What the Hail Read online

  Text copyright ©2017 Lani Lynn Vale

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  To my computer. You’re a fucking jerk for doing automatic updates when I get up go to go get food. Sincerely, your very unhappy owner, Lani Lynn Vale.

  No, but for real. This one goes out to my husband. He inspires my writing completely. A little piece of Will goes into each one of these heroes. He’s my rock, but also my hard place. I love him like a fat kid loves cake. You know, because you love him and he tastes good, but he also makes you fat, too. Sorry, now I’m rambling. Did I tell you how much I freakin’ hate dedications?

  Acknowledgements

  RJ Ritchie- Model

  Golden Czermak- Photographer

  Danielle Palmumbo- My awesome content editor.

  Kellie Montgomery and Ellie McLove- My editors

  My mom- Thank you for reading this book eight million two hundred times.

  Cheryl, Leah, Kathy, Mindy, Barbara & Amanda—I don’t know what I would do without y’all. Thank you, my lovely betas, for loving my books as much as I do.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale:

  The Freebirds

  Boomtown

  Highway Don’t Care

  Another One Bites the Dust

  Last Day of My Life

  Texas Tornado

  I Don’t Dance

  The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC

  Lights To My Siren

  Halligan To My Axe

  Kevlar To My Vest

  Keys To My Cuffs

  Life To My Flight

  Charge To My Line

  Counter To My Intelligence

  Right To My Wrong

  Code 11- KPD SWAT

  Center Mass

  Double Tap

  Bang Switch

  Execution Style

  Charlie Foxtrot

  Kill Shot

  Coup De Grace

  The Uncertain Saints

  Whiskey Neat

  Jack & Coke

  Vodka On The Rocks

  Bad Apple

  Dirty Mother

  Rusty Nail

  The Kilgore Fire Series

  Shock Advised

  Flash Point

  Oxygen Deprived

  Controlled Burn

  Put Out

  I Like Big Dragons Series

  I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie

  Dragons Need Love, Too

  Oh, My Dragon

  The Dixie Warden Rejects

  Beard Mode

  Fear the Beard

  Son of a Beard

  I’m Only Here for the Beard

  The Beard Made Me Do It

  Beard Up

  For the Love of Beard

  There’s No Crying in Baseball

  Pitch Please

  The Hail Raisers

  Hail No

  Go to Hail

  Burn in Hail

  What the Hail

  The Hail You Say (1-11-18)

  Hail Mary (2-8-18)

  He’s wanted her since he repossessed her car and made her cry.

  Baylor Hail knew two things. One, he hated crying females. Two, it was even worse when he was the one to make that female cry.

  He never meant to do anything but his job, but when one thing leads to another, suddenly all he can think about is the broken woman whose car he towed.

  She’s wanted him since he patted her back and told her it was okay to cry even though she knew he was lying.

  Nothing ever goes right for Lark.

  Not when she got married. Not when she tried to leave her abusive husband, and not when she arrived in a new town with a fresh, clean slate.

  That clean slate came courtesy of a secret organization that specializes in helping abused women find a way out. They set her up with a whole new life. It just turns out that it happened to be right smack dab in the middle of another woman’s old one.

  That woman also happens to be down on her luck, something that Lark learns the hard way when on her first day there, her car is towed by a handsome stranger.

  It’s been two years since she’s felt any sexual attraction toward a man, and she reacts badly. We’re talking full-on, hysterical breakdown as he loads her car onto his tow truck while looking at her like she’s lost it.

  Maybe being crazy isn’t all that bad.

  The next thing she knows, she’s spending time with the sexy stranger and life couldn’t be better—even though she still doesn’t have a car.

  She thinks she’s in the clear, that she has it all figured out… well, that is until her ex-husband finds her again.

  Now the ball is in her sexy stranger’s court as he decides whether or not her kind of crazy is worth getting killed over.

  Turns out, for Baylor Hail, maybe it is.

  Chapter 1

  Never treat a woman like an object. It hates that.

  -Things not to say to a woman

  Lark

  “We’re going to send you to Hostel, Texas,” the big man in front of me named Sam, said. “We don’t normally send two birds to the same place just in case, but we have one who’s just left there, and all her old contacts are still in place, so it works out, plus we have allies there that’ll watch over you. Do you have any questions?”

  I looked at the packet of information he’d given me.

  A new ID. A stack of bills that established my new ‘identity.’ A thousand dollars in cash. Everything someone might need to start all over.

  “I’ll have a job?” I looked up.

  He nodded, the scar on his face pulling with the movement. “You will. All the stuff that’s there right now of the old bird’s will become yours. Her car. Her house. Her things. You won’t be her, but you’ll be using all of her stuff. Our contact there at the grocery store will advance you a paycheck so you’ll have money to pay those bills. Got it?”

  Then I blurted out what was on my mind. “Why Lark?”

  The big man grinned. “Lark is a bird name. You’re one of our birds now. Really, the name is more of a category so we can keep facts straight on our end. You’re currently Lark, III.”

  I grinned at that, then tried to calm myself.

  “Uncle Sam, did you make sure to catch up on the car payments for her loan?”

  My eyes flicked to the beautiful woman that was sitting at a desk in the corner of the room.
She was furiously writing on something, her hand periodically going to a piece of paper that she’d flip over to the small stack that was steadily increasing in height on the corner of her desktop.

  “Shit,” Sam grunted. “Yeah, I’ll do that. The car that you have hasn’t had its note paid yet. I think the old bird was a month behind because of some doctor bills that she’d accrued while she was there. I’ll make it current, though, and we’ll make sure you start fresh.”

  I nodded.

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  I was so tired of being scared. Would I be scared once I got to this new town, Hostel?

  I sure hoped not.

  Chapter 2

  Not sure if I attract crazy, or I make them crazy.

  -Baylor’s secret thoughts

  Baylor

  I grunted as I pulled the last of the chains off the truck.

  Today was normally my day off, but since we were short staffed—like always—I came in anyway.

  Now I had to deal with this bullshit.

  “Listen,” the woman whose car I was repossessing pleaded. “If you take the car, I have no way to get to work.”

  I looked over at her, then dropped down to my knees and started to crawl under the car to attach the chains.

  They weren’t needed, not with today’s technology and advances in towing, but I was old school. I liked them on there because it made me feel better. So sue me.

  That’s when I felt something on my foot.

  I looked down at the woman—girl really. What was she, all of twenty-two?

  “Don’t touch me,” I ordered, looking over to see her hand on my ankle.

  I hated being touched by people I didn’t know. Fuck, that was why I hadn’t had sex in over eight years.

  I was seriously on the verge of kicking out with my foot when she let go and then fell to her ass in defeat.

  “Perfect,” she whispered.

  That’s when the tears started to drip out of her eyes.

  Fuck!

  I hated when women cried. Especially young, pretty ones.

  Shit, fuck, damn.

  I attached the chain and scooted out from under the car, not bothering to dust the dirt and grass off my back. This wasn’t the first time I had been on the ground today, and it wouldn’t be the last. That much I knew for sure.

  “Where are you taking it?”

  “Yard.”

  Since I was repossessing it, I’d be towing the vehicle to our impound yard.

  Though, not all of my pick-ups were repossessions.

  Sometimes they were wrecks, or the car was broken down. Then I either took them to a mechanic or a body shop.

  And most of my pickups didn’t come with crying women. The majority of them came with little to no trouble at all, but if there was trouble, I preferred it in the form of a man swinging his fist at my face instead of tears. Especially tears of a woman.

  But that’s just me.

  I lived for the adrenaline spikes that this job offered me.

  “Come on, darlin’.” I held out my hand. “I’ll take you where you need to go.”

  She looked around the parking lot—the mall parking lot—and swallowed.

  She didn’t take my hand.

  “That’s okay,” she whispered. “I’ll walk. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again.”

  That was my very first encounter with Lark Lawrence, but it wouldn’t be the last.

  Chapter 3

  Can’t trust a woman named Natasha. Natasha spelled backwards is ‘Ah Satan.’

  -Lark’s inner thoughts

  Lark

  3 weeks later

  Getting a job at the local grocery store, as well as the Taco Shop, helped.

  Kind of.

  I now had money left over at the end of the bills—which, I might add, were astronomical. How was it even possible for a woman—the woman whose life I’d slipped into—who had only been established in a place such as Hostel, Texas for such a short time to rack up bills like she had?

  She wasn’t just behind one car payment. She’d been behind four. Five by the time I’d realized that she was, and tried to catch up.

  Unfortunately, before I could get it all straightened out, it was repossessed due to non-payment.

  Which was unfortunate seeing as I had mailed in my payment the day before. I’d even tried to convince the repo-man—the oh, my God he’s fucking beautiful repo-man—of that, but he didn’t believe me.

  Seriously, if there was one thing on this Earth that could be considered a silver lining in the storm cloud of this situation, it was getting to see first-hand the incredible hotness of the man who had repossessed my car.

  Now, he was all I could think about, and it was starting to get on my last nerve.

  The first time my car was repossessed, I hadn’t been expecting to find an attractive man. I expected some nasty, old, fat dude with a balding head and a half-finished cigar hanging out of his mouth.

  What I found instead was a tall man wearing coveralls, half on and tied around his waist with the sleeves. His broad back was covered with a tight, red t-shirt that had grass on the back.

  His collar-length, thick brown hair was a little sweaty at the ends, causing them to twist into the most adorable curls I’d ever seen on a man.

  He turned around at the sound of my feet tapping lightly on the pavement as I made my way to him, and I’d gotten lost.

  He’d been muscular from the back, but from the front—with the way his tight t-shirt hugged his toned body—I could tell that he was no slacker in the work department.

  His forearms had been what drew my attention first.

  In my old life, I’d been a phlebotomist. The bigger and juicier the veins, the more appealing a man became.

  This man, though?

  He had not just one good vein, but dozens of them.

  By the time I’d been able to peel my eyes away from those muscular forearms, I stalled again on his tattooed-to-the-elbows biceps.

  He had rings of sweat under his armpits that made the red t-shirt he was wearing appear even darker.

  Before I could even get to his face, though, he turned around to continue what he was doing, allowing me a moment to gather my wits.

  Once I got myself together, I proceeded to beg him not to take my car because not only did it have all my clothes in it that I had planned to take to the laundromat that evening, but it also had my next week’s worth of groceries, sans the cold stuff that Francine had allowed me to store in the industrial fridge at the Taco Shop.

  He ignored me.

  When I touched him to get his attention, he practically kicked my hand off of him, and I’d fallen back on my butt as tears stung my eyes.

  I tried to fight off those tears, but I still wound up crying like a baby. Which, of course, just made him feel sorry for me.

  That had the same effect on me that it always had, which was essentially to light a fire under my ass.

  I despised pity.

  A knock sounded at my door, pulling me from my contemplations of the man and his pity.

  I immediately cringed.

  Knocking on my door at seven thirty on a Saturday morning could only mean one thing. Harold Higginbotham. The banker and my neighbor—who also happened to be my landlord.

  He was an asshole and a half, and I fucking hated his guts.

  If this was why the woman before me had left so abruptly without paying any of her bills, then I knew why she did it.

  Harold had been the bane of my existence since I’d arrived in Hostel four weeks ago.

  At first, he’d only been the man that was my point of contact in the city. The man that, should I have any questions or concerns, I could go to for help.

  Well, fuck that.

  I wanted nothing to do with the man, and I wondered how in the hell the nice men who’d gotten me out of my previous situation didn’t know that Harold was a piece of s
hit—the biggest piece of shit that I’d ever met.

  And that was really saying something.

  I had an ex who was a real doozy.

  Bending over to grab the previous night’s jeans, I slipped them on, buttoned them up and grabbed a sweatshirt from the pile of clothes on the chair and slipped it on.

  Once I arrived at the door, I was covered from head-to-toe.

  Why, you ask, was I covered from head-to-toe while inside my place that was probably eighty-five degrees?

  Because Harold was a fucking sicko.

  He took every possible chance he could to leer at my body, and when he didn’t have that, he touched me.

  I’d rather a touch than a leer, though. At least at this point.

  Nothing was overly inappropriate…yet.

  “Harold,” I smiled at him. “How can I help you?”

  Harold was angry. That I could tell within the first twenty seconds.

  “You didn’t mow the lawn to the required length for the HOA.”

  The HOA.

  If I never heard those letters again in my life, it’d be too soon.

  The HOA—better known as the homeowner's association—was meant to be something that kept a neighborhood beautiful by enforcing a set of rules every homeowner agreed to upon moving into their new home.

  I should know. In my previous life, I’d been on my community’s HOA board. Along with a few other people, one of those including my ex-husband.

  Mainly the only thing we got bent out of shape for was when abandoned cars were left out in the open for people to stare at or when a lawn became overgrown.

  This stupid bullshit that Harold was always spouting?

  Today, it was the lawn—which I’d mowed yesterday, thanks to my other neighbor who let me borrow his lawnmower if I mowed his side, too.

  Yesterday, it’d been because I’d planted purple flowers.

  Purple. Flowers.

  Yes, you heard that correctly. Purple fucking flowers.

  Apparently, the color purple wasn’t an approved color for the HOA and our community.

  Stupid prick.

  He’d been the one to tell me that my yard wasn’t decorated, and that I’d get a fine of fifty dollars if I didn’t have some ‘ornamentation’ by the weekend.