Wild on the Rocks

By Kiersten Hallie Krum

Wild on the Road

Driven by wanderlust and insatiable curiosity, Quinn Forrester views every new gig for her mixologist business as another chance for adventure. Until the night she wanders down the wrong hallway and witnesses a mob murder. After a week on the run, lack of funds and few options land Quinn in Barefoot Bay where she takes a job tending bar at the swanky Casa Blanca resort…and hopes no wise guys show up to make her sleep with the fishes. But nothing whacks a low profile like having your Navy SEAL ex-husband walk through the door—especially when he's the love of your life you left behind.

Wild on the Beach

Discovering his restless ex-wife at Casa Blanca—and still going by his name—is enough to drive Lieutenant Commander Jasper McQueen wild. When she ran out on their marriage, Quinn left him a broken man. Now with his career in jeopardy and his sexy ex-wife at hand, Jasper is ready to chuck responsibility and submerse himself in a hedonistic affair—all sex, zero emotions—with the woman he won't forgive and can never forget. And this time, when they're done, it'll be Jasper who does the leaving.

Wild on the Rocks

But a mob enforcer has tracked Quinn to Barefoot Bay. With her days numbered, Jasper may be her only shot at living through the night—if Quinn can get him to believe in her one last time. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kiersten Hallie Krum
• Release date: Sep 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386087212

Book preview

Dedication

For The Mother

Because the first one should always be for your mother.

(But do us both a favor and don’t tell me when you’ve read it.)

About the Book

Wild on the Road

DRIVEN BY WANDERLUST and insatiable curiosity, Quinn Forrester views every new gig for her mixologist business as another chance for adventure. Until the night she wanders down the wrong hallway and witnesses a mob murder. After a week on the run, lack of funds and few options land Quinn in Barefoot Bay where she takes a job tending bar at the swanky Casa Blanca resort...and hopes no wise guys show up to make her sleep with the fishes. But nothing whacks a low profile like having your Navy SEAL ex-husband walk through the door—especially when he’s the love of your life you left behind.

Wild on the Beach

DISCOVERING HIS RESTLESS ex-wife at Casa Blanca—and still going by his name—is enough to drive Lieutenant Commander Jasper McQueen wild. When she ran out on their marriage, Quinn left him a broken man. Now with his career in jeopardy and his sexy ex-wife at hand, Jasper is ready to chuck responsibility and submerse himself in a hedonistic affair—all sex, zero emotions—with the woman he won’t forgive and can never forget. And this time, when they’re done, it’ll be Jasper who does the leaving.

Wild on the Rocks

BUT A MOB ENFORCER has tracked Quinn to Barefoot Bay. With her days numbered, Jasper may be her only shot at living through the night—if Quinn can get him to believe in her one last time. 

THIS STORY IS SET IN a world based on Roxanne St. Claire’s Barefoot Bay Series; it is published with the permission of Roxanne St. Claire, information about whose books are found at http://www.roxannestclaire.com/barefoot-bay-series/.

A Message From Roxanne St. Claire

Dear Reader:

Welcome to Barefoot Bay World, a place for authors to write their own stories set in the tropical paradise that I created! For these books, I have only provided the setting of Mimosa Key and a cast of characters from my popular Barefoot Bay series. That’s it! I haven’t contributed to the plotting, writing, or editing of Wild on the Rocks. This book is entirely the work of Kiersten Hallie Krum, a talented author I handpicked to help launch of this world.

Kiersten and I had a cute meet on Twitter. A television reviewer and aspiring author, Kiersten’s sassy commentary filled my twitter feed with a biting wit that made me a fan of hers long before she’d read any of my books. The Twitter exchange bloomed to a real-life friendship and the honor of asking Kiersten to set her debut novel in Barefoot Bay.  She’s written my favorite kind of romantic suspense and one I am confident readers will love—full of sensual scenes, unexpected plot twists, and a sexy Navy SEAL who wants a second chance. I have no doubt it will have you stalking Kiersten on social media and asking for her next book!  But before you do, kick off your shoes, pour something Wild on the Rocks...and fall in love!

Roxanne St. Claire

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Barefoot Bay Series

www.roxannestclaire.com

CHAPTER ONE

I’m for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers, or Jack Daniels.

—Frank Sinatra

The Borgata Hotel

Atlantic City, New Jersey

Check the stalls. She can’t have gone far.

The shouted order overpowered the dub step that rattled the elegant walls of Premier Nightclub’s men’s room. Straddling the metal toilet flusher, stiletto heels jutting out behind her into the wall, arms stretched wide to press into the sides of the stall for balance, Quinn Forrester tried very, very hard not to breathe.

The pair of men caught her eye while she was working the exclusive party in the Borgata’s penthouse. They looked as though her client had ordered them off a central casting menu for a Tom Clancy thriller: big with a puffiness that implied a diet dominated by carbs and stances that suggested weekly deportment lessons from Rocky III.

When she’d fled the luxury suite hours later, they’d been close enough behind for Quinn to smell the vodka on their breath right before the closing elevator doors cut them off.

The club music swelled, and she figured the man was standing in the open door when he added, If you find her, don’t kill the bitch. Nikolai wants to interrogate her first. Find out how much she saw. I’ll check out the bar. The door shut behind him, muffling the dub step. Quinn focused on the methodical slap of dress shoes as the remaining thug systematically flung stall doors back to bang against walls. Her pulse pounded away in her throat, flooding her mouth with fear as each empty stall brought him closer.

Bang. Slap. Bang. Slap.

Her stilettos did their futile best to bore right through the wall. Why, tonight of all nights, had she switched out her motorcycle boots for heels?

Oh, right. Because this was supposed to be a cushy gig in Atlantic City. The rare sure thing.

The invitation-only party at the Borgata promised an elite batch of cocktail connoisseurs with money to burn and the potential to boost Quinn’s mixologist business, In the Mix, to a new level. Five years she’d spent building her cred as a cocktail specialist through blood, sweat, and bar fights. Would’ve been nice to work for a higher class of clientele with deeper wallets. Plus, there’d been the promise of full payment up front and a generous bonus at the end of the night.

Not that she’d see any of that now.

Watching your client shoot someone in the head tended to reflect poorly in your gratuity.

Slick with sweat, her trembling hand slid from the wall. Quinn caught her breath and spread her legs, straining to keep her feet above the edge of the stall wall as she wobbled on her perch. Her long, chunky, fake pearl necklace slid off her forearm and nearly kissed the water. Breathless, she eased it aside before it could trigger the embedded flushing sensor. The short skirt of her skintight, black leather, off-the-shoulder dress strained at her thighs as the metal dug painfully into her crotch, not the kind of action she’d been missing in that area.

She just had to go with a theme of sexy class for the night, dragging out the Vegas dress and heels for the first time since she’d left that city more than a year ago, and then topping it all off with the pearls, curled and overly teased dark hair, and makeup from the notice me! oeuvre.

Smooth move, Forrester.

Hopefully, she’d have time to regret her fashion choices. Next time, (please God, let there be a next time!), she’d remember it was easier to run in motorcycle boots than five-inch heels.

Bang. Slap.

Tears prickled behind her nose making her eyes burned. She had such the urge to burst from the stall and go for it. She didn’t do conflict, and being stalked by a burly man with a gun was conflict personified. When it came to the flight or fight question, she firmly felt flight was always the best option. But for the first time, she wished she could, occasionally, when it really counted, like, say, right freaking now, be more than her usual hot mess of a flight risk and deal with her damn drama!

Bang. Slap.

Shit, he was only five or six stalls away. And she had nothing. No one even knew she was in Atlantic City much less this hotel and this gig. She managed her clients herself, booking through her website and on her cell. The mobile office in her SUV saw her ass in its seat so often, she’d broken the lease on her one-bedroom condo to save on its rent. She could drop off the face of the earth and no one would miss her till she wound up on a John Walsh special.

Sometimes it really sucked to be alone.

Her thighs clenched around the metal flusher.

Bang. Slap.

She was always so damn curious. A smart woman would’ve known better than to seek out the source of all that shouting. A sensible woman would’ve packed up her shit tout freaking suite and gotten the hell outta Atlantic City fast as she could. But not her. Ohhh no. She’d wandered her leather-clad ass down the hall and got rewarded by watching some guy get his head blown off!

Quinn gagged at the memory and swallowed back the befouled taste of the celebratory aperitif she’d downed right before she’d wandered down that hall.

Bang. Slap.

Fast and sharp like fresh lust, it flashed through her, an irresistible compulsion for bat-shit cray cray. A hair-trigger flare of wild that never failed to fling her straight into absolute madness. It reached up, took firm hold of Quinn’s terror, and strangled the crap out of it.

Fuck this shit.

Her last footnote in life was not going to be getting killed crouched on a men’s toilet in the club of an Atlantic City casino. She’d be on a BuzzFeed listicle before the end of business: 15 Ways You Really Don’t Want to Die, or 20 People Who Would’ve Died From Mortification if Someone Hadn’t Killed Them First.

I don’t think so.

Bang. Slap.

Quinn quietly slipped the straps of her heels from her ankles and eased her bare feet onto the seat-free toilet bowl—honestly, how did men deal with the sheer uncleanliness of it all?—excruciatingly careful not to trigger the flushing sensor and blow all her slim chances straight to hell.

Under the brim of the wall, tasseled leather loafers came into view at the stall to her left. She turned both shoes heel out and braced.

Madness.

Damn skippy.

She launched herself at Thug Two the moment he flung open the door. Quinn hit him full body, and hard, with all 130 pounds of her 5’6" frame, slamming him back on his ass with the fierce rush of a successful surprise. She thrust one stiletto at his neck and felt it give as the sharp edge on the heel sliced into his flesh.

Fucking whore! he shouted into her face, spittle spraying her cheek. Blood from his neck smeared her hand. Quinn swallowed back bile and rammed the second heel at his eye before she could think twice about it. She almost dropped the shoe with shock as the flesh gave under her jab. He howled again. One meaty paw swept out to cuff the edge of her shoulder when she didn’t dodge fast enough.

Quinn flew back across half the room. Her head hit the wall with force, but she sprang back onto her feet a second later, hyperventilating and shaking stars from her eyes as she snatched up her satchel and stumbled for the door and prayed Thug One wasn’t waiting outside.

Out in the club proper, the once-muted dub step pulsed deafeningly through the room. Quinn slid on the slick floor, stubbing her bare toe when she caught herself on a high-top table. Gyrating bodies in tight clinches matched tempo with the music. Two AM and the club was jumpin’ jumpin’.

The DJ flipped a switch; instantly, disco balls stopped spinning, replaced with the staccato flashes of strobe lights that left the dancers looking like a stop-motion parody. Quinn pushed through bodies and ducked behind an ornate, lattice screen, scanning for Thug One as best she could while the lights fucked with her vision.

Jimmy Choos? Quinn glanced blankly at the woman yelling in her ear who seem to be wearing two napkins and a tablecloth as her top and skirt. Her blonde hair was ruthlessly pulled back into a tight ponytail for a do-it-yourself facelift. Her long, glittering earrings danced when she nodded at the heels Quinn clutched at the ready. Those look like Jimmy Choos.

Quinn spared a glance for her footwear. A black band cut across the base of the toes and attached at its center to the tip of a large triangle of black leather that spread wide up the foot to wrap around the ankle. Strings of various sized pearls covered the leather triangle. The shoes were another Vegas remnant and the only designer pair she owned.

Now they were an improvised $900 assault weapon.

You’re motorcycle boots and pearls, babe, he’d murmured as he zipped her into the dress. But, goddamn, your legs were built for these heels.

More than a year later, she could still feel his deep voice coasting over her skin before he’d kissed her neck next to the halter strap. His hands had roamed her body, touching on breast and hip before flirting between her thighs for one brief, hot moment that instantly primed her. My wild lady, he’d whispered in her ear.

The bolt of longing speared her heart like a dagger.

Don’t drop them in this mess, the blonde advised, snapping Quinn back. A flash of strobe light gleamed in the woman’s avaricious gaze. You’ll never get them back.

Quinn noticed the pearls on her shoes bore polka dots of Thug Two’s blood. Belatedly, she shoved the shoes and her blood-smeared hands behind her back. The blonde snickered while the disco balls flipped back on. When Quinn’s eyes adjusted, they landed on Thug One, already moving her way. She watched him check behind her and noted his frown when he didn’t find Thug Two at her rear.

Quinn plunged into the mass of bumping bodies on the dance floor. It was as close to a public orgy as they could get without arrests being made. Without shoes, her average height was dwarfed by women in platform shoes with sky-scraper heels and the club bros trying to score.

Quinn used the palpable sexuality to her advantage. Hands brushed her breasts and hips and thighs as she bobbed and weaved across the floor, shoes and satchel clutched close, all the while peering between bodies for a safe exit, once even sliding between a couple for a charged, if brief, threesome bump and grind that sent them straight to a semi-private corner.

Quinn grabbed a club bro and dirty danced him to the edge of the crowd, giving up an ass grab for the favor, then breaking free when they reached the perimeter of the bar area. His shouted protest was lost in the roar that heralded colored bits of paper dropping from vents in the ceilings and beach balls being tossed into the crowd.

From the corner of her eye, Quinn saw Thug One get trapped in the mad rush for toys. Her gaze caught on a bouncer standing guard at a nearby set of stairs that led to the club’s front door. She stumbled out of the crowd and clutched the bouncer’s beefy arm. Oh my God, she gushed in her best Kardashian imitation, waving her free hand in Thug One’s direction. Her frightened expression was completely genuine. "That guy has been after me all night. He felt me up on the dance floor. Can you, like, do something about him?"

The bouncer frowned down at her, dislodged her hand like brushing off a fly, and with a signal over her head to his partner, pushed through the crowd to intercept Thug One.

Quinn raced up the stairs and through the door, keen to get out of the hotel and to her car before Thug One talked his way out of the bouncer brigade.

The stone white opulence of the Borgata’s lobby was a shock after the noise and colorful crush of the club. Quinn’s gaze pinwheeled past the orange fireball chandelier that hung from the ceiling. To avoid interested glances, she slipped back into her shoes, settled her bag on her shoulder, and strode at a clip from the hotel without looking back.

Every crime thriller and procedural she’d ever seen or read ran through her mind as she click-clacked down the sidewalk and into the darkened parking garage. Her shaking arms could barely manage to hold onto her keys. Her head swiveled, checking each pocket of shadow until the fear finally trumped her flagging control and she broke into a flat-out run. Focus, focus, focus, she chanted in a whisper. Keep breathing and focus.

She reached her SUV without being jumped, and beeped the lock open while she yanked the satchel strap up and over her head. She wrenched open the door, flung herself in, and powered up. Too panicked to be quiet about it, she backed out of the space fast enough to make the tires screech, plunged down the ramps, and shot out onto the highway to the blare of horns from cars she cut off. Less than a minute later, she was on the Atlantic City Expressway and racing blindly into the night with the sure certainty that life as she knew it was over.

CHAPTER TWO

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

—Winston Churchill

Coronado, California

The next morning

Lieutenant Jasper McQueen barreled through the double doors of the roadhouse on the chalkboard screech of a slide guitar. Already on the far edge of pissed off, the twang assault tipped him right over.

He did not need this shit. He was tired. Jesus, was he tired. Up now for seventy-two hours after a two-week deployment, twenty-two of those on a plane following their high-stress extraction from a piping hot LZ. He’d sorted his Team’s shit, got them all home in one piece, and was finally on his way to nearly eight hours unconscious when his goddamn cell had rung.

He’d hit the answer button. Twist did him the favor of not fucking around with the lead in. Queen, man, Mav’s got his dick in the fryer.

Goddammit. This was his third call out for Maverick in as many months.

Where?

The Range.

Trust Maverick to get his shit in a bind at a biker roadhouse. Spectacular. Cops been called?

Doubt it. Guys here like to handle shit like this on their own.

For a brief moment, Jasper considered enjoying the privileges of rank and tagging his chief petty officer for cleanup. But the chief was a family man and wouldn’t thank Jasper for waking up his pair of tweens, commanding officer or not.

Jasper had no such excuse. Not anymore. And he was a man who led with his feet, showing up regardless of the imposition or the clusterfuck that required intervention. Command ignorance might be the smart play, especially given all the crazy shit his enlisted men got up to, but he’d learned the hard way that knowing more now lessened the chance of catastrophe down the line. His men knew not to call him for piddly shit, but if they didn’t for the big guns, there’d be hell to pay.

Maverick had been loading the big guns for some time.

He hung up on his friend and ten minutes later headed out to the Range. His entrance into the roadhouse garnished him more than a few looks, and more than a few ladies treated him to the once—and several the twice—over. Jasper ignored the target-rich environment and scanned the sawdusted floor for his best friend.

Queen!

At the shout, Jasper shot past the three-person deep bar and around its bend to the back area where Grant Twisted Sisti stood in the back door. He’s in the back lot, Twist said when Jasper got close. He led the way into a narrow alley. Distant shouts and catcalls grew louder as they got closer to the action.

How’s he doing?

Blinding white teeth flashed as Twist grinned. Getting his ass kicked. How else?

Who got that pleasure this time?

Bikers, man. Went for a friendly old lady. Real friendly. Mav’s not about to pass that up. Her old man had other ideas.

This shit feel like a pattern to you?

Twist snorted. Pattern happened a month ago. This is a fuckin’ hobby.

Men who spent their lives preparing for combat, engaging in combat, or stopping combat before it could start often wound up with lots of unspent adrenaline. Picking a bar fight wasn’t an unusual way to burn it off.

Lately, Maverick had been making an art form of it.

What’re we lookin’ at?

Four bikers. Me, you, and Maverick. Beau was along for the ride, but he scored and split off before shit went down.

The rest?

Opted to crash, Twist confirmed. Beau and Maverick had adrenaline to burn.

He sober?

I shit you not, Queen, he had one beer all night.

Which meant they didn’t have booze to blame this time. Fucking Maverick, Jasper muttered. Twist shot him a look. Jasper didn’t usually talk smack about his team. Not out loud. Gonna need your assessment.

Twist silently sized him up. I’m thinkin’ you need a break, Roy. A beach, booze, and babes kinda break.

"Not the professional assessment I’m looking for, Doctor."

Blinding white teeth flashed in the night as Twist grinned. All that jealousy for the letters after my name is unbecoming in an officer.

Jasper’s irritated frown bounced harmlessly off his friend. More often than not, Twist’s PhD in psychology was an asset to their team dynamic, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a pain in the ass about it. Long as the letters in front of mine out-rank you, I’m good.

How can I serve your royal highness this time?

Cut that shit out and give me your take on Maverick.

Should’ve let Ice Man flame out in his own backwash.

You enjoying your trip back to 1986? When you were, what, nine months old?

There’s no age restrictions on the highway to the danger zone, brother.

Jasper’s mouth quirked. Need your take, he repeated.

Well, to use the professional terms of my people, the boy’s fucked.

Jasper stopped abruptly and crossed his arms. Twist.

Twist turned at the growled warning and in an instant, Jasper’s friend was gone, and Twist addressed his commanding officer. "Recent borderline insubordination and ongoing aggressive acts while off duty suggest patient has developed acute PTSD. Continued deployment