Page 3 of Cash's Treasure

“Okay,” I say, fighting to push down the flutter in my chest. This is nothing out of the ordinary. Cash and I often grab dinner together after my shift when he’s not too busy, so why do the words feel different this time?

Ugh, I blame Lana for this.

Ever since she joined that romance book club, she’s been insufferable. Over the past couple of weeks, she’s been feeding ideas into my head and making me think things about my best friend that I shouldn’t, and now, I read into every little thing he says or does.

“Let me know if you need anything else,” I tell him, and he nods without looking up, his focus firmly on the receipts he’s reading through.

More patrons filter into the bar, and I quickly become busy but still find my gaze drifting toward the large man working in the corner. I’ve always thought of Cash as handsome, especially when he climbs off his bike dressed in all leather, but there is just something different about him seated there, all serious and sifting through files. It just does something to me.

“If you keep staring at him like that, people will start to think you like him or something.”

“Let it go, Lana,” I say, rolling my eyes at her sudden fixation on my relationship with Cash, but her words do force my attention from him to the bar entrance, where two men just walked in. “We have new customers, maybe we should focus on that.”

“Pfft, let the others handle them. Now about you and Cash . . .”

Everything quickly goes static when my eyes settle on the faces of the two men who just walked in. They are dressed casually in khakis and matching polo sweaters, as if they jumped straight off a GQ magazine cover. I stand frozen to the floor as the taller of the two men looks around the bar, his eyes and nose wrinkled in disgust as he runs them over the patrons. The shorter one taps his shoulder and points at an empty table, and they both walk over and take a seat.

“Kayla, are you listening? Hey, what’s wrong?”

I can make out Lana’s voice. Hell, I can even feel her hand on my shoulder as she shakes me, but I can’t move for the life of me.

In the same room as me, are my stepbrothers. The same people who cheered on my stepmother when she kicked me out of my family home. No, these two were thorns in my side way before that. My father married my cruel stepmother a short two years before he passed, and not even a full day after his funeral, I was homeless.

I can’t fathom why they would be in this bar of all places. No, Mark and Henry would not be caught dead anywhere near an establishment that didn’t require a steep membership fee where they could rub elbows with the wealthy elite.

Are they here for me? But that doesn’t make any sense. They’ve made no effort to contact me in the year since they helped my stepmother force me out of my home. But why else would they be here if not to find me?

The thought sends me ducking behind the bar, and I crouch on the floor, my heart hammering in my chest at the thought of having to deal with them. Getting kicked out of my childhood home was painful, but in hindsight, also liberating. It meant I didn’t have to deal with my stepfamily’s vile tempers.

“Kayla, are you okay?” Lana calls out, and I look up to find her watching me with a worried look on her face.

“Um, yeah,” I whisper shakily. “I . . . I just had a leg cramp. I’ll be okay in a second.”

She stares at me unconvinced but doesn’t call me out on my lie, and when she leaves to serve our new customers, I stay hidden, praying like I never have that the floor will open up and swallow me whole.

Anything to avoid the ghosts of a past I’d thought died with my beloved father.

Chapter Two

Cash

Mine.

I have always thought of Kayla as mine. From the second I almost ran over the tear-stained girl with my bike, I knew she was mine.

Best friends? What a ridiculous term she uses to describe our relationship. The thought that a rough man such as myself could be best friends with a gorgeous, innocent girl like her is hysterical in itself, but . . . I am, if anything, a patient man.

For eleven months, I have let this beautiful girl believe that I am only her friend. That everything I do for her is out of the kindness of my heart. My brothers from the club would laugh at my name being attached to such an absurd description.

Kind? The world is anything but.

I am no exception. Most people assume that just because I run and manage all the Steel Order’s businesses, I am some kind of nerd they can underestimate. What they don’t realize is that any official member of the Steel Order Club has some sort of dark history attached to them.

I just happen to be a very dangerous man, who is also smart with numbers.

Kayla, my beautiful little girl, assumes that everything I do for her is out of the goodness of my heart. No, it’s because she is mine. Every last inch of the perfect girl belongs to me, and I would have claimed her a long time ago if she didn’t need time to heal from whatever past she was running from. Kayla has been skittish from the moment I met her, constantly expecting me to change my mind and kick her to the curb. I’ll give her however much time it takes to see that she can rely on me, that I’m not going anywhere and neither is she. I’m nothing if not a patient man.

Mine!

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