The Biker's Hidden Heiress novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: House Rules

Rafe sets the terms, Mabel warms to her, Otis wants her gone, and Rafe lies to Dorian on the phone with her watching.

"Calla Caruthers," I said.

The name came out cracked and quiet.

I had not said it out loud in five hours, and it sounded like somebody else's.

Rafe didn't blink.

"Caruthers," he said. "Like the hotels."

"My father built them."

"The one who died in the spring."

"Yes."

"And the man on the television?"

"He was marrying me today."

I watched Rafe turn that over.

Then he nodded once, as if I had told him the price of a part.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

"You can stay until you can walk down my stairs without holding the rail."

I stared at him.

"There are rules," he said.

He held up one finger.

"You stay in the back rooms. Nobody sees you from the road, the bar or the yard."

A second finger.

"You do what Mabel says. She's bossier than I am and she has a better arm."

A third.

"You don't leave this mill. Not for air, not for a phone, not because you got a good idea at three in the morning."

"Those are a lot of rules for a man who won't say why he's doing this."

"Because you came out of that road bleeding."

"That's not a reason."

"You were apologizing," he said. "Nobody should be that sorry about running from a church."

The door opened before I could answer.

A small woman in an apron came in with a tray and glasses on a cord around her neck.

She had silver hair in a braid and the walk of someone who had been on her feet for forty years.

"There she is," she said. "I'm Mabel. You owe me a pair of scissors and an apology for what you said about my mother."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm kidding. You didn't say anything but a name, and it wasn't mine."

She set the tray on the bed.

It held broth, two pills and a glass of water with a straw in it.

"Drink all of it, and Rafe, get out so I can wash her."

"I need to look at her leg first," Rafe said.

"I looked at her leg."

"It's seeping."

Mabel gave him a long look over the top of her glasses.

Then she sighed and went to the door.

"Five minutes, and I'm standing in the hall with the door open."

She did exactly that.

I lay very still.

Rafe pulled a chair to the foot of the bed and sat.

He had given me one of his shirts, gray and soft and far too large, and it ended halfway down my thighs.

"I'm going to lift this," he said. "Only as far as the bandage."

"Okay."

His hand was warm.

He folded the cotton up my left thigh slowly, an inch at a time, and I felt his knuckles on my skin.

The bandage ran high.

Higher than I had known.

He peeled the tape back, and cool air touched the stitches.

His thumb rested on the inside of my thigh, just below the wound, and stayed there a second longer than the dressing needed.

I stopped breathing.

He didn't look up.

A muscle moved in his jaw.

"Does that hurt?" he asked, and his voice had gone lower.

"No."

"Good."

He cleaned the line of stitches with a cold, wet pad, and I gripped the sheet in both fists.

The skin under his hand was alive in a way I hadn't felt in four months.

Dorian had kissed me for a whole season and never made me feel this.

I hated that I noticed.

"There," Rafe said, and pulled the cotton down.

He stood, and for a moment he was between me and the lamp, a big dark shape with a cut vest and a ruined arm.

Then he left without another word.

I heard low voices in the hall.

Mabel's, and then another man's, deeper and flat, whom Mabel called Otis.

"She's worth half a million, Rafe."

"I know what she's worth."

"Then why is she in your bed?"

"Because I said so."

"That money's already spent, brother," the deeper voice said.

It was a warning, and it wasn't aimed at me.

"I know what I spent it on," Rafe said.

Their boots moved away.

I lay there with the pills going warm in my stomach and wondered what money they meant.

I decided it was the reward.

Somewhere downstairs a phone began to ring.

It was an old one, a real bell, and it kept ringing for a long time.

Then it stopped.

A minute later Rafe was back in the doorway, and he was holding the receiver of a corded phone, stretched on its long wire from the hall.

He put his palm over the mouthpiece.

"It's for me," he said. "But it's him."

My whole body went cold.

I heard a man's voice in the speaker, small and tinny and perfectly kind.

"Mr. Kincaid? Dorian Halsey. I'm sorry to call so late. I'm looking for a very sick young woman."

Rafe held my eyes.

He took his hand off the mouthpiece.

"Nobody here," he said.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend