Untamed Hearts 1: The Viper Read Free Page A

lie.
    Instead she heard her fighter face it head-on. “Yeah, Sheriff, I had a few beers at midnight.”
    She found herself staring at the roof of the ambulance before she could hear how it all played out. The sirens came to life. Tommy, the handsome paramedic, alternated between checking her vitals and writing things on his chart. All the while he laid on that charm he was famous for, obviously very accustomed to making horrible situations a little easier with the good looks God gave him.
    Yet all she could think about was Marcos, the mystery fighter with kind eyes, dangerous tattoos, and a horrible case of bad luck almost as epic as hers.

Chapter Two
    Miami
    April 2014
    The only good thing to come out of Marcos’s fated trip to Garnet County was getting out of that town without a DUI. Once the sheriff gave him the all clear, Marcos promptly headed back to Miami and attempted to forget everything about that week. To be safe, he went ahead and moved just in case the sheriff decided to change his mind and pin something on him.
    Marcos’s past made him more than a little paranoid where the police were concerned. The old apartment had been a shithole anyway. Not that the next place was much of an improvement, but sometimes any change was good. A new place, a new job, a new cell number, a new life.
    That had been his grand plan after his dreams of being a professional fighter had officially ended the moment he ran into Katie Foster. More than losing the fighter spot at the Cuthouse Cellar, it was the accident itself that disturbed him.
    He remembered the young, pretty brunette with no small amount of regret. There was something about those wide, honey-colored eyes framed by long, tear soaked eyelashes that haunted him. Her hair was the same shade of light brown as her eyes, long and wavy, the kind a man longed to touch just to see if it was as silky as it looked. Everything about her was soft and innocent in a way the women he knew weren’t. She’d been so pale in the night, making the blood stand out starkly on her cheeks and forehead. He’d seen a lot of terrible shit in his life, but that image disturbed him more than most. Perhaps because someone like Katie Foster was never meant to bleed like that, and knowing it had been his fault had him waking up at night in cold sweats.
    That accident was churning up a fuckload of posttraumatic stress.
    Even if Chuito had assured him she was recovered, he couldn’t shake the guilt or the strange pang he got in his chest when he remembered how she’d actually been concerned about him that night. Even with painful injuries, she had been willing to cover for him, and it just furthered his determination to stay out of trouble once he got home. He didn’t want to run into another Katie Foster again, and he was officially tired of the fast lane. He could work hard, keep his nose to the grindstone, and stay out of trouble long enough for life to somehow forget guys like him weren’t designed to grow old and live off a pension.
    His intentions had been good, but it didn’t take long for it all to go to hell.
    “You can’t fire me.” Marcos glared at his boss of the past several months, his eyes narrowed in disbelief. “I’m the best guy you got.”
    Sebastian sighed and lowered his head as he mumbled, “You know the heat’s been sniffing around my place ever since you started. We’ve had four salvage inspections in the last three months. The cops came back last night. I can’t do it anymore. I’m sorry.”
    Marcos felt that familiar white-hot rush of shame and anger wash over him. He couldn’t argue with that reasoning. If he were in Sebastian’s place, getting shaken down every few weeks by the cops, he’d probably fire the ex-con putting a target on his back too.
    Even if he was the best body man in Miami.
    “Yeah, whatever.” Marcos turned his back on him, determined to gather up his things and then go and get drunk.
    Fuck it, what the hell was staying on the straight