Gypsy king

“What’s the plan, Dash?” Emmett asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t want any more surprises. I underestimated the reporter. That stops now. She’s digging—deep—and we need to stop it.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Work. Is Leo in the garage?”

He nodded. “He’s finishing the pinstripes on the Corvette. Isaiah is doing the routine jobs on the board.”

“What about you?”

“We got a new Harley rebuild to bid.”

Normally, we did those together so we could bounce ideas off one another. “Can you do it alone?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Good.” Following Bryce to the motel hadn’t ended the way I’d hoped. Guess it was time to try a different approach.

I WALKED into the Clifton Forge Tribune, taking a quick look around. I’d lived my entire life in this town yet hadn’t been in this building before. Up until now, I hadn’t had to bother with the press.

“Hi there. Can I help you?” The guy at the front was a dead ringer for Santa Claus. In fact, I think this guy was Santa during the a

“Just looking for Bryce.” I pointed to the door that I assumed led deeper into the building. “Is she through here? Never mind. I’ll find her.”

The wheels of his chair rolled across the floor, but he was too slow to stop me. I pushed through the door. Bryce was sitting at a desk near the back, alone in the room.

Her eyes lifted from her laptop, her gaze narrowing as I strode down the aisle. She leaned deep into her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. Then she quirked an eyebrow, all but daring me to unleash hell.

“Sorry, Bryce.” The man from the front caught up to me, his heavy steps thudding on the floor.

“It’s okay, Art.” She waved him off. “I’ll deal with our guest.”

The moment he was gone, she recrossed her arms, the movement pushing her breasts higher.

My eyes involuntarily dropped to her cleavage. The woman had a great rack. When I met her eyes again, that smirk was even stronger. Busted.

“Mind if I sit?” I slid a chair away from the empty desk in front of hers, straddling it backward.

“What can I do for you today, King?”

King. I’d hated that fucking nickname ever since kindergarten, when little Vanessa Tom had called me King every time she snuck up on me at recess and pinched me. But there was no way I’d let my a

She knew it too.

Goddamn it, she was a piece of work. Bryce sat there, looking bored as she waited for me to answer her question. I chose silence, studying her face for a few long moments.

Her full lips were irritating, mostly because I couldn’t stop wondering how they’d feel when I licked them. Her beautiful eyes drove me mad because they saw too much. I hated that her dark hair was my favorite length, not too long to get in the way and blow in my face when she was behind me on my bike.

Everything about her pissed me off because of my body’s reaction.

“Read your story.” I plucked a copy of today’s paper off the desk. “Looks like Cody was more forthcoming with you than he was with me.”

“I never reveal my sources.”

I tossed the paper aside and met her gaze. The silence settled and I counted to ten. Then twenty. Then thirty. Most people cracked by fifteen, but not her. Bryce kept that arrogant smirk on her face like she’d been born with it. Her eyes were bright and they held my stare without so much as a hint of fear.

Damn this woman. I liked her. That was my real problem. I liked her. Which was going to make threatening her a hell of a lot harder. That, and she didn’t seem to be intimidated by me one bit.

“You don’t scare easily, do you?”

“Nope.”

“What’s your game here?”

“My game?” she repeated. “I’m not playing a game. I’m doing my job.”

“But it’s more than that, isn’t it? You’re after more than just the details of this murder.”

She lifted a shoulder. “Maybe.”

“Why? What did we do to piss you off?”

“This isn’t personal.”

Yeah, right. No one worked this hard when it wasn’t personal. This entire thing went deeper than her need to do her job. She wasn’t reporting a murder investigation for the good of the populace. Everything about this was personal.

Why? What was driving her to push so hard? From what I’d found out about her, she’d been successful on TV in Seattle. Had they fired her? Was she trying to prove herself to an old employer? Or her father?

Or herself?

“What do you really want?” I asked, going for broke. Sometimes the best way to get answers to your questions was to toss them out there.

She quirked an eyebrow. “You expect me to just lay all my cards out?”

“Worth asking.”

Bryce leaned forward on her desk, her eyes finally showing that addictive spark. “I want to know why the Tin Gypsies shut down.”

“That’s it?”

Bryce nodded. “That’s it.”

I’d been expecting something more. Maybe that she wanted to see all the former Gypsies rotting in prison. “Why?”

“You were the leader of one of the most powerful motorcycle gangs in the region. I’m sure that meant money. And power. Yet you shut it down without any explanation. For what? A life as a grease monkey? No way. It’s too easy. It’s too clean. You’re hiding something.”

“We’re not,” I lied. We were hiding so much that if she knew the truth, she’d never look at me the same way again. There’d be no more hints of attraction, no checking me out when she thought I wasn’t noticing. She’d look at me like the criminal I’d been.

Like the criminals we’d all been.

“Ah, yes. The standard deflection.” Bryce rolled her eyes. “Sorry. I’m not buying it.”

“There’s no big story here.” Another lie that she wasn’t going to believe.

“If that’s the truth, then why did you break apart?”

“Off the record?” I asked.

“No way.”

“Of course not.” I chuckled. And of course, she wasn’t cutting me any breaks. I’d always liked the feisty ones. “Then I guess we’re at a stalemate.”

“A stalemate?” She scoffed. “This is no stalemate. I’m twenty steps ahead of you and we both know it. Why exactly did you come in here today?”

“My dad is i

“I’m not scared to look like a fool.” She’d called my bluff—like always—but I wasn’t buying it. Something flashed in those eyes that looked a lot like the first sign of weakness.

“You sure about that? New reporter in a new town, going balls-out on a murder investigation like she’s some wa

“Yes. Your point?” she asked through gritted teeth.

“My point is . . . my family has lived in Clifton Forge for generations. We’re well-known. And well liked. In their day, so were the Gypsies.”

“So you’re saying if I don’t take your side that people in town will hate me? I can live with that.”

“Can you? Small-town newspaper, can’t be making a ton of money. It only takes one rumor that you’re printing false information for people to stop reading.”

The color rose in her cheeks, the fire flaring in her eyes. “I don’t like being threatened.”