Heart of a Bad Boy (Bad Boys of Destiny #3) Read online

  “Tell whoever it is I’ll call them back.”

  “No. You need to take this phone call.”

  “What did you say to me?” Duke asked with an edge in his voice. Probably because none of his employees ever had the balls to tell him no.

  Tyrell took another step out of the office and stood his ground, which made Levi respect the man even more. “Take the call, Duke. It’s your aunt. She’s in ICU.”

  Hearing that made Levi’s body seize up, like he had crashed again and was hit so hard he no longer knew which direction he was facing.

  Lolly was sick. Lolly who had rescued them. It looked like the King boys were about to return home.

  *

  “Are we there yet?” Levi couldn’t remember the last time he had been in the backseat of a car. Years now. Actually he could remember the last time he was in a backseat, but he hadn’t been going anywhere and the beautiful leggy blonde he was with was keeping him happily occupied. But this time he was riding in the back of Duke’s ’58 Chevy Bel Air, already knowing the answer to his question, and looking for a way to alleviate some of his boredom caused by the ten-hour ride.

  Or if he was being honest with himself, he was looking for a way to distract himself from his anxiety. He didn’t want to think about Lolly being connected to tubes and machines in a hospital room. He wasn’t afraid of much, but losing one of the members of his small family was enough to cause his stomach to churn.

  “Shut up,” Duke barked.

  “Almost,” Colt said at the same moment.

  He’d never thought he would return to Destiny. He’d left with Colt at fifteen years old, the day Duke was sentenced to prison, and never looked back.

  They had never had it easy there. People used to call them trash and say they would never amount to anything. Half the town vilified Duke when he beat the hell out of the police chief’s son for slapping a woman around. And now they were headed back to that place as multimillionaires, each of them successful in his own right.

  Part of him thought it would be nice to rub their success in the face of everyone who’d doubted them. But they weren’t those kinds of men. They didn’t need to prove anything. Plus not everyone in Destiny hated them. There were still some people there who were very important to Levi.

  “If you ask that one more time, old Duke here is probably going to break your fingers,” Colt said to him in his cool, quiet voice. He probably sensed that Duke was growing more on edge as they got closer. They all were, especially since they weren’t sure what they would find when they got to Destiny.

  “As long as he stays away from my face.” Levi smoothed his hands over his jaw, trying to keep the mood light, but knowing they were all feeling a sense of dread. “We all know that’s the moneymaker.”

  His brothers had dubbed him the good-looking one out of the three, but he didn’t believe he was any better-looking than his brothers. They all looked alike. All big guys with broad backs and dark hair and brown eyes. The biggest difference was that Levi looked more like their mother, which his brothers considered a positive considering how much they hated their father.

  “You’ve never been punched in your moneymaker, boy?” Duke looked at him through the rearview mirror, and Levi could see that some of the tension had melted from his face. “You’re not a man until you have. Maybe I should make a man out of you.”

  “You’re always so damn cranky,” Levi said, knowing Duke wasn’t above punching him. “When’s the last time you got laid? Trust me, it’ll make you feel better.”

  “When’s the last time you stopped running your mouth?” Duke asked him, but the corner of his mouth twitched upward in a slight smile.

  “It’s not my fault that I’m the only one who has any social skills in this family,” Levi said. “People like me, and after spending nearly ten hours cooped up in this death trap with you two sons of bitches I know why they don’t like you.”

  “This Chevy is not a death trap. It’s a classic.” It was a classic and a beauty, painted laser blue with white flames shooting up the sides and completely redone on the inside in a buttery-soft leather. It was one of his best projects, and a hell of a way to quietly rub their faces in his success.

  “It doesn’t have seat belts. Or air bags,” Levi said, truthfully. The car may have been a piece of art, but it was built for beauty, not for safety. “I’m pretty sure you stopped short a few times just to see me smash into the back of your seat.”

  Duke shrugged. “I might have. Can’t have you too comfortable back there. You shouldn’t get to sleep while I’m driving nearly ten hours.”

  “I would have driven some of the way!”

  “Nobody drives me around.”

  “I was a goddamn race-car driver. You don’t trust me with your car? You’re the one who taught me how to drive. I learned everything I know about cars from you.”

  He hadn’t thought about racing since they had heard the news about Lolly. He wanted his brothers together so that he could tell them about the offer Fitz had approached him with. They hadn’t all been together in the same room in months—but now that they were, it was absolutely the wrong time for that conversation.

  Going back for the glory of it all was the last thing he needed to be focused on now.

  “Sometimes I wonder if that was a mistake,” Duke said to him. “Can’t seem to get you out of my hair after that.”

  Levi had stuck closer to Duke since he’d gotten out of prison. He went to King’s Customs every day not because he wanted to be with his brother, but because he wanted to know about the business. He wanted to be able to really explain what was going on to the people who watched their show. He might be known as the pretty boy, but he wanted to be more than that. He wanted to show the world he was more than that. Plus, he’d had years with Colt when Duke was away. When he thought he was going to die, one of his regrets was not knowing Duke better. And a man shouldn’t die without knowing his brother.

  “We should have flown here,” Colt said after a long silence as he looked out the window, his face completely expressionless, not giving any of them any inkling as to what he was thinking. But it left Levi wondering what was going through his mind as they got closer to town. Colt had always been more out of place than any of them there. He was brilliant and his mind worked in a different way than most. He always knew he was going to turn over the shitty hand that life had dealt him. There was never any doubt that he was going to get out of Destiny, that he was going to make something of himself. His extreme drive made him stand out from most of the people living in their blue-collar town. And that determination to propel himself forward was the reason why he didn’t make too many connections with people. They just got in his way. “We would have been there by now,” Colt continued. “I could have chartered a flight within an hour.”

  “It’s a waste of money.” Duke shook his head, never seeming to agree with anything Colt said. “Nothing wrong with driving, Your Highness.”

  “Then you should have taken my SUV.”

  “I’d rather stick a fork in my eye than show up driving that,” Duke shot back.

  “I’m going to agree with Colt on this one,” Levi interjected, breaking up the back-and-forth his brothers seemed to engage in whenever they spoke. “His SUV is sick. He’s got TVs in the back and wireless Internet and climate-control seats. Plus it’s a smooth ride with all that German engineering. A man could get some quality sleep in a car like that.”

  “You slept enough,” Duke told him.

  It was then they saw the familiar green sign that told them they were finally home.

  WELCOME TO DESTINY.

  And the knot that had loosened a little in the last few minutes tightened to lead again.

  Lolly had always seemed invincible to him, like she would outlive them all. Full of piss and vinegar and topped with sass. Raising three unruly boys was the last thing the beautician wanted, but she’d supported them and loved them in her own gruff way when nobody else wanted to. So he
didn’t want to think about her aging and sick and alone in the hospital.

  She was going to pull through this. And when she did, he was going to force her to move to Vegas and live with him. She would refuse like always, but that didn’t mean he would stop trying.

  They were silent as they drove through the town toward Lolly’s house. Not much had changed in the thirteen years since he had left. Destiny had been a mining town when he was a small child, but those mines had dried up and turned into a tourist destination. The town had been dying when they left. He had thought it would be full of ghosts by now, but a nearby casino complex had blown new life into the crippled economy. Levi was glad for that. Lolly was still there. He still had friends there. There was still one other person here that he deeply cared about.

  “We’re here,” Duke said unnecessarily as he pulled the car to a stop in front of Lolly’s old ranch-style home. It wasn’t exactly how Levi remembered it. It must not have been painted since the summer before he left. Big white flakes were shedding from the place, giving it a sad molting look. The porch steps looked a little lopsided. The whole house seemed vacant, and Levi felt a sharp stab of guilt travel through him. Colt had gone away to college. Duke had been locked up for nearly a year before his trial. It was just him and Lolly there for a little while. It was his job to make sure that the house was taken care of and the yard was kept, his job to make sure that all the broken things got fixed and nothing went neglected. It was his job to keep Lolly company and make sure she was safe. But he had left. Abandoned her, when he went to live with Colt after Colt graduated from college. She didn’t want to move to California with them and they couldn’t stay there.

  She didn’t want to leave Duke behind. She had never said it outright, but she went to visit him in prison every week. They weren’t allowed to see him more than a couple of times a year. Duke didn’t want them to. He hated for them to see him locked up, in a prison jumpsuit, having to obey the orders of guards who never respected him.

  Seeing Duke shackled made Levi hate Destiny a little bit, even though his life here wasn’t as tough as his brothers’ had been. Thinking about his brother in a tiny cell, just for getting into a fight with the wrong man’s son, made it easier for Levi never to look back. Easier, but it still had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done: He had left behind his best friend, and he had missed her so much those first few years he could barely stand it.

  “We’re staying here?” Colt asked, looking at Duke. “There’s a fine hotel at the casino. Hell, there’s a motel in town near the mine.”

  “I lost my virginity in the parking lot there,” Levi interjected, knowing an argument was brewing. “Good times.”

  “You think you’re too good to stay here?” Duke gave Colt a hard look. “You always thought you were better than this place.”

  “No, but the rest of the town sure as hell didn’t think we were good enough.”

  “Proved ’em wrong,” Duke said after a moment. “Didn’t we? I’m going to the hospital. ICU has twenty-four-hour visiting.”

  “What? We’ll go with you,” Colt said.

  “No. She’s wants to see each of us alone. I go first. You go tomorrow. Levi goes after you.”

  She wanted them each to come alone?

  Shit.

  Levi shut his eyes briefly as the implication of those words hit him.

  He sure as hell wasn’t ready to say good-bye to her.

  “I’ll go first thing in the morning,” Colt said.

  “No, you won’t.” Duke shook his head. “If you wake her before nine she’ll crack you in the head with whatever is closest.”

  “My head is still sore from the time she got me with that damn ugly cowboy boot.” Levi rubbed his head, remembering that time fondly. “I might have been as sharp as Colt if it weren’t for that.”

  “Go get some rest,” Duke ordered. “I’ll be back later.”

  They got out of the car with their bags, both of them knowing that rest wasn’t going to be happening tonight.

  “You think she still keeps that key in the fake rock?” Levi asked him.

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  Levi watched as Colt picked up the fake rock and removed the spare key from the hidden compartment. Levi repressed a sigh. Destiny was safe and Lolly was tough, but anyone could see how fake that rock was from a mile away.

  “You should tell her that it’s a bad idea for a single lady to keep a key on the porch. Anybody could just walk in,” he told his brother.

  “You tell her,” Colt said as he unlocked the door. “She likes you more.”

  “But she listens to you.” Levi dropped his bag just inside the door. “You’re the brains of this operation.” He looked into the house but couldn’t bring himself to step inside yet. It didn’t seem right to be there when Lolly wasn’t. “I’m not ready to go to bed. I’m going to see if Shelly is still up.”

  “She still lives here?”

  “Yeah, and if you kept in touch with anybody in this town you would know that.” He walked away, knowing that seeing his best friend would be the only good thing about this trip.

  Shelly was their next-door neighbor and even though he hadn’t seen her since the day they left Destiny, she was still his closet friend. They spoke to each other by phone on birthdays and holidays, but they mostly kept in touch through letters. Shelly wrote him long handwritten letters twice a week where she told him about her life and what was going on in Destiny and how much she missed him. She never left out that she missed him, and every time he read her letters he would picture the girl with the frizzy dark-blond hair and the chubby cheeks and the thick reading glasses that she wore even when she didn’t need them.

  They were unlikely friends. Levi had always liked everything fast. His cars. His women. He wasn’t afraid to break a few rules and he was from a family full of people like him. But then there was Shelly, sweet elementary school teacher Shelly, who went to sleep by ten and always made up her bed every morning and still listened to everything her prison-guard, deacon-of-the-church daddy said.

  The two of them should have wanted to stay far away from each other, but Shelly was the only person Levi found himself going to over and over again.

  His life hadn’t been very stable until he’d moved to Lolly’s and met Shelly. His mother died. His father left. Duke went to prison. Colt took care of him until he graduated high school. But Shelly had remained one of the few constants in his life, the one person he could always count on to brighten up his day.

  He went around to the back of her house, where her bedroom was, and stood there for a moment, not really believing he was back. He felt a lot like he was fifteen again. He remembered the last time he was here, the night before he moved away. She had been crying. Her face was puffy and her eyes were red.

  That night was probably the reason he never got involved with anyone seriously. He never wanted to go through that again. He never wanted his leaving to be the cause of that kind of pain in anyone else.

  He knocked on Shelly’s window. Two times, then three times, then once, their secret signal alerting her that he was there. He never went through the front door, always preferring to sneak in through her window. They had always been just friends and nothing had ever gone on between them, but he still didn’t like facing her father. He’d never banned Levi from the house, but like everyone else he wasn’t a fan of any man with the last name of King.

  He heard no answer to his knock. No rustling of the blankets, no footsteps on the carpet. No sign she was there at all.

  He peered into the darkened room and from the moonlight could see that it was empty. That her bed was made. Nothing was out of place.

  Shelly wasn’t there?

  But Shelly was always there when he needed her to be.

  He wasn’t sure how he felt about her absence.

  He walked back to Lolly’s house, remembering that Shelly was now a grown woman who was sweet and funny and would make some man a wonderful w
ife. Things could change. Things probably would change, too. But …

  He didn’t want to think about a life where Shelly wasn’t there.

  He opened the door prepared to go to bed and think about his upcoming visit with Lolly. But he was pleasantly surprised to see that Colt had a nearly naked woman who looked like a gorgeous mix of 1950s pinup and Vegas showgirl pressed against the living room wall.

  “It means ‘God’s gift’ in Hebrew,” he heard her say.

  “God’s gift?” Colt was silent for a moment, looking as if he was feeling mighty cozy where he was. “I was thinking you were sent by the devil.”

  “Really? I thought the same thing about you.”

  Apparently, neither one of them heard him walk in, and Levi immediately knew Colt must have the hots for the scantily clad stranger. No women ever seemed to keep Colt’s full attention for longer than a second. But this one … This one seemed to have Colt all wrapped up.

  “What do we have going on in here?” he asked, causing his brother to turn his head. He looked flustered. Colt always looked cool. Levi was enjoying the hell out of this. “If I knew Lolly was going to be leaving a welcoming gift I would have stuck around.”

  “Shut up, Levi,” Colt barked at him.

  “Not until you tell me how you managed to get a gorgeous half-naked female pressed against the wall.” He folded his arms across his chest. “We all know I’m the one with all the game in the family.”

  “Come here and get this shotgun before she tries something else.” Colt picked up a large gun and tossed it his way, all while keeping the woman pressed against the wall.

  “Holy shit. She turned a gun on you?” Levi looked down at it, amazed that he had missed so much in such a short amount of time.

  “Yes.” Colt gave the woman one long hot look before he slowly let her up. “I think it was a misunderstanding. It appears Lolly has a tenant.”

  It wasn’t lost on Levi that Colt shielded her body from his eyes. She may have turned a gun on him, but Colt was always a gentleman. “It appears we’re going to have a roommate.” Levi stepped forward, smiling at the woman, who looked indignant. “I’m Levi. I only caught the ‘God’s gift’ part of your name, but I can tell just by looking at you that you are indeed a gift to this earth.”