“Maybe I have a taillight out,” Alex suggested. “Should I pull over?”

He laughed as Janey pinched his thigh. In the rearview mirror he caught Rogue’s glare.

Whatever was going on, he was sure he’d hear about it soon. Until then, he’d drop his passenger off and head home to be with his own woman. Zeke would learn what Alex already knew. There was nothing as satisfying as holding your own woman in the still of the night and greeting the next day with her. He had confidence in the sheriff’s abilities to figure that out. And if he didn’t, well, Alex just might have to help him along a little.

NINE

Spring was in full flush in the mountains, the trees weregreening out, the evenings were mildly cool, the days pleasant, and the Bar, better known as the biker haven in the Lake Cumberland area, was hopping.

For a Thursday, it was packed. The winter country tunes were replaced by harder, driving music. Leather and denim rubbed shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, and cycles filled the parking lot along with a heavy share of pickups and SUVs.

Dressed in her customary black leather pants and sleeveless vest, a lacy violet camisole peeking over the top, Rogue surveyed the crowd. Four- inch stiletto-heeled boots gave her barely enough height that if she strained, she could almost see over the writhing mass.

Mainstream hard rock and metal was pounding through the PA system, drinks were flowing, bouncers were alert, and Rogue was in her element. She loved the pulse and pound of the music, the laughter, and sometimes, she even enjoyed the fights.

It had been two nights since she had last seen Zeke, and she had used the time to regroup and reassess the damage she had allowed in her life.

Rogue had remade herself after the debacle four years before. She hadn’t let that night destroy her, she hadn’t let it beat her. She was bitter at times, but only because she had once believed that Nadine and Dayle had taken away her chance with the man who fascinated her. She no longer believed that was the truth. There had never been a chance, because Rogue knew, even then, the “good girl” image wouldn’t have changed anything. And in time, she would have matured and stepped out of that more submissive role anyway.

She had moped the past two days. She had pouted. She had even shed a tear or two and watched outside her apartment window as Zeke drove through the parking lot each night before he went off duty. And she had had a spark of realization.

Rogue didn’t hide. She wouldn’t be a closet lover, she wasn’t going to be one of the women Zeke kept hanging on a string, always worrying, always wondering when or if it would be over on any given night. She wasn’t a submissive little lapdog content to wait on the pillows for his attention.

That was her realization. It didn’t change the fact that she still dreamed about him, and it didn’t change the fact that she still woke wet and wild, reaching for him. But there were other things in life to occupy her.

For the moment, Grandma Walker, Lisa, and Lisa’s twin boys were a concern. She had friends, she had family. She had, over the years, become content with her life.

“Hey, Rogue,” Jonesy called from behind the bar as she moved through the crowd in front of it. “Get your luscious ass back here and help me.”

Jonesy and his assistant ’tender, as he called her, were working frantically to fill orders as customers lined up around the wide bar.

Rogue worked her way to the entrance behind the bar, moving quickly to take orders and fill them. Thursday night wasn’t usually this heavy, but the unseasonably warm days and evenings had spring fever in the air. Bikers mingled with farmers and tourists, fishermen and hikers. The Lake Cumberland area had something to tease the imagination and interests of a wide variety of people.

“Hey, beautiful. I wondered where you’d been.” Hank Gentry was from Virginia. He and his small group of friends made the trip several times a year from their homes to the lake where they rented one of the available houseboats.

Hank was handsome as hell. Very accountant neat, and biker wild. He liked to say he pretended he was revisiting his twenties when he made his trips.

“Hank, you’re early this year.” She laughed as she pushed a mug of draft beer his way and turned to pour more for the friends standing behind him. “I see you have your misfits with you,” she yelled over her shoulder.

The other four men laughed, obviously pleased that they were being called misfits at forty-something.

“You saving me a dance?” Hank’s wide grin met her as she turned back, handed over the beers, and took the cash.

“My dance card is full, sugar.” She cast him a wide grin. “Jonesy keeps me leashed to the bar or serving drinks.”

Jonesy glowered at her. He’d been doing that for two days now. His temper was getting testy, and she was getting ready to take a bite out of his butt for it.

“When she ain’t consorting with undesirables, you can almost get a good night’s work out of her,” Jonesy snarled, and it wasn’t playful.

Hank’s green eyes turned back to her in surprise, his brows raised. “Shame on you, Rogue.” He wagged his finger at her chidingly. “Consorting with undesirables.” He shook his head before glancing around the bar. “You surprise me.” He winked, took his beer, and moved off.

“Cut it out, Jonesy,” she snapped as she turned to pour another beer. “You don’t want to fight with me here.”

“You got fight left in you then?” he grunted. “Now that one surprises me. I thought you’d done tucked your tail and turned vanilla on me.”

God, there were days she hated men; their PMS was worse than a woman’s any day, and less understandable.

“I’m going to turn homicidal if you don’t get off my back,” she ordered him. “Wait till closing and take up your problems with me then.”

She turned away before he could snap back in reply. She’d had just about enough of snarly, snapping males that thought they could order her around or steer her damned life. She’d been steering it fine on her own for over five years now.

“Ronnie’s having problems with a couple in B area,” he called out as she pushed a handful of beers across the bar. “We got a regular and a tourist having a bit of a problem over a woman.”

Jonesy wore a headset radio atop his head that connected him to the other bouncers.

“Get out there with him,” Rogue warned him. “Lea and I can handle the bar for a while.”

“Kent’s on his way,” Jonesy informed her as he collected a heavy bat from beneath the bar and exited the bar area on the other side quickly.

“He’s been dying to use that bat all week,” Lea called out as she worked furiously to mix several drinks and slide them across the bar.

“He’s a man. Playing with his bat is the only thing he understands.” Rogue laughed back at her, causing Lea to nearly drop a bottle of whisky in her mirth and most of the men around the bar to hoot and yell in agreement.

She toasted the men with a hastily poured shot, tossed it back, and slapped the glass on the bar with a grin at the eager cheers before going back to work.

She was having fun. She liked to have fun. She had always imagined any lover she had she would be able to tease and flirt with, to laugh and share her enjoyment of the atmosphere she had built here. She wasn’t going to be ashamed of it. She wasn’t going to change who and what she was, and she wouldn’t ask Zeke to change his rules, either.

That left things rather at a stalemate. The night wasn’t at a stalemate though. She worked the bar before making her rounds through the building again. She watched the waitresses and waiters, made certain everything was running smoothly in between brief hip-shaking dances and laughter. If Zeke were here, she wondered, what would he see?

The bar whore she was rumored to be, or the woman she truly was? She refused to question herself as to why it should matter either way. She was who she was. She couldn’t be anything less, anything more.

As the night deepened, her frustration with Jonesy only mounted though. He was scowling more often, and each time he spoke to her, he snapped. It was wearing on her nerves, and she knew better than to allow it to continue. He had his moods, and if she put up with them, they would only escalate until he ended up in a fight with someone else. The only way to end it was to confront it, before she ended up with bar damage.

Motioning to Lea and Kent to take over the bar, she moved to Jonesy. “My office,” she ordered.

“My ass,” he growled, his brown gaze glittering in anger. “I have work to do.”

“Not after tonight you won’t,” she snapped. “My office now, or get your ass out of my bar. And you damned well better remember who owns the place.”

She turned on her heel and stalked out of the area toward the back door marked Private.

Pushing through, she moved through the short hall, made a sharp turn, and quickly unlocked the door to her office.

She threw it open before Jonesy could barrel into it. He stalked into the room, jerked his white apron off, and wadded it into a ball before throwing it to the floor.

His white T-shirt stretched over the bulging muscles of his tattooed arms. The ham-sized biceps flexed menacingly as he glared back at her.

“Drop the attitude.” There was no fear of Jonesy. He was temperamental, tried to be a bully, and fussed like a mother hen gone rabid, but she had never seen him as dangerous.

“Don’t tell me to drop the attitude, little girl,” he snarled, face flushing as his heavy brows lowered over his dark eyes. “I’m the dumb bastard watching you mope around with those big, pathetic eyes of yours as you watch the door and pray that no-account sheriff makes his way back to mark you. Where the fuck is your head, letting that bastard touch you?”

Rogue drew back in surprise. Evidently Jonesy had seen the reddened mark beneath her jaw as well.

“The mark or the man is none of your damned business, Jonesy,” she said, voice tight.

“It’s my damned business when I have to listen to the gossip and field the questions,”

he yelled back, his lips pulling back from his teeth furiously.

“Like I’ve ever given a damn about gossip,” she retorted. “And since when do you give a damn? Hell, Jonesy, they talk about everyone and everything. It’s a fact of fucking life and I couldn’t give a damn one way or the other.”

“Maybe that’s your problem!” he said, his voice rising further. “You simply don’t give a damn. You didn’t give a damn when they made you look like a tramp in those pictures, and now you don’t give a damn and spread your fucking legs for that whoremongering sheriff who doesn’t have a chance of being good enough for you.”

She was going to pull her hair out. Staring back at him incredulously, she fought to figure out what the hell kind of bug had gotten up his ass to make him act this way or to say something so vile.

“Zeke is not a whoremonger,” she bit out between clenched teeth.

“Yeah, you’ll take up for him, but you don’t give a shit when I call you a tramp,” he accused roughly, his eyes narrowing as his entire body seemed to quiver with outrage.

“Your daddy raised you better than this, girl.”

“My daddy raised me to have enough confidence in myself to do whatever the hell I want with whoever the hell I want,” she yelled back, nearly shaking in her own anger now. “How dare you think you can take me to task for anything, Jonesy? You don’t have that right, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let you pretend you do.”

He was six feet tall to her five feet seven in her highest heels. She was in his face, snarling back at him, overwhelmed by her anger. She hated being told what to do or being taken to task for decisions she made. She was an adult. She knew what the hell she was doing even when she wasn’t certain of the way to get there, and she knew she was damned sick and tired of others trying to tell her she was too young, too inexperienced, or evidently raised to do things differently than she was.