Page 44 of Twisted Road

Already, her mind had simply shut out the fact that Keys’ Torpedo Ink brothers were trailing after them. This was a beautiful little area, still underdeveloped. There weren’t any nail or hair salons close. The community seemed small, but there appeared to be a movement to build up the small downtown area and make it appealing to tourists. Her kind of hair salon would fit perfectly.

She could ride out the time with Keys, keeping the relationship just between the two of them and avoiding his brethren. She didn’t need to make connections with his family because they had made it clear they didn’t want to make any with her. She would focus on him, on making memories with him every single day, so when the time came and he dumped her, she would have something to take with her. She didn’t need to worry about what his brethren thought of her.

Keys entered the code to open the door to the shop. She stepped inside and her breath caught in her throat. It wasn’t just the beauty and perfection of the place, it was the feel. She had always been sensitive to atmosphere, and this very large set of rooms felt welcoming and hers. She had often found little shops that she fell in love with, but not a single one had called to her the way this one did.

The building had a spacious main room, where she was already visualizing the layout. If they would let her paint or even wallpaper, she knew what she would do with the walls that weren’t made of that beautiful, highly polished wood. The back closet was large enough to house all her products. The second room was perfect for facials and lashes. It was large enough to fit her table and lamps. She was already thinking of blues and golds. The bathroom was ADA compliant and it too was spacious. There was a small fenced-in backyard with a patio. An overhang helped to keep the coastal weather at bay.

“Keys, it’s perfect. Do you have any idea how much they want for the rent?” She held her breath, sending the best possible thoughts into the universe. She really wanted this space. There was so much she could do with it. It was inviting and right across the street from the grocery store, a major perk.

Lyric was used to setting up her salon alone. She was fairly good with carpentry, was an excellent painter, but was still learning to hang paper. She could do the floor, if necessary, as well. She had shelving units, her chairs, lamps and table, as well as her products. If she was lucky, no one had yet gone in to pack up her salon and take everything to storage. She always had a contingency plan for her business.

She paid someone ahead of time, someone in the community she could count on to keep their word, and they brought in movers to take her things to storage as if everything had been forfeited. She would disappear into the wilderness for as long as she thought necessary, and then she would begin looking for a new small town where she could set up her salon.

“Anything you need changed will be easy enough to do,” Keys said.

“It’s perfect. Find out what they want in rent, and then I’ll call Justina and tell her not to put my things in storage. I can have them brought here.”

She wanted to hug herself, she was so happy, but she kept her social smile in place because the one thing marring the perfection of the moment was the heavy disapproval emanating from Keys’ brethren. The dark mood rolled off them in waves.

Maestro stepped right into her personal space. Maybe she had larger boundaries than most, but he was close enough to reach her with his long arms, and she immediately felt unsafe. She tilted her chin at him, uncaring that Keys was right there. She was not going to be intimidated by any of them.

“It’s going to be very hard to bring your equipment here when the salon burned to the ground a day after you and Keys were flown to Caspar, now, won’t it?” he asked.

His voice was soft, but he looked at her the same way the other two stared at her, as if deliberately piercing her armor to strike blows. And the blow was one of the biggest she’d had in a long while. She always had a contingency plan for her things. She had set it up with an older woman, Justina, to pack her things and store them. It wasn’t like one could just start an entire business over again. Her hair salon was her livelihood.

She knew they all expected a reaction from her. She’d been deliberately given the news as cruelly as possible so they could judge her reaction. She not only felt their judgment, but she smelled their treachery. They wanted a visceral reaction from her and expected to get one.

Lyric had had a lifetime of passive-aggressive attacks. Maestro hadn’t said anything that, if taken apart, could be construed as an attack, but she knew it was. This was all about shock. He and the others were basically accusing her of using Keys. That was how they viewed her.

Her eyes met Keys’. He hadn’t told her. This news was important. He didn’t have the right to arbitrarily decide not to tell her and open her up to this kind of public attack. He’d allowed this to happen. Whatever his reasons, he wasn’t getting what he wanted.

She switched her gaze to the bridge of his nose and tilted her chin at him. She used the softest, most matter-of-fact tone she had. Bland. Just a casual conversation.

“Did I ever tell you about one of the times Declan caught up with me? He brought someone very important in his organization with him. Interestingly enough, the man was Russian and very skilled in the art of torture. Everything from chemicals to ripping out toenails. All those dots on my body, compliments of Declan and his Russian helper.”

The three men went on high alert. She felt the instant difference in them, but she wasn’t going to look at them. As far as she was concerned, there was only her and Keys. She couldn’t read Keys, but she felt that wild rage that sometimes swept through him like a volcanic eruption.

“Lyric…” Keys broke off when she sent him one look from her now very dark green eyes. He would know that look. The one that said he wasn’t seen, and she wasn’t going to let him see her. Not ever again.

“The thing is this, and I would have thought you knew me well enough to know, shock doesn’t work on me. Neither does torture. I have the capability to disappear into my mind. I’m not here, so I don’t feel what’s being done to me. You should have known that.”

As she spoke, she could feel herself retreating, pulling away from that place, the building that she would never use, the dream she almost let herself have. And she was going to keep speaking. He was going to know exactly what her reaction to his treachery was. Keys had forgotten who she was, the steel in her. She might want to throw herself at him, seeking comfort from this last, terrible blow, but she never would. She was used to being alone and depending only on herself. She could find her peace again in the mountains. Starting over alone would suck, but she knew she was capable.

“I don’t show my emotions unless I want to show them. So this little setup all of you cooked up to see my reaction won’t get you anywhere.”

Lyric spoke directly to Keys, but she had already stopped looking into his eyes. She gave him the same treatment she did total strangers: she looked at the bridge of his nose. She pulled her jacket tighter around her and looked toward the ocean, with its rolling waves and diamond-blue surface. “I’m going to take a walk because I don’t want to breathe the same air as all of you. I expect you to have my car waiting for me. It’s mine and I want it back.”

“Lyric, I didn’t know,” Keys said.

She didn’t stop to assess his voice. She didn’t want to look at him ever again. She turned away from them and walked down the quaint, uneven sidewalk toward the headlands.

There was a long silence as Keys worked to get his temper under control. “Which one of you is going to tell me what the hell that was all about? When did her salon burn down, and why wasn’t I informed immediately?”

All he could think about, aside from beating the holy hell out of his brothers, was going after Lyric and doing damage control. He’d finally gotten her to a place where she was willing to take a chance on him, and the family that mattered so much to him had treated her like a pariah.

“She isn’t your type, Keys,” Maestro protested. “At all. Not once in all the years we’ve been together have you ever looked at a woman who faintly resembled that.” He gestured toward Lyric’s retreating back.

“Face it, Keys,” Player said. “You go for tits and ass and an empty head.”