The crooked grin that appeared on his face flashed dimples, and I felt my insides get all funny. Could he be any more beautiful?

  “I broke in a horse all day. I can assure you, I smell worse.”

  The cowboy hat that sat on his head was tilted back, and his brown curls were peeking out from under it. I took in his white T-shirt, and it was dirty, as were his jeans. His face had distracted me so much that I hadn’t noticed how the rest of him looked.

  I doubted anything could make him smell bad. He was too pretty to stink. I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing at myself. No one was too pretty to stink. My head was all over the place with this guy.

  “Um, well, if you don’t mind. It’s five more miles, and the first mile was hard enough,” I admitted.

  He frowned. “You were going to walk six fucking miles in this heat?” he asked, looking almost angry.

  I shrugged. “My brother was supposed to get me. He didn’t show.”

  Saxon nodded his head back to his truck. “Come on. I have cold bottled water and AC.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I began walking toward the truck.

  Saxon walked over to the passenger side and opened the door for me. No guy had ever opened a car door for me. This was one of those moments I would tuck away in my memory to never ever forget.

  As the cool air started drying my sweat, I watched him jog around the front of the truck and climb inside the driver’s side. He opened a middle compartment between our seats and pulled out a bottle of water, then handed it to me. I sighed in relief as I took it from him.

  “It’s nice and cold. I keep several here in the fridge in the summer,” he told me.

  I glanced down at the fridge, realizing it was built into the truck. Jeez … they put refrigerators in vehicles?

  “Thanks,” I told him, opening the water and taking a long drink. My parched throat was instantly relieved.

  After I drank almost half the bottle, I stopped gulping it down and turned to look at Saxon. He was staring at me with an odd look. His dimpled grin reappeared.

  “I’ve got more if you need another one,” he said.

  A small laugh escaped me. “I might.”

  He shifted those brown eyes, which I could look at all day, from my face to the water bottle in my hand before pulling back onto the road. “You want to give me an address for the GPS or just tell me where to turn?”

  I licked my lips and glanced at him. The muscles in his arms stretched the sleeves of his shirt. His tan was a deep golden color. Did he spend a lot of time at the beach, pool, or was he outside, working with horses a lot? I knew the Houstons did that whole racehorse life, but I never pictured Saxon doing manual labor. He was sexy, rich, and best friends with Trev Hughes. And it was common knowledge that Trev Hughes threw parties and lived a wild, free life. He didn’t do manual labor.

  “I’ll tell you where to turn,” I said, glancing back at the road.

  I didn’t need to ogle the guy and weird him out. He was being nice. That was all this was.

  “So, tell me, since we didn’t go to school together, but you’re clearly my age or close to it, where did you go?”

  I bit my bottom lip, not sure I wanted to engage in this questioning. I’d attended high school, but I’d ended up getting my GED because Mom needed me to work full-time. It was the same for AJ. Our income had been required to help out when we turned fifteen.

  “Vanguard,” I finally replied, hoping he didn’t ask more questions.

  “We played Vanguard in football,” he said, smirking at me.

  I nodded. I was well aware. I had watched Saxon play my sophomore year. He was hard not to watch. It was one of the three football games I’d attended during high school.

  “Did you win?” I asked, already knowing they had.

  They’d always won. The game I had witnessed, Saxon had scored the winning touchdown. My crush on him had started that night.

  He nodded his head, still grinning. “Which year? We won every year I played.”

  I laughed, then took another drink of water. “Take the next left,” I told him.

  He slowed and put on his blinker before turning.

  “It’s another mile before you need to turn again.”

  His brown eyes met mine again, and there was a gleam in them that made my heart flutter.

  “Do you have a boyfriend? Seeing anyone?” he asked.

  My pulse picked up its pace as I stared at him. Had he really asked me that?

  I shook my head, then cleared my throat nervously. “No,” I replied.

  I had no time to date. I taught eight yoga classes a week, cleaned six different houses a week, and volunteered at the hospital two days a week. The closest thing I’d come to a date was the nephew of my boss at the yoga center I worked at. He’d come to visit this summer and brought me coffee at work two mornings, but the few times he asked me out, I wasn’t available. Sammy, another instructor—who was also a big ho—made it real clear how interested she was, and they’d dated the rest of the time he was in town.

  “That might be the best news I’ve heard all damn week,” Saxon drawled with a sexy glint in his eye as he flashed that panty-melting smile at me.

  Three

  Haisley

  Three.

  I closed my eyes and sighed.

  Three used condoms in the trash.

  At least he’s using condoms, I thought bitterly as I emptied the bathroom trash from the room Saxon had now vacated.

  He wasn’t coming back. This room was to be cleaned for the next guest. I stared at the bed through the doorway of the bathroom, knowing I had to go back out there and try again.

  My first attempt at stripping it had sent me running to the toilet to throw up. I wasn’t sure if it was just because I did that a lot these days or if the smell of Saxon, mixed with the strong perfume the woman had been wearing, wafting from the sheets had been too much for me.

  My emotions had been all over the place lately. I rarely had highs anymore, but the lows were becoming a regular thing.

  If Milly, Silver’s aunt, hadn’t agreed to let me sleep on the sofa in her apartment until I could save up enough money to afford somewhere to live, I’d be living in a cardboard box. That was the only reason I was in Gainesville.

  Milly’s had been the only place I could go after Mom kicked me out.

  When Mom had found out I was pregnant, she’d demanded to know whose it was. I refused to tell her, and she took my cell phone away from me. I finally told her, thinking she’d give me my cell phone back, but then she tried to force me to go demand money from the Houstons. There was no way I was doing that.

  We battled for two days, and in the end, she gave me an ultimatum—abortion or be kicked out. I’d not expected that. I did a lot for the family. When I pointed out my income and all I did, Mom quickly told me a baby would take more money than I made for us and that she didn’t want it there. Even while I packed my bags and tried to figure out where I was going to go, I kept thinking Mom would change her mind. She didn’t.

  While Jamaica was hysterical and crying over my being forced out, Silver called her father’s only sibling and asked her if I could stay there for a little bit. Milly agreed, and I took my last paycheck from the yoga studio and the only cash I had left in my Venmo account from the two houses I had cleaned that week to get a bus ticket to Gainesville.

  My brother AJ was no help, but he was also MIA. The last time I’d heard from him was a text, telling me he had to leave town. It was the day that he’d taken Aspen from the hospital and pissed off the freaking Mafia. I knew he was alive, but the fact that he’d changed his phone number and completely disappeared was concerning. But then I’d learned a lot about my older brother that day. Things that should have been hard to believe, but unfortunately, none of it shocked me.

  “Are you gonna change those sheets or glare at them?” a voice barked from the doorway.

  I winced before looking at Shirley, the head of housekeeping. Her yellow hair, which clearly had come from a box, was wiry and thin, sticking up in random places, while her leathery skin stretched as she scowled at me.

  “Sorry,” I replied and decided to breathe through my mouth and not my nose as I walked over to the bed and began to quickly take the sheets off it.

  Images of Saxon and sex began to taunt me. Pushing those out of my mind was easier said than done. He was the first guy I’d trusted, the first guy to make me feel special, the guy I had given my virginity to, along with my heart. Somehow, he’d managed that in the span of two weeks. Along with knocking me up.

  “When I hired you, it was because Milly said you were a good worker and not some prissy, spoiled ass. Don’t make her a liar,” Shirley snarled before walking down to inspect the other rooms I had cleaned so far on this floor.

  Focusing on my task and not giving Shirley anything else to complain about, I hurried to finish cleaning this room and get away from all memories of Saxon. Running into him here was just life tossing me more bad luck. It had been happening since I had been born. Starting with my mother. Sadly, for a short time, I had believed the powers that be had finally given me a break when Saxon walked into my world. The joke was on me.

  Once I was finished, I stopped at the door and looked inside the room one more time. It was an odd feeling. Seeing a place where the father of your unborn child had spent the night having a lot of sex with another woman.

  All my life, I had promised myself I wouldn’t become my mother. I would make smart choices. I wasn’t having kids. One day, I’d own my own yoga studio and have a house in a nice neighborhood. Maybe a dog and a cat or both. A cute walkway lined with flowers. A tree in the yard with a swing on it for me to enjoy.

  I never allowed myself to think about love or marriage. Watching my mother make one mistake after another with men had been enough to show me that love was a myth. That knowledge saved me from being stupid in high school. While other girls were worried about dating, boys, sex, I was worried about getting out of the life I had been born into.

  All it had taken was one guy with brown eyes, dimples, and a sexy grin to snatch away my good sense.

  Shaking my head at my own stupidity, I closed the door and pushed my cart to the next room. I knocked twice and waited. No one said anything. I tried again, just to be sure. My daily cleaning list said this room wasn’t checking out today. They’d be here for another night or they were keeping the room for the day. If that was the case, they could still be in there and I wanted to be sure it was empty before going inside.

  Slowly, I tested the door, pushing it open, then called out, “Hello,” before I waited again.

  Silence.

  Satisfied that the room was vacant, I propped the door open and got my trash bag to go inside and begin cleaning up whatever mess was here first. I paused and groaned. There were two condoms on the floor and three that I could see on the bed. Yuck. At least Saxon had used the trash can. This was one of the worst parts of cleaning hotel rooms. I hadn’t even known people just tossed used condoms on the floor when they were done. I mean, really, who did that?

  “Sorry, sugar, don’t let me interrupt you. I just came back for something,” a deep drawl said behind me.

  Startled, I dropped the condom I had been trying to pick up with a clothespin and spun around. His eyes widened in surprise when he recognized me. My heart slammed against my chest. I had met him once, and it was a day that still gave me nightmares. Glancing down at the condoms I still had to pick up, I had my answer to who did something like this. Figured. Lifting my eyes back to meet his, I gave the tattooed blond guy a tight smile.

  I didn’t know his name. He hadn’t introduced himself when he came with Aspen’s guy, Levi, to “speak” to me, which was what Levi said to me as I stepped out of my trailer that day.

  It wasn’t speaking. It was threatening.

  Speaking had consisted of me walking down the stairs and closer to his expensive black car before something was wrapped around my mouth, gagging me.

  This was the guy who had done it and then jerked me back against his chest while telling me that they weren’t going to hurt me. And they hadn’t hurt me. They’d just terrified me while holding a gun against my spine.

  His eyes shifted to the used condoms, then back to me, and he gave me an apologetic grin. “I should’ve tossed those in the trash,” he told me.

  If I didn’t know what he was capable of, I’d probably respond with, You think? in a sarcastic tone.

  But seeing as he had gagged me, put a gun to my back, and held me while Levi warned me to end all contact with Saxon, I wasn’t going to piss him off.

  When I had nodded with tears streaming down my face, I was sure I wouldn’t live to see another day. However, they had let me go, and as they drove away, I’d realized I’d peed on myself before walking back inside and going to the bathroom to fall apart.

  “Haisley,” he said my name, and I stopped breathing.

  Would he believe that I hadn’t come here, looking for Saxon? Would I even get a chance to explain? Or was he going to pull a gun on me and use it this time?

  Knowing I had to say something, I blurted, “I work here. I didn’t come looking for Saxon!”

  He smirked. “Guess that explains Saxon’s shit mood. He must have seen you before we left.”

  I shifted my feet, nervously glancing at his hands to make sure a gun hadn’t appeared in them before responding. “He was still in his room when I went to clean it. I had no idea he was here. I’ve been working here for three weeks—you can check my records with the hotel. I don’t even live in Ocala anymore. I’ve kept my distance from him.”

  “Why did you move to Gainesville? I remember you had a shit ton of younger siblings to take care of,” he asked me, looking more curious than anything.

  Oh, because my mom kicked me out for getting knocked up and she already has too many kids shoved in a three-bedroom trailer as it is.

  Yeah, I wasn’t telling him that. I couldn’t trust that they wouldn’t kill me if they knew I was pregnant with Saxon’s baby. In fact, I was almost positive Levi would have no issue with making me disappear—forever.

  “My mom decided it was time for me to move out. The trailer is cramped. I’m an adult.” That wasn’t a complete lie.

  He frowned. “Your brother is in Orlando. Why didn’t you go there?”

  A laugh bubbled out of me. Of course they knew where AJ was. I should be surprised they hadn’t been tracking me too. Just to keep me away from Saxon.

  “I haven’t spoken to AJ in two months. Good to know where he is.”

  The guy was still frowning. “Who do you live with? You don’t live alone, do you?”

  Was this guy worried about where I lived? Seriously? He’d threatened me with a gun.

  “I live with my younger sister’s aunt,” I replied. At least for now.

  Her boyfriend had been getting friendlier, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I was going to be able to stay there.

  “I’ll toss the condoms,” he said, walking over to pick up his mess.

  I stepped back, still holding the garbage bag as he grabbed the ones off the floor. He turned to me and winked as he dropped them in the bag. Then, he went to the bed and jerked back the covers to make sure he retrieved all the used ones on the bed.

  I’d been wrong. There were four on the bed. Jeez, had he been up all night?

  “Busy night?” The words came out before I could stop them. I slapped my hand over my mouth, horrified that I had spoken my thought aloud.

  He grinned at me. Thankfully, he wasn’t angry about my remark. “There were two of us and one of her.”

  He seemed amused. That was a good sign.

  “Her vagina must be sore,” I added, hoping to get another smile and then ease myself out of this room alive.

  A bark of laughter startled me, and he flicked his tongue ring.

  “Her ass and throat took some of the pounding too,” he told me. “I had some personal frustration to burn off.”

  I felt my face heat up. This time, I bit my tongue to keep from blurting out some other stupid remark. I’d been lucky so far, but at any time, this man could put a gun to my head. I wasn’t sure what might make him snap.

  “I thought it was the face and body. I’ll admit, you’re a head-turner, but there are plenty of hot pieces of ass out there. But I think I get it now. I can see why he got so fucked up over you. You remind me of someone… special to me.”

  “What?” slipped right on out of my lips before I could think that through.

  The guy stepped closer to me. “You’ve got a personality under all that other shit. It’s sassy. There’s a little wildcat in there. I respect it.”

  Was he flirting with me? He couldn’t be. I was on their shit list. The you aren’t allowed near anyone who is ours list. The we don’t trust you list.

  They’d made sure I understood that any contact I had with Saxon would be crossing a line I wouldn’t return from.

  “This wildcat prefers not to piss off the big bad wolf. So, I’ll let you finish up in here, and I can start on another room. I’ll come back when you’re done,” I told him, tying the bag up as I headed for the door, my heart racing as fear coiled in my gut.

  “Who is the big bad wolf?” he asked me.

  I paused, then glanced back at him over my shoulder. “You held a gun to my back,” I reminded him, thinking maybe I shouldn’t have said anything at all.

  His laughter was low and deep. I watched as he rubbed his jaw, and I noticed he had tattoos on his fingers too. He looked at me through his lashes with his head slightly tilted down.

  “It’s a fucking shame,” he finally said.

  “What?” I asked nervously.