Erin Kealoha never set out to become a PI’s sidekick, but after escaping from a cult, becoming an accidental drug mule—it wasn’t her fault, honest—and then getting fired from a strip joint, she lucked into the job. And she’s going to be the best assistant Ari Danner has ever had. Okay, being blinded while working surveillance isn’t part of the plan, but accidents happen, right?
Rusty Bolt might be a great hockey player, but he sucks at surveillance even more than Erin does. So when Ari proposes a trade—investigative services in exchange for room and board—he grudgingly accepts.
Too bad he didn’t ask exactly why they wanted to borrow his spare bedroom…
Blind Luck is an action-packed romantic suspense novel with plenty of dark humour and a morally grey girl squad. No cliffhanger!
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Sneak peek…
I reached for the ketchup, but I accidentally knocked my glass. It teetered for a second, then fell, splashing lemonade over the stack of books. To give the German novel its credit, the pages were great at soaking up the mess.
Cherry and Cotton Candy began shrieking while Plum turned an ugly shade of puce. She threw her fifteen-dollar cocktail in my face, and I felt rather than saw the slice of lemon and part of a kiwifruit slide down my top and settle in my bra.
Felt rather than saw because whatever was in that cocktail stung like hell, and I couldn’t see anything at all. My eyeballs were on fire. Hey, Frodo, I found Sauron and his twin. Heart racing, I tried to wipe away the liquid, but that only made the pain worse. Where was that wailing coming from?
Oh, right. That was me.
Strong arms wrapped around my waist. Someone tipped me backward. More liquid poured over my face, and an ice cube hit my nose, but this time, the stinging began to ease. I reached up gingerly to assess the damage, but fingers grasped my wrist.
“Don’t rub your eyes,” a deep voice said.
A woman added, “That’ll only hurt more.”
I cracked open an eyelid and found Pink Dress watching me, an empty glass in her hand. Her two friends were hovering in the background along with the bartender, and when I twisted my head to the side, I saw Sunglasses Guy holding me. The three BookBuzz bitches were nowhere in sight.
“They scooted on out of here,” Pink Dress said, reading my mind. “Not a single manner between them.”
“I…I…It hurts.”
“Flush it with water. Tap water is fine. Where’s the nearest sink? Or a shower?”
“There’s a sink in the kitchen,” the bartender offered, pointing to a mirrored door.
Sunglasses Guy guided me with a hand on the small of my back as Pink Dress led the way. When we reached the tiny kitchen, he picked me up as if I weighed nothing and held my face under the faucet while Pink Dress smoothed my hair out of the way. The pain lessened, a smoulder compared to the raging inferno, and although it didn’t go away completely, my head cleared enough to realise that Sunglasses Guy’s hand was dangerously close to my ass.
“I’m fine now. All good.” I wriggled free and whacked my elbow on the edge of the sink. A yelp escaped along with several curse words, and I clenched my fists as another wave of pain rolled through me. “Everything’s just fine.”
I blinked furiously, trying to get rid of the itchy, prickly sensation.
“What was in that drink?” Pink Dress asked the bartender.
“Gin, Lillet Blanc, lemon juice, Cointreau, and a dash of absinthe.”
“Lemon juice? Yikes.”
Sunglasses Guy touched me on the shoulder, the lightest brush of his fingers, but it made me shiver.
“How do you really feel?” he asked.
I was too sore to lie. “As if someone poked me in the eye with a cactus. Cacti. I have two eyes, and they both hurt like heck.”
Pink Dress studied me blurrily. “You should probably get checked out at the hospital to make sure there’s no serious damage.”
“Kina was going to be a nurse,” one of her friends said from the other side of the room. “You should listen to her.”
A nurse? And now she was hanging out in a downmarket hotel and doing who-knew-what with men every few hours? I wasn’t in a position to judge—I’d had to take some questionable jobs to keep a roof over my head—but if she’d had to give up a career she wanted for one she didn’t, I did feel sad for her.
“You don’t want to take risks with your eyes,” Sunglasses Guy warned. “I’ll book an Uber.”
“No, no, I’ll call a friend.” I hated Ubers. When I lived in the Promised Land, the elders used to warn us never to get into cars with strangers, and now you could literally order a stranger in a car from your phone. Maybe the elders had been scaremongering, but enough girls had disappeared from the compound that I had reason to worry. Ari understood my fears. For sure, she’d pick me up as soon as she was done with Digby Rennick. “I need my phone.”
“Where’s it at?”
“On the table.”
“We’ll get your stuff.”
Kina disappeared with her friends in tow, leaving me alone in the kitchen with a man I didn’t know and a sudden swarm of butterflies. Great. I felt bad enough without a bout of nausea.
I’d begun inching toward the door, still blinking furiously, when he took off his sunglasses. Boy, he was handsome. Probably. I mean, what I could see looked good, but he reminded me of those witnesses they blurred out on true-crime shows. You could see them, but you couldn’t.
“I’m Rusty,” he said.
“Rusty at what?”
“It’s my name. Rusty.”
“Oh.” Between the pain and his proximity, I couldn’t think straight.
“Your name is Oh?”
“No, my name is Erin.”
Actually, my name was Joy, but I hated it. Erin was the name I’d picked out for myself, and Alexa had gotten me a passport, so it was official now. She’d offered to get me a driver’s licence too, but Ari had vetoed that idea after Kai gave me a lesson in his truck and I got distracted by a raccoon and then drove through a stoplight. I could kind of see her point.
“Good to meet you, Erin.”
He laughed, but why? “What’s so funny?”
My watering eyes? Or my blotchy face?
“Sorry. It’s just this whole…”—he pointed between us—“awkwardness. My momma always said laughter was the best medicine.”
“Laughter isn’t making my eyes sting any less.”
“You want me to call an ambulance?”
“No! Do you know how much those things cost?”
Right after I escaped from the Promised Land, I’d taken the first bus that was getting the hell out of California and found myself in Rockport, Texas, cleaning hotel rooms so I could afford food. One of my roommates at the time had been bankrupted after he slipped over on a half-melted ice cream cone and broke his wrist. He’d warned me never to go near a hospital, even if I was dying. Life would be easier if you spent your money on a nice casket instead of on a healthcare provider’s Christmas party.
I did have insurance now, my brother had made sure of that, but I still wasn’t going to ride in an ambulance when Ari’s passenger seat was an option. All I had to do was call her and explain the situation and—
“There’s no phone on the table, only a book,” Kina said.
“No, I definitely left it there.”
“A girl sitting nearby said a blond-haired guy was looking at your stuff, and he left when he noticed her watching him. She didn’t see him take the phone, but it isn’t there now, so he most likely did.”
Just my freaking luck. I was half blind, and I couldn’t even explain that to my boss.
“You want to borrow my phone?” Rusty offered.
I screwed my eyes shut harder, trying to focus. What was Ari’s number? She’d programmed it into my phone, and I’d never bothered to learn it by heart. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I should have done that. Why hadn’t I done it? I remembered Kai’s number, but if I called him, he’d never let me leave Santa Cruz again. I wiped my eyes, but that only made them hurt more, and I’d put mascara on this morning so I probably looked terrifying.
“Is my room key still on the table? I can wait for my friend upstairs.”
Why was Rusty shaking his head? And Kina too? Or had my vision just gone really weird?
“You’re going to the hospital,” Rusty said.
“But—”
“Your eyes are red, and they haven’t stopped watering.” That was true, the watering part at least. “If you won’t ride in an ambulance, and you won’t take an Uber, then I’ll drive you there.”
“No way.”
Kina turned on him. “Literally every woman learns in kindergarten that you shouldn’t get into cars with strange men.”
“Wait, isn’t it your job to get into cars with strange men?”
“I work out of a hotel room, you asshole.”
“Sorry, I just thought—”
“Just because I’m a sex worker doesn’t mean you have to get all judgmental.”
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“Oh, really? Men are happy to take advantage of my services when it suits them, and then they—”
“Could I just squeeze past?” I asked. “I need to get to my room.”
“No!” they yelled in unison, and then Kina added, “I’ll drive you to the hospital.”
“I’m coming too,” Rusty said.
“No, you’re not.”
“So you’re planning to pay for her treatment?”
“Uh…”
“Then I’m coming.”
I raised a hand. “Do I get any say in this?”
On that one thing, they agreed. “No.”
CONTENT WARNINGS
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