Find A Way Or Make One (5 page)

Ken, Crow, and Sunny all looked at me. I could tell they were all
waiting for me to tell them what was wrong with Kye.
“I am putting you all on notice, that fucker is not to be around Kye again. Hear me?”

Ken looked at me
and knew something was up. Loyalty to thos
e on or that had been with the teams was a given, and for me to be drawing a line in the sand
against
one of our own was huge, but the hurt, and sheer anger that had been exhibited on Kye’s face had run deep. Too deep. It brought back a lot of memories that I would just as soon forget.

Tilting his head in concern Ken said, “Man
that was intense. W
hat exactly
was
that?”

Blowing my normally cool, calm and collected outlook on life, I unloaded all my anger and frustration. “Evi-fucking-dently
Kye dated Wyatt for about six months when she first came back to the states. He didn’t have the balls to end it and let her find him with some socialite bitch and told her that even though she was a good lay, she didn’t fit in with
his
people. She even went
back a couple of months later to tell him who she really was, and the socialite bitch answered the door wearing
her
shirt and brushed her off so she could go join him in the shower.”

Sunny, Wyatt’s old swim buddy, thought about that for a moment then stated, “I don’t get it, we only found out about his pedigree by accident, and he never tried to live off the family name or connections.”

“Yeah Sunny
I know, but it doesn’t change the fact that he cheated and even moved the bitch in with him!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ken’s slight flinch.
I could see the minute that Ken made the connection.
I shook my head at the silen
t question in his gaze.
I knew that the similarities to my own past weren’t the only reasons I was so pissed. Honestly, Kye was like a sister to me; she
had saved my ass more times than I could count, and I couldn’t stand that she had been hurt like that.

“Shit! The fucker is meeting us at
La Rassa
tonight at 9:00. He gave me his number, I’ll call the piece of shit now and tell him he better not sh
ow.” Crow was the newest on our teams besides Chip,
and it was obvious that he was upset about what Asshole had put Kye through. I
t didn’t take anyone more than a day to lose a little of their heart to Kye. She didn’t even have to tr
y.

Ken
had been quiet until this point, but now he just shook his head with a purely evil smile forming on his lips. “No Crow, don’t call the
fucktard. Let me take care of tonight. I will make Wyatt fucking Masters remember that payback is a bitch, and it will be my privilege to collect!”

We all turned to look at Ken. He walked to his bag and pulled out his phone and started pacing as he spoke to someone
in a low voice. When he got off the phone and came back to the ring, the look on his face would make most grown men piss their pants. “You guys know how we had that little surprise planned for Kye tonight? Well I just tweaked it a bit.” He briefly filled us in on the changes to this evening’s festivities.
Man, I had to give Ken his due, it was
epic. Ken
was going to
bring that ass to his knees. We
all laughed and bumped fists in agreement.
Wyatt would get his, of that there was no doubt.

5

“Who are you when I’m not looking?”

Blake Shelton
, Who are you when I’m not looking?

Wyatt

Fucking Hell! How did Kylee get more beautiful in the seven years since I
had seen her? Not only had the years been more than good too her, her inner beauty had not diminished one iota.

Of course, she doesn’t want ANYTHING to do with me. She had made
that beyond obvious. But that won’t
stop me now that I have seen her again
. I’ll
find a
way to get her alone. T
hen I will explain everything. I
know
that she would understand.
She has to,
because I can’t think of the alternative.
After all, she obviously
had an idea about the secrecy and clandestine nature of my former line of
work. How in the hell had
she gotten herself mixed up in all this anyway
? Evidently Chip had
a crush on
Kye
because it really didn’t seem that she could possibly have done all the things he said she did. Take down a meth operation in Ohio, bringing a Mexican drug cartel to its knees? Hell, people were in the DEA or any other special ops unit for twenty years
and still never accomplish half of what he
had said she had. How can I
reconcile the sweet, easy to please girl that I had known and had stolen my heart, with the tough badass Chip had described? As my mind raced through the memories of her that filled my head, for some reason I started remembering the morning after we had first made love.

I had been up for a while. When I first woke up to the feel of an unfamiliar weight lying upon my shoulder, I had experienced a moment of all and out panic. But, when I looked down and saw Kylee’s dark head and began to understand the soft warm air on my chest was her breathing, I had felt no panic: only a sense of
rightness and peace. As I
began to rub small circles on her back, I felt her flinch and jerk her eyes
up to meet mine. I softly
chuckled, smiled tenderly, “It’s ok pretty girl, it
is just me. I am not going to hurt you.”

In a voice full of sleep and confusion, Kylee uttered, “How long have I been out?”

“Well it is about 7:00 in the morning now, but I think we both finally closed our eyes in about 1:30 or quarter till 2:00-So five to six hours?”

A look of anxious concern crossed Kylee’s face.
She suddenly looked frightened.
“I hope I didn’t hog the bed too much? I am not used to sharing my covers.”

“No darling’ Princess, you were fine. Slept like an angel. And I think I could handle being pushed to the edge of the bed if you were snuggled up to me.”

Laughing softly, Kylee had rolled to the edge of the bed and was moving to get up. “Hey where do you think you are going,
Princess? Are you just
gonna
use me like a common stud then leave?”
I hadn’t pouted since I was ten, but I could feel my lips begin to pull down in a definitive pout. What the hell?

“Well, I figured you might not want me to hang around like I was never going to leave,” Kylee had stated softly.

“Hell Princess, waking up with you will be the highlight of my day…unless I get to fall asleep with you again tonight?”

Kylee had laughed softly as she snuggled closer to me, “We might be able to arrange that cowboy.”

That morning she had definitely woken up on alert. Come to think of it she had always woken up tense and ready for whatever came her way, which had usually been me looking for some morning loving. She had always asked to make sure that she hadn’t hogged the bed. Why had she always been concerned about that?
I didn’t have any answers
, but it was obvious there was a whole side of Kylee that I
didn’t know. Why? Why had she kept so much of who she was and is to herself?
Just as I was working up to getting royally pissed I remember that I hadn’t been all truthful and forthcoming either.

That shit didn’t matter. After I got her to listen to me and hopefully accept my
apology tonight I might ask about her secrets, but that wasn’t a
top priority right now. I set at my
desk planning how to get the girl of my dreams back, when the cloying smell of too much
Channel #5
hit
me. Actually, it caused me
to have to
subdue his gag reflexes. As I
turned to the door, Sable’s ample and obviously put on display breasts all but slapped me in the face.

“What the hell? Do you NOT know how to respect someone’s personal space? Get the fuck away from me!”

Looking down at the floor as she bit her lip, Sable quivered out her reply. “But Wyatt, I just want you so much! I haven’t felt this way in so long. Not since Europe. Please don’t turn me away.”

With a grunt of frustration, I laid it all out to Sable.
I did not
want her to have even the smallest chance to say I led her on.
“Look, the only reason you have this job is because your mother is a friend of my mom’s a
nd
pleaded with her for me to give you a job. And frankly, you suck a
t it. When we get back to the States, you are out of here. I am sorry, but you are just way more trouble and hassle than you are worth.”

“But Wy…”

“No! That is it, I’m done. I have to get ready; I am meeting my friends later tonight for some drinks.”

Sable’s head snapped up and a predatory gleam came to her eyes. “Where?”

“Shit, don’t you get it? I don’t want you and I am not going to ever want you.”

As Sable stomped to the door to jerk it open, a sense of dread filled me. A crazy ass bitch had gotten in between me and Kylee before, but I won’t let one keep her from me now.

A thought suddenly entered my mind. Crow had explained that since he had won the sparring match that Kylee had to dress pretty provocatively tonight, and I didn’t know how I
would take it, seeing other men ogling her. This was evidently a
long standing bet, and I sure as hell didn’t want to think about all the times she might have lost in the past, and all the men that had seen her dressed like a common street walker. That led to me thinking about the possible men that she could have been with, and really pissed me off. Kylee wasn’t a whore, but seven years was seven years and I have to be realistic. I can’t expect her to have not looked for someone to
share her life during that time. Even though I always knew that Kylee was it for me, so I
had never tried to replace her and the few times I had tried to have a random hookup had ended rather badly. In fact, I finally
gave up even trying.

I just hoped I wouldn’t have to hear or see Kylee’s past. I know deep down that I deserve to feel all kinds of hell for what I put her through, but I hoped that God in all his mercy wouldn’t punish me in that way.
But questions still rolled in my head; where has Kylee be
en, what has she been doing, who was she now and the most important one; do I still have a place in her heart?

6

“My dear, I don’t give a damn”

Margaret Mitchell
, Gone with the Wind

Kye

“Damn, this is gonna suck! And when I say suck,
I mean majorly suck.” As I
turned around in front of the antique full length mirror in my bedroom, I took a silent inventory of what I saw.
The deep purple
dress that I am wearing certainly left little to the i
magination.
Actually, the “dress” was really the blouse to a purple chiffon blouse and skirt combo that I wore when Toby and I attended formal functions for the DEA.
The deep V of the collar exposed an indecent amount of cleavage, and in the past I had pinned it together to make sure that less of me was exposed.
But not tonight, n
o tonight I have to purposely put my goods on display. I went a little overboard on my makeup too.
I really didn’t mean to, but I got lost in repeating my rules to live by litany and before I knew it, I looked in the mirror to see my face completely transformed into someone I didn’t know. Deep gray eye shadow covered my eye lids, and my eyes were expertly lined with eye liner, and my eyelashes were coated in mascara and looked about two miles long.

I let out an exaggerated sigh
, pulled back my shoulders and walked in the club’s front door. Hey maybe tonight’s festivities will help me keep my mind off
Wy…
him
.
Besides, I owed the guys. A bet was a bet, and they had always kept their end of the deal, so it was now my turn to keep mine. But if Crow thought for one minute that this was ever going to happen again, he was so crazy that even a padded room wouldn’t help him.

As I walked to the bar where all the guys were, all the leers and once overs started to get to me. By the time I got to where the guys were sitting at the bar, all the laughter that had been bubbling between them when they had first seen me was long gone. Now they all just looked pissed, e
ven Chip the newbie to the team seemed about to explode.
I had only been around once or twice but he had always seemed unfazed by life. Well, he didn’t look so unfazed now; now he looked like he wanted to rearrange someone’s face.

At first I thought they were all
pissed at me, but as I scanned their faces I realized that they were looking at the people, mostly men, around me. “Hey! What gives, I thought we were going to have a good time tonight?
Really guys, relax!”

“Yeah, well I
was
in a real good mood until you walked in and the wolves descended!” Sunny said belligerently.
Even as Sunny is talking, he is getting up and bringing he jacked that had been on his chair over and trying to wrap it around my shoulders. I try to side step him but he has no problem keeping up with me and wrapping the jacket around me.

I shrug of the jacket and hand it back to him.
“Wolves? What are you talking about?”

“Kye, look around you. Just about every man in the place is circling around you like sharks on Shark Week! And the ones that aren’t are either gay or just
too damn ugly to think they have a chance!” Cale said as he came to stand beside me and put a
proprietary hand on the small of my back and lead me to an empty chair.

“Yeah couldn’t you have dressed a little more conservatively? I mean really, are you
trying
to start a fight tonight?” asked Cale as he stared at a guy that I saw coming over to us in the corner of my eye.
After seeing Cale
’s face the guy quickly turned around and found someplace else to be.