Roman (Savage Kings MC - South Carolina Book 1) Read online
Roman
Savage Kings MC - South Carolina
Lane Hart
D.B. West
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
Afterword
Coming Soon
About The Authors
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue were created from the authors’ imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual people or events is coincidental.
The authors acknowledge the copyrighted and trademarked status of various products within this work of fiction.
© 2020 Editor's Choice Publishing
All Rights Reserved.
Only Amazon has permission from the publisher to sell and distribute this title.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Editor’s Choice Publishing
P.O. Box 10024
Greensboro, NC 27404
Edited by Angela Snyder
Cover by Marianne Nowicki of www.PremadeEbookCoverShop.com
WARNING: THIS BOOK IS NOT SUITABLE FOR ANYONE UNDER 18. IT CONTAINS SEXUALLY AND PHYSICALLY VIOLENT SCENES THAT MAY BE A TRIGGER FOR SOME INDIVIDUALS.
Prologue
Roman McNamara
Five Years Ago…
Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan
Tired of tossing and turning in my bunk, I give up on the attempt at sleep and head outside for some fresh air. There’s a cloud of smoke being blown to tatters by the cool night wind, meaning someone is already out here. I don’t smoke much, but a cigarette does sound good right about now. I saw some things out on patrol today I’d really like a way to forget.
“Can’t sleep either?” my friend, Adam, asks while offering me his pack and lighter.
“Nope. So, what’s keeping you up?” I ask as I fumble a bent cigarette out of the badly crumpled package.
He takes a deep pull and then blows it out before answering. “Tomorrow’s my anniversary.”
“Congrats. I mean, I’m assuming you mean your wedding anniversary. Did you get your wife anything?”
He’s silent for several seconds. “Do you believe in soulmates?”
“Soulmates?” I repeat with a chuckle. “What the hell are you smoking over there?” I joke.
“I’m serious,” he says, taking another drag from his cigarette and blowing the smoke out of his mouth into a little cloud between us.
“Do I believe in soulmates? I dunno, man. Maybe, for some people.”
“That’s only because you haven’t met yours yet,” Adam explains. “You’ll know when you do. One day you realize you would give them the world without asking for anything in return. It’s the person you want to just talk to for hours about all the stupid shit and big shit in your life. I’m talking the kind of love that doesn’t break, doesn’t bend.”
“Man, you have been awake too long, or this place is starting to get to you,” I tell him with a good-natured grin. “We’re out here sweating our balls off every day in this desert, most of us thinking about who wants to shoot us, or how bad our feet hurt. You’re over here daydreaming some Romeo and Juliet shit. Something about this place put some romance in you?”
“Trust me, it ain’t this place making me think about it,” Adam says, smiling back at me. “Like I said, it’s my anniversary with Charlotte coming up. I’m just missing her, you know, and thinking about how perfect we are together.” He must be worried I’m going to pick on him some more; because after explaining himself, he lapses into silence.
I think his words over for a few moments while I look around our base camp, until I see him stomp out his cigarette. “I guess you could say my parents are soulmates,” I blurt out before he goes back inside the barracks. “Growing up, it always felt like they had this sort of protective shield around just the two of them. Nothing could penetrate it no matter what the world tried to throw at them. Pops got cancer and lost his job, but my mom never left his side at the hospital. And then, when he was home, she went out and got a job at a restaurant in town, even though she had never had one before. She didn’t get upset or angry at him even though I know she hated it. They were a team, and nothing could come between them.”
“That’s it!” Adam agrees. “That’s soulmates. Your ride or die. Your shelter in a storm. When you’re with her, you feel like you’re finally home.”
“Yeah, okay. But really, man, why are you going on about soulmates in the middle of the night instead of sleeping?”
“Because I fucked up,” he says.
“How did you fuck up?”
“I think…no, I’m certain that people can have more than one soulmate.”
“At the same time?”
“Yeah, at the same time or different times. I dunno, Roman, but they’re out there and, hell, I know that it’s crazy, but I think I have more than one soulmate.”
“Someone other than your wife you mean?” I mutter.
“Yeah.”
“Sounds like you’re fucked,” I tell him with a chuckle.
“I am so fucked,” he agrees. “I never meant for this to happen. I didn’t go out looking for this shit. And now, one way or another, someone I love is going to get hurt.”
“That’s why you’re awake in the middle of the night?” I ask him. “You’re out here trying to figure out who gets hurt and who doesn’t?”
“Yeah.”
“So? What have you decided?” I ask.
“I’ve decided…both of them deserve someone a helluva lot better than me.”
“That’s probably true,” I tease him. “Show me.”
“Show you what?”
“Let me see these two women. I’ll help you decide.”
“They’re both fucking gorgeous,” he says around the fresh cigarette hanging out of his lips while he pulls out his phone and scrolls through his photos. “This is Meredith.” When he turns the phone around, there’s a young, vaguely familiar black-haired beauty smiling at the camera while Adam stands next to her, his arm around her shoulder, both of them in tan t-shirts and sand camo pants. “And this is my wife Charlotte.” He flips to another picture, and it only takes me a half a second to decide that the slightly older woman with long, straight, strawberry blonde hair and bright blue eyes is twice as gorgeous as the first.
“Honestly, man, I’m not sure how you even noticed another woman if you’ve got that hot as fuck wife back home.”
“I didn’t! I wasn’t…I never meant for this to happen.”
“You said vows. You made a commitment to Charlotte. Nothing else should trump that.”
“That’s what I thought too. I finally told Meredith that I’m a married man and that my wife has to come first,” he says as he puts his phone away and puts out his cigarette on his forearm unflinching, like he thinks the deserves the pain.
“So it sounds like you’ve made a decision.”
“I did.
I had,” he agrees. “But then…Meredith told me she’s late.”
I let loose a low whistle. “The whole illegitimate child thing may put a damper on your anniversary.”
“I’m not gonna tell Charlotte, at least not until I know what Meredith is going to do. And I know what you’re thinking — I’m an asshole. I deserve to be in this position. And you’re right. But how the fuck am I supposed to choose between my wife and my kid?”
“I have no clue what to tell you, but you’re gonna have to make a decision, man, and soon.”
“I can’t!”
“You better before life decides for you,” I suggest.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you need to tell your wife about Meredith and the kid before she finds out from someone else.”
“She won’t,” he says.
“You don’t think Meredith will get pissed and tell Charlotte herself?”
“Nah. She wouldn’t do that.”
I find that hard to believe. A woman scorned can be hell on wheels.
“I can’t tell Charlotte. It would kill her, man. Destroy her. I don’t want to hurt her like that just to get the guilt off of my shoulders.”
“So you’re gonna go home to your wife and pretend like your kid doesn’t exist with another woman in some other part of the world?”
Adam is quiet for several long minutes before he says, “Yeah, yeah, I’m gonna do that. Charlotte…we’ll get through it once I’m home. I’ll miss Mere, but she’s a tough girl. I can send her some money every month.”
“You’re in deep shit, man,” I tell him. There is no way in hell he can keep a situation like this a secret forever.
“You can’t tell a soul about this, McNamara,” he insists. I know he’s serious when he switches to my last name, as if he’s giving me an order.
“I won’t,” I assure him.
And at that moment in time, I would’ve bet my life that I would never be the one to betray his trust.
But fate had different plans for all of us.
Chapter One
Roman
Five Years Later…
“I can’t fucking wait for summer,” Hugo says after he straightens from taking his turn and missing it on the pool table in the clubhouse.
Winston, my VP and a man of few words, grunts his agreement.
This round, the third of the night, it’s me and Winston verses Hugo and Cannon. The winter months are slow and boring around here in our tourist beach town, which is starting to show in the depressed demeanor of all the guys.
“No shit. Spring break is just the appetizer before the main course,” Cannon agrees.
“Maybe for you all,” I mutter. “I’m getting too old for college girls.”
“There’s no such thing,” Hugo argues with a dramatic gasp. “Easy pussy is easy pussy, prez.”
“It’s hard to take pride in something you didn’t work hard to earn,” I explain while lining up my shot that goes wide. Grabbing my bottle of beer from the bar, I take a sip before continuing on with my tirade. “Any asshole with a dick would suffice for a bunch of drunk college coeds trying to bang their way through spring break. You’ve talked to enough of these chicks; you know their stories. ‘I don’t want to have any regrets when I start planning my wedding,’ shit like that.”
“Wow, cynical much, Roman?” Cannon asks with a bark of laughter.
“I’m not cynical. It’s the truth.”
“Roman’s ego recently got bruised,” Winston states. He reaches up to stroke his black, closely trimmed beard to try and hide one of his rare smirks. “Some girl called him ‘daddy’ last week. Got him feeling old.”
I glare at Winston while the guys laugh at my expense. That was not exactly something I wanted to be public knowledge. I swear the grumpy bastard enjoys having other people’s misery keep him and his surly-ass company.
“Damn, man! That’s awful,” Cannon, one of the twins who looks like a twenty-one-year-old surfer, has the nerve to say to me.
“Whatever,” I mutter. “I’m done with college girls and their inflated pouts, obsession with selfies and inability to cook fucking spaghetti.”
Before I can continue my rant or force myself to finally admit that I’m ready to start settling down, I feel my phone buzzing from the inside pocket of my cut. And since I’m at the bar with most of the other Savage Kings, that means it’s probably a bullshit, afterhours call about one of the club’s properties. I’ve been managing our rental properties from the beginning and regretting almost every second of it, even though I shouldn’t complain.
I was damn lucky to have met Torin Fury, the president of the original Savage Kings when I first came home from Afghanistan. He thought I would make a good leader for a new chapter in my hometown at a time when I was flailing, trying to find my place in the world again. Torin even threw in some of his own money to help our guys invest in rental properties.
Pulling out my phone, I take a quick glance at the screen and mutter a curse. “Sorry, but I better answer this. If I don’t, he’ll just keep hanging up and calling until I do,” I inform the guys. “What’s up, Ernie?” I ask as I put the phone to my ear.
“Roman! So glad I caught you. You weren’t asleep, were you?” he asks.
“No, Ernie. It’s only ten o’clock.”
“Good, good, good,” he says. “Then that means you can ride on down here and tell your tenants to shut the fuck up.”
I don’t bother to hide my grin since he can’t see me, but I do try to modulate my voice. “What have our tenants done now?” I ask, finding it hard to believe that our widow renter is causing any major problems during her annual trip this week.
“It sounds like a gaggle of geese over there, laughing and carrying on. Sure, they’re some lookers, but these ladies are out of control!”
“Gaggle?” I repeat. Charlotte didn’t come alone this year? Maybe she brought some other thirty-something women who wanted to get away from their men for a week and have a little fun.
“A gaggle! Now, are you gonna do something or not?”
“Can’t you just shove in some ear plugs, Ernie? I bet they’ll be settling down before I can even get there.”
“Do you want me to go over there and do your job? I will, but I won’t do it half as nicely as you. Or I could call the police. Doubt you all need any cops up in your shit, but I’ll do what I have to do to get some goddamn sleep tonight!”
Rolling my eyes at his exasperation, I give in with a heavy sigh. “Fine. I’m on my way.”
“Thanks,” he says with a huff before ending the call.
“Something up?” Winston asks.
“Just got a rowdy crowd over in the Tidelands rental, and Ernie is out for blood.” Sighing, I hang up my pool stick on the wall, telling them, “See you guys tomorrow,” before I head out the door and climb on my bike.
Charlotte Newsom
“Someone’s at the door!” Sydney yells.
“I’ll get it,” I say. “Who the heck would be showing up here at this time of night?” I wonder aloud to my tipsy self on the way to the side entry, which is where it sounded like the knock came from. I open up since there’s no peep hole, just a screen door, and find a tall man in dark clothes standing on the other side of the screen that I keep locked.
“Can I help you?” I ask.
“I think you know why I’m here,” he grumbles.
I rack my alcohol laden mind to try and figure out why he would be here when it finally hits me.
“Shit! Oh, shit!” I say as I unlatch the screen and push it open for him to come inside. “Wait, it’s not Thursday!” I laugh and slap his hard, very hard chest. “You’re a day early, dude! You weren’t supposed to be here until tomorrow night!”
“I wasn’t?” he asks, sounding confused. When I look up, up, and up even further at his face, his reddish-colored brows are bunched up, forehead crinkled underneath a flop of curly, auburn hair.
“Nope,” I answer with a slig
ht sway to the right that I cover up by slapping my palm against the wall while studying our man. “And what’s with this outfit? I asked for a police officer.”
“Huh? Why did you ask for a police officer?” he asks while I take in his attire, a leather biker vest with white patches slung over a plain gray t-shirt with a pair of frayed jeans that have a gaping hole at the knee.
“Well, cops are hot and have handcuffs,” I explain. “But fine, forget it. You’ll do,” I tell him with a wave of my hand. “Tessa loved the Sons of Anarchy. Not to mention you look like a time traveling Jamie Frasier from Outlander.”
“A Jamie-what-the-fuck?” he asks, looking to me and then to the living room where the rest of the ladies are gathered around, laughing and talking about disastrous first dates. None have yet to beat mine and Adam’s. We ate at a new Mexican restaurant and both ended up in the hospital with food poisoning that night. But the next morning, when Adam got released first, he went to the hospital’s gift shop and bought me a bouquet of flowers as an apology and a request for a redo first date, which I happily gave him.
“Look, you screwed up the date and the outfit, so how about you stop asking questions, get your ass into the living room and start taking your damn clothes off already,” I order him since alcohol makes me even bossier than usual. Hiring a stripper is crazy, even I can admit that. But isn’t that what you’re supposed to do for the bride-to-be?
“You want me to take my clothes off?” the eye candy asks with a cocky smirk.