But she only shook her head and kept moving until she stopped in front of Earl.

  “You will not be selling this dealership, Mr. Banyon. And, while we’re on the subject, if anyone is going to need another job, it’s most likely going to be you,” she said in a tone that was heavily accented, serious, cool and sexier than anything Nash had ever heard.

  Earl chuckled, his wrinkled face twisting with the action. “What the hell are you talking about? You have no right. You’re only here to work up some bogus ass report to send to the lawyer. I run this place and I can do whatever I damn well please!”

  Mica took another step toward him. The way her brow hiked up at his remark gave the distinct impression that she couldn’t give two fucks about how cold and angry his piercing gray gaze was. “I own this place, Banyon. So, despite your delusional thoughts, I will be the one making all decisions about selling or not selling this dealership.”

  “You’re a filthy liar!” Banyon yelled. “This place is owned by⁠—”

  “Michel Monroe,” she completed his sentence. “That’s my name, Michel Lynette Monroe. My mother always called me Mica. Bellamy Anderson was my father which, upon his death, made me the sole owner of Bellamy Motors and executor of his estate. All this you’ve been walking around here talking about is yours, is not. I own this place and I’m firing you!”

  Earl was silent. Rock stood with his eyes just about ready to bulge from his face. Nash, well, he just stood rooted to that spot, his fingers unclenching at his sides as he stared at the woman he’d spent a fantastic night making love to and a great day doing community fellowship with. A woman that he had no idea was related to his mentor. A woman, he concluded, he knew absolutely nothing about.

  Mica

  “You’re his daughter?”

  Mica had gone up to her office to find the folder with all the information about the dealership’s current stock. She turned around slowly at the sound of Nash’s voice.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  He shrugged. “I didn’t know Bell had any children.”

  “He didn’t either. Not until two years ago when he saw a picture of my mother and I in a magazine.”

  “A magazine? So, you’re really a model and not an accountant?”

  “No,” she replied and cleared her throat. “I do have a masters’ in finance. My mother is a photographer. A magazine that she’d worked with for years was doing a special on professional single mothers. My father saw the article and he knew…”

  Mica’s words trailed off at that moment. She’d often wondered how Bell had been so certain that she was his child, especially since at that point, he hadn’t seen her mother in over twenty years. Now, it finally hit her. For some reason the reporter had insisted on publishing the children’s entire names before giving their brief bios within the article. Earlier today, when Amy told her the story of why Bell stopped riding, she’d mentioned his sister named Lynette. Her mother had given Mica her aunt’s middle name.

  “You came here knowing you were going to take over this dealership. Why all the secrecy? Why not just march through the door and stake your claim?” he asked.

  He was irritated. She could tell by his furrowed brow and that muscle twitching in his jaw. That was just great, because she was irritated too. This was not how she’d envisioned telling him. Truth be told, she hadn’t yet figured out how she was going to tell him. As she’d lay in his arms all through the night and each time he’d moved so easily and deliciously inside of her, she had wondered. She’d thought of the words and how best to explain her deception but in the end she had yet to decide when she would put those words out there.

  Seems as though fate had a better idea for the big reveal.

  “I didn’t think any of you would accept me as the owner,” she said. “And I wanted to learn about the company without the title hanging over my head. If I’d come in and staked my claim everyone would have treated me the same way they treated Banyon,” she spoke, her fingers gripping the folder tightly.

  “That’s not true. We all had reason to despise him. That was years in the making and it had more to do with the things he did and said rather than the title he carried. We would have had no choice but to accept you as the heir and rightful owner.”

  She wanted desperately to believe his words. “Even if I am younger than all of you and, at that point, had never even taken a ride on a bike?”

  Nash shook his head. “Kandra doesn’t ride and yet she’s one of the best sellers on the floor. Don’t you think it was unfair to pre-judge us and make assumptions before you even knew us?”

  “I can see that,” she said. “And I get it, really, I do. Because I’ve experienced more judgmental stares and reactions than I care to recall. Which has perhaps made me more cautious about new people. I may have grown up in a big city, but my circle was very small. Trust doesn’t come easily to me.”

  “You could’ve trusted me,” he said.

  She attempted to cross her arms over her chest, but the folder got in the way. So, she dropped her arms and huffed. “I could say the same to you,” she said and watched him closely for his response. “Why did Banyon say you had a criminal record?”

  Nash leaned against the door but didn’t speak right away. He was so ruggedly handsome, so good with his hands whether it be working on bikes or working her. And there was compassion in him. She’d heard it in the way he spoke of Bell that first day they met, and again when he’d talked about his parents.

  “My brother was seventeen,” he spoke after another few moments of silence. “I was twenty. I picked him up from school and was giving him a ride home before going to my job at the movie theatre. There was a car stopped in front of me and a tractor trailer in front of the car. I decided to go around them and had to speed up to get out of the lane of oncoming traffic. By the time I pulled over in front of the tractor trailer, a cop had come out of nowhere. He stopped us and asked if he could search my vehicle. I was used to bogus traffic stops but I knew he could ticket me for crossing over into the opposite lane and speeding, so I decided to be as cooperative as possible, hoping to buy myself some points for good behavior.”

  “That plan backfired big time.” He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Henley slipped a brown paper bag beneath the seat just before the cops pulled me over. In the bag was a kilo of cocaine and a gun. They arrested both of us. I told them it was my car and my drugs. Henley got twelve months supervised probation because he was charged as a juvenile. I served five years in jail for charges of possession and conspiracy to sell drugs, reckless endangerment, and handgun violations. Five years in, and five years’ supervised probation was the plea bargain my public defender worked out. I did the time and when I got out, Bell was there to give me a second chance.”

  He'd told that story so matter-of-factly, as if he were reciting a dreary ass poem and her heart ached for him. “I didn’t know any of that,” she said for lack of something better. What she’d really wanted to do was run to him and wrap her arms around him. To hold him tight and tell him how great a man and brother he was for doing something she knew she couldn’t have done.

  “Then I guess we’re even. Neither of us know who the other really is. Or at least we didn’t, until now,” he told her.

  She nodded in agreement. “So, what do we do now?” she asked.

  He stared at her quietly, keenly, until she felt like she wanted to either yell or cry. This evening was turning into an emotional rollercoaster. She’d never had to fire anyone before and she’d certainly never had to deal with any sort of illegal acts. All that on top of the night she’d spent with Nash and the terrific day they’d had, including all the background information she’d learned about her father. There was a lot going on and she didn’t know what to do or say about any of it at this point.

  “You deal with your business and I deal with mine,” was what he finally said before he turned and walked away.

  For a few stunned seconds, she just stood there. What the hell had just happened? Was he angry with her? Should she be angry with him? Her head began to pound with a headache she was certain was a direct result of stress. This day had been stressful as hell.

  She had no idea how long she stood there staring at the empty space, but after a time she figured it was pointless to continue questioning when she knew the answer wasn’t coming anytime soon. Nash was right about one thing, she had to deal with Bellamy Motors. That’s what she’d come here to do and she wasn’t going to let her father down. Nothing else mattered, at least not at this moment.

  Chapter 10

  Mica

  In the days that followed Mica kept busy by fully incorporating herself as the owner and interim general manager of Bellamy Motors. With Mr. Finksburg’s help she was able to get all of the legal paperwork squared away. Rock and Otto were on hand to assist in the transition on the sales floor and with the remaining staff, as Nash had conveniently taken his vacation. She tried not to think about that.

  “So, is it over?” Pamela asked when they’d spoken on the phone last night. “Between you and the biker, I mean, is that over? Because the way you were talking when we spoke briefly on Saturday morning, something was definitely getting started there.”

  Mica sighed. The reason she’d been talking like something was getting started between her and Nash was because that’s what she’d believed. No, she wasn’t saying she was head over heels in love with him, but there was definitely a connection, both mentally and physically. Even though now, in retrospect, she wasn’t sure how they would have had a mental connection when neither of them knew a key component about the other.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “He hasn’t been at work so I haven’t had a chance to talk to him.”

  “You could call him,” Pam said.

  Refusing to sigh again, but rolling her eyes instead, Mica replied, “I don’t have his number.”

  “Oooookay. So, you spent the night with this hot as hell biker or mechanic or whatever, and then joined him the next day when he was out doing some community shit that I’ve got to say sounds sexy as hell. You enjoyed the sex immensely and even had a good time at the fundraising event. But now, the two of you aren’t speaking. Sounds like a high school drama to me.”

  “I wasn’t honest with him about who I was and why I was here,” she told Pam.

  “And he wasn’t honest with you about doing time for his kid brother years ago. I get it, both of you held something back. But from where I’m standing you two hadn’t taken much time to get to know each other before you jumped into bed. Still, you felt fine enough with that fact to do the nasty all night and morning long. What’s the big deal about finding out now?”

  Mica didn’t know the answer to that question. In fact, from her end, she didn’t think any less of Nash because he’d been incarcerated. Maybe he thought she would be and that’s why he hadn’t told her. Just as she’d thought he wouldn’t understand who she was and why this job was so important to her. At any rate, it didn’t matter now because Nash obviously had nothing more to say to her.

  That was fine, she had more important things to occupy her mind with. Earl had been siphoning cash from the business almost since the first day he’d started working there. She had seen the signs the moment she’d begun looking at the books. Through all of her studies she’d been trained to scrutinize accounts and to find what was meant to be buried in the checks and balances. He’d started small, with amounts that equaled his paycheck which he’d marked as a bonus. Then he’d grown bolder, by special ordering bikes and heavily insuring them. The bikes would then be taken out for a test drive and damaged or broken in some way. The shop workers would fix the bike and Banyon would send the invoices to the insurance company. There were invoices to the insurance company for the fees, but no record of the insurance payments being credited to the dealership account. When she first suspected he was somehow managing to cash those checks that should’ve been made payable to the dealership, she called Finksburg and he’d hired a private investigator to quietly look into Banyon’s financials. And to top it all off, every one of the cuts that Banyon had told the staff about—the health insurance rate hike, ending the daycare program and stopping the profit-sharing incentive—were bogus. The health insurance rate was the same as it had been for the past two years, the increased biweekly amounts noted on each employee’s paystubs was matched with amounts deposited to Banyon’s bank statements on coordinating pay dates, something he managed because he did the payroll himself. Similar to the health insurance, Banyon had attempted to hike up that rate and pocket the increase, but the daycare owner had gotten wind of that from one of the former dealership employees, and the owner had threatened to expose him. But Banyon had apparently threatened her right back with some sort of code violations in her building he somehow knew about. So, instead of either of them losing out, they decided to sever ties. As for the profit sharing, it ended for every employee except Banyon.

  That man and his surly attitude was going down. Mica was going to see to that personally. Just as soon as she completed the mountain of insurance claim forms for each of the bikes that had been stolen. Rock had offered to help but as the Rendezvous was only two months away, there was an influx in bikes to be serviced. Likewise, the sales force was busy trying to keep up with the new customers coming in. Some of them would try to purchase new bikes as their attempt to make up for the ones that were stolen. Those were the customers that stayed loyal to Bell. Others were via a new MC club that Rock said formed just a few weeks ago. Eighteen riders and ten of them needed bikes. Mica wanted Bellamy Motors to be the one to provide them. For that, she put Kandra in charge of coming up with a new marketing plan to effectively target each and every club along the east coast.

  There had been a lot of progress in the past three days and Mica was proud of herself and grateful to the staff for standing by her. At least most of them.

  The new phone system that had been installed rang like an alarm—a series of beeps instead of a simple ringtone. With a shake of her head because she was still amused by it, she picked up the receiver and answered, “Mica Monroe, how may I help you?”

  “Ms. Monroe, this is Deputy Reid Cedi.” She remembered him. He was the first cop on the scene the night of the burglary.

  “Hello, Deputy Cedi. What can I do for you today?”

  She’d spoken to him several times since Saturday night and had decided that she liked the guy.

  “Wanted to let you know that we have a suspect in custody.”

  “Really?” She sat up in her chair, letting her elbows fall to the table.

  “Yeah. Got him locked up real tight. But I need your signature on a couple pages of the report and the missing item inventory before we can ship everything up to the DA’s office to have him indicted. Can you come down to the station?”

  “Certainly. I can be there in half an hour,” she told him.

  “That’ll be fine. I’ll be here waiting.”

  It only took Mica twenty minutes to get to the police station. She’d become very familiar with the streets of Destine. As she parked her car in front of the bakery and activated the locks before crossing the cobblestone street, she thought how much she’d also grown to like this town.

  She walked in and looked around at a small space that reminded her so much of the old Andy Griffith show her mother loved to watch that she almost smiled. There were two desks a few feet from the door and further back another, larger desk, where she supposed the sheriff sat. Towards the back were bars, the jail cells, she decided with a sigh.

  “Thanks for coming down Ms. Monroe,” Deputy Cedi said as he stood from one of the two desks where he sat.

  “It was no problem,” Mica said. But as she started to walk around the two potted plants—that were dying by the way—positioned one in front of each desk, somebody yelled.

  “Hey pretty lady!”

  Mica turned towards the sound of the voice and was shocked to see Henley Waters smiling at her from behind those bars.

  Nash

  Nash stared at the offer letter one more time. He needed to even though this was to the tenth time he’d read it.

  The Blackbond Group was offering him a job as Executive Designer. He would manage the entire design team at their factory headquarters in Alexandria. In addition to managing a team of engineers, Nash would also be designing his own line of bikes, one of which—the design he’d submitted to them for consideration—would be called the Bell927; the day Bell would have turned sixty years old. And as if that weren’t incentive enough, they were starting him with a high six figure salary, which was much more than he was making now, plus bonuses and a special commission on bikes that would be offered exclusively under his special brand.

  It was his dream come true, and then some. A fact he’d reiterated three days ago when he sat in a booth at Spades, Destine’s only casino.

  “What’s the problem?” Fury, the owner of the Blackbond Group and an old friend of Nash’s asked.

  The man was eight years older than Nash and probably a good sixty or seventy pounds heavier. At six feet three inches tall, Fury Mathias was built like a beast—broad shoulders, wide chest, beefy hands. All of which had worked well as he played defensive lineman on his high school and college football teams. The fact that women loved his Aldis Hodge lookin’ ass was a plus for him and a burden for some of the other Ryders in the building.

  The bonus for Nash was that he and Fury had remained on good terms long after Nash had decided to walk away from the Ryders.

  “Who says I’ve got a problem?” He responded to Fury’s question with one of his own.

  Fury chuckled and lifted a finger to rub over his chin. “Oh, you must have one since you aren’t jumpin’ up and down thanking me for this offer.”