Page 9 of Savage Heart

Dr. Elizabeth Simpson was feeling a terrible, no good, very bad case of the Mondays. On a Wednesday. And she only had herself to blame.

One more shot. One more shot,Tessa’s incessant voice pounded through her already screaming skull.

She’d been invited to Skathi’s baby shower the night before, which—when you consider the purpose of a baby shower—was supposed to be all about the new mom and the coming baby. Fun, cute games with baby themes, soft music, delicate hand foods and fizzy punch, gifts wrapped in pastels and ribbons, and unsolicited advice from moms too happy to provide unwanted stories about their labor experiences. Normal, everyday baby shower stuff. Butnooooo. Someone as badass as Skathi Odinsdottir, the ol’ lady of the Savage Raiders MC president, couldn’t just have anormalbaby shower. Oh no. Of course not! She had to have a full-on party, complete with drinking—notpregnant Skathi, of course—greasy foods, loud music, drunk dancing on tables, loud and uncomfortable stories aboutbedroom antics with big, filthy bikers, and—of course—party crashers.

The party crashers being Skathi’s baby daddy, Odin, Tessa’s old man, Fang, Fae’s fiancé, Hawk, and…the asshole, piece of shit, He-Who-Shall-Not-Have-Space-in-Her-Head club Vice President, Trouble.

Thankfully, the crashers hadn’t crashed in until the party was winding down, but that didn’t stop a totally wasted Tessa from pushing Liz to take that last shot, and because Liz was seething from the appearance of Asshole Piece of Shit, she’d let the brassy bitch push her to over imbibe.

And now she was paying for it.

Rubbing her temples, Liz scanned the daily schedule on her phone and cringed.

Dammit.

She had her normal concierge calls to two residences to do regular checkups on two house bound patients. But then…she had to stop in and do a supplies check.

At the Savage Raiders MC compound.

Since being hired as their on-call doctor almost two years ago, after she’d gotten an out of the blue phone call from Odin, she’d been as professional as possible whenever dealing with the club. She’d pushed for a clean and well-supplied medical room so that she wasn’t forced to do minor surgery in a barroom on a pool table, sticky with spilled beer and…. She shuddered just thinking about it. After Skathi, Odin’s woman, was attacked by the MC’s Cartel enemies, and Liz had been called to tend to her, Odin had given her an offer she couldn’t refuse: be the on-call doctor for the Savage Raiders MC, get five grand a month, whether or not she got called, and an additional five grand when she got called to the compound.

Odin hadn’t known it then, but he’d saved her ass. She’d given up her job as a hospitalist at Summerlin in north Vegas,filled with hopes and dreams, for the promise of starting a clinic with her partner. But things hadn’t turned out the way she’d hoped, and she was hurting for money to cover all the clinic costs and make a living wage. Back then, she’d signed on the dotted line, her belly swirling with conflicting emotions. Now, she was stuck being at the beck and call of the very club that had turned her life upside down ten years ago.

Some of the men who’d looked on as her life was torn to pieces were still members. They still looked at her with varying degrees of pity. Some with wariness. At least Tosser and Bonnie were gone. She’d heard that Tosser had died of a heart attack years ago, and that Bonnie had been killed recently. No details, of course, because that wasclub business.

God, she hated those words. Because to her,club businessmeant business that damaged lives. So, they could keep theirclub businessto themselves, and she’d just do her fucking job, get the fuck out of there, and wait until they needed her again.

Every minute she spent inside the compound was like acid in her blood. No, it wasn’t the same compound she’d known before, ten years ago when the club was just getting started. But the concept was the same: a place where men were allowed to act like jackasses without consequences. Still, though, she couldn’t say no to the club women, the old ladies, who’d only been welcoming to her. Skathi was a badass, Tessa was a ball-buster, and Fae was such a sweetheart. And they had become her closest friends. She cherished having friends again. Even though their men made her want to throat punch them on occasion.

But she was a professional. She’d been trained to deal with any circumstance.

Including seeing her ex.

The father of her daughter.

And acting like he hadn’t ripped her heart out.

God, it had been ten years, you’d think she’d be over it. She’d moved out of her apartment, she’d cut off everyone even remotely connected to him or his club, she’d moved on, she’d had relationships. And yet Erik—Trouble—still owned real estate in her head. And it was a dilapidated, termite-riddled, fire hazard she wanted to raze to the ground while cackling manically. If she were a man, she’d piss on it, but she was a woman, so she’d just spit on it. Like a fucking lady.

Knowing she had to go to the compound, her day was a test of her patience and focus. She refused to bethat doctor, the one who only saw her patients as a paycheck or a medical record number, so she was determined to not let her poor attitude reflect in her work.

It took serious fortitude, copious amounts of caffeine, and a full bar of Gertrude Hawk Dark Chocolate and Peanut Butter, but she made it through the day.

Now, she was sitting outside the compound, having been let through the gates by a prospect, Jack, and was staring at the building through her windshield, cursing.

Just get in there, get the job done, and get the hell out of there.

Easier said than done, especially since she recognized one of the motorcycles parked toward the side of the massive old firehouse building.

The bike was massive and menacing, matte black on black, with a beautifully painted image of the MC’s emblem on the gas tank. The wolf’s head, the battle axes, and the words “The Sons of the Gods” perfectly personified the men she’d met. The men she’d known all those years ago. All of them dogs with god complexes.

She remembered every face of the men who’d been in the bar that day, glaring at her, smirking at her, knowing where she was going and what she was going to face—and not doing a damnthing to stop it. Some would ask her if she was crazy for working with those same men, and she’d be honest, she probably was. Then again, she’d never let them see how much their betrayal had hurt. Now, she was just a professional, doing her job, and getting paid a ridiculous amount to do it. She had a daughter and her daughter’s future to think about, so there was no room for whining about her painful past.

The men in the club seemed to have forgotten all about what they’d done to her, treating her with a modicum of respect, which had thrown her the first time she’d come around after nearly ten years.

She smirked thinking about that. Then again…Skathi, Tessa, and Fae’s men didn’t seem too bad; two of them hadn’t even been around when Liz had been—way back in the beginning of the MC. They treated their women like queens, and they didn’t give any of the club bitches the time of day.

Unlike Trouble.

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