Fear the Beard (The Dixie Warden Rejects MC Book 2) 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 husband, the biggest asshole I know…I may love you like crazy, but you just pissed me off, so this one is for you.

  To my sickly baby. The one who the little girl in this story was based on.

  You were my third baby, and you were absolutely perfect. Then you started getting sick. One sickness after the other. Cough. Stomach bugs. Respiratory infections. Pneumonia. Stomach bug. It was a vicious cycle that continued on for nearly a year. It was a scary year, too. One that I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

  But now, you’re my mini me. You’re the most rambunctious and naughty of my entire bunch…but you are worth every sleepless night, every single doctor visit, and every last trip to the ER. You, my baby, are worth it. I love you with all of my heart and soul, and I hope one day you grow up and read this, and it makes you realize just how much you mean to your daddy and me.

  Acknowledgements

  Golden Czermak/Furiousfotog—this image is amazing. When I don’t think you can get any better, you do.

  Jake Wilson—the same goes for you. I now own 4 photos that feature you, and I can’t tell which one I love more.

  Danielle—the amazing woman that makes my babies shine. Words are not enough to explain how much you mean to me. You’re literally one of the best people in the world, and I count myself lucky to have you as one of my closest friends.

  Mom—you do just as much work as I do, and don’t ask for a single thing in return. Thank you for loving these books as if they were your own.

  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

  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 (4/16/17)

  Dixie Warden Rejects

  Beard Mode

  Fear the Beard

  Son of a Beard (4-27-17)

  I’m Only Here for the Beard (5-31-17)

  Tally is a twenty-year-old single mother struggling to finish nursing school. Has she made mistakes in life? Sure, but her daughter isn’t one of them. She works hard, she studies even harder, and she’s only a few weeks away from graduating.

  She’s living her life the best she knows how when she witnesses a near miss motorcycle accident between a car and a biker. A biker that happens to be the most talked about teacher at her college.

  The moment she meets those startling blue, narrowly-escaped-death eyes, she realizes quickly that life as she knows it has changed. No longer will she be content to let life pass her by, even if it puts everything she’s worked so hard for in jeopardy.

  ***

  Tommy is a highly skilled doctor. A teacher. A veteran. A fully-patched member of The Dixie Wardens MC. He’s lonely, but also set in his ways. What will it take for this man to accept that he needs to make some changes in his life? Apparently, it’ll take a guy in a truck, who’s preoccupied with his phone rather than focused on the road, nearly plowing into him on his bike at seventy miles per hour. Oh, and a twenty-something year old nursing student witnessing the entire thing from only a few feet away.

  It only takes a second, a single heartbeat in time, as he looks into her worry-filled eyes to realize that he’d give anything for a single night with her. He may lose his job in the process, but after that one incredible night turns into an amazing weekend, he knows it’s worth the risk for the promise of her forever.

  Chapter 1

  I’m not good at peopling.

  -T-shirt

  Tally

  “No, baby. I have to go to school.” I smoothed my daughter’s hair back gently. “When Mommy gets home, she’ll come to your room and give you a kiss, okay?”

  That was if I got home on time. Last clinical I didn’t get home on time. In fact, I was home so late that I barely had the energy to make it through the door four long hours after my clinical was supposed to be over.

  My daughter’s quiet pleas and sniffles with snot smeared on my scrub top had me wanting to cry right along with her.

  Every single time I went to school like this, she tried to get me to stay, and each time was getting harder and harder on me.

  My father took my daughter from me and settled her on his forearm.

  “Go, Tally,” he ordered softly. “I’ve got her.”

  My daughter’s fat tears rolled silently down her cheeks.

  “Be good, baby,” I ordered. “You go right to sleep for Pawpaw, okay?”

  Tallulah pursed her lips, wiped her eyes, and buried her face into my father’s neck.

  My eight-month old daughter knew two words. ‘Bye-bye’ and ‘Fish.’

  “You better go before you’re late,” my father ordered.

  I grimaced at him.

  “I’m going,” I sighed. “See you tonight.”

  With one final blown kiss to Tallulah, I pushed through the door and headed down the steps to the driveway.

  I looked back one final time to see my dad in the window helping Tallulah to wave at me.

  I smiled at her, then unlocked the doors to my Toyota 4-Runner, my father’s hand-me-down nineteen-ninety model that
needed a paint job and a tune up.

  However, when you’re a twenty—almost twenty-one—year-old single mom working forty hours a week and going to school full time, luxuries such as a new car weren’t afforded.

  Hell, I was lucky if I had enough money to put gas in my car to get me to school and work.

  With one final look at the massive five-bedroom monstrosity my parents had lived in for the best years of my life, I pulled a U-turn in the grass and carefully eased out of the driveway.

  My thoughts were on the first day of the last semester of nursing school, and I was still wondering, much like I was on the first day of school, what exactly I was thinking.

  I hated nursing.

  I hated it with a passion, in fact.

  I didn’t like blood. I couldn’t stand seeing broken bones. I actually hated people, too.

  I wasn’t a good people person, and it seemed like everyone knew it.

  Like the biker at my side.

  I knew he was there. We were sitting at a red light, and I could feel his eyes on me.

  Did I turn to acknowledge him?

  No.

  What if he smiled? Was I expected to smile back? What if he waved? There was no way in hell I was waving back. Then there was the worry that he might think I was coming on to him, when I most definitely wouldn’t be.

  Why? Because I wasn’t good at peopling.

  I, Talith Breanna Slater, was an introvert.

  I didn’t do well in crowds. Talking to someone new made me feel like I had hives. And I was about to enter into an occupation that was known primarily for interacting with human beings.

  My phone rang, startling me out of my contemplation.

  “Hello?”

  “Where are you?” my best friend hissed.

  I rolled my eyes. “Be there in five,” I told her, and then hung up.

  I hung up because the light turned green, and I made a promise to myself the day that I’d brought Tallulah home from the hospital and we were nearly killed by a texting teenager that I would never pick up the phone while I was driving ever again.

  And it was a good thing I did, or I might’ve missed the stupidity that’d happened directly in front of me.

  My foot eased off the brake, and my SUV started to inch forward.

  The motorcycle next to me revved his engine and started forward as well, and I was just about to press my foot to the gas when a large white maintenance van shot through the intersection, missing the biker by only a few inches, and zoomed on like nothing had happened. As if he hadn’t just nearly run over a freakin’ person.

  The biker, sometime in between then and now, had slid sideways and was perpendicular to my car, staring at the road where the van had disappeared so intently that it made me quite nervous.

  I’d just about decided to get out and ask him if he was okay—and, yes, I realize how extrovert-like that would’ve been for me—when he turned and stared at me.

  The only thing I could see were his eyes.

  A blue so beautiful that they were piercing.

  They were shocking, and pairing those eyes with a man on a motorcycle was just wrong.

  Why?

  Because I had a weakness for bad boys and a child to prove it.

  The thing that was even worse was following those chilling eyes all the way to the school.

  Right into my school, where the only people that came into said school were other nursing students and teachers.

  He parked in the teacher parking lot, and I breathed a sigh of relief, thankful that I wouldn’t have to park and walk in with him since teachers had their own private entrance.

  Pulling into a spot next to the familiar white car belonging to my best friend—who was in the front seat downing the largest latte that our tiny town had to offer—and shutting off my car.

  I got out the same time Hadley did.

  “I think you pulled in behind Dr. Tommy.”

  I blinked.

  “What?” I asked. “Who is that?”

  She started to snicker as she straightened her black scrub top.

  I looked down at my top and fingered the fourth star that I’d just sewn on this morning.

  Three semesters down, one more to go.

  I could do it. I could do it.

  Maybe if I kept chanting that to myself, then eventually it would be true.

  The tests weren’t the problem, though they were tough. No, my problem all boiled down to the hospital itself.

  “That’s Dr. Bones.”

  I froze, then turned, went to my tiptoes, and gasped.

  The moment I could see him getting off his motorcycle, I finally registered the scrub pants.

  Dr. Tomirkanivov aka Dr. Tommy aka Dr. Bones—who was dubbed that by the ghosts of nursing students past for his lady boner inducing powers—was the hot doctor who taught our critical care classes.

  And this was also the semester that we spent the most of our time in the ER—my worst nightmare.

  “I also saw him nearly get hit at the stoplight just down the road. I would’ve had to perform mouth to mouth with him,” I chuckled to hide the nervousness at seeing that man in a classroom and what that was doing to me.

  “I think you mean on him, not with him.”

  I chuckled under my breath.

  “Sure. That’s what I meant.”

  She rolled her eyes and hefted her backpack, and I followed suit.

  “You have something cheesy looking on your shirt.”

  I looked down, holding out my scrub top where she’d pointed to examine it, and laughed.

  “Tallulah was having eggs and cheese when I left,” I explained. “I guess I’m lucky it’s not vomit.”

  Hadley snorted.

  “Hey, did you apply for the internship?” Hadley asked suddenly.

  “Yes,” I muttered.

  Of course, I had. My mother would’ve killed me if I hadn’t.

  My mother was Director of Nursing, and she would’ve had a coronary had I not applied.

  Apparently, it was a good way to get a ‘leg up’ on other hires. Or whatever.

  I didn’t really care.

  She didn’t know yet that I was likely going to go work in a doctor’s office and not the hospital at all, but she’d figure that out pretty quickly once I graduated.

  “I did too.” She nodded her head. “My hope is to get in there with Dr. Bones. I hear he’s a good…teacher.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Dr. Bones doesn’t fuck students. He doesn’t even fuck other nurses or doctors. In fact, I’m not quite sure that he’s capable of even having sex,” I whispered to my best friend.

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but one can hope, can’t she?”

  Yeah, one could hope.

  We walked up the hallway to where the Critical Concepts class was—thank you to our small college for offering something brand new that no other nursing program in the country offered to their level four students—and I started to get lightheaded.

  Yeah, the idea of critical care—of anything that even remotely had to do with blood and gore—gave me the heebie-jeebies.

  I was determined not to let anyone know of my fear, though, even my best friend.

  I stepped through the doorway and my stomach knotted.

  Here goes nothing.

  Chapter 2

  If you don’t shut up, I’ll shove this stick down your throat.

  -Why Tally shouldn’t be trusted with tongue depressors when she’s pissed.

  Tally

  “Sweet baby Jesus,” Hadley groaned. “We’re going to die. Literally, how can anyone make it through life like this?”

  I agreed.

  How were we going to make it through our days without falling into a puddle of goo at the feet of Dr. Tommy?

  I didn’t think it was possible.

  Well, not now that he was our freakin’ teacher as well.

  Why he
was a teacher, on top of being a freakin’ doctor at the hospital, was beyond me.

  But there he was. In our classroom. Showing off his freakin’ tattoos.

  “How is he allowed to show his tattoos?” the girl on the other side of us, Elba, asked. “We’re not allowed to show ours.”

  “Is there something you ladies wish to discuss with the rest of the class?” Dr. Tommy drawled, bringing our attention to him.

  “Uh,” I stalled. “I was asking if either one of them had a pen I could use. Mine’s no longer working.”

  He started to stalk toward me, and I started to squirm in my chair.

  Please don’t check my pen. Please don’t check my pen!

  He didn’t check my pen.

  No, instead he pulled a freakin’ pen out of his pocket, handed it to me, and waited while I tried to get my hands to work.

  “T-thank you,” I murmured quietly, taking the pen gently.

  His eyes were an intense blue. So freakin’ blue that they looked fake. They looked even bluer when you paired them with his tanned skin and black hair.

  “Maybe next time you’ll be prepared for my class,” he murmured so softly that only Hadley and I could hear.

  My face turned an intense shade of red, I was sure.

  “I will. I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

  We were supposed to have two pens. That’d been the instructions on the syllabus on the first day of class. Two pens. One blue, one black. Two pencils. Two highlighters. Two notebooks.

  Two…in case one failed.

  That’d been his instructions. Always be prepared. Bring two of everything. Always. Everything fails, so always have backup.

  Gritting my teeth, I gave my friends a sideways look that clearly relayed that they were to behave, or I’d kill them, causing both of them to smile.

  Elba was a very cute Latina girl who I met the first day of class, and she’d quickly become one of my very best friends. She was getting married in the fall after we graduated, and I was really happy for her.

  “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, your first clinical in the ER might be somewhat overwhelming. That’s to be expected. However, over time, you will learn the ropes, find your stride, and realize that it isn’t some big, scary place that will swallow you alive,” Dr. Tommy—I refused to call him Dr. Bones anymore—continued.