Captivated (Club Destiny #6) Read online

  Captivated

  A Club Destiny Novella

  Nicole Edwards

  Copyright © 2013 by Nicole Edwards

  All rights reserved.

  Captivated – A Club Destiny Novella is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This book may not be resold or redistributed without the express consent of the author.

  Cover Image by:

  © moodboard/Corbis

  Dedication:

  To all of the ladies who put a smile on my face, day after day.

  You know who you are.

  ~Nic~

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Prologue

  *** ~~ *** ~~ *** ~~ ***

  “Lucie, I sure as hell hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Yes, she was talking to herself. Again.

  Lucie Werner walked into the small restaurant close to the club where she worked, glancing around to see whether he’d gotten there first. From what she could tell, Kane wasn’t there, which was just fine by her. She needed a few minutes to figure out a plan. Well, not really a plan. More like the words to explain the horrible, deceitful secret she’d been keeping from him for so long.

  Taking a seat in the back, Lucie was grateful that the place wasn’t busy. At three o’clock in the afternoon, she’d been banking on missing the lunch crowd. Considering she had selected this place because it was public, hoping Kane might take that into consideration before he lost his cool, which she knew, for an absolute fact, he was going to do.

  When he walked through the front doors a moment later, Lucie suddenly felt sick. Really, really sick. She peered through the restaurant, trying to locate the bathrooms in the event that her stomach decided to revolt against her thanks to those irritating little things called nerves.

  “Lucie,” Kane greeted her, taking the seat across from her as he glanced around the restaurant as though expecting someone else to show up and save him.

  Nope. Not today. Today it was just her.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said, but she had to clear her throat just to get the words out.

  “Is everything ok?”

  The concerned look in Kane’s eyes was nearly her undoing. If he only knew what she had to tell him, he wouldn’t be looking at her as though he were worried about her health.

  “No.” That was the sad truth. Everything was not ok, nor was she sure it ever would be again.

  “What’s going on, Lucie?”

  Lucie detected his frustration level rising, which was not all that unusual for Kane. He wasn’t a patient man by any means. And since she hadn’t told him what she wanted to talk about when she’d called him earlier, she knew his curiosity was probably getting the best of him.

  “I need to talk to you,” she choked out the words, looking around for the waitress. She needed a glass of water or something. Her throat was constricted by the tears she’d been shedding for the better part of the last day and a half. Ever since she made the decision to tell him.

  When Kane reached out and touched her hand, Lucie immediately jerked away from him as though he’d shocked her. She couldn’t touch him. No matter how badly she wanted to. In a few minutes, she was pretty sure he’d never want to lay eyes on her again, so this only made it easier.

  Fuck that. There wasn’t anything easy about this as far as she was concerned.

  “Lucie.” Kane’s tone went from friendly to stern, and she knew she was just wasting time.

  “I need to talk to you about Haley,” she began, feeling the tears returning with a vengeance.

  “Luke already told me,” Kane responded before she could continue.

  “He what?” How could Luke do that to her? Why would he? And why hadn’t Kane come to talk to her?

  “Luke told me that he caught you stealing liquor. But he told me that it’s all been taken care of. He understands why you did it.”

  Oh, God. That certainly wasn’t what she wanted to tell him, but the fact that Kane didn’t hate her for that alone was promising. Yes, she’d been stealing liquor from Luke McCoy, the owner of the club she worked for, but she’d had a good reason. Well, it made sense in her mind. Except, sort of like everything else, it really didn’t make any sense, she’d just pretended it did.

  When she had found out that Haley needed to have surgery because of her chronic illnesses, she’d been desperate. On her salary, she could barely afford the apartment she and Haley lived in, much less the amount of money the doctor’s told her it would cost to get Haley well.

  But that wasn’t why she was here. She needed to focus. To tell Kane exactly what she’d been keeping from him for the last five years.

  “That’s not what I want to tell you,” she whispered, unable to stop the first of the tears from breaking free.

  “Lucie, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?” Kane asked her again, but this time he didn’t sound concerned. He sounded angry.

  “My daughter, Haley,” Lucie swallowed hard, but continued, “she’s your daughter.”

  ~~*~~

  Kane didn’t move.

  He couldn’t say a word. Hell, he would be surprised if he was even breathing.

  Staring back at Lucie, he tried to process what she was telling him, but there was absolutely no fucking way he had heard her right. There was no way that her daughter, who was now four years old, could belong to him.

  Absolutely no way.

  In case Lucie didn’t know, two people had to have sex in order for that to happen and he sure as hell knew he’d never had sex with her because if he had, he would fucking remember it.

  Leaning back in his chair, Kane dropped his hands into his lap and stared back at her. She was crying and his first thought was that he’d missed something vitally important. His second thought was that she was totally out of her fucking mind.

  “Want to run that by me again?” Kane asked the question when he finally found his voice. He didn’t even sound like himself.

  “Haley is your daughter,” she repeated, sounding as though she actually believed what she was saying.

  Kane couldn’t believe his ears, but there was something in the back of his mind that told him she wasn’t out of her mind delirious. For years, Kane had felt like he and Lucie had a connection, although, for the life of him, he had no idea why he felt that way. Sure, he was attracted to her. Lucie was a beautiful woman. But that was as far as it went.

  “It’s not possible,” he barked, the fury beginning to churn in his gut. She was lying to him. Why the hell would she do that?

  “It’s true.” Lucie was sobbing almost uncontrollably now, and Kane had no idea why she was crying.

  “When? How?” Ok, now that sounded stupid because he knew how babies were conceived, but he just could not figure out how he factored in to this.

  “I drove you home from the bar one night after we’d all stayed late. You’d been drinking shots, and you were in no condition to drive. You invited me in your house.”

  Kane heard her words, but he didn’t know what she was talking about. She had to be delusional. There was no other way
to explain it. Kane would’ve remembered. He couldn’t have been that...

  Oh, shit.

  Kane was having a hard time breathing again.

  Haley was four years old. That meant she was conceived nearly five years ago. That was the year... No. No, no, no. He hadn’t.

  Staring back at her blankly, Kane said the only thing he could say. “I want a paternity test.”

  “Absolutely,” Lucie agreed easily, wiping her eyes with a napkin she’d taken from the table as Kane watched her. “I’ll pay for it. I’m so sorry, Kane. So very, very sorry.”

  With the blood crashing in his ears, Kane could barely make out the words Lucie was saying. He couldn’t believe... It had to be a mistake...

  Kane blinked; his vision hazy for a second before it cleared. Staring back at the dark haired woman sitting across from him, he suddenly realized she was telling him the truth. He couldn’t remember, but he knew without a doubt that Lucie Werner wasn’t lying to him. He had no idea why he believed her, but he did. And she agreed to a paternity test which would prove it. He needed proof. He’d get proof.

  He wasn’t sure whether he’d be able to stand up and walk out of the restaurant, but he knew three things for absolute certain: He had slept with Lucie and Haley was his daughter. He didn’t remember a fucking thing about that night. And Lucie had been keeping him from his daughter all this time.

  Now, if only the red haze would fade from his vision, and he could manage not to wrap his fingers around Lucie’s neck and squeeze the life out of her, Kane might just be able to figure out what to do next.

  Chapter One

  *** ~~ *** ~~ *** ~~ ***

  Six months later...

  Standing behind the long edge of the bar, Kane Steele watched as his boss descended the stairs from the second floor. If he’d thought a shitty day couldn’t get worse, he hadn’t considered the fact that Luke McCoy had been in rare form for the better half of the night.

  “Kane!” Luke’s powerful voice boomed from across the room and raked like fingernails down a chalkboard across Kane’s last nerve.

  It was the end of the night – or rather morning – for crying out loud. Didn’t the man have something better to do? Or better yet – someone... no, make that two someone’s to do?

  “What’s up?” Doing his best not to sound frustrated, Kane pasted on what would pass as a smile and turned his attention to the imposing man making his way across the now empty club floor.

  Call him a pessimist but after having spent the last few nights watching all of the happy fucking people wandering around the bar – namely the McCoy clan who’d been congregating at Club Destiny in celebration of one thing or another it seemed for weeks now – Kane wasn’t finding it easy to be in a good mood these days.

  The fact that Luke had thought it funny to introduce karaoke night to the already rowdy crowd hadn’t helped either. If he had to listen to another garbled rendition of one of Adele’s songs, he’d be inclined to gouge his own ears.

  Ok, so Kane doubted he would win any awards for his personality and to his credit, he made a point not to walk around pissed off – or he tried to anyway. If he were being scored for his optimistic outlook, sure the results would be subpar, but at least he’d have some points. Maybe.

  He was having one hell of a time finding much to be optimistic about lately. Unless of course, someone mentioned his daughter, then the smile was genuine.

  “Why are you still here?”

  Because you’re hollering my name, maybe?

  Kane wasn’t about to voice his thoughts, but that’s what dashed through his brain as he stared at Luke from across the pristine bar top. As a matter of fact, he had just finished up the last of his inventory count for the night, he’d checked to make sure everything was clean and ready for the next night, and was planning to head out, but it appeared that might be changing.

  “I’m finishing up,” he offered, his gaze landing on the woman walking across the room at a fast clip.

  Trying to get away, was she?

  “Lucie!” Kane called out, leaning to the right so that he could see around Luke’s massive frame.

  He fully expected Lucie to continue walking right out the door and ignore him altogether so when she stopped suddenly, he bit back a grin. At least she was getting better about tolerating him. At least in public. Then again, maybe she just didn’t want to cause a scene with Luke present.

  Lucie Werner was the bane of his existence. He wanted to both hate her and love her all at the same time. Oh what a difference the last six months had made though. What with all of the drama with Club Destiny and the McCoy’s, Kane hadn’t had much time to dwell on what was or wasn’t going on between him and Lucie at the moment.

  Ever since Lucie’s admission that Kane was, in fact, the father of her daughter, he’d been eaten up with both guilt and anger, and unable to explain the reason for the former.

  Initially, right after Lucie shared her earth shattering news, Kane had been livid. He could hardly stand to look at her; he had been so fucking mad that she would’ve kept something like that from him. He’d insisted on a paternity test and successfully managed to treat Lucie like the scum of the earth.

  Now, well... Now things were different.

  Sort of.

  For the last few months, Kane had spent the majority of his time with both Haley and Lucie and found that if he had a choice, he wouldn’t be anywhere else. Even on the days that Lucie allowed him to take Haley to do something on his own, he found he wished she were right there with them. For some reason, he just felt more complete with her there.

  Explain that one!

  Although he had always sensed that something had actually happened between him and the beautiful woman now turning to face him with a scowl on her face, Kane had chalked it up to an overactive imagination, and an even stronger desperation to fuck her. As it turned out, all of those images that had been flashing through his brain for months hadn’t been dreams as he originally thought. No, he was pretty sure they were suppressed memories coming back to torment him.

  According to Lucie, those images were real, at least according to the way she described in very high level detail what had happened between them. He’d just somehow managed to do what he had longed to do without as much as a single conscious memory of it.

  Which sucked like hell.

  How could he have fallen into bed with Lucie and not remembered a damn thing?

  The alcohol was undoubtedly a monumental factor in his memory loss that night. He’d had more than his fair share and rightfully so. That had been a rough time for him and obviously taking advantage of Lucie had topped off a really awful period in his life.

  Since then, after she spilled her news and he got past the blinding rage, things had gotten somewhat easier for him at least. Not that he could say the same for Lucie. She’d gone from having a baby without a father, which he could only imagine was hard as hell to manage on her own, to having to figure out what the best way to include him was.

  While her life was getting significantly more difficult, Kane had been working hard to right the wrongs of their past as best he could. He didn’t think Lucie cared much for his interference, but he admired her patience. She certainly had more than he did.

  “Are you heading home?” Kane asked as he moved out from behind the bar, leaving Luke behind. It wasn’t that he was purposely ignoring his boss, but at the moment, Lucie was more important.

  “Yes. Haley’s at home with Erica and I need to get there as soon as possible.”

  Kane had met Erica, Haley’s nighttime babysitter, only a few times. Being a complete and utter jackass, thanks to his original disbelief and anger, he’d actually questioned Lucie at length about the woman. Lucie had assured him – with the patience of a damn saint – that Erica was one of the best things to have ever happened to Haley. Now that Kane knew her, he couldn’t disagree. The twenty two year old, college student watched Haley from the time Lucie left for work until she walked thro
ugh her door at the wee hours of the morning.

  In all fairness, Kane had never been a hard ass when it came to his employees, especially those with children. He always tried to ensure that they never had to stay later than the normal closing time if at all possible. Although he had grown a bit protective of Lucie in recent months, he still tried to ensure he didn’t show her any preferential treatment.

  Well, except for the fact that he wanted to ensure she made it home as well. Which was why he’d resorted to catching her on her way out, just to remind her that he expected a phone call to let him know she made it home safely.

  “Call me when you get there,” he told her, locking his eyes with hers and daring her to argue with him.

  Interestingly enough, she had only argued one time, and that had been the first time he insisted which he knew had taken her by surprise. She had called him heavy handed, and he had all but laughed it off. Ok, so maybe that was partly true.

  At least since then, Lucie stopped being so stand-offish with him, but he definitely would not consider her warm when it came to their interactions.

  “Ok,” Lucie said abruptly, then turned and made a beeline for the back doors that would lead to the parking garage. Little did Lucie know, but Kane would watch her until she was in her car and on her way out of the parking garage. He figured she certainly wouldn’t have taken too kindly to that, so he’d managed to hide it for the last few weeks.

  Five minutes later, after he ensured that she was safely on her way, he pulled out his cell phone, made sure the ringer was on before sliding it back in his pocket. Fifteen minutes tops. That’s how long it would take her to get home and like clockwork, she had always called. Even though she didn’t linger on the phone, Kane still felt better knowing she was safe.

  The impatient part of him wished they could gloss over all of the anger and pain that they’d caused each other in recent months, but he knew that was easier said than done. Mending what was broken between them was going to take time, even if he didn’t like it.