Blaze (Twisted Devils MC Book 4) Read online

  Blaze

  An MC Romance

  Book 4 in the Twisted Devils MC

  By

  Zahra Girard

  Copyright © 2020 by Zahra Girard

  All rights reserved. This ebook or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you'd like to share this book with another, please purchase a separate copy for them. Thank you for respecting the hard work that went into my work.

  Foreword

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  Want More Steamy Action?

  The Twisted Devils MC

  Book one: Razor

  Book two: Rusty

  Book Three: Mack

  The Rebel Riders MC:

  Book one: Thrash

  Book two: Riot

  Book three: Duke

  Book four: Rooster

  Book five: Creole

  Book six: Bull

  The Wayward Kings MC Series:

  Book one: Bear

  Book Two: Ozzy

  Book Three: Hazard

  Book Four: Preacher

  Other books by Zahra Girard:

  His Captive

  Liar

  Chapter One

  Tiffany

  “Tiffany, your numbers are shit. Absolute shit. They make me want to step into the alley and puke my fucking guts out. Do you even want this job?”

  Fingernails tap an intolerable rhythm on my desk and a mess of long, bleached-blond hair falls into my field of view.

  I look up from the pile of paperwork on my desk — account histories, financial projections, risk analysis reports — and stare into a set of malevolent eyes that are framed by a perfectly coiffed mess of wavy, bleached blond hair, hair that sees at least two-hundred-dollars per week spent on it.

  “Yes, Anna. I want this job. I care about this job. And about being professional. In fact, that’s why I’m doing my work,” I say, tapping the stack of papers. “There’s a huge backlog of files and accounts that really need to be audited.”

  She shakes her head. A lone bleached hair frees itself from the perfectly coiffed nest on her head and drifts to land on the rim of my coffee cup. The tip of the strand breaks the surface of my coffee and a delicate chemical shimmer radiates outward — hair spray.

  “That’s not your job.”

  “If we want to call ourselves a responsible financial institution, these are the kinds of audits we need to regularly perform on all our accounts.”

  Again, she shakes her head. Another too-blond strand escapes from her and falls — this one lands on my keyboard.

  “Remind me again: what job did my dad hire you for?”

  “Loan application specialist,” I say, grudgingly.

  “And what position does he hold in the bank?”

  “CEO,” I say.

  It’s a two bank chain, I want to say. But I keep those words to myself.

  “And who manages this branch?”

  “You do.”

  But you shouldn’t.

  “Now, I graduated from Cal State. Remind me again: what college did you graduate from?”

  My teeth nearly snap, I’m grinding them so hard.

  She taps my desk again. “Tiffany. Talk to me.”

  “You know I went to Stanford,” I say.

  Her fingers rap the desk once more and a frustrated sigh breaks through her pursed lips.

  “That’s not what I asked. Everyone knows you went to Stanford — you made such a big deal of it back in high school when you got accepted and about how they were giving you a full ride — but I asked you where you graduated from, not where you went to and then transferred out of because you couldn’t deal with the stress.”

  There’s an angry lump in my throat. I swallow. “I received my degree from Torreon Community College.”

  Satisfied, she nods.

  “So, let me get this straight — and correct me if I’m wrong about any of this — I got my degree from a better college than you, I run this branch, and my father, who recruited and hired you out of pity and as a favor to your father, runs all of Southwest Regional Bank; between the two of us, who do you think is the one who has the authority to define your job description?”

  That angry lump in my throat doesn’t want to be swallowed. In fact, it wants to spit right out of my mouth, along with a ton of vomit and about a million different curse words directed at my boss, Anna Ebri.

  “You do.”

  “Now, as your boss, I’m telling you to forget about that auditing crap. Your numbers are garbage — you’ve brought in only two new clients for the bank this month and it’s already the 28th. If you don’t fix that, I will fire you and then you can go back to the temp agency where you were working for years before I hired you. I mean, I’m sure they’ll be happy to have you back, you are Stanford educated after all.”

  My eyes stay focused right on the paperwork in front of me and I fight to keep my mouth shut; it’s not my fault that most everyone who came in this month — business owners and individual clients alike — were too high risk to merit a loan. And besides, Anna doesn’t want to hear it — I know what she wants to hear. It’s the same song and dance near the end of every month and has been for the way-too-many months I’ve been working here.

  Anna wants to hear a very specific phrase. One she can never hear often enough.

  It’s just going to make me sick to say it.

  “OK, Anna, you’re right. I’ll try harder.”

  The hair spray shimmer floating in my coffee cup wobbles as Anna taps my desk in satisfaction. “Good. Despite your attitude, Tiffany, I know you’re smart and I know that eventually you’ll learn your place here. That’s why I’m going to throw an easy one your way. You see that big guy standing over there by Derek’s desk?”

  I look over to where Tiffany’s pointing. I don’t see a man, so much as I see the back and side of a flannel-wearing mou
ntain with a beard so full that it looks like he’s just emerged from a ten-year hermitage in the mountains, blinking at the brightness of the sun and grumbling at the foreignness of civilization.

  Do we make loans to cavemen?

  He turns as I’m looking at him; he’s being called by my co-worker, Derek. As he turns, his front side comes into full view; the sharp, handsome lines of his face, the brightness of his blue eyes, his ready smile — all of it makes my toes clench in my high heels.

  “Yes. I see him.”

  And I enjoy seeing him. Maybe this won’t be so bad.

  “He came in to fill out a loan application.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You’re going to help him.”

  “I don’t know if that’s the best idea,” I say. Those words come out way more shaky than I’d like. But Anna doesn’t seem to notice and a quick look up at her reveals why — she’s staring at this new guy just as much as me.

  “You need to get your numbers up. Derek doesn’t. He should be an easy client, Derek told me he seems desperate for a loan. So, I’m going to tell Mr. Paul Bunyan over there that Derek is needed in an urgent meeting and that you’ll assist him. Here’s your chance to prove that you can bring in more than two new accounts in a month.”

  “OK,” I say. Two syllables are about all my Stanford-educated brain can manage right now. I can’t stop staring at the man across the bank. Not just because he looks like he could — in the very best way — pick me up, sling me over his shoulder, and take me to some forgotten cabin the woods where he would do things to me that would make me forget all about the outside world, but also because there’s something about him that tugs at my memory. Maybe it’s his eyes. There’s something about how much they shine.

  “Good. Because if you don’t do this, you’re fired. I don’t care what my dad says, I will boot your ass out of here and I will fight tooth and nail to keep you from getting unemployment. So don’t test me, Tiffany. Do your job.”

  She’s made this threat before, and each time has failed to follow through on it. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t scare me, because working here at Southwest Regional is the closest I can get to working in the area I studied for — Finance — considering I finished my education at the prestigious Torreon Community College.

  Anna turns on her heel and saunters across the room to Derek’s desk.

  As she gets close, there’s the briefest of moments where her saunter turns to a stumble and I see a flash of recognition flicker across her face — so brief that maybe it’s a mirage — but then she’s back to being all smiles and, with a crook of her finger and a turn of her wrist, she sends Derek scampering and the Paul Bunyanesque client ambling toward me.

  As he gets closer, his confident smile and bright eyes do more than tickle my memory, they jolt it to life. And my stomach sinks.

  I know him.

  He stops at my desk. His eyes flicker to my chest, hold there for a second — long enough for a blush to break my cheeks — and then those bright eyes wander down to the nameplate on my desk. They scan it without recognition.

  He extends his hand.

  “Ms. Santos, nice to meet you. My name’s Declan Dunne and that lady over there said you’re the woman to see about a loan.”

  The smile on his face is nearly hot enough to set fire to the stack of papers on my desk, and I flush in places that he can’t see.

  His hand hangs in the air for a moment before I gather myself enough to rise and shake it; his grip is unbelievably strong, even though I’m sure he’s doing his best to be gentle, and his hands are firm and scratchy with callouses.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Dunne. Have a seat, please.”

  The flannel-clad Adonis does as I ask and I take a deep breath and focus on the routine of the loan application process — I hand to him a few forms to fill out and I fire up the credit-checking software and turn all of my attention to the screen of my computer.

  I am so glad he doesn’t remember me, I think to myself as I sit in silence, pretending to work on my computer while he completes the forms. It takes several minutes. All the while I keep stealing glances at the man who once was the boy who sat next to me in Biology class — I had a crush on him, then. And he hardly even saw me.

  “There you go,” he says, handing them over.

  My keyboard becomes a symphony of clicks and clacks as I transfer the data in a flash, eager to get this transaction over with and get this man from my past out of here and get Anna Ebri off my back.

  Then, halfway down the page, my eyes come to a jarring stop.

  “I think you might’ve put in an extra zero here in the ‘Requested loan amount’ section,” I say, handing the form back to him.

  “No, that’s right.”

  “That’s fifty thousand dollars. That’s a considerable amount for a loan.”

  “Well, I have a considerable issue to take care of.”

  “I see,” I say, pushing on with the paperwork and praying there are no more obstacles to getting this man his loan. “Can I ask what it is?”

  “You just did,” he says, turning up the wattage on his grin.

  I roll my eyes. Breathe deep. Remind myself that I need this job because I’ve got no other options. Unless I consider Froyo saleswoman at a mall kiosk to be a valid career choice.

  Then I get to the income section of his form.

  I stop. Again.

  “Did you leave a zero out of the declared income section, here?”

  Please, please, please let that be the case.

  “No, that’s right.”

  “That’s not much.”

  His grin turns sideways a bit. His eyes look me over in a way that takes the oxygen from my lungs.

  “There’s other income, Ms. Santos, but, well, I don’t want to declare it.”

  “Is it illegal income?”

  “Uh, shit. Fuck. No. It’s not illegal.”

  My eyes scan the form. “Are you really just a mechanic? Or are you something else?”

  “Just forget I said that. The form is accurate. Or not. Whichever you think, in your excellent and professional opinion, is the most likely to get me this loan.”

  Oh god.

  “Are you literally asking me whether it’s better to declare that you’re a criminal or a poorly paid mechanic?”

  “Listen, Ms. Santos, whatever it is, I’m good at what I do. Fixing cars… or other things.”

  “Mr. Dunne, I’m going to stop you right there and just tell you it’s better for you — and for me — if you just go with being a mechanic. Please.”

  “Got it. Thanks, Ms. Santos.”

  He beams another megawatt, too-charming, incredibly disarming smile at me. If only he had the financial history to back up his confidence.

  And if only we didn’t have the kind of shared history that his not-as-bright-as-his-smile brain thankfully seems to have forgotten. It would be so much easier to turn him down if that was the case.

  “You’re welcome. Now, I’m going to run a credit check on you and we’ll see what we can do about that loan.”

  I roll my eyes back to focusing on my computer screen. All the information is there and, after saying a prayer that somehow he’s been playing a prank on me and is actually a financially stable man in disguise, I depress the Enter key and let the computer do its thing.

  It takes two seconds. It’s never that fast.

  Then I look to Anna. She’s across the bank, sitting on the edge of Derek’s desk — perched like a vulture awaiting its next meal. When she notices me looking to her, she runs her finger across her throat in an unmistakable portent about my career prospects if Mr. Dunne leaves my desk without a loan agreement in hand.

  Still, the number that pops up on my screen is enough to make my jaw drop.

  “Wow,” I say.

  I shouldn’t say anything, but I can’t help myself.

  “I get that reaction a lot,” he says. “So, when can I sign this paper and get my loan?”
>
  He’s still smiling.

  Oh, that poor man.

  “I’ve never seen a score like this,” I stay. My eyes find Anna’s and she makes that gesture again.

  “It’s OK to be impressed. I get it. What do we need to do to finalize this loan? It’s kind of urgent.”

  A few moments elapse where I just stare at the screen and the impossibly low score on it, trying to reconcile my sense of ethics with the fact that I need to keep my job.

  Ethics win.

  “Mr. Dunne, I’m afraid I can’t approve you for this loan. Or any loan. Not even if you wanted to borrow some change for a vending machine.”

  “You’re joking. Don’t mess around with me, Ms. Santos,” he says. His once confident and jovial voice takes on a hard, icy edge.

  “I’m not joking, Mr. Dunne. Your loan application is denied.”

  His icy voice takes on a tone of permafrost. He leans in, calloused, powerful hands thudding onto my desk with sheer menace. This man is different from the boy I remember from high school.

  “Check it again. For your sake.”

  The threat in his posture, the malevolence in his voice, shock me and send me back to a dark memory I’ve spent years trying to forget; for a second, it’s not Declan in front of me — it’s someone else. Someone I’d rather forget. A man I haven’t seen in years, but who visits me every day in my weakest moments and makes me feel less than human every single time.

  I’m frozen.

  He clears his throat. The icy suggestion in his voice warms, just a little. “Ms. Santos, are you OK?”

  Shaking my head clear, I sit up straighter. “Are you threatening me?”

  “No, I’m making a suggestion. Just look it over.”

  A notification pops up on my screen. An interoffice instant message from Anna: Approve him. Now.

  I raise my voice loud enough that she can hear from where she’s sitting on Derek’s desk, glowering at me over the screen of her brand new phone.