Charity For Nothing: The Virtues Book III Read online

  A novel of The Kraken MC

  CHARITY FOR NOTHING

  The Virtues Book III

  AJ Downey

  Second Circle Press

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Book Summary

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  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

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Epilogue

  Teaser: Brother To Brother

  Other books by A.J. Downey

  About the Author

  Publishing Info

  Charity is home free: her degree under her belt and making a beeline straight for sunny Ft. Royal, and her sisters, Hope and Faith. Excited to see them, yet having been warned by Hope to watch herself when it came to the disarmingly charming ways of The Kraken, Charity never expected to walk right into the one man to flip all of her switches to the ‘on’ position before she’d even taken a dozen steps into town.

  Nothing was everything she liked. Tall, handsome, with a pair of eyes that any woman should swoon over. Just the right mix of tortured bad boy to pique all of her healer’s instincts. Charity knew that the men of The Kraken played for keeps; all except, it seemed, for this one. Too bad no one told The Kraken that she played for keeps, too.

  Author’s Note

  Being a spin-off, the events of this trilogy take place after the events of Damaged & Dangerous, The Sacred Hearts MC Book VI. If you have not read the SHMC series, references and events that are talked about in this book may not make sense to you. I highly suggest reading the SHMC series first, followed by Cutter’s Hope, the first book in this trilogy.

  Dedication

  To all the paramedics who put in long hours to soothe our pain while empathizing and feeling it right along with us. You guys are over worked, under paid, and just frickin’ amazing.

  The Virtues Books In Order

  1. Cutter’s Hope

  2. Marlin’s Faith

  3. Charity for Nothing

  Chapter 1

  Charity

  It was hot, the sun beating down, and a wonderful change from the snowmageddon I’d just survived through up north. We were passing spring and heading into summer back up north where my university was located, but when I’d left, there were still patches of snow on the ground up under trees, combined with piles of dirty, melting snow in other places. Mother Earth was one pissed off mother and she was letting us know all about it, but according to most politicians, global warming wasn’t a thing; go figure.

  I was driving my white Jeep Wrangler, rag top rolled and strapped down, little trailer with all my worldly possessions bouncing along behind me, looking for this marina Hope had told me to find. She said I could park there and that they’d be right next to it on the beach.

  Somehow, I expected this town to be bigger. I mean it was sunny Florida, and the rest of the state, from what I’d seen driving through, was as over developed as hell. Somehow, though, they’d missed this town. That or the people here still managed to hold their own somehow. I don’t think there was a single building over three stories tall; it was great.

  The main drag was a two way boulevard that ran along the water. It had decorative median strips down the center of it with old fashioned looking iron lamp posts. Strong, which I would guess you would need with hurricanes and the like. Speaking of which, there was supposed to be one building way off the coast, but a lot of these people were moving around unconcerned. I guess that was how things rolled around here.

  Like so many things, once you got used to it, you just rolled with it… became complacent… like I had with the thought of never seeing Faith again. I felt a stab of some serious guilt over the fact that on the inside, I’d given up on my sister. Guilt that was seriously compounded by the fact that I hadn’t skipped out on finishing up my degree and gotten my ass down here much sooner. Hope would have killed me, but I think what hurt more was Faith hadn’t wanted me to come see her… at least not right away.

  It wasn’t like I didn’t know what she was going through. As a part of my schooling, I’d been in an advanced work study program. I’d gotten my advanced nursing degree with a specialization in emergency medicine. That’d meant spending some time in the university hospital’s emergency department over the last year. Technically it was post graduate work, but I’d still needed it to earn my degree, which sat in a glass frame, carefully bubble wrapped and just behind the locked doors of the trailer. It was going to be one of the first things to be unloaded so that I could celebrate my accomplishments with my sisters. I was so fucking excited to see them, I was going to die.

  “Your destination is on your left,” blared out of my speakers, over the music; some Ashes & Embers. Faith had said they were her new favorite, so I’d downloaded everything and listened to them on the way down. It didn’t hurt that they were all long haired, tattooed, and seriously built hot guys that were like hello! Instant lust. The lead singer sang oh-so-pretty, too.

  “Your destination is on your left. Arrived, 3221, Beachfront Boulevard, Fort Royal, Florida. Arrived!”

  “Thank you! I get it, you can totally shut up now.” I cried at the GPS and rolled to a stop to let some girls in bikinis and boys in their board shorts cross the street in front of me. I hit my signal and waited with some serious impatience, bouncing in my seat, ready to scream at them to get their ass across already. I wanted to see my sisters damn it! I’d been good, I’d gotten through school, did everything I needed to do to set myself up for success and have prospects at a real fuckin’ job when I got down here and now I just wanted to see my sisters, be a family, and set up shop.

  It was time to have a life, a real one, again. A life that involved my family, helping people, and maybe meeting a guy or two. I was pretty sure I had a fling or two left in me, and according to Hope these bikers she and Faith were hooked up with were hooooooot. I’d told them to save one for me and Hope had laughed and had given me the 4-1-1 that if I were going to do the whole fling thing, that I’d want to stick with some of the beach body tourist boys. The men of The Kraken supposedly liked to play for keeps.

  I whipped the Jeep into a left turn across the lane coming in my direction once it was clear of both pedestrians and traffic, and felt excitement bubble up in my chest. Hope had told me to park in one of the spots reserved for trucks and their boat trailers and to come down to the beach on the other side of the boat ramp. I pulled forward into one of the double long spots next to a big Ford pickup and killed the engine. A couple of decent looking, rugged guys were strapping a speed boat
onto a trailer and they obviously checked me out as I refreshed my lip gloss in my rearview mirror.

  I grabbed my purse and other items I didn’t want stolen and locked them in the back of the trailer, leaving my Jeep empty. Not like I had anything to stop anyone with the hard top upside down in the back of the trailer with all my boxes of shit piled in it. Taking the time to roll the rag top back up wasn’t going to really be any kind of deterrent against a box knife or anyone smart enough to operate some snaps and a zipper. I’d been equal parts prepared with weather reports and graced with good luck for the drive down. I’d had to keep the rag top on to cut the wind when I’d first started out, but I didn’t regret my decision to leave the top off at the first chance I got for the rest of the trip. It was gorgeous down here, and I was a west coast California sun worshiping girl at the end of any day that ends in ‘Y’. With the palm trees and sun, this almost felt like home… the difference? Holy god, the humidity!

  I locked up the trailer, slung my beach bag over my shoulder, checked my hair one last time in my passenger side mirror before turning it and the driver’s one in to keep them from getting busted off, and with nothing possibly left to do to stall from my sudden case of nerves, I headed for the beach. I walked across the blacktop, flip flops flapping, my heart in my throat, scared of what I might find in Faith. She was different, distant, and I was scared the sister that I remembered wasn’t ever going to be the same again.

  My steps slowed and I stood in the parking lot for a minute, the slight breeze ghosting over my skin, hot still, and I almost cried. It’d hurt so much that they’d wanted me to stay up north through all of it. That I wasn’t wanted to come down and help, that it’d taken this long for me to get here, but at the same time I knew it was because they loved me and wanted me to finish school, which I’d done with full and the highest honors, because I was an overachiever and that’s just how I rolled.

  Once I set my mind to something, I did it and damn the consequences for the most part. It had gotten me in very little trouble, surprisingly enough, but then again, I was pretty good about making all the right choices. I’d learned from my mother’s mistakes, and from my sister Hope’s achievements. I’d never quite understood why my sister Faith felt the need to test Hope on everything, but then I realized, when it came to my closest sister, her heart beat wild and free, that she’d been at an honest loss as to what to do with herself and instead of helping… we just made it worse; me included by enabling her inertia.

  I stopped to take one last minute to myself to get my shit together, and I made up my mind then and there, that I couldn’t change the past, none of us could, so I might as well make a future that all three of us could be happy in. If that meant burying my butt-hurt over being left out of the gnarly shit, then that’s what I would do. Resentment couldn’t live here. I liked my heart light, wild, and as free as the ribcage it resided in would allow.

  “Charity, right?”

  I startled out of my reverie and looked to my right and right into a wall of muscular chest that was framed very nicely in black leather to either side. I let my eyes linger for a moment as I roamed the hills and valleys left by an absolutely superbly kept physique before my gaze slipped up over a shadowed jaw and came to rest on a pair of beautiful, deep gray eyes.

  “Yeah, how did you know…” I left it open, voice dying off in hopes this handsome stranger would give me his name.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” I asked confused and he smiled.

  “My name, it’s Nothing, and you look like Faith. Like a lot like Faith.” That made me smile, a weight lifting off my chest just a bit. I don’t know why I thought she’d look different. Probably because time and experience could change people irreparably and Faith had had both in abundance the last two years.

  “Don’t suppose you know where they are, do you?” I asked and he smiled. It looked really good on him, if a touch tragic; the ghost of something indefinable there.

  “Yeah, they’re this way,” he held out an arm, gallantly, a really old fashioned gesture by today’s standards and I smiled, taking it.

  “Thank you, Nothing.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  I put my body in motion alongside Nothing’s sleek, muscular, and taller frame. He looked to be in his early thirties, so not at all out of my price range; I liked them around ten years older.

  Pretty quickly, my line of thought about the delicious number walking me towards my sisters vanished. My steps quickened and he let me go, the patter of my thongs on the asphalt of the parking lot giving way and taking me down the cement steps to the sand. I hadn’t been able to keep myself from rushing forward at the rich, familiar laughter of my oldest sister. I stopped a few steps into the soft white sand, Nothing catching up and drawing even with me.

  Hope was in the air, Cutter, her boyfriend, had her around the waist and they appeared to be play fighting. I grinned and thought to myself, typical Hope. Except in all the time I’d known her around boyfriends or even just occasional fuck buddies, I’d never seen her smile like this, nor had I ever seen them treat her like this guy did; like she wasn’t dangerous to him. Dating Hope was like petting a pet panther in your lap. One minute it’s a cute cuddly kitty, the next it was digging claws in and nomming your face off.

  I stood back and scanned the beach for that familiar light blonde hair so like my own and I found it cuddled in the arms of a well-built man with shoulder length blond hair that was several shades darker than my sister’s. He held Faith like she were a delicate thing, and she was. She smiled, but there was a tightness around her eyes and she was still thinner than I’d ever remembered her being. She looked like me in the body now, but from what Hope had sent me picture wise, she looked loads better than when she was at her worst. Her bones no longer stuck out so prominent against her skin and her cheeks had a healthy glow to them. Her hair still needed a trim, desperately, but I’d always been the one to do the homemade haircuts, at least after I’d turned sixteen.

  I wondered briefly if Faith were waiting for me to do it for her and the thought instantly made me smile.

  “Oh! Oh, holy shit! Put me down. Put me down now!” I turned my head just as Hope buried her elbow into her boyfriend’s solar plexus. He ‘oofed’ and dropped my sister to her feet, doubling over grinning while also grimacing, which made me kind of laugh outright as my oldest sister barreled full tilt across the sand. I dropped my bag next to me and opened up my arms laughing and pretty soon, it was all three of us standing there hugging, laughing, and crying like idiots giving zero fucks about the spectacle we were making of ourselves.

  “Oh my god, Blossom, we missed you!” Hope cried and sniffed, but Faith’s tears had become something damn near inconsolable, and so had mine. We clung to each other, Hope getting her shit together first, as always, and looking on as Faith and I simply refused to let the other go.

  “I missed you so much!” I cried brokenly.

  “I missed you, too!”

  “I love you,” Faith cried and I answered with what we’d always said.

  “I love you more!”

  “Yeah, well I love you both most of all,” Hope warbled before bursting into fresh tears and just like that… we were all home because home for a bunch of rag tag vagabonds like us wasn’t a place. It never really had been moving up and down the California coast with our hippy dippy mother. No; home was the three of us, our mother’s three virtues, all in the same place at the same time. It always had been and it always would be. Period.

  “Okay, that’s enough, that’s enough! Jesus, you’d like to think y’all were at a funeral the way you’re all carrying on.”

  “Shut it, Pyro.” Hope grumbled against my neck.

  I gave the finger in the general direction the voice had come from to a track of masculine laughter.

  “Shit, is she like a mini-Hope?” Someone asked.

  “All of the fearless sass you can handle,” Faith said backing up and wiping tears off her face.


  “Just a little less likely to cave your nuts in, she’s got more patience than I do,” Hope said, backing off and doing the same. I put my hands to my cheeks which were hot and tight from the salt of my tears and did my best to wipe them away.

  “Well it’s a party now!” Cutter crowed.

  “It wasn’t before?” a blonde tattooed woman asked.

  “Not until the guest of honor arrived,” he stated and threw open his arms at me. I laughed and gave him a hug, even though it felt awkward and a little weird. I wasn’t used to strangers to me treating me so casually, or like I was family. That’s exactly what these guys did though. Each one greeting me with an enthusiastic hug and a ‘welcome home’ or ‘welcome to Ft. Royal.’ There was a lot of laughing and greetings and a lot of really weird names that made me totally curious. Not nearly as curious as I was about Nothing though.

  He stood on the fringe of the happy reunion, a sad little ghost of a smile on, what I found to be, some seriously sensual lips. It was like he set himself apart, but he was still one of them, and I found the dichotomy fascinating. It wasn’t something I could study or explore, because all too quickly, my attention was ripped away, to greet yet more arrivals clad in the black leather vests with dirty but colorful patches on them.

  Everyone was keen to stay on the beach, despite the leaden clouds on the horizon, stating they would have plenty of time to move the party to someplace they called The Plank before the rains reached us.

  “Prospect!” Cutter called and a youngish looking man, maybe early to mid-twenties, perked up like a gopher out of a hole.

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “Get our guest’s keys from her, would you? Take her Jeep and trailer to the house and unload it, then get your ass back here for food and beer aplenty on me,” he ordered.

  “Do what?” I asked.

  Hope looked on bemused, “It’s okay, Charity; give Trike your keys.”

  I handed them over to the eager young man and made a bit of a face for his benefit, “I’m sorry you have to do this,” I uttered and he flashed a grin.