Walking Away_A Bad Boy Romance Read online

  A Bad Boy Romance

  By

  Ellie Danes & Tristan Vaughan

  www.EllieDanes.com

  www.TristanVaughan.com

  Copyright

  First Edition, April 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by Ellie Danes, Trsitan Vaughan

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and situations are the product of the author's imagination.

  All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written consent from the author.

  License

  This book is available exclusively on Amazon.com. If you found this book for free or from a site other than an Amazon.com country specific website it means the author was not compensated for this book and you have likely obtained this book through an unapproved distribution channel.

  Table of Contents

  Walking Away

  Copyright

  Book Description

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Legend - Preview

  Book Description

  Torn - Preview

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Unlawfully Yours - Preview

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Blind Faith - Preview

  Copyright

  Book Description

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  For Super Fans

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  More From Ellie Danes & Tristan Vaughan

  Book Description

  Sometimes walking away leads you to the perfect place.

  I thought I could fix him, my ex, but he was beyond repair.

  He was broken and dangerous.

  He left me scarred and scared with only one choice,

  Pack up and start over someplace new.

  That’s when I met him, Evan.

  He was everything I never knew I wanted and more.

  Tall, dark, handsome and kind.

  The moment I saw him I knew we were meant to be.

  He was who I was escaping to.

  Until I met his family and learned the truth,

  you can’t escape your past and mine was now

  staring me right in the face.

  Walking Away is a 70,000+ word full length romance with shocking twists and turns and plenty of steam.

  Prologue

  Lora

  I found my focus wandering from the pavement in front of my car. The soft hum of the tires on the road and the gentle droning of the motor served to hypnotize me, gently lifting me out of the present and taking me back, back, back...

  Rage. Terrifying rage. A look in his eyes I'd never seen before, a look that chilled me to my bones and sent an icy dread rushing through my veins like liquid nitrogen. I'd never known true fear of another human being before, not until this moment. I remembered backing up as he came closer, trying to get away as my heart pounded with huge, terrible thumps, pumping that icy blood through my veins as—

  I blinked, and I was back in the present. The memory dissolved in the warm air like morning fog in sunshine, leaving only the lightest traces of unease in its wake.

  I cranked up the bouncy pop tune playing on the car radio.

  “Come on, Lora,” I said to myself. “It's all over. You have nothing to worry about any more. You'll never see him again, never. And now you're on your way to a new town, a new life. Positive, c'mon, be positive! Let those positive vibes flow through you.”

  I glanced up at my reflection in the rear-view mirror. Looking back at me was a pair of sparkling blue eyes—my mother's eyes. I had my father's brown hair, but my mother's blue eyes. I felt a stab of sadness as this thought entered my mind. I was going to miss both of them greatly, but moving away from my hometown was something I really had to do. And besides, I wasn't even crossing county lines. They would only be eighty miles away, which wasn't really that much. It was just that I was so used to seeing them every other day, and now our visits would happen far less frequently.

  Still, as sad as I was to be leaving, I was also happy and excited. My new job was going to be amazing; I'd met the manager of the winery a few times now, and he was a fantastic guy. The benefits and salary were a lot better than my previous job too, so I had that to look forward to...And, of course, there was the general sense of excitement and anticipation that comes with moving to a new place.

  Yes, I had made the right choice. I was doing the right thing. Sometimes, you really did have to pack your bags and leave a place and turn over a new leaf somewhere else. It had taken something terrible to make me finally realize that, but ultimately, I was glad that it had happened.

  I focused on the road again. I had been climbing up a steep hill for some time now, but I was nearing the top. The sun shone brightly, intensifying the hues of green of the hills around me, and the blue of the sky above.

  Finally, I crested the top of the hill and I saw it, spread out below: Sala Valley, my new home. With a smile I hit the gas pedal and started making my way down toward it—toward a fresh start, a new job, a new home, and a new life, full of wonderful possibilities...

  Chapter 1

  Evan

  I woke up at five a.m. sharp on Friday morning, as I did on every weekday morning. On weekends I allowed myself to sleep in, and would get up at five thirty, or maybe, if I was feeling especially lazy, six. As I always did, I jumped out of bed, dropped straight into a push-up position and cranked out fifty push-ups. I then went to my bathroom door, to which a pull-up bar was attached, and did twenty-five chin-ups. After that, I jumped into the shower—ice cold, the most intense wake-up possible. It beat coffee any day, and I’d learned it was great for my immune system and testosterone levels, too.

  It was as I was getting out of the shower that I heard my phone ringing in the bedroom. Man, always at the worst possible time. Who the hell would be calling me now, at twenty past five?

  I wrapped my towel around me, not having had the time to dry myself off properly, and then jogged out to my bedroom to answer the call.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Evan.”

  “JB? What are you doing calling me this early in the morning?”

  “It's about the bar. There's a little uh, issue that I need to talk to you about.”

  I groaned and shook my head. There had been far too many of these “issues” in the last few months. There were times I wondered if the only real way to sort things out with the bar would be to fire JB—except that I couldn't. Not only because he was my step-brother, but I actually wanted to see him succeed. I wanted him to be able to stand
on his own two feet without me having to bail him out of mess after mess. That dream, however, seemed as if it were getting less and less realistic.

  “Well go on, spit it out,” I said.

  “There was a bit of a brawl at the bar last night. And now one of the guys involved wants to press charges against us.”

  “What?” I asked, anger rising within me. “A brawl? What kind of people are you letting in these days, JB? And how did things get to the point where a fistfight could break out? You need to keep things under control. You can't let situations escalate to the point where guys start throwing fists—or bottles or chairs, man! Come on.”

  “Dammit, Evan, do you think I want guys fighting in the bar? Quit being an ass—I called you for help, not a damn lecture.”

  With a sigh, I forced myself to remain calm. “All right,” I muttered, “so there was a fight. But what's this about pressing charges against the bar? Do they want to sue us now?”

  “Uh, yeah. It turns out that one of the guys fighting was the son of a prominent lawyer here in town, Gabriel Nash.”

  I groaned. “Dammit. Nash is notorious for that kind of thing. So, you let his kid take a beating in our bar?”

  “I didn't let the damn guy take a beating! Nash's kid is the one who started the fight!”

  “Please tell me this 'kid' is at least over twenty-one. Because if you're letting underage troublemakers into the bar, then we're gonna be in a world of trouble.”

  “Jeez, Evan, how damn incompetent do you think I am? Of course they're both over twenty-one. Nash's kid is twenty-three, the other guy is twenty-six.”

  I let out a sigh of relief—at least we wouldn't be getting in trouble for that. Still, this whole issue was messed up, and I didn't want the name of our family bar to get dragged through the mud. We had a big problem now, especially since Nash was gonna come after us, and this would mean that I was going to have to put some serious effort into sorting this out.

  “Okay. Tell me exactly what happened, JB, and what Nash wants to sue us for.”

  “Okay, so, I was making some cocktails for these two girls—”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” I said, feeling anger rising inside me again. “You were making cocktails? Where were the bar staff? You're supposed to be keeping an eye on everything that's going on, not making drinks for people.”

  “Spare me the damn third degree, Evan,” he muttered sourly. “Look, do you want to know what happened and what's going on, or do you want to keep freakin' criticizing me? Because if that's what you want to do, we might as well just end this conversation right now.”

  I took a breath. He was right. I needed to bite my tongue for the time and let him finish. “Fine. Go on, tell me what happened.”

  “All right, so, I was mixing up some cocktails for these two girls when I heard someone yelling. There was a commotion at the other end of the bar. Things were kinda rowdy at that point, so I didn't investigate right away.”

  I really, really wanted to say something at this point, but forced myself to bite my tongue. I needed to get to the bottom of this mess, and scolding JB wouldn't help me to get there.

  “Look, Evan, there were a lot of people in the bar last night. It was crazy busy, and I just didn't have the manpower to—”

  I groaned and cupped my forehead in my hands, pressing against my temples as he continued. I was hoping we weren't going to be in serious trouble. “Just get to the point, JB,” I said. “Tell me exactly what happened, not why it happened.”

  “Okay, fine. So, I heard a bunch of yelling, but I had my hands full at the bar, so I couldn't check it out right away. Next thing I knew this kid gets tossed over a tabletop, and then all hell broke loose.”

  “Oh man,” I groaned. “This doesn’t sound good. How many people were involved in this fight? You made it sound like there were just two of them, but if all hell broke loose—”

  “No, it was just two people, but when they started slugging it out, a whole bunch of people stampeded toward the door. The other guy—the older guy, the twenty-six-year-old, this guy Jake—he had just thrown Nash's kid, I think his name is Dominic, over a table. Jake had a bloody nose at this stage. I heard from his friend that Dominic had thrown a sucker punch, and that's what started the fight. Apparently, this Jake guy had been hitting on Dominic's girlfriend, and grabbed her ass or something, I was told they had a history, and—”

  “JB, just get to the point please. What happened after that, and how badly were they injured?”

  “Well, it turns out this Jake guy was a competitive boxer at some point. He ended up breaking Dominic's jaw before I managed to pull him off the kid and break up the fight. After that, the cops showed up and made a report and all the usual stuff.”

  I groaned and shook my head. “A broken jaw? In our bar? So, let me guess. Nash wants to sue us for damages because this happened on our property?”

  “That pretty much sums it up, yeah.”

  “I have a question, JB, and I want you to answer honestly.” I said with my tone as even and calm as I could manage.

  “Uh, all right. Ask away, Ev.”

  “Were you drinking on the job last night, JB? Were you drunk or sober when this happened? And remember, if I think you're not being upfront with me, I can call the cops who were there last night and ask them what sort of state you were in.”

  “I…I might have had a couple of drinks,” he murmured.

  “A couple? Seriously, JB, was it just a couple?”

  “Maybe closer to five or six. Or maybe a little more,” he admitted sheepishly.

  “You have to be the worst damn manager on the face of this planet, JB,” I growled, truly furious. “I warned you, didn't I warn you? More of this sort of shit and you're gonna lose this job. I am at the end of my rope here. I can't give you any more chances. You keep screwing up, and this is on a monumental scale! I don’t want to have to do this, but that's it…This is it, JB. You're done. You're fired.”

  “No, no, no no no no,” he pleaded. “Please, Ev, don't fire me. This job is all I have. You can't fire me, please—”

  “You're not giving me a choice. We're in a world of trouble because of this.”

  “C’mon, Ev, please. Without this job, I've got nothing. Seriously man, don't do this to me.”

  “Look, I'm going to call my lawyer and arrange an emergency meeting to see what we can do about this situation. If he thinks we can get out of this somehow with our reputation and finances intact, then we can talk about another chance. If not, you've left me with no choice.”

  “Ev, wait, come on you can't—”

  I cut the call off, not giving him the opportunity to say anything else. I flung the phone across the room, bristling with anger. I balled my hands into tight fists at my sides. I needed a good, solid session on the boxing bag in the gym, that was for sure.

  How could JB keep screwing up like this? Just a few weeks earlier, he had gotten drunk on the job and forgot to lock the bar up when he went home. Some crackheads had gotten in and stolen most of the expensive liquor and a dozen cases of beer. I should have fired JB then, but I do believe in second chances. Third and fourth chances, in JB’s case.

  I stormed across my room and picked up the phone which, thankfully, still seemed to be in working order after I'd flung it against the wall. I dialed Alex Venables, my attorney.

  His cell phone rang for quite a while. Eventually, he picked up.

  “Uh, um hello?”

  “Alex, it's Evan Powers.”

  “Oh uh, hi Mr. Powers,” he said, still sounding groggy.

  “I'm very sorry for the early call, but I have a situation on my hands. There was a serious fight in my bar in Wytheville last night, and one of the injured parties was the son of Gabriel Nash, who now wants to sue us.”

  “Ah,” he said in a knowing tone. “I see why you called me. Nash is a real bulldog, and we're going to have to get serious fast if we want to tackle this issue and get him to drop the suit. You're aware there's likely
going to be some sort of out-of-court settlement to shut him down?”

  “I'm aware of that. I'll do whatever necessary to keep the reputation of my bar intact. Sorry again about waking you at this hour.”

  “Can you meet me around midday? I have some urgent business this morning, but I'll be free around twelve.”

  “That sounds good. I’ll see you then.”

  “Of course.”

  I put the phone down, still fuming, and still in a towel. Edgy, impatient, and worried, I grabbed some clothes, got dressed, and turned on my computer to check on some stock prices to distract myself from the stressors that were now bouncing around my mind.

  I couldn't sit and waste time though; I needed to plan my day and shuffle a few things around if I was going to meet with Alex, which hopefully wouldn't take too long. I picked up my planner and checked what was going on for the day. A few meetings were set up throughout the day, one I was particularly excited about—going to Sala Valley Winery to sample their range of wines. I wanted a new range of local wines for my restaurants, and I'd heard good things about their selection. Hopefully the taste would live up to the reputation.

  I made a few adjustments so I could fit everything in, then I did my best to push the incident with JB and the bar out of my head.

  * * * * *

  “So, the mill is still using some of its original 1893 machinery, huh?” I asked the mill owner, a grizzled, hirsute man in his fifties, dressed in dungarees and work boots.

  “Yes sir,” he said, nodding slowly. “It's been in my family for five generations, and we've always maintained it meticulously. That's how we've been makin' our stone ground flour, same now as it was way back then. Best stone ground flour in all of California. Yes, we sell it at a more expensive price than our competitors, but I'll tell you what, you take this little bag of flour home, free of charge, and you make whatever you want with it. Then you get some of our competitors' flour and make the same things, and you serve 'em to your customers. Guaranteed they'll pick the food that was made with my flour, ten times outta ten. And they'll be coming back for more, guaranteed.”

  I nodded, running my fingers through the flour. It was thick, coarse and had a sense of real substance and presence to it. I could almost taste the flavor through my fingertips. “That won't be necessary,” I said.