Depends on Who's Asking Read online

  Table of Contents

  Depends on Who’s Asking

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale

  Blurb

  Prologue I

  Prologue II

  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

  Epilogue

  What’s Next?

  Copyright © 2020 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.

  To my family. Couldn’t do this without you.

  Acknowledgments

  Golden Czermak - Photographer

  My Brother’s Editor & Ink It Out Editing- My editors

  Cover Me Darling - Cover Artist

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

  Kendra, Laura, Lisa, Brandi, Jen, Kathy, Mindy, Barbara, Penney & 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.

  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

  Law & Beard

  There’s No Crying in Baseball

  Pitch Please

  Quit Your Pitchin’

  Listen, Pitch

  The Hail Raisers

  Hail No

  Go to Hail

  Burn in Hail

  What the Hail

  The Hail You Say

  Hail Mary

  The Simple Man Series

  Kinda Don’t Care

  Maybe Don’t Wanna

  Get You Some

  Ain’t Doin’ It

  Too Bad So Sad

  Bear Bottom Guardians MC

  Mess Me Up

  Talkin’ Trash

  How About No

  My Bad

  One Chance, Fancy

  It Happens

  Keep It Classy

  Snitches Get Stitches

  F-Bomb

  The Southern Gentleman Series

  Hissy Fit

  Lord Have Mercy

  KPD Motorcycle Patrol

  Hide Your Crazy

  It Wasn’t Me

  I’d Rather Not

  Make Me

  Sinners are Winners

  If You Say So

  SWAT 2.0

  Just Kidding

  Fries Before Guys

  Maybe Swearing Will Help

  Ask Me If I Care

  May Contain Wine

  Joke’s on You

  Join the Club

  Any Day Now

  Say it Ain’t So

  Officially Over It

  Nobody Knows

  Depends Who’s Asking

  Valentine Boys

  Herd That

  Crazy Heifer

  Chute Yeah

  Get Bucked

  Souls Chapel Revenants MC

  Repeat Offender (January 2021)

  Jailbait (February 2021)

  Conjugal Visits (April 2021)

  Doin’ a Dime (May 2021)

  Kitty Kitty (July 2021)

  Gen Pop (August 2021)

  Inmate of the Month (September 2021)

  Shakedown (November 2021)

  Blurb

  Saint & Caro

  It was the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring… nope. No. Nuh-uh. That’s a lie.

  The moment that Caro wakes up, she knows that she’s not alone.

  One thump-thump from the living room and she quickly moves into action.

  One 911 call later, and she’s ready to defend herself.

  Only, she gets more than she bargains for when she steps out into her living room and comes face to face with a living, breathing nightmare.

  And isn’t it just fitting that the man that saves her by coming down the chimney with a large black gun in his hand is named Saint Nicholas?

  ***

  It seemed like the start of a bad joke.

  Saint Nicholas comes down the chimney on Christmas Eve night, but he isn’t there to bear gifts. He’s there to take out the trash.

  When he lands on his silent feet, he has no other choice but to put himself in harm’s way.

  One look at Caro’s terrified face, and he can’t stop himself.

  He steps in just as the bullets start flying, saving the damsel in distress and taking a wound to the shoulder for his trouble.

  But one thing he can say is, heroes always win the girl.

  And Caro is the best Christmas miracle of all.

  PROLOGUE I

  I may look innocent, but I screenshot a lot.

  -T-shirt

  SAINT

  Seventeen years old

  “Are you ready?”

  I looked up at my mother who was bent down smiling at me.

  I was ready.

  I’d been ready for hours.

  Yet, as the son of the President and First Lady of the United States, I was expected to do things that most other kids weren’t.

  Like sit around for hours, doing nothing, on Christmas Eve.

  I was also dressed like a pretentious asshole in layers and layers of fabric that itched. Yet again, I wasn’t allowed t
o complain.

  Not and be ‘presentable.’

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, trying my hardest to sound pleasant and not the pissed off teen that I actually was.

  At seventeen, I should’ve been at home, hanging with my friends, or spending time at a party with my family. Instead, I was at a fundraising dinner, or whatever, with my parents and about two hundred of Capitol Hill’s finest.

  Or, at least I was told they’re Capitol Hill’s finest.

  I didn’t like half of them. And the other half I was ambivalent about.

  “Let’s go,” one of the two secret service agents that were sworn to protect only me ordered.

  His name was Daniel, and he was an asshole.

  But he was a protective asshole, so I guessed that worked in my favor.

  The other secret service agent tasked to protect me, Phillipe, fell into step on my other side as my mother and her secret service agents fell into step beside her.

  My father wasn’t far behind with his, but he got hung up by a senator that he was trying to win favor with and stopped. Again.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said to nobody in particular. “Will this fucking night ever end?”

  “Language,” my mother growled.

  I looked over at her and narrowed my eyes.

  “I’m fucking tired of this, Mother,” I ground out. “This is getting to the point where it’s ridiculous. I didn’t have to come with you tonight. I could’ve stayed at home, yet, alas, I was forced to because it would ‘look good for Daddy’s reelection.’”

  My mother’s eyes narrowed. “Language, Saint.”

  I narrowed my eyes back. “Don’t lecture me on my language. How about you tell me why we can’t spend a holiday on our own? Or, how about you tell me why, for the love of God, y’all just can’t leave me behind?”

  My mother looked like she wanted to smack me upside the head.

  She wouldn’t, because someone might very well see it and print it in the newspapers, but I could tell she wanted to.

  We couldn’t do anything normal.

  Every single move, every single shit we took, was scrutinized.

  And it was getting really fucking old.

  I’d spent four fucking years doing this, and I was tired.

  Not to mention the two years before that my father spent campaigning.

  Or the six years before that my father spent as the senator of Arkansas.

  Politics had been my life for as long as I could remember. The only problem was, I didn’t want politics to be my life. I wanted to be a regular teenager.

  And that wouldn’t ever happen if I hung around any longer than I had to.

  Luckily, as of December nineteenth, and thanks to my homeschool teachers that taught me at the White House, I would be a graduate.

  In the eyes of the world, I would be officially an adult.

  That meant that I could say, do, and shit wherever I wanted, and my parents couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

  Though, that was probably a lie I told myself, too.

  They could likely stop me from doing everything.

  If they knew what I was doing, that was.

  I had a plan, though. Come December twenty-sixth, I had a meeting. One that I would be making. Alone.

  For now, I would bide my time until everything was in place.

  PROLOGUE II

  I’m not Rapunzel, but you can still pull my hair.

  -T-shirt

  SAINT

  One year ago

  The op we were working at that particular moment in time was a fucking joke.

  The old SWAT team knew it. The new SWAT team that I was a part of knew it. Yet, we were doing it anyway.

  Honestly, I knew this was a test, that I should be taking this seriously, but I wasn’t.

  We were at a repeat offender’s house.

  A man that, according to the old SWAT team, got the cops called on him often. And when the SWAT team came, he nearly always went into defense mode and did spectacular things that really should get him shot. Yet, the guy always managed to live to do his bullshit another day.

  Just as I was thinking this, the guy we’d entered the house to apprehend, did a spectacular swan dive into the frozen pool below.

  According to everyone that I’d asked, he was a crazy motherfucker that did stupid things.

  Like dive into a pool that was sheeted over with ice.

  It was cold for Texas—something that I’d been told, anyway. I wasn’t originally from here. I had been born in Arkansas, moved to California, then back to Arkansas where my dad became the governor. Then we moved to Washington, DC when my dad was campaigning and then became the president. It was, indeed, cold during winter. Winter in Texas was Washington, DC’s spring.

  Today, though, there was a bit of a chill in the air.

  Fast forward five minutes and we were getting the dumbass out of the pool.

  My eyes were on the guy’s dick that was swinging in my direction, as well as Booth’s body that was blocking most of the guy’s upper torso from my view, which had to be why I’d allowed the asshole to get the drop on me.

  “Saint!” The growled words from Michael weren’t fast enough.

  The guy sliced me open with a knife and I hissed at the pain that quickly burned through my arm at the move.

  Just as quickly, though, I deposited a kick straight to his chest.

  The knife went flying one way, and the guy the other.

  Seconds later, I had him on the ground, my knee in his back, and was putting handcuffs on him. Then he was being led away with his arms behind his back.

  Michael gestured me over frantically.

  Thinking I was about to get reprimanded for my dumbass mistake, I was surprised to find him looking more freaked out than a slash to the arm warranted.

  “Let’s go. You can drop me off with my girl before you go to the hospital to have that arm stitched up.” Michael turned to Luke. “I’m leaving.”

  Just a minute after that, I was walking out of the yard with Michael hot on my heels.

  Luke didn’t bother to argue.

  “Baby, head to the hospital,” I heard Michael order. “I’ll be there in five minutes. You’ll be there in three if you don’t stop. Not even for another cop, do you hear me? They’re going to be on the lookout for your car, but they know to leave you alone. I have other officers heading toward where you got pulled over, okay?” After he said that to whoever he had on the phone, he looked over at Luke who’d followed us out. “You might want to give me an update on whoever the fuck just did that,” he said. “I’ll be meeting with them after I make sure that Caro and Saint are okay.”

  Luke nodded his head. “We’ll finish up here and meet you at the hospital.”

  The ride to the hospital took four minutes.

  During those minutes, Michael explained that someone had tried to pull his daughter over. Someone that wasn’t a cop. And when she didn’t stay or hang around, they started to shoot at her car.

  We arrived at the hospital in record time, and I was pulling into a police-designated parking spot much faster than I’d ever gotten here before. But that wasn’t due to Michael’s insistence that I drive faster, but the lack of people on the road to congest our commute.

  “Where are you?” Michael asked tensely the moment he got out of the truck.

  She must’ve answered because Michael looked up expectantly and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw a car pull in. He pointed at the parking spot next to mine and then met her at her car door.

  My breath left my lungs when I saw her jump out of the car and throw herself at her father.

  “Daddy!” she cried.

  He caught her up in his arms and held her tight. After hearing what happened, I was unsurprised to find her body shaking violently.

  I tried not to notice how fucking adorable she looked but couldn’t stop myself from checking her out.

  She was short and curvy. Her shapely ass was covered by buffalo plaid leggings,
and she had a skin-tight black turtleneck that was plastered to every inch of her body, showing off delicate curves and generous breasts and hips. Her hair was midnight black, so black that it matched the color of her turtleneck.

  Then her eyes turned to me and I felt something inside of me shift at her attention.

  She had light blue eyes the color of the sky on a sunny, cloudless day.

  “Tell me what happened, baby,” Michael ordered.

  I lost her eyes then, and I felt like something in my chest all but deflated at the loss.

  “I was driving home from Red’s house when I saw flashing lights come up behind me. The thing was, I passed the car on a side road as I was pulling out onto the highway, and the unmarked car didn’t look anything like any other car that I’d ever seen before. So, I became suspicious and called you, just in case. When you told me to leave, I put the car into drive, and that’s when the guy started shooting,” she explained. “I didn’t see much.”

  Her eyes flicked to me when I growled.

  This was the third such event I’d heard of in the last week of a fake officer pulling people over. This girl, Caro, was lucky that she didn’t end up like the others—hurt badly and robbed.

  “He followed me until I pulled past the police station. Then a bunch of police cars surrounded him and forced him to pull over,” she explained. “Daddy, I have holes in my brand-new car!”

  She whirled around in her dad’s arms, and he was forced to let her go. She stomped directly toward me and then pushed me out of the way with her hand on my hip so she could point out the bullet holes in her car.

  “I just paid my first car payment!” she wailed.

  I backed away warily, looking at her as if she was about to break.

  She might’ve been.

  But she was also pissed.

  Once she was done pointing at her car, she turned then, surveying me.

  “Who are you?” she asked. “And why are you bleeding all over the place? Go inside and get that taken care of.”

  My lips twitched.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said quietly.

  I started to walk away, but she stopped me before I could even get five feet. “You didn’t tell me your name!”