Get to know Nico and Paige in Hard Limits
by Elle Aycart!
Now
Live!
Synopsis
Nico Grabar,
head of one of the most ruthless cartels in the world, is in the last stretch
of a two-year nightmare, his agenda extremely busy. He has a criminal
organization to run. A cover to maintain. A promise to fulfill. Too bad he’s
bleeding to death in the middle of nowhere, about to meet his maker on a
deserted street. A fitting ending to a bleak existence, really. When a
beautiful Vintage bride with racoon eyes and a choke collar, covered from head
to military boots in blood, came to him. It looked like the Grim Reaper had
gotten a makeover just for him. What an honor.
Who finds a
frigging drug lord in serious need of resuscitation while coming back from a
bachelorette party at the wee hours? Paige, aka magnet for psychopaths, of
course.
The Goth
waitress at Rosita’s has already survived a major asshole, narrowly escaping
with her life. The last she needs is to have to play Nightingale to a dangerous
kingpin. What if he dies on her? Or worse; what if he doesn’t?
Excerpt
ps on us,” Ronnie said, glancing through the
window and waving.
Paige leaned against the steering wheel and
smiled innocently at the driver in the next car, but it didn’t help. Eyes about
to bug out of their sockets, he spoke even faster into his phone, while automatically
locking the doors. “We are sooo ending up in jail.”
Who would have guessed people would be more
scared of her clad in white than in her normal Goth clothes? Then again, she
was wearing a wedding dress splattered with red, Carrie style, and Ronnie was
too, so yeah, she could understand the horrified expression in the neighboring
car. That they were driving at three o’clock in the morning through the Boston
suburbs—makeup all smudged and hair in messy snarls of paint and party—didn’t
improve matters.
“Probably,” Ronnie conceded, trying to pat
her frizzy curls down. “You better floor it.”
No shit. When the light changed, Paige put
the pedal to the metal and soon lost the spooked driver. Whichever came next,
the arrest or the speeding ticket, she would let her lovely lunatic of a boss
deal with it.
After all, their current predicament was
entirely Elle’s fault. She’d declared her bachelorette party would happen in
stages over a whole month, the coed paintball game being the first installment.
As if the women hadn’t already been an easy mark for those testosterone-ridden,
military-trained guys, Elle had made them wear thrift-store wedding gowns over
the protective gear. Wrong move. Not even leveling the odds by mixing the teams
had helped.
After the shooting fest, looking like vampire
gore brides, they’d gone partying downtown. How Elle had gotten them into the
club dressed like that, Paige didn’t know, although it shouldn’t have been a
surprise. Elle always got her way. Now, with that ominous weapon of mass destruction
called Jack shadowing her 24/7, it was a miracle anyone dared blink at her,
regardless of how nuts her requests were.
All in all, a memorable first installment.
Paige couldn’t wait to see what was to come. By Jack’s aggrieved looks, he
couldn’t either.
Paige glanced at the rearview mirror. No
spooked driver, no police cars chasing them. Just empty, quiet road. “We might
avoid jail after all.”
“Jail would have been a fitting ending for
the night. Can’t believe it didn’t happen before, at the club.”
“You seemed to hit it off with Kai,” Paige
said. “How come I’m driving you home and he’s not? Not that I mind. Just
curious.”
Ronnie laughed. “Didn’t you see the way Jack
looked at him when we were talking? I didn’t want to give my brother a
coronary. Besides, better not jinx it now that he’s more relaxed and all that
crazy stuff about the drug cartel is over.”
And thank God for that. At the time, when
Jack had suddenly started following Elle everywhere, Paige had not known what
was going on. Then Elle had gone underground, and James Bowen, Elle’s
brother-in-law, had gathered the staff of Rosita’s and informed them he was
taking over management of the restaurant temporarily. From then on, there were
250-pound, heavily tattooed bodyguard types on the premises at all hours. In
hindsight, no frigging wonder. It was not every day that you had a South
American cartel gunning for you.
When all was said and done, Jack had almost
lost his life rescuing Elle. Now, though, they were happily in love and about
to get married. If the groom or the guests could survive the bachelorette
party, that was.
“What about you?” Ronnie asked. “How come
you’re driving me home and not with some sexy stranger? You were by far the
prettiest bride, the way you Goth-customized the outfit.”
She shrugged. “No one tickled my fancy.”
The last guy who managed that feat had been
one of the enforcers for said cartel. The second in command, as she later found
out. He had come to Rosita’s to scout the place and had struck up a
conversation with her. Nick, oil-rig worker, a reluctant participant on a blind
date gone wrong. Extremely handsome, interesting, and easy-going, with a
fascinating wit and a deep, husky voice, the man had almost convinced Paige to
go out with him.
It figured that the lying psychopath would
zero in on her. They always did.
Worst of all? She could still feel how badly
she’d wanted him.
“You need to give them a chance,” Ronnie
insisted, distracting Paige from her gloomy thoughts. “Talk to them at least.
Like that cute guy who kept sending drinks your way even though you kept
turning them down.”
A frat boy interested in taking a stroll on
the kinky side. No, thank you. Either they ended up disappointed or she freaked
out. Both options were unacceptable, really. And unpleasant. Not to mention
totally unsexy.
“You need more than drinks to impress a
bartender,” Paige answered with a wink.
“So that’s me,” Ronnie said as they turned
onto her street, and she pointed at a building. “Thanks for getting me home.”
“No problem. It was on my way.”
Paige would have gone straight home because
she was dead on her feet, but she was about to have three days off in a row.
She needed to make sure all was in order at Rosita’s, especially as she had
been the one closing and at the moment couldn’t recall if she’d verified the
lock. Besides, Paige’s colorful roommate was having her boyfriend over. The
only thing they did more than fuck was fight, so she was not in too much of a
hurry to get into that mess.
She parked in front of the restaurant. Time
to make her OCD proud.
The lock on the roller shutter was closed.
She opened and closed it again, fixing the moment in her mind, and pulled at it
three times to ensure she wouldn’t forget.
Then from the corner of her eye, she detected
movement in a nearby parked car, the door ajar.
There was a man inside, hunched over, one leg
out.
Probably one of those inebriated morons who
thought they drove better intoxicated. She’d met her fair share of those. He
didn’t make a sound. No drunken babble or dribble, but it was cold outside.
Maybe he was freezing. Or choking on his own vomit.
Paige approached. “Yo, buddy, you okay?”
No answer. The guy wasn’t moving, his head
still flung forward. She couldn’t see properly through the window, so she
opened the door a bit more, and the huddled figure tipped sideways until his
face was half-buried in her stomach. Not cool. At all. She took a step backward
and noticed a fresh splotch on her dress. Oh, God. That was blood. Real blood.
Thick. Sticky. Dripping from the side of his abdomen too.
She reached for him, and the second she
touched him, a strong hand clamped on her forearm.
The man lifted his bloody face to her, his
expression a snarl, his deep-blue eyes cold and murderous. Suddenly, he shoved
a gun against Paige’s neck.
Oh, shit. She knew that man. “Nick?”
NICO HAD TROUBLE focusing. Everything was
blurry. Distorted. He narrowed his eyes, his trigger finger twitching. The
image in front of him sharpened little by little: a bride covered in blood.
Looked like the Grim Reaper had gotten a makeover just for him. What an honor.
Or maybe he was hallucinating. It wouldn’t be the first time tonight.
“It’s me. Paige,” the bride blurted.
Who? He couldn’t recognize the face, but her
eyes were strangely familiar. Not sensing any immediate danger, he lowered his
gun. It must have been the right call because the bride didn’t grab his weapon
and shoot him with it.
He let her go and put pressure on the wound
beneath his ribs, his hand sinking into warm blood. How he had any left, he
didn’t know.
“You’re bleeding,” he heard her say. “Have
you been shot?”
And drugged. Or poisoned. Hell, both
probably. He wasn’t sure he could articulate so many words, so he just nodded.
“You need a doctor. A hospital,” she
continued.
“No hospital,” he choked out. A hospital
meant police. Too many questions. If by any miracle he managed to survive, he
didn’t want to wake up in a government black site. Or in a hole in the jungle,
compliments of the cartel.
The bride hesitated for a second. “Okay. No
hospital. But you can’t stay here.”
That was true. Remaining in the open was a
sure death sentence.
Without waiting for his response, she
sprinted around the car. Then he heard the door of the passenger side open and
felt her beside him.
“Lift your ass when I tell you to,” she
ordered, grabbing him by his armpits and taking a deep breath. “Now.”
With the last of his strength, Nico obeyed,
gritting his teeth, almost blacking out from the agonizing pain in his side.
She was small, but damn if she didn’t manage to drag him over the console onto
the passenger seat.
“Sorry,” she whispered, flinching as she
helped him bend his knees over the gear shift. Then she ran to the driver’s
side, jumped in, and revved the engine.
Nico struggled to keep conscious, but his
vision became fuzzy again. Fuck, not now. He had to get to a safe location
before he passed out completely. “Where are we going?” Hopefully she was not
turning him in, because he was too weak to mount any substantial resistance.
She didn’t answer, just continued driving,
throwing furtive glances his way.
He tried to fight the blackness, but he
couldn’t. He was drifting away. Resignation blanketed him, dulling his senses
as his body started shutting down. He looked at his driver. Vintage wedding
dress, covered in blood. Military boots. Spiked choke collar. Crazy hair. Black
lips. Weirdly pretty raccoon eyes. He’d always thought the last thing he would
see in this world was the snarl of the guy sending him to hell.
If a beautiful Goth bride was the last image
he witnessed before biting the big one, he was happy. Considering the life he’d
led, it was more than he deserved.
About
the Author
After a colorful
array of jobs all over Europe ranging from translator to chocolatier to travel
agent to sushi chef to flight dispatcher, Elle Aycart is certain of one thing
and one thing only: aside from writing romances, she has abso-frigging-lutely
no clue what she wants to do when she grows up. Not that it stops her from
trying all sorts of crazy stuff. While she is probably now thinking of a new
profession, her head never stops churning new plots for her romances. She lives
currently in Barcelona, Spain, with her husband and two daughters, although who
knows, in no time she could be living at the Arctic Circle in Finland, breeding
reindeer.
Elle loves to hear from readers!
elleaycart@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment