The safe house was up near Big Bear, tucked away from all the little camps and nice vacation homes, down a long undeveloped road. I hadn't seen another house, or a store, in at least twenty minutes. My heart sank. When they said safe house, I thought they meant some nondescript place in the suburbs, somewhere not connected to my father. Somewhere connected to civilization at least. Not this. This was in the middle of nowhere. It didn't matter whether I knew where we were or what towns we passed through on the way. There was nothing out here.
I was completely cut off from everything. There would be no cell reception, and it wasn't like I could jump on his bike and ride away. I'd been a passenger on motorcycles, but never driven them myself. I wondered whether Blaze knew that, if that was the reason for no car. Shit. Blaze was less and less my hero, the biker who was kind and gentle with me in the hotel. No, he was becoming more and more like one of my father's hired thugs. Just another asshole.
I watched her standing in front of the house, taking it all in, and I searched her expression for any sign of disdain. I was just waiting for a condescending remark, something she would do or say that would make me hate her. Right now, I wanted to pick her up, throw her over my shoulder, and take her to the bedroom. Christ, on the bike when we were riding over here, I couldn’t stop thinking about her and her hands wrapped around me. When we pulled over at the gas station, it was all I could do to stand with my feet planted in the ground outside the door and just wait, to keep myself from going in there and having my way with her. That would have been really classy, Blaze, taking her in a dirty gas station bathroom. That would have been a great way to show her you’re not just some thug.
I could not stop thinking about Dani, not since that night. I had never before been so distracted by a girl. And when she walked in the door of Guillermo’s house, the only thing I could think about that I was going to see her again. But in this scenario? No matter how much I wanted to throw her on the bed, put my mouth on her *, I couldn’t. Not with Guillermo Arias’ daughter. He would kill me, and maybe even her.
If I was reluctant to get involved with Guillermo before, strictly from a business perspective, that feeling was a million times stronger now. He was not some mid-level criminal. It was hard to get good intel on the guy because he laid low, but what I’d gotten said he was running one of the biggest smuggling operations in the country, if not the continent. Rumor had it he trafficked in a lot of things, and I suspected that included women and kids. I just couldn’t get anyone to confirm anything, only that he was ruthless when it came to his enemies. And I had no interest in being one of his enemies.
The fact that I’d been unable to get much reliable information about him made me more unsettled. Whispered rumors weren’t a good sign. This was a guy I wasn't sure about dealing with already, and now I'd gone and bedded his daughter. If a guy like this found out...I didn’t want to think about what he would do to me or to the club. Or to her.
Dani was angry with me. She had every right to be. Her father had dropped this bomb on her, and here I was, the one taking her here against her will. But she had to understand I was just doing my job. It wasn’t like I had run off with her on my bike the night we screwed and taken her up here to the cabin. Although I had to admit, the thought of doing that wasn’t completely unappealing.
No, this girl is off limits. I needed to remember that if I wanted to survive-and if I wanted her to survive. Her father was dangerous.
Then Dani looked at me with those big eyes, and I melted inside. Shit, this was going to be hard.
“This is the safe house?” Dani asked.
I nodded. “It’s my place.” Say something snide, I thought. Something about this shitty little cabin. Something I can hate you for saying. I felt vulnerable bringing her here and showing her the house. It was personal, and it felt too much like letting her into a part of myself I was sure she didn’t belong. She was from a different world, one that had no place in it for me. This cabin was mine, the only place where I could be away from all the other dirty shit in my life. Letting her intrude on this might be a huge mistake.
“It’s really quiet up here,” she said, looking around.
“It’s why I like it.” I didn’t just like it-I loved it. There was no one around, not for miles. I had saved for years to buy my patch of dirt up here in the middle of nowhere. The nearest neighbor was ten miles away. Almost all of this was forest. The road that ran through here was a dirt one, and there was no internet, no cable, no cell phone connectivity. It was away from the tourist crap, and that made it perfect for me.
“Listen to that,” Dani said.
“What?” I looked over my shoulder. I’d been careful about checking for a tail on the way up here. I thought I’d spotted one when we left Guillermo’s place, but I couldn’t be sure. The car had disappeared before we got too far, and I was confident we hadn’t been made coming up here.
“There’s nothing,” she said. “Absolutely nothing. It’s completely still. No honking, no traffic.”
“Yeah, just the sounds of birds and the wind rustling through the trees. It’s why I love it here.”