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  Fox

  (Drive Me Wild book one)

  By Gwendolyn Grace

  Fox

  Copyright © 2015 Gwendolyn Grace Books. All rights reserved

  Fox is © copyrighted by Gwendolyn Grace and is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws, with ALL rights reserved. No part of this may be copied, or changed in any format, sold, or used in any way other than what is outlined under any circumstances without express permission from Gwendolyn Grace.

  This 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.

  Cover Design: Grace Street Designs

  Editor: Jennifer Zamora

  Proofreader: Jennifer Mattison

  Dedication

  For those who refuse to give up on their dreams.

  No matter what, never give up.

  Chapter One

  Loud snoring jolted me awake and I shot straight up, trying hard to figure out my surroundings. My vision was too blurry to focus as my right eye twitched in sync with the pounding in my head. I craved water desperately as I tried swallowing to relieve my dry throat. Slowly, I relaxed as the familiar smell of motor oil and cigarettes filled my nose. It was Mack’s place. I gulped down the bottle of water on the nightstand, and rubbed my throbbing temples, slowly recalling the night before.

  Shots. There had been lots of shots at Daggers. It was just after midnight when I planted myself on a stool at the end of the bar as I waited for Mack to show up. Fifteen minutes later, he sauntered in with three other guys behind him. When he saw me, his mouth twisted into a slow, cocksure grin as if he knew I would be there. I really hated Mack sometimes. I didn’t want to need him, but there was no one else.

  The problem between Mack and me was that he refused to stop fucking other women, and I could never fully rid myself of our toxic relationship. I was his number one girl, the one he liked best, and for some demented reason, I had allowed myself to be that for five years.

  When things were good between us, we were magnetic. Mack was fierce, and he was feared. There was an air of trouble about him that I found irresistible.

  Like a masochistic moth to a sadistic flame.

  Then I’d catch him with another girl and it was like someone poured gasoline on that flame, and we both would crawl away singed.

  I would convince myself that things were finally over…until the next time I saw him. Sometimes by accident and other times on purpose. He always knew the right words to say to get me back to his place and then we’d start the cycle all over again.

  I lifted his heavy arm from around my waist and got out of bed. I couldn’t resist turning to his sleeping profile and admiring the way his dark hair fell over his forehead and the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. God, he was so beautiful yet so broken. His life was as shattered as mine.

  With a yawn and a stretch, I made my way through the piles of dirty clothes and beer cans to the bathroom. When I hit the switch, only one of the three bulbs over the vanity flickered on. I looked at myself in the mirror and grimaced. My dark brown hair was hanging in a lopsided ponytail, mascara was smeared under my eyes, and my lips were puffy and swollen from the never-ending blowjob I’d given Mack the night before. He was so wasted that it had taken him forever to get off, and when he finally did, he immediately passed out before he could take care of me as he’d promised.

  Pulling my gaze away from the mirror, I washed my face with a bar of green soap I found in the shower and rubbed toothpaste across my teeth with my finger. Reluctantly, my gaze shifted back to my reflection. Those hazel eyes reminded me of Gram. I loved that I had her eyes. My chest began to ache, and I could almost hear her voice.

  I raised you better than this, Harley Jane Wyatt.

  I tiptoed back into Mack’s room, put my clothes on, and then quietly searched through his pants pockets. After pinching a few bills from his wallet, I ran out of the house before I was caught red-handed.

  They called him Mack for a reason. I’d seen him take men down with the force of a Mack truck. He was only about 5’11” but he was 220 pounds of pure muscle. He’d always been gentle with me; however, I wasn’t foolish enough to test him.

  I went straight to his Ford Shelby Mustang that was parked in the driveway, his pride and joy. I opened the passenger side door and found my stuff still sitting on the seat. After slipping on my boots, I looked around the car for anything else worth taking. Glove boxes always held surprises, so I reached out, pulled the little compartment open and yelped. Several pairs of colorful panties spilled onto the floorboard. I zoomed in on turquoise thongs I knew were mine.

  Ew.

  There were so many things wrong with that picture. The most disturbing was how my panties were mingling with other panties.

  Just, ew.

  I got out of the Mustang, leaving his stash on the floorboard, because I wasn’t touching that shit, and hauled ass to the end of the block.

  I walked aimlessly for hours, not sure what my next move would be. I had no car, no money, no place to stay and no real friends. I’d just gotten fired from my job as a waitress at a stupid chain restaurant because I wasn’t cut out for all the fake chipper bullshit. I’d lost it on a table full of uppity women and told them to fuck off after the third time they sent their plates back.

  Just eat your fucking salads!

  I’d also been renting a room from one of the girls at the restaurant, and since I was already behind on rent and jobless, she kicked me out. That was the reason I decided to find Mack.

  His life was slightly more… stable. He and his crew of goons street raced for money and did a bunch of other things I knew couldn’t be legal. Mack protected me from the details and I carried on in ignorant bliss.

  Our long history also meant that staying with Mack was an option while I got my shit together. He had never turned me away. Except, when I woke up that morning, the idea didn’t sound so great anymore. I knew that living with him meant I would always be waiting for the other shoe to drop. It was inevitable that he would do something to hurt me, and I would be angry with myself for allowing it to happen, then I was out on my own again.

  It’s your life, Harley Jane. It’s up to you whether you make something of it.

  The familiar ache crept its way in again. Gram had been gone six years and I missed her every day. She raised me from the time I was ten until I graduated from high school. I couldn’t lie; I was a wild child and pure hell on wheels. Gram couldn’t control me; her nature was too gentle. I ran away constantly and didn’t care about anyone but myself.

  Gram withheld the fact she was sick from me for a long time. I stomped around like a brat, clueless that my life was about to go from bad to worse. The day she collapsed at her job at the grocery store, it took three days for one of her co-workers to track me down at what was considered a ‘party house’ for teenage runaways. The doctor said that she wasn’t responding to treatment as they had hoped, and thus began the rapid decline of her health.

  Fuck cancer.

  Gram went from being vibrant and energetic to old and frail in a flash. I felt like the worst shit in the world for the way I’d treated her. I tried hard to make up for wasted time by finishing my senior year of high school, just like she wanted, and ditching my loser friends. Her pale face lit up with pride as she watched me graduate, but it all just seemed like too little, too late. I spent every moment I could with her until the sickness consumed her whole body and took her life—just three days after my nineteenth birthday. Once she was gone, I didn’t care about anything. Her death had destroyed what was left of my heart. Any hope of me becoming someone Gram could be proud of had scattered off into the wind with her ashes.

  Instead, I’d surrounded myself with bad people, got arrested twice on misdemeanor charges, and eventually fell for a criminal who wasn’t emotionally there for me any more than I was for him.

  Sometimes I even had myself convinced that I deserved my fucked-up life.

  ****

  A few hours later, and miles away from Mack’s house, I was sitting in a diner outside of Charleston, sipping on my third coffee refill as I tried to figure out my next move. The place was empty besides a few people sitting at the counter and an elderly couple at a booth near the window. Two waitresses were huddled together behind the counter, whispering and tossing quick glances behind them. Mildly curious, I looked around to see the cause of the commotion. There was a guy who looked to be in his mid-twenties, eating quietly at the end of the countertop, completely oblivious to the attention. I’ll admit he had a gorgeous profile. A strong jaw that held a little bit of scruff that matched his short, light brown hair. His full lips moved enticingly as he chewed, his jaw moving almost hypnotically. It was like staring at that old-timey pendulum thing I remembered from my shrink’s desk. Another thing Gram had forced on me during my rebellious teenage years.

  When the waitress stopped to refill his coffee, he looked up at her with a pair of deep blue eyes and politely declined with a smile. He was classically handsome, so yeah, I could see why he was causing a fuss.

  Not my type, though.

  I liked my men a little rougher around the edges. The longer I stared, the stronger my urge grew to have a little fun with him.

  I dropped some money on the table and got up from my chair at the other end of the counter. When I slid down on the barstool next to Mr
. All-American he turned his blue gaze to me in surprise.

  “Who do you think the luckiest person in the room is, right now?” I asked.

  “What?” He looked taken aback by my sudden appearance but didn’t dismiss me like some crazy person. Instead, he continued staring, waiting for me to say something. I grinned, thrilled that he was going to play my game.

  “Who do you think the luckiest person in the room is?” I repeated. “Because I think I can name at least two.”

  He looked at me like I had three heads, then laughed awkwardly.

  “Um, I don’t know. Who?” he asked, clearly expecting a certain answer but humoring me anyway.

  “Those two waitresses right there.” The moment the confusion set in for him I continued. “Having you sitting here at the end of their counter has made their day.” I looked around and lowered my voice. “Now, the only problem is that the rest of the customers aren’t being waited on. I would hurry up and get the hell out of here before Big Earl catches you.” I nodded to a random trucker who was seated in a booth near the door. All-American also started to wearily turn his gaze to the direction of the trucker.

  “No, don’t look! Damn it, I’m trying to help you. Earl loves his pancakes and he does not like to wait. You are causing too much commotion and slowing down the staff. You look like you might be able to take a few good blows but then again so did that last guy.” I furrowed my brow and chewed on my bottom lip as if I were sizing him up for competition. “Nah, you might do okay.”

  I slapped him on the shoulder, swiped a strip of bacon from his plate with a wink, and hopped off the barstool. On my way out, I noticed the name tag on the trucker’s shirt really did say ‘Earl’. What were the odds? Judging by my rural surroundings, I decided they were pretty good.

  Laughing to myself, I chewed on my bacon and walked away from the diner. Gram would cook bacon every Saturday morning when I came to live with her. I’d grown so sick of bacon that I threw a tantrum and refused to eat it. Gram, who never called me out on my bratty behavior, just simply stopped making it. Every time I remembered those little details it always made the ache in my chest even worse. The hurt was constant, it was only the pain level that varied. I would give anything to have her bacon again.

  Every time I thought of Gram, I rubbed the sparrow tattoo on my inner wrist that reminded me of how small but mighty she was. A Greyhound bus rolled by and came to a stop at the terminal up ahead. As I got closer, I read that the bus was headed for Sea Whisper Island, South Carolina. The place I remember spending the best summer of my life when I was ten years old, before everything changed. It was a sign, and I was reminded of the last thing Gram ever said to me.

  Choose happiness, Harley Jane.

  Chapter Two

  I went inside the bus terminal and stood in line to buy a ticket. There were several people ahead of me and only one person behind the counter. A little old lady was fishing pennies from the bottom of her purse with a shaky hand trying to make exact change for her transaction. I shifted from one foot to the other impatiently as the line slowly moved forward. From behind me, a man shouted from the entryway.

  “I’m headin’ out, Doreen.” He was the driver to the only bus outside, the one to Sea Whisper Island, and I still needed to get a ticket. Shit.

  There were still two people in line ahead of me and Doreen seemed to be on a personal phone call, completely oblivious to the line in front of her. My heart fell as the bus engine roared and pulled away from the terminal. According to the schedule on the wall, the next bus wouldn’t be until the morning.

  Just fan-fucking-tastic.

  I looked around the small terminal as I got out of line and thought about my next move. I had only managed to grab a few hundred dollars from Mack’s wallet, so I needed to be careful how I spent it. While I was considering my options, a man started yelling.

  “Leave me alone!” I whirled around expecting to find an altercation in progress except all I saw was a scraggly looking guy with dirty jeans and a ripped T-shirt sitting by himself in one of the blue plastic chairs. “No, no, no.” He continued to yell with his eyes focused on something only visible to him. “Because I said no. Leave me alone.” He got up, stormed to another chair then dropped down with a hard thud.

  Oookay.

  That’s when I decided to get out of there. Immediately. I walked outside just in time to see the bus disappear in the distance. Looking around, there wasn’t much to see. The bus terminal was in a small country town outside of Charleston and I wasn’t even sure what it was called. There was a farmhouse surrounded by cow pastures to my left and a little farmer’s market on my right. I made the decision to walk toward the market and hopefully figure out a way to a larger town. There was no way I was going back in there with the schizo traveler. The clouds grew darker and the wind began to pick up as I got closer to the market. My heart sank a little when I realized that it was closed.

  Now what? I thought to myself. Just then, it began to sprinkle. I stared up at the gray sky as the rain fell harder and let the droplets fall on my face. Gram and I used to run outside and look up at the sky while the rain drenched our clothes. I did that often after she passed away and let my tears flow with the drops.

  “Hey! You okay?” A deep voice called out to me.

  I opened my eyes to see someone sitting in the driver’s side of a black Dodge Challenger. Swiping my hand across my eyes, I stepped forward to get a better look and then wiped them again to make sure what I saw was correct. It was Mr. All-American from the diner. The way he was staring at me with those bright blue eyes made my gut clench involuntarily.

  “What?” I asked even though I’d heard him the first time.

  “I said, are you okay?” He repeated in a Southern drawl that was heavier than it sounded earlier. “It’s really starting to pour. Can I give you a ride somewhere?”

  Now, I’d had a couple of one-night stands with men I barely knew. I’d spent a total of about nine days in jail if you include the times I was thrown in the drunk tank after a few bar fights. But for some reason, I was terrified at the thought of getting into a car with this guy, yet I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I didn’t get the sense that he was a creep because I could spot one a mile away. He seemed too clean-cut, too good-natured, just too opposite of anyone I usually hung around with. It was as if my body knew something about him that my mind was still trying to figure out.

  Even more reason to stay away from him.

  “Um, no. I’m good but thanks,” I replied and kept walking toward the market.

  “Uh, everything is shutting down due to the storm. It’s probably best you head home,” he called out to me through the half-opened window.

  “Thanks for the advice, doll,” I shot over my shoulder and trudged along. I noticed that he was still driving at a slow pace behind me.

  “Hey, sorry to keep bothering you but this isn’t exactly the safest road to be walking on, especially in the rain.” A second later a car came flying around the corner and narrowly missed me.

  “Asshole! Slow down!” I yelled as the car corrected itself and whizzed by.

  “Do me a favor. Please?” he said when I looked back at him, and he gestured to the passenger seat. I studied him for a second. He was cute, and he could be fun. The stare between us went on for an exaggerated amount of time while I contemplated my options. My plans up until this point weren’t working out very well, and I did need a ride. The idea of getting mowed down by speeding cars in the middle of the country really wasn’t very appealing. Besides, it was just a ride with a handsome guy, what could go wrong?

  “Sure, why not?” I shrugged and got inside. Once I was situated in the seat I looked over at him and God, he was even more gorgeous up close. The corner of his eyes crinkled at the sides as he smiled at me. My gaze immediately landed on his kissable bottom lip and the dimple in his chin.

  “Buckle up,” he prompted, and I clicked the seatbelt in place it as he shifted the car into drive. “Fox, by the way,” he said.

  “Wow, aren’t you a flirt? I haven’t even been in the car for five seconds.” I gasped dramatically and pretended to clutch at invisible pearls around my neck. Maybe I was right, he might be fun.