.

She parked behind the bar and headed for the back door.

Sex and moments of easy companionship were enough—just don’t let those bones grow in. Keep it soft and shapeless with no skeleton, no means to follow you when the time comes to walk away.

Raina stepped across the very threshold where she’d been left as a baby, and into a thousand dusty memories of her dad. She shut the door behind her, feeling interred.

Good God, what was she doing here? She should have sold this place and moved on three years ago, after he’d died, quit surrounding herself with nostalgia for the only man she’d ever truly loved, and given these wounds a chance to finally heal.

There was still time. A flashy new bar and grill was coming to town in the next year, ahead of the casino, and only a block west of Benji’s, on Station Street. The outsiders would be tearing down the derelict old tack shop and building from scratch. They had big money, and big plans, and undoubtedly stood a better chance at attracting the future gaming tourists than Raina would. They’d serve food, with a side of clean, friendly, faux-rustic charm. That basically left Raina cornering the Friday night fistfight market, with not nearly enough profits coming in to fund the overhaul she’d need to put in a kitchen, hire more staff, and undertake the renovation necessary to stay competitive.

And why bother? This place had been her dad’s project, not hers. He’d opened it just before she showed up, and with Raina’s mom MIA, he’d struggled to nurture his child and his business in tandem. This bar had been her home her entire life . .&#