Shaking my head, I pulled over to the side of the road. “I’m not going any farther until you tell me exactly what it is I’m helping you escape from.” I glanced down at her baseball bat tucked between her legs, then up at her face. Even in the darkness I could tell she was one of those ridiculously gorgeous southern blondes. It was like the South had some special ingredient to raise them like that down here.

She let out a frustrated sigh and blinked rapidly, causing tears to fill her eyes. She was good. Real good. Those pretty tears were almost believable.

“It’s a really long story. By the time I explain everything, we’ll have been caught and I’ll be spending the night in jail. Please, please, please just take me to my house. We’re so close,” she pleaded. Yeah, she was a major looker. Too bad she was also bad news.

“Tell me one thing: Why do you have a baseball bat?” I needed something. If she’d knocked someone unconscious back there, then I couldn’t help her get away. They could be injured or dead.

She ran her hand through her hair and grumbled. “Okay, okay, fine. But understand that he deserved it.”

Shit. She had knocked someone out.

“I smashed all the windows in my ex-boyfriend’s truck.”

“You did what?” I couldn’t have heard her correctly. That did not happen in real life. Country songs, yes. Real life, no way.

“He’s a cheating bastard. He deserved it. He hurt me, so I hurt him. Now please believe me and get me out of here.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. This was the funniest damn thing I’d ever heard.

“Why’re you laughing?” she asked.

I shook my head and pulled back onto the road. “Because that’s not what I was expecting to hear.”

“What did you expect me to say? I’m carrying a bat.”

Glancing over at her. I grinned. “I thought you’d taken someone out with the bat.”

Her eyes went wide, and then she laughed. “I wouldn’t have knocked someone out with a bat! That’s crazy.”

I wanted to point out that smashing your ex-boyfriend’s truck windows and then running through the woods in escape at night was crazy. But I didn’t. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t agree.

“Right here, turn right.” She pointed up ahead of us. I didn’t bother putting on my blinker since no one was around us. “So, what’s your name? You look familiar for some reason, but no one I know around here drives a Porsche.”

Did I tell her who I was? I liked the privacy that Sea Breeze, Alabama, afforded me. I had a lot to think about over the next month, and making friends with the locals wasn’t on my agenda. Even if she was smoking hot.

“I’m not from around here. Just visiting,” I explained. That was the truth. I was here staying at my brother’s beach house while deciding on my next move.

“But I’ve seen you before. I know I have,” she said, tilting her head and studying me.

She’d figure it out soon enough. My brother was Jax Stone. He had become a teen rock star, but now that he was twenty-two he was a rock god. We looked similar. And the media loved to follow me around when they couldn’t get to Jax. While I loved my brother, I hated getting the attention. Everyone saw me as an extension of Jax. No one, not even my parents, cared about who I was as a person. They all wanted me to be who they expected.

“This is a Porsche, isn’t it? I’ve never seen one in real life.”

It was also one of my brother’s toys. I didn’t have a car here, so I just used the five he had in his garage. The house in Sea Breeze was where our parents used to make us spend our summers while Jax was juggling fame at a young age. But Jax was no longer a teenager and the house was his now. He’d turned twenty-two last month. And I’d turned twenty the month before that.

“Yes, it is a Porsche,” I replied.

“Turn here.” She pointed again toward the road ahead of us. I took the left and then came to the third house on the left. “This is it. Thank God no one is here yet. I gotta go. You need to get out of here so no one comes questioning you. But thank you so much.”

She opened the door and then glanced back at me one last time. “I’m Jess, by the way, and tonight you saved my ass.” She winked and closed the door before running off toward her front door. Her ass in those tight black jeans was worth saving. It was the nicest ass I’d ever seen.

I shifted the car into reverse and pulled back out onto the road. It was time I headed back to the private island where my brother’s house was. This night hadn’t turned out quite like I’d planned, but it’d been pretty damn entertaining.

The sound of something sliding across the seat and hitting the door startled me, and I glanced over to see the baseball bat. She’d forgotten it. I looked back at her house and smiled to myself. I’d be sure she got it back. Not tonight, but soon.

Chapter Two

JESS

I let the screen door slam behind me before I thought about it, then turned to lock it. Just in case Hank decided to take the law into his own hands. Not that I thought he was that stupid. He knew better than to screw with my momma.

“That you, Jess?” Momma called from the kitchen.

I might as well go tell her what I’d done. If the cops showed up, she needed to have her game face on. “Yeah, it’s me, and we might have some trouble,” I replied, walking through the small living room and toward into the kitchen. The five-room house I’d grown up in was cinderblock and nothing special, but the rent was affordable. No man had to help us get the bills paid. Momma had always taken care of things.

“What the hell have you done now?” Momma asked as I stepped into the kitchen. She was standing at the coffeepot with a cigarette between her red lips. Her favorite hot-pink satin robe was all she had on. She must have been getting ready for work and decided to stop and make some coffee.

I pulled out one of our vinyl-covered kitchen chairs and sat down. “I beat the shit out of Hank’s truck.”

Momma pulled the cigarette from her lips. “You did what?” she asked.

“He was at Live Bay with that whore he’s messing around with. He lied to me again. I’m done with him, and I wanted to make him hurt.”

Momma got rid of her ashes in the sink and, shaking her head, reached for a coffee cup. Her long blond hair was still pretty, but the face that had once been strikingly beautiful now showed hard lines from life. I was sure her smoking didn’t help things either. “Shit, girl. I need to go to work in an hour. What if the cops show up?”

I hadn’t thought of that. No alibi. I shrugged. “If they’re coming, maybe they’ll come before you leave.”

Momma took her coffee black and walked over to sit down across from me. “Did you at least get it good? If we have to deal with the poe poe, then you better have made it worth it. I ain’t in the mood for those bored shits tonight.”

I smiled, thinking about how good it had felt to see his pretty truck’s windows shatter. “Yeah, I think I got it good.”

Momma nodded and put her cigarette out, then took a sip of her coffee. “He’s a stupid, sorry-ass fucker who you need to stay away from. You’ve got a life ahead of you, and I’ll be damned if you end up like me. Hank’s already knocked up one girl he ain’t gonna marry. I sure don’t want you to be his next victim. This life ain’t easy, and you know it. You got the looks to buy you a life outta this. I intend for you to do it,” Momma said, leaning back in her chair and crossing her long legs.

This was a conversation we had been having since I was old enough to understand things. Which was since I was about nine. When your momma is a stripper in town, you learn things a lot sooner than other kids. There is no time for innocence.

“I’m done with Hank for good this time. I promise,” I assured her.

Momma didn’t look like she believed me. I couldn’t blame her. This thing with Hank had been going on for years. I really needed to let him go. He was a one-way ticket to the life I’d watched my mother live. As much as I respected her for not leaning on a man to take care of us, I didn’t want that life. I knew how much she hated it.