OGs: Deep Down (36 page)

“Not running. No way in hell.”

“Good. That’s the Mike I know. Now let me go get Wilma and Greta. I left them alone with Rachel, talking with some motorcycle guys with cool vests and patches.”

That last piece got his attention. “You’re messing now with one percenters?”

“One percenters? Those guys? Ha! Me and my girls, we are the real one percenters.”

“How come?”

“Only one percent of our generation will make it to the end of the year alive.”

* * * *

Mike was sure he wasn’t going to be let into the conference room where Kyra and Sam had gone, but damn if he wasn’t going to try.

As he was approaching the security guys, he saw Kyra leaving the room, talking with Josh, smiling happily, Sam by her side, the kid munching on blue gummy bears.

They were so comfortable with each other. They could make it work easily. Josh was in show business, after all.

Mike rushed to them, ignoring everything and everyone in his path.

“Mike!” Sam screamed, running to him. She hugged and kissed him, her lips sticky from the candy she was eating. “Where’ve you been?”

“Waiting for you two, baby girl. Mind if I talk to your mom for a sec?” he asked, putting her down.

“Mike—” Josh began.

“Shut up,” he told him and then turned back to Kyra and whispered against her lips, “Your way.”

“What?” she asked, looking confused.

“As long as I’m with you, I don’t care where we are. I’ll go where you need to go. I’ll adapt. Relocate. Find someone to watch the gym. Your way.”

Josh laughed. “She already chose you, asshole. She refused the offer.”

Mike couldn’t believe his ears. She’d chosen him. “You refused? You chose me?” She nodded. “Why?”

Josh snorted. “Come on, kiddo,” he told Sam. “Let’s go outside.” With a shake of his head and a smirk, they left the room.

Kyra smiled softly at Mike. “Because I love you, and I’m staying with you for good. You are more important to me than any job offer.

“And it’s not my way. Our way, baby. We’ll find our own way. Together.”

“I love you, Kyra. I don’t want you giving up anything for me.”

She silenced him with a hand on his lips. “I’ve spent all my life thinking that the grass on the other side was greener. Running after that greenery. Not anymore. I know what I need to be happy, and that’s you. That offer was amazing, but I told you I’m staying in Alden. I spoke with Alexa; I will be her lead choreographer if she wants, and I will train her dancers, but not in New York. Here. Where I can continue with my dance classes. She actually is moving up north from New York to be closer to her parents, so it will work beautifully. The three months of touring will depend on you. If you’re cool with it, I’ll be her lead dancer too. Otherwise no.”

“But your career—”

“I love you, Mike. And I choose you. It is true that your career will never wake up one day and tell you that he doesn’t love you anymore and is leaving you for a younger, prettier model. But your career will never kiss your tears away when you’re sad or cuddle you to sleep. Or listen to you and lend you a shoulder to cry on.”

A snort escaped him. “I will never wake up and tell you I don’t love you. And no way in hell am I trading you for any other model. Are you crazy? I can barely keep up.”

Kyra smiled. “I know you wouldn’t. I’d rather have both, my career and my man, but there’s no question where my priorities lie. They lie with you. I don’t need to tour Europe to feel validated. I wanted recognition, to see the world, but I’ve learned in these seven years we’ve been apart that it’s not the places you get to visit that matter, but the people by your side, accompanying you in your journey. I learned that too late, after I lost you. Had to pull on my big-girl panties and continue without you. Not again. You’re my home, and Alden is yours, so that’s where I want to be.”

Mike hugged her tight, hiding his face in her hair. “You’re wrong, baby. My family is in Alden. My friends. My gym. I lived there without you for seven years, dead inside. Alden isn’t my home; you are. I want babies and lazy Sundays and the white-picket fence, but I only want them with you. So we’ll make space for lights and shows and traveling. ”

She looked up and kissed him. “We’ll find our way. Together. Now let’s go, honey. We have a bunch of teenagers dying for pizza.”

Chapter Nineteen

“Where are we going?” Kyra asked as Mike dragged her out of the gym.

“You’ll see.”

Oh God. She knew that look. “You didn’t let Sam get another dog, did you?” Kyra whispered so that her daughter who was beside her and Mike wouldn’t hear.

Mike chuckled and kept walking along Main Street. “No, two is enough.”

Good, because Mike was a tough guy, except when it came to Sam; there was nothing he could deny her.

“Is this going to be fast? I need to get back to my classes. I’m behind.”

“Sara will take care of the last one.”

She’d come back to Alden just two weeks ago, after taking part in another season of
Shake Your Booty
. When she had been contacted at the beginning of autumn, even though accepting wouldn’t interfere with her responsibilities with Amantis and she still loved that show, she’d hesitated. Mike hadn’t.

“You’ve been part of that show for a bunch of seasons. You enjoyed it. We’ll go.”

Kyra had had to blink quickly not to cry.
“You know I love you, right?”

“Yeah, baby, I know.”

He was ready to go with her. No hesitation. She had turned Mr. Solomon’s offer down. She was sure they could have made it work, but she hadn’t wanted to be away for six months. To her, it wasn’t worth it.

As they were getting ready for their trip to LA, they’d noticed Sam wasn’t as excited as she had been in the past when she got to stay at the beach for ten weeks. Sam had started school already, and she didn’t want to leave Alden, so at the end they decided Mike and Sam would travel back and forth on the weekends, with Mike coming to stay with Kyra for the first week to help her get settled while Sam stayed with his parents.

Sara had taken over her dance classes for the time being, so all in all they’d managed pretty well.

Still. Eight weeks in LA had felt like an eternity, so when her partner was eliminated in the quarter-final and she could come home instead of being there for two more weeks, she’d been relieved. She missed home. Sam, Mike, Alden. Her students.

It was amazing how her priorities had changed since Mike had come into her life again. She loved dancing and performing, she always would, but she had nothing to prove to anybody, and she wouldn’t sacrifice her family for it.

A hundred yards from the gym, in front of what had been a supermarket, Mike stopped and magically produced a key.

“Wow,” Sam said and dashed in.

“What are we doing here?” Kyra asked, looking around. The premises were not just empty; they had been stripped bare.

She’d always loved this old stone building, with its big, arched windows and high ceiling.

“This is your new dance studio.”

“What do you mean my new dance studio?”

“I bought it for you. Tomorrow you have a meeting with Cole to decide about the renovations. I knew you would want to handle those by yourself.”

“A dance studio!” Sam squeaked, twirling on the open floor. “Oh, and there’s a backyard too.” She went to investigate.

Kyra was stupefied. “I can’t accept this.”

She wasn’t as dead broke as she’d been when she’d come back to Alden. Her finances were now more than on the green side, especially after making it so far in
Shake Your Booty
.

“Sure you can. As a matter of fact, the deed is already in your name.”

She shook her head. “Mike—”

“I live in your house,” he stated, crossing his arms.

Right. A house he’d all but totally rebuilt, when she’d been away and unable to complain, almost doubling it in size with the additions. She’d tried paying for those. It hadn’t worked. Mike didn’t take her money. Neither did Cole.

“Don’t even go there,” she warned him, tapping at his chest with her forefinger. “Besides, I already have a place to dance at the gym.”

He grabbed her poking finger and, with a smile, brought her to him. “Baby, I love having you at the gym; you know I do. Since you started teaching there, we’ve more than tripled our clientele, but I’m going to end up killing someone. I have guys coming half an hour earlier for classes. When they make it to the tatami, their dicks are so fucking hard they can barely walk.”

She chuckled. “You’re exaggerating.”

“No, I’m not. More than half of the dancers at Bottoms Up take your classes. Since Amantis’s dancers have started rehearsing the new choreographies there, the whole thing has escalated. We have people coming from out of town trying to join our gym. I thought the exotic aerobics were bad. Man, was I wrong.”

Alexa and Wata had decided to move to Boston, and with them came Josh and the rest of the group. Since Kyra was their lead choreographer, when they had to rehearse, they all came to Alden. Wata and his security team used the trips to Alden to spar and train. Mike had told her Jack, the big guy she’d seen several times training in the gym, had disappeared, and no one knew when he was resurfacing, but everyone was waiting for the day he would spar with Wata. The expectations were so high she heard there was a pool going on.

“I won’t have my wife ogled by a bunch of sweaty, testosterone-ridden bastards.”

She froze. “Your wife?”

“My wife,” he stated.

“Are you asking me to marry you?”

“No, I’m not asking you, baby. I’m telling you. I already asked you once. We both know the result of that one. I’m not risking it again.”

Kyra cupped his face with both hands and, going onto her tiptoes, kissed him, long and possessively. “Ask me,” she whispered.

Mike faltered a second, his expression tense. Then he dropped to his knees. Like he’d done all those years ago. “Kyra, will you marry me?”

The answer came right away. “Yes. Yes. Yes. Of course I’ll marry you.”

He hugged her tight. “Thank fucking God.”

“But—”

“No fucking way. No buts allowed.”

She smiled. “I have to talk to Sam. I need to make sure this is okay with her.” Not that she had any doubts about her daughter’s response. Sam loved Mike like crazy. Every Friday when Mike and Sam came to LA to stay with her for the weekend, Sam spent hours telling her about her week. She loved being with Mike and the rest of his family.

“I asked her already,” Mike answered impishly. “Yesterday.”

“Really?” Because her daughter couldn’t keep a secret worth a damn. “Sam!” Kyra called her out. When Sam peeked from the back door, Kyra asked, “Did you forget to mention something to me?”

Sam smirked and turned to Mike. “Can I tell her now?”

“Go for it, baby girl.”

She came running and threw herself at her. “Mike asked us to marry him. I said yes. Look what he got me.” Sam pulled a small velvet bag from her pocket. It had a beautiful necklace with a red heart pendant.

“Isn’t it pretty?” Sam asked her mom. “This is better than a ring. Mike said I would outgrow a ring in no time. This I can wear always.”

Kyra tried to fight the tears, but it was no use, especially when Sam handed him the pendant and Mike clasped it around her grinning daughter’s neck.

“I told him I should get a tattoo because I wouldn’t outgrow that, but he said no.”

Clever guy.

“So, we are marrying him, right?” Sam asked.

“We most definitely are.”

“Yay!” She hugged and smooched him. “I’m telling Gram! And Grams Amanda and Grandpa! I’ll wait for you at the gym.” And she took off running.

Kyra watched Sam dash away. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything.” He opened his hand and presented her with an engagement ring. “I jazzed it up a bit, but it’s the same one that I gave you seven years ago. If you don’t like it, we can get another.”

“No, no changing anything. This is perfect,” she said as he put it on her, and she hugged him. “It was damn hard to give you back the ring the first time around.”

“It was damn hard to take it back.” He kissed her and, holding her neck, looked her in the eye. “I have been dying to put it on your finger for months. I was going to propose before you went to LA, but I didn’t want you thinking I was trying to trap you or blackmail you or anything like that.”

Kyra flinched. She’d accused him of that the first time he’d given her the ring. “I would have said yes too, honey.”

He brushed his thumbs over her cheeks. “I should have been your first, your last, and your only.”

“Two out of three is not bad.”

“Yeah, not bad at all,” he said as he nipped at her lips. “After the way I screwed up, I’m pleased.”

They came together in a deep kiss that lasted forever. Kyra wanted to crawl inside his skin and stay there, so when he placed his hand on her ass and lifted her, she wrapped her legs around him. It started to get heated, as it always did when Mike had her in his arms, so he broke the kiss, leaning his forehead on hers, his hard-on pressed against her. “Baby, we need to stop. The windows are huge in this place. No drapes. You need to get off me, or we’ll get arrested.”

His arms, though, were firmly around her, his grip not softening. “You let go first,” she joked.

“Can’t, sweetheart. Won’t. I will never let go of you,” he said, his face serious.

She knew. Mike would never leave her. “Later on we can cover the windows and have the dance studio properly christened.”

“Like we christened the dance room at the gym?”

She shivered at the memory. “Better.”

“You’re killing me here, baby,” he said as they managed to disentangle themselves. After a deep breath and rearranging his painful-looking erection, he held out his hand to her. “Let me show you around.”

They inspected the premises. “I’ve always loved this building,” Kyra said, brushing her fingers against one of the four stone columns between the windows.

“I know. Great natural light and wonderful acoustics.”

It was really a magnificent place for a dance studio. Even in its present state, all stripped to the stone, she could already see how it would look with the mirrors and the wooden floors.