The Runaway

3

Never before in her life had Roseanne needed to survive on so little money.

She'd imagined life without the backing of her family would be hard, but reality had smacked her in the face, and once she was on the ground—kicked her for good measure. It took two weeks of working at the gas station shop until she realized just how lucky she was to have Lisa's help.

Roseanne refused any more handouts, and worked her ass off, but she still had the luxury of not paying any rent on her tiny closet of a room, and the club kitchen was available to her. To think that she could have not even had that made her work twice as much to save up, but money dissolved in her hands.

She'd never needed to pay attention to the price of food, and her allowance had been more than enough to cover any expenses she might have had. Now, buying a new T-shirt had to be budgeted for, a pair of New Rocks was out of the question, and her favorite brand of mascara needed to be swapped for an out-of-date drug store own-brand from the discount basket. She was pretty sure they shouldn't have been selling it at all, but she wasn't complaining. At twenty cents a pop, she got three.

Being poor sucked ass.

But being married off to a creeper asshole whom she didn't choose was much, much worse, so there she was, stacking shelves for the fifth hour today and it was nine in the morning. Her back and thigh muscles hurt from lifting crates of soda, but she trudged on, knowing she didn't have much choice in terms of work when she'd come to the U.S. as a tourist and wanted to keep her presence buried in the deserts of Nevada.

"They really have you do that?" asked someone from up close. So close in fact Roseanne could feel the heat of his breath on her shoulder.

She flinched so abruptly, the cans she was holding trembled in her hands, but the guy spooned her from behind and put his hands over hers to help her hold the crate. If anything, he was helping himself by pushing his dick against her.

Sadly, in the two weeks of working in a shop, a number of guys had come in only to flirt and try to get into her pants. Not one but two had offered to pay her for the pleasure. Dealing with them was more work than the job itself. At least back in the days of having a bodyguard, no one had dared approach her.

Roseanne pretended to wobble from the weight she was carrying and stepped on his foot on purpose.

Unfortunately, the fucker wore steel-toed boots.

She shoved the cans on the shelf with his help and turned around with a fake smile. "I'm managing, thanks."

Kane's face was the spitting image of his father's, from the wide lips to the heavy brow line, but he was much, much shorter than Kurt and only had a couple of inches on Roseanne, which had made the whole rubbing-against-her-ass thing easier for him.

With a smile so wide and friendly he could have fooled her if he'd done any of this in a crowd, Kane leaned against the doorframe and played with one of the open buttons of his shirt. Lisa had many male brothers, friends, and cousins, most of whom were members of the Smoke Valley Motorcycle Club, and while the single ones made advances on a regular basis, Kane was a bit of a wild card. He might have had a pleasant face, but he also had a freaky circus tattooed on his back and wore his short-cropped hair dyed an angry red that always stained the skin of his scalp or left colored trickles on his neck.

And Lisa disliked him, which was a bit of a red flag, considering she was on good terms with almost everyone here.

"You sure? Carrying heavy weights is unhealthy for girls," Kane said, scratching his stomach to reveal one of his pecs by pretend-accident.