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I let out a labored sigh and shook my head. “I thought you didn’t do the whole therapy thing.”
“Why? You finally going to admit you need it?”
“No, I’m highlighting the fact that even if this were true in the slightest, it wouldn’t be your fucking business. So do your job and stop flirting with clients before I pull your ass for being unprofessional.”
Fitz looked like he might respond but a buzzing from my phone in my pocket pulled both our attention. Grabbing the device, I unlocked it and felt my temper flare all over again.
Kasey: The angry man doth protest too much, methinks.
“You’re all worse than a bunch of gossiping housewives,” I said through clenched teeth, grabbing Lake’s phone from my jacket pocket and powering it down since that was obviously how Kasey had been listening in. I looked back to see Fitz fighting another shit-eating grin. “Go,” I barked.
Fitz gave a nod and turned on his heel strolling out like he didn’t have a care in the world. It only managed to further piss me off.
I knew why I was mad and it wasn’t the flirting or being talked about like it was junior high all over again. My anger was squarely on the fact that Fitz had been right. Lake Harrington was definitely under my skin.
Since I could remember, I’d always had an iron grip on my emotions and what I allowed others to see or hear from me as a result. I’d honed the skill in foster care and out on the street with my sister, Avery, even keeping control of any emotion when we’d been taken in and eventually adopted by the Mullins’. My ability to compartmentalize had kept me safe as a child, and able to keep the anger and grief from the loving couple who’d taken us in. By then I was afraid they wouldn’t want to keep an emotionally damaged 12-year-old. I’d built my first wall in childhood, held together by the shitty parenting and terrifying foster life. It had only been reinforced after I’d turned 18 and joined the Navy, then SEAL training.
Those walls had doubled the night our transport had been hit and I’d been pinned and useless as I had to watch the life leave my best friend Grady's eyes on the side of that desert road so far from safety. I’d been able to lock down the rage and loss behind that insurmountable wall. Stoicism firmly in place as I felt Jenny flinch through every crack of that twenty-one gun salute, from under my hand on her shoulder, standing as silent guardian. Even watching the new widow silently cry as she watched them lower Grady Remmington into the ground, I hadn’t even let a tear come to my eye. I’d been more broken in that moment than I was the night I’d found my mother dead in her own vomit. But I’d locked. That. Shit. Down.
Untilher.
It wasn’t even a devastating event or an attack that I needed to react to. It was justher. I was all reaction when it came to Lake. Unfortunately all that reaction was negative and had me growling and fuming like some pissed off pit bull. In all honesty, my annoyance with Lake wasn’t her snippy comments or her obvious need to be on full display or even her little games to shock and awe the public. It was the fact that I found myself reacting without the ability to lock it down before it was out there. Yes, the other men had noticed it too, and that just meant I was going to have to work harder to keep my emotions securely behind my reinforced walls. Maybe I could build a dungeon for those feelings and bury them so deep that only the robotic, lifeless version of myself remained in her presence. It was far less worrisome than wondering what I’d do the instant I let that beast off its chain.
CHAPTER 5
LAKE
Iwasn’t sure how long I’d stood glaring at the door now resting against the frame, keeping me from locking the world out, but with a long sigh I turned away from it and took in the rest of the room. Decker Mullins, more monster than man, had completely demolished my last shred of distance in destroying my door, and he’d taken my only lifeline to the normalcy I’d worked hard for. Again.
Sure I had my laptop but that was communication with one person and a connection to the world I hid from everyone else. The public was all cell phone and, behind closed doors, I relied on my laptop to continue to grow my actual passions. And now with my phone being held hostage and my freedom stolen by the same man who’d stolen my phone, I was wondering if this entire cluster fuck could actually cripple me.
No, I wasn’t going to let this beat me. If I’d survived life with Robert after my mother’s death, I could survive a few weeks stuck with a man who had two settings…indifferent and pissed. I tried to turn my attention to packing the bags in front of me, but packing was second nature. I’d lived out of suitcases pretty much since the day I’d started leaving the country without my father. Even before that as I’d packed for boarding school after boarding school when the private schools around Robert had run out and he’d sent me further away from him.
Still, it was the muscle memory of packing that had my mind wandering back to the current fucked up affairs of my life. The text, my reaction, and the moments of weakness I’d accidentally shared with people employed by my father.
I hadn’t expected to see Fitzpatrick O’Rourke eating up the space in my room while Mullins glared at me from the corner. Honestly, I was starting to wonder where this company pulled staff from. Probably an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog or possibly they were made in a lab like Captain America. Fitz had been well over six foot with a much trimmer frame than the wide shoulders of Mullins. He had a swimmer's physique tucked under his expensive suit. His brown hair held traces of his Irish heritage only made more obvious by the red highlights peeking through his sharply maintained beard, just thick enough to not look patchy but shorn down enough to exude professional hotness. His brown eyes had held flecks of gold around the edges as he’d walked me through a grounding technique that I’d been too invested in to be embarrassed about.
He’d been kind and reassuring in a way that made it easy to drop the mask of bitchiness and just appreciate his help. Something that seemed to irritate the other man in the room that I’d been trying to pretend didn’t exist. Decker Mullins made Fitz look like the nerdy sidekick from an 80’s teen movie. He also made me uncomfortable with his intensity, so I’d ignored him for as long as possible. Beforehe’dstarted ignoringme. And that was when rage started to well up in me again, psychotic text messages be damned. I found something very triggering to my rage when I was outright ignored. Maybe it was the fact that I was constantly herded from one location to the other without even taking into account that I was an actual human being and not a lamb. Maybe it went back to the days when I’d listened to teachers explain my “issues” with Robert like I wasn’t in the room watching him get less and less interested by the moment. I was forgettable and easy to ignore those first few years after my mom had died. I’d suffered in solitude to the point of wishing I’d been in that car with my mother. At least I would have gone out with the one person who had actually loved me.
I looked down at my hands, shoving my disjointed thoughts aside, only to realize I was fisting a light pink teddy. Well, very doubtful I was going to be needing anything remotely fun to wear for my prison stay. “Going to need an orange jumpsuit for this trip,” I muttered to myself, tossing the teddy back into the open dresser drawer. I glanced down at the suitcase that had been half full by the time my brain had checked back in to pay attention to my actual packing job. Lingerie was woven throughout the mess like I’d attempted to pack other things but kept grabbing more from my funware drawer. I shouldn’t have been too surprised when my mind was constantly flitting back to one tall, dark, and broody armed guard.
I began picking out the lingerie as I struggled to keep my attention on the job I was doing. It wasn’t long until my mind wandered back to the text. Someone was threatening to physically hurt me. I hadn’t been exposed to actual physical threats from the public before. Or hell, maybe I had and my father’s staff had just blocked me from it. The thought fled as soon as I’d had it, knowing that was too much care for me to be a concern of Robert’s. I had been one to read every reply and comment written about me online, letting the cutting words sink deep and keep me in a state of self loathing. I’d become the target of their disgust on purpose, but the abuse had still gutted me. A sick twist on self harm. I’d act out, and the world would conspire to call me every vile name they could think of to hurt me. And I’d taken the hurt. Needed it. For years I lived in a state of unending agony until I’d finally had to make the choice to live for myself. I hadn’t read a single word written about me in the remaining years, and had actually started to heal without branding myself with strangers’ hate. I was used to the internal damage done by the rage of a stranger, but I wasn’t ready to face what a monster could do to all of me if given the chance.
Something else was nagging at me though. Something about the way I’d interacted with both Fitz and Mullins, and neither seemed even remotely interested in the content of the text. I could assume they’d cloned my phone or something equally illegal to protect me, so they’d most likely seen the message. I crossed the room and awkwardly pulled the door back, peeking my head out to look down the hall. The doors were all closed and there was nothing visible in the living room beyond the dusky glow of the afternoon sun shining through the windows.
Walking down the hall, I let my shoulders roll back, my chin lifted and the sway I attached to my hips wasn’t to entice, but to show the confidence I now feared was lacking when I had to face the truth of my situation. At the edge of the hallway, I was able to make out the large areas of the living room, dining room, and kitchen. A short scan had my eyes falling on Mullins where he stood at the kitchen counter, slightly hunched in front of a laptop as he appeared to be working while waiting for me to pack. I could only see him in profile as he worked, apparently not noticing me out of his peripheral vision, so I took the moment to study him again.
His square jaw seemed more relaxed than I’d ever seen it before, even if it did still tick every now and then with that tension that made me wonder if he’d ever cracked a tooth clenching the way he did. His eyes seemed less intense, more inquisitive as he scrolled and typed randomly. All in all, it was easy to watch him as he worked on a computer. So easy I could have gotten lost in fantasies about meeting him as a banker or tech specialist, any job that held no need to constantly be wearing the frown I’d grown a pavlovian response to glaring at.
“You’re doing it again,” he said, eyes never leaving his computer work. He didn’t react beyond his words, but I had. I jumped a good foot in the air before grasping at my chest to relieve the ache caused by a skipped heartbeat. I hadn’t thought he’d seen me, but obviously he wouldn’t have been hired to guard me if he wasn’t observant.
“Doing what?” I asked when I’d finally slowed my heart rate. I could have sworn I’d seen the ghost of a smirk at the corner of his mouth for just an instant before it was gone, and I was left wondering if I’d just imagined it.
“Staring at me.” Mullins shut the laptop and turned to face me directly, his face shuttered in calm. But with the soft glow of the afternoon sun shining through the window beside him, his face was almost glowing. Beautiful in a primal and dangerous way. Eyes flashing and brow set in an unreadable expression. I waited for him to ask what I wanted or even if I was done packing, but he said nothing. Just stared blankly back at me, making me want to squirm under his gaze.
I felt as some sort of sacrifice, laid out before him; my life completely in his hands as he stared at me like that. Judge, jury and executioner. A shiver of unease and desire threatened my lower spine and I pushed it down, calling on all my strength to sniff in annoyance before narrowing my gaze to only his eyes. “How bad was that text in comparison to the past letters?”
His eyes narrowed in response, and I wondered if he was even aware of it. I could see the flicker of barely banked rage in the narrowing of those eyes, and I couldn’t help the pathetic idea that his rage was directed at the people he was trying to protect me from and not my mask of indifference. “Why?”
