Free Barefoot by the Sea by Roxanne St. Claire

I can do with that man is make him run away.”
     
    Ian floored the bike over the causeway, not bothering with his helmet but letting the warm wind slap his face and whip his hair. He had to work, had to show some stability, had to do something with his miserable life besides
run
and
hide
and
lie
and
wait
.
    It was all so completely counter to the man he used to be—the man he still was under this pumped-up, inked-out, anger-fueled body. Ian Browning didn’t run from anyone, he never hid from a problem, he’d despised lying, and “wait” wasn’t in his overachiever’s dictionary. Now those words defined his entire world. He knew that like he knew his name.
    The thought almost pulled a sharp laugh from his belly because half the time he couldn’t remember his damn name. He’d wake up, sweating, hurting, sick throughout his body, with memories of Kate and the kids and the smell in the air when he’d gotten out of the tube that afternoon.
    He could still see Luther Vane’s eyes when they’d bumped into each other on the street, Ian still clueless about what the man had done. And then he remembered walking into the flat, dropping his suit jacket and briefcase, calling his wife’s name, listening for the still unfamiliar sound of an infant’s cry, and…
    The thought made him swerve into the next lane, earning a loud horn blast from a pissed-off truck driver. He ignored the urge to lift his middle finger and instead glanced to his right, the navy water of some Florida river about fifty feet below, nothing but a slim guardrail between him and blissful relief. His arms tingled on the handlebars, his right arm aching with the very idea of whipping that wheel to the side to sail right over that railing, down, down, down to end it all.
    He opened his mouth and let out a low, long howl, catching air and dirt in his teeth, trying to release some of the agony in his chest.
    Why did this hurt so much today?
    Because of that woman. That sweet, warm, pretty, innocent, anxious, tentative, sexy woman who pressed every button he had and held them down until he wanted to scream.
    She didn’t look a thing like his honey-haired Kate, didn’t have any similar characteristics—on the surface—that should ignite this old pain. But there was
something
.
    Something that made him
want
to be honest. And that could be the last moment of security he ever knew. What was
wrong
with him? Fuck that job and forget that woman. Both of them were way too dangerous for him.
    He flew down the other side of the arched bridge, heading into the congested traffic of a much more populated beach town than the one he’d just left. Maybe he should have put his helmet on. Especially in a place where there could be British tourists. Sure, he looked different from when he was Ian Browning, successful investment banker at Barclays, happy, decent, and normal. He was no longer the clean-cut, lanky businessman in suits and ties, but had his canvas of tattoos and shoulder-length hair changed him enough?
    What if someone with a keen eye spotted him, and remembered the press coverage of the young woman stabbed alongside her brother with the babies left in their cribs until their daddy came home? The story had been well covered by the press, and he’d been front-page news during the trial.
    Then the threats got worse and the N1L gang members closed in on him, killers with no regard for their own lives or anyone else’s, not when they were hell-bent on vengeance. Ian Browning had to disappear, but not with his babies. They couldn’t be together while the gang was still on the streets. A man with twin babies was too easy to find, so the kids had gone to Canada and he’d gone—to hell.
    If he ever wanted to see his children again, if there was any hope of a life even remotely resembling normal, Ian had to do a few very specific things: He had to lie and he had to hide and he had to wait for British law enforcement to do their job. But he also had to work.
    A