Page 23 of Her Bad Boy

"Bove."

"That's quite a chick you've got there. Who would have thought that such a button down A.D.A. would be such a freak in the sheets, huh?"

"Who is this?" he asked, although he had an inkling already.

"We need to talk. Tomorrow night."

The man gave directions to a place that Lucas was unfamiliar with.

"Come alone. I think you realize that I'll know if you don't."

He agreed, of course, not seeing that he had much choice. He could hardly run to the police.

It was an abandoned warehouse. He had men there but outside of the perimeter in which he thought they might be easily detected.

He'd done his homework about the spot, even polishing up his information about the person he thought had called, just in case. Like Allie, he preferred to be prepared rather than surprised.

And it was exactly who he thought it was. Daughtry, as well as one of the men Lucas recognized as being part of the chief's own private mafia, which was part of how he'd managed to get away not only with molesting and sexually harassing countless innocent women over the years, including Allie, but how he'd also managed to line his own pockets and those of the men who were loyal to him.

In truth, what Daughtry was doing wasn't much different from what he did, but then, he hadn't taken an oath to protect and serve. The taxpayers didn't pay his salary, and, although he had definitely committed crimes in his time, none of which were against women—certainly nothing like what he had personally done to Allie.

"Did you wonder why I really hadn't done much about the way you jumped me that night, Bove?" the chief asked expansively when the two of them stood about ten feet apart from each other.

"I was trying to stop you from molesting and probably raping a woman, if you were given the opportunity," Lucas returned much more calmly than he felt.

"Ah, yes. Your little whore. Is she as good a piece of ass as she felt like to me? Nice boobs, those." he asked, turning to laugh with his compatriot.

Although the memory of the livid bruises on the underside of Allie's breasts flashed through his mind, he held his tongue, knowing that the other man was just trying to bait him.

"You shot pretty high above your station with her, didn't you? Or was that your plan all along? To try to get close to someone in the D.A.'s office, hope to get them to spin things your way?"

"What do you want, Daughtry?" His patience was wearing very thin.

"She's compromised herself with you. Multiple times."

He flung a manila envelope towards him that he reached down and opened. It contained pictures of them together—in the garage, at the diner, at his place when she returned the gifts—a shot that deliberately looked as if he was giving her those things rather than her returning them—at the restaurant that he was late to and, somehow, one of her stretched up by the tree.

"She's got to go, I'm afraid. Nothing else I can do. Too bad, too. She's good. Probably could have made D.A. in another few years, when old Perry retires, if she had a few friends to help her along the way." His reluctant act could use a lot of work.

Lucas knew that it would kill Allie to lose the job she'd worked so hard to get, and, in the same instant, he knew that he had to do anything he could to prevent that from happening.

Chapter 8

Allie was feeling unusually good that day. Work was coming along well; she'd succeeded in her quest to change some things about her life that had resulted in her having one of the sexiest men on the planet in her bed on what was becoming a relatively regular basis—despite their challenges, and every time they could possibly work it out.

She was learning a lot about herself from him, and he was proving to be the best possible teacher for her, with the ability to be infinitely kind, but also calculatingly, enticingly cruel. He encouraged her to work on changing what she could, what she wanted to, but didn't demand that she do any of it in order to accommodate him, although he did institute rules that would require that she do some things that made her a bit uncomfortable or pushed her rigidly well-ordered, anal retentive buttons. Like eliminating the fifteen-minute rule. Not just for him, but for everyone.

"I can't believe you have any friends at all, considering how badly you treat them. I can at least whip your behind when you try to talk to me as if you've never been late in your life."

"I haven't been!" she protested. They were in bed, and she was trying to lean away from him, although he wouldn't allow her to. "The extremely few times I've been late, it's been someone else's fault—they were late picking me up when they were giving me a ride or something like that."

"And did you expect that the person you were meeting, when you were late, was going to act like an asshole when you got there?" he pressed.

"Well, if she or he had, I would have understood perfectly."

"Yes, well, I am the person you have to worry about the most, and I would not, as I'm sure you realize, by now." A big hand came down to pat a bottom that she would have sworn was still sore, even a week later.

"Humph. I still don't see why—"

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