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“Oh, um, sure,” he mumbled, trying to get over the way the simple touch from a handshake had him all worked up. “I guess it’s not good for either of us to be standing out here in broad daylight. There is a killer on the loose,” he teased. Mace noticed how her whole body tensed at the mention of a killer on the loose and he instantly regretted his words.
“Sorry about that,” he said, “I guess I have a warped sense of humor that not everyone gets.”
“No, I got it, I just don’t like to joke about such things,” Brooke said. “I’m here to help you, Mace, but I can’t do that if you aren’t in this to win.”
“And I’m assuming that by that you mean, me not having to go back to jail or being considered a murderer, right?” he asked.
“Back to jail,” Brooke repeated. “How about we sit down, and you can tell me more about why you were in jail, to begin with. I have no record of you doing time.” She wouldn’t find anything about his time in prison because he was a juvenile when they put him away. His records were sealed, and he planned on keeping them that way.
“Is this confidential?” he asked.
“Are you agreeing to hire me as your lawyer?” Brooke asked.
“I am,” Mace said without hesitation. Owen said that she was good, and that was enough for him.
“Great, then whatever you tell me is confidential,” she said. Mace nodded and took a deep breath, letting it out again. He had never told anyone what he was about to tell Brooke.
“I was sixteen when I foolishly joined a gang. I lived in Los Angeles at the time, and joining a gang was a rite of passage. I had no choice if I wanted to make it on the streets.”
“What about your parents?” she asked. “Didn’t they try to stop you?”
Mace barked out his laugh. “My parents weren’t really in the picture. My father took off right after I was born, and I’m not sure that he even knew about me. My mother was a drug addict. Her drug of choice was heroin. My grandmother got custody of me, and God love her, she did her best to keep me on the straight and narrow, but she was an old woman. I turned out to be too much for that poor woman to handle.”
“What happened once you joined the gang?” Brooke asked. She seemed to be in a hurry, and that kind of pissed Mace off.
“Do you have someplace else you need to be, Ms. Reyner?” he asked. Yeah, he sounded like an ass, but he didn’t really care.
“Um, no,” she said. “I’m just not used to meeting with clients in a motel room and well, you aren’t wearing a shirt,” she pointed out.
“Shit,” he mumbled. Mace stood from the bed and grabbed the first clean shirt that he could find, tugging it over his head. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I had just showered before you got here, and I guess I got ahead of myself when you knocked on the door. I don’t usually conduct business half-dressed either. I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.”
“I didn’t say that you made me feel uncomfortable,” she insisted. He could tell from the way that her cheeks tinted the cutest shade of pink that he had made her very uncomfortable, but he wasn’t going to challenge her on it. For now, he’d answer Brooke’s questions, and then, he’d try to convince her to let him see her out of her fancy suit. Mace didn’t care about the rules and whether or not he should pursue his sexy lawyer. All he could think about was getting her naked, and when he was on a mission, nothing and no one could stop him.
Brooke
Brooke wasn’t sure why she felt so overheated, but she did. Maybe it was the sexy biker sitting shirtless next to her—yeah, that would explain why she felt so hot. She stood and pulled her jacket off, tossing it onto the chair next to the bed. The small hotel room suddenly felt even tinier, and she wondered if they’d ever get through her questions.
Brooke looked down to find Mace looking her body over and when his gaze reached her eyes, she was sure that she was blushing again. What was it about her new client that made her blush like a damn schoolgirl?
“You’re staring,” she challenged. She had to wear her sexiest suit to her meeting today—a decision she currently regretted. But she had nothing else to wear since she had forgotten to stop by the dry cleaners to pick up her laundry on Friday, and they were closed on weekends. Brooke made a mental note to pick up her laundry tonight on the way home, but that wasn’t going to help her get through her meeting with the sexy biker.
“Sorry,” Mace said. He didn’t really mean it as an apology, but she would take it as one.
“Right, how about you tell me what happened after you joined the gang?” she asked, repeating her question from earlier.
“I had to be initiated into the gang and they had the new guys do some pretty shady shit. I’m lucky that all I was made to do was steal a car. My buddy, Dante, had to kill someone, and he’s still in prison.”
“What would have happened to you if you refused to steal the car?” she asked.
“I would have ended up dead. We either did as we were told, or we forfeited our lives. It was that simple, and after they were done with me, they’d go after my grandmother, and kill her too. That’s how they kept their guys in line, with the threat of killing their families.”
“That’s awful,” she whispered. She couldn’t imagine having to make that kind of decision between right and wrong. Brooke had always been a good girl and getting involved in a gang wasn’t ever something that she considered. But then, she had a very different life than Mace seemed to have.
Brooke had grown up privileged. Her father was a lawyer, as was her grandfather before him. She’d grown up knowing what she wanted to become since she was just a little girl. It was ingrained in her that a lawyer was her only option, not that she minded. Brooke loved the law and becoming a lawyer was not only her father’s dream for her, but also her dream.
She had graduated from law school at the top of her class and was offered positions at four different firms before her father put his foot down and insisted that she join his firm. He explained that he wasn’t going to practice law forever, and when he retired, he wanted to leave the firm that his father had built to her. He wanted to keep the firm in the family, and it already had her name on it, so Brooke decided to take him up on his offer. She knew that starting at any other firm would mean working her way up to partner over years of hard work. Joining her father’s firm as a full partner was something she dreamed of, but never thought possible. When her grandfather passed away, she inherited his shares, and now owned more than half of the firm, making her the controlling partner.
“You okay?” Mace asked, snapping his fingers in front of her face.
