A Secret Vow: A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance (3 page)

“He hit her, Croak. Slapped her right in the fucking face, in broad daylight. Like she’s some street-level hooker.”

“That’s not your business. You know that.”

“I’m getting tired of being told what is and isn’t my business, Croak.”

“You know we need him. We can’t afford to piss him off. He just got promoted to major.”

“That’s appropriate. He’s a major asshole.”

“Funny, as always. But take what I’m saying to heart. You can’t do a thing to touch Grady Freeman. I’m telling you right now: stay away from him. Stay away from his girl. Don’t upset the balance.”

Croak leans back, clearly letting me know that this conversation is over. The anger in my chest has cooled into something black and solid. It’s not going anywhere, though. “Croak,” I start to say, but he waves me off.

“Enough. There’s nothing more to discuss.” He grabs a bottle of vodka and two glasses from the table next to us and pours a pair of shots. “Have a drink with me.” He hands one to me and raises his in the air. “To tranquility.”

Our rims clink in the air.

Croak stands up, clapping his hands together. I can see the party face settle back down over his features. The calm, cool, and collected Croak is gone, replaced by a debaucherous idiot I barely recognize. “It’s a party, Mortar. Have a good time.” Then he stumbles away, leaving me alone on the couch with a half-finished shot in my hand.

I take another look around me. He’s right about one thing: it is a party. Everyone I lay eyes on is in the throes of a drunken rager. Music vibes through the air. Sometimes, when I’m in a good mood, it feels like the bass is working my heart for me.
Thump, thump
, pump, pump. Tonight, though, it’s more like a jackhammer in the eardrum.

There are girls everywhere. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve taken someone home just to fuck out my bad temper. But I just don’t have it in me right now.

I look down at the shot. It reflects the purple gleam of the black lights purring from the ceiling. I toss it back. The burn down my throat feels good. It feels like fire. That’s what I want right now—flame.

I set the glass down on the table, then steal one last glance at Kendra. She’s facing away from Grady, who is laughing as he palms the thigh of the girl on his other side. Her face is dark and brooding. She deserves someone who makes sure she never frowns again.

I’m that guy.

I come to a decision. Cop or no cop, with or without Croak’s permission, I’m going to claim Kendra.

I’m going to make her mine.

Chapter 2

Kendra

“I hate it.”

“What about this one?”

“I’m sorry, but that one isn’t great, either.”

The wedding planner sighs and closes the binder full of floral display photographs. I can tell she’s disappointed, but honestly, it doesn’t really matter. It’s not like this wedding is ever actually going to happen. Grady and I have been engaged for going on five years, and the idea of going through with the marriage itself seems to be a distant afterthought for him. The engagement is good enough—keeps me locked into him. There’s no escaping the giant rock on my finger letting everyone within a thirty-yard radius know that I’m property of Grady Freeman.

He was supposed to come with me today to the wedding planner’s office to go through floral displays and then cake tasting for the thousandth time since we first got engaged. But he isn’t here.

In fact, I haven’t seen him since last night. The last image I have of him is his screaming face shoved against the door of the taxi after he tossed me inside and sent me home. As if I’m some misbehaving kid getting sent to her room. I didn’t fall asleep until near dawn, but he never came in.

It isn’t the first time he’s stayed out all night. There are always rumors floating around about all the “house visits” that Officer Freeman loves to pay to rich, single women around town. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out he is cheating on me, frequently and carelessly. But I stopped caring a long time ago.

Besides, as he so often reminds me, the entire situation is my fault. If he actually has a consistent set of standards in mind, I still have yet to figure them out, because as far as I can tell, they change constantly. I am too skinny one day and too thick the next. Too dark, then too light-skinned. Too submissive, then too loud. There’s never any pleasing him, which in turn means that this is an utterly pleasure-free relationship, because I certainly never find any pleasure in having his sweaty mass heaving above me while he shoves his limp prick inside of me.

His voice has become a part of my own thoughts. Every time I look in the mirror, I can practically hear him shaking his head and dismissing me. “Ugly,” I hear, “fat, mulatto whore.” I have to admit, he has a gift for finding the one thing that you hate about yourself and digging into it ruthlessly. He never misses, never overlooks.

On another level, though, this really is all my fault. I let myself fall into this situation. He was a hero at first, or so I thought. A regular Superman, swooping in to save the day with that badge gleaming on his chest. It had been too easy to just say yes without thinking about what my consent would mean down the road. Now, looking back on the five years since Grady had first entered my life, I want to laugh at how stupid I’d been. The signs were there from the beginning: the irrational anger, the outbursts. It started with a fist smashing into the wall by my head, not quite hitting me, just scaring me. And when I’d cried afterwards, he’d merely looked down at me sobbing on the floor and told me to get up. “I didn’t even hit you.”

The fist got closer, until it wasn’t hitting wall anymore. It started hitting my thighs, my stomach—places that wouldn’t be seen in public. He was a cop and he was clever. He knew how to hurt someone without drawing attention. Before long, though, even that pretense went out the window. The slap at the races last night was only the latest in a long line of bruises and split lips. Every time it happened, I told myself, “That was it. That was the last one.” But then he’d dangle that threat over my head.

That’s what it came down to, in the end: the money. The money, the money, the fucking money. That’s where it started and that’s what keeps it from ending. If only I hadn’t said yes to his loan. “I just want to help you,” he’d cooed, and silly me, I believed him. I hardly believed my ears the first time he used it as a warning. Now it is as rote as the slaps and the insults. Just one more quiver in the daily arsenal of Grady M. Freeman, my fiancé.

“Mrs. Freeman? Are you okay?” asks the lady on the other side of the desk.

My eyes snap up to hers. “I’m not Mrs. Freeman.”

“My apologies,” she stammers. “Of course, you’re right.”

“I’m Kendra. Just call me by my first name.”

“Yes, dear. I will.” She rests her elbows on the desk. “Shall we move on to cake tastings?”

I nod, still lost in the fog of my own thoughts. The wedding planner rings a buzzer and her assistant bustles through the door with three trays of cake bites. I barely listen as she rattles off the ingredients and benefits of each one. My face is numb and blank, surveying the soggy crumbs.

I pick chocolate. Grady hates chocolate.

* * *

I strip off my jacket and pull my hair back into a ponytail as I push through the front door. It creaks open, swinging wildly on one hinge, and it takes a hard hip bump to convince it to shut behind me.

I hit the light switch with an elbow and watch as the fluorescent bulbs flicker to life. They’re dim and in need of replacing, but they work for now. I survey the space in front of me.

Canvases are stacked in careening piles along the back wall. On every available surface, brushes sit in cups of dried paint next to crusty easels and sculptures I couldn’t afford to take to the kiln to get fired. The chemical smell of paint is overwhelming.

I weave my way between the debris on the floor and throw open the windows. Galveston greets me from outside with a salty kiss. The street below is mostly quiet, save for the occasional bicyclist or dog walker who comes past. I can see a sliver of the beach a few blocks over, just enough to keep me sane.

Tossing my jacket over the back of a chair, I turn back to the room. I can’t help the smile that breaks across my face. This is my temple, my happy place—my art studio. The smell alone is enough to get my blood pumping excitedly. I pull on an apron and stride over to a canvas stretched across an easel. The vague penciled outline of a new piece has been worked carefully from edge to edge. Brush in hand, I dip it into the paint and lose myself in the work.

Sometimes it surprises me how easily I fall back in love with art every time I return to the studio. Every artist starts out similarly enough—just a kid with a sketch pad and some crayons, doodling stick figures and happy homes. For some people, like me, it just clicks in a way that makes more sense than anything else around them.

The real world always veers off course in ways that are disappointing or painful. No painting ever did that to me, though. There’s a sense of satisfaction I get when I look at something I’ve created. It’s complete and perfect in its completeness. People are never like that. Outside the walls of my studio, life never stays in the lines.

Seeing something beautiful take shape beneath my hands is the only bliss I have left.

The crash of waves on the shore and gulls crying that comes through the open window lulls me into a zone while I paint. Hours flit by. Shapes emerge in broad strokes of color as a face slowly comes into focus. Shadow here, the curl of skin texture there, the hint of a light refracting in the iris…

“That’s an awful sad face,” someone behind me says.

I know that voice. I whirl around.

Mortar leans against the doorjamb, hands stuffed in his pockets, as if his being here is the most natural and nonchalant thing in the world.

“What are you doing here?” I ask. Then I catch sight of myself in a mirror and blush. I’ve got paint streaked across my forehead, my hair is pulled back into a sloppy ponytail, and the apron I’m wearing wouldn’t be out of place in a grandma’s kitchen.

Mortar jerked a thumb behind him. “My bike’s in the shop down the street. I thought I’d take a stroll while the guys worked on it. Lo and behold, the door was wide open, so I stuck my head in. Lucky me.” He grins and my blush deepens. It’s not just an embarrassed flush. It’s also the same heat I felt rising in my cheeks when he’d pulled me into his embrace last night. In my face, my thighs, between my legs, heat flourishes like it’s meant to be there.

“Oh. I see.” I’m at a loss for words. “The door is, uh, broken.”

He looks at the easel behind me. “Like I was saying, that’s an awful sad face.” I turn to face what he is talking about.

It’s my face on the canvas, broad and colorful. He strides over to it. I feel like crumbling into myself like a black hole, just in and in and in to one single point until poof, I’m gone. But that’s not an option. I step to his side.

“It’s a self-portrait,” I say, and immediately I curse myself for saying such a stupid, obvious thing.

His voice comes out almost as a whisper. “It’s beautiful.” He raises a hand like he wants to touch it, then stops short and lets it fall back by his side. Meanwhile, I’m a living, breathing oven, judging by how hot my insides feel.
Where does this heat even come from?
I wonder.

Mortar opens his shoulders to look at me. I’m suddenly so aware of everything about myself, what I’m wearing, how ridiculous I look. It was one thing for him to flirt with me when I’d spent all night getting ready to go out, putting on that dress and those heels, the works. But it is a whole different thing to be seen like this, paint-smudged and sweaty.

His eyes don’t seem to agree. He looks me up and down and I see that same twinkle in them that I’d seen last night. In some ways, it reminds me of Grady. There’s the same kind of hunger in there, a sort of wild animal dominance. But there’s a softness in it, too.

Or maybe I’m just reading way too much into a pair of eyes.

He gives a tight nod, like he’s seen what he was looking for. Spinning away from me, he starts to stroll around the cramped space, examining all the drawings hung up along the walls. I gulp and shiver before I follow him. This man does something strange to my body when he’s close.

“Why isn’t this one finished?” he asks. He points up at a big canvas with several large blank areas.

“I couldn’t afford to buy new paint to finish it,” I admit.

His eyebrows furrow. “Grady has plenty of money. Why doesn’t he just buy you the supplies you need?”

“He thinks it’s a waste. I’ve never made much from selling this stuff.”

“How’s that? They’re incredible. People must be dying to get their hands on it.”

“Mostly because it’s hard to sell half-finished paintings.”

The frown deepens. “Let me get this straight, People want to buy them. You don’t have the money to get new supplies to finish the ones you’ve started. And Grady won’t help you get what you need?”

I nod, unsure of what Mortar is driving at. Why does he care about this stuff?

“I don’t get it.”

There are a million things buzzing through my head that I’m dying to say.
Because he’s an asshole
, or,
because he can use the promise of more money to manipulate me,
or,
because I still owe him a fortune in loan payments ever since I was foolish enough to try to buy this place on my own in the first place.

But I can’t say any of that, as true as all of it is. Instead, I settle on a forced shrug and, “It’s a long story. A long, boring story.”

The mention of Grady brings him to mind. He sure as hell wouldn’t be thrilled to walk in and find Mortar waltzing around my studio. And he would be even less pleased if I told him that Mortar’s presence is making my heart beat ten times faster in my chest.

I set my jaw and steel myself against the soft heat between my legs. The man in front of me is nothing but trouble. Everything about him screams, “Don’t get involved!” The cocky swing of his arms, the tattoos peeking above his shirt collar, the winged skull stitched on the back of the leather jacket he’s wearing. I remind myself that he is a criminal. I’ve seen him before, on the nights in the past when Grady took me to the midnight races. Mortar was always in the thick of things, handling huge sums of money that made my dizzy just by looking at them. Nothing good follows something like that.

I stay leaning against the windowsill while Mortar does a slow lap around the room, looking at everything on display. He takes his time. I wonder if he is genuinely appreciating everything or just putting on a show for me. I remember his crack from the night before about finding a woman to raise a family with, and I wonder how serious he was about that, too. I dismiss it—no chance. A man like that is nothing but a lone wolf.