Page 2 of Fighting For You
Problem was, I didn’t want to keep getting sent away. I’d discovered a love for this town, and I had friends here—real, actual female friends who loved me.Me.
They weren’t brothers and sisters in arms who cared about me the way these men did—out of a shared history of duty and honor. No, these women were my friends because we had interests in common and by now, we’d been through a few things together. We’dchoseneach other instead of being assigned, and I didn’t want to leave that again—at least not for months at a time.
So I’d decided to play ball—to suck it up andnotcomplain about Beast.
We’d avoided each other quite effectively the last while. But now?
“I don’t understand how this happened,” I tried, wishing they’d clarify how they’d assigned me and the one person I couldn’t work with on a TDY trip together.
Wilder simply waited while Bruce explained.
“We’ve been over the scheduling issue. You were supposed to take this one with Cookie, but he’s sick, and he’sreallysick, so we’re not going to task him with a weekend trip when he’s barely recovered.”
“Sure, that’s fine. But him?” They knew who I meant. “I thought he didn’t travel.”
Wilder’s eyes flicked to Bruce, then back to me. “His circumstances have changed, and he was available this weekend.”
I ground my teeth together, my jaw aching. “And he can’t switch with… anyone? Adam? Kenny? No one has flexibility?”
Bruce took a beat, assessing me in that way he did when he meant business. Bruce was all charm and charisma and nice guy boss, but when you got down to it, he was a trained killer with excellent managerial skills. This expression—the origin of his nickname, Jaws, and the dead-eyed shark look—meant I was unlikely to love what came next.
“Gotta tell you, we need you to roll with us on this. We’ve done everything we can to respect your boundaries, but we’ve arrived at a point where we need you to both handle your issues and function as a part of the team.”
Something sharp jabbed at me, but I stayed quiet as he continued.
“You have history—we know this. Don’t know all the details and frankly, we don’t need to. What we do want is for Saint Security to do what we are contracted to do—and in this case, it means sending a couple undercover to vet this resort before we take our A-list client, who has been severely harassed at similar locations recently, and expose her to a bad situation. After reviewing the schedule, this is the way we can make it work. If you’re telling us you can’t or won’t do this, we will take that under consideration. But we are asking you, as a professional, to please keep in mind we are trying to run a businessandtake care of our people, and this is what we came up with.”
My heart sank low, low, low. Bruce and Wilder weren’t all that much older than me, but they’d felt like older brothers for a long time now. Their disappointment stitched into me, a needle puncturing in and reemerging, the thread pulling through the small wound at the hint of pleading in his words.
Was this an ultimatum? Were they really saying that if I didn’t go pretend to be Beast’s wife on this mission, I wasn’t a team player? They deeply valued the quality. Were they hinting at the end of my time here if this caused more trouble than it was worth?
Every strong, independent part of me shriveled up at the thought. All my justifications and anger fled, and I caved in seconds. “No. I’m not saying I can’t. Or won’t. I’m just… I just wanted to make sure there were no alternatives.”
The clocks on Bruce’s walls showing different cities around the world tick-tick-ticked.
“Not this time.”
I nodded, accepting it. “Okay, then. I’m in. And I’ll… we’ll handle it.”
“Good.”
I nodded again and slipped out, hating the crush of embarrassment coating my insides, instantly replacing the anger I’d felt so righteously earlier.
Maybe they weren’t giving me an ultimatum, but they needed me to step up. And wasn’t it time I got my crap together and stopped acting like Jude Rawlins had any say in my life? Was I going to let his grunting bad attitude jeopardize my place at a job I loved with a group of people who’d become like family to me?
Absolutely not.
I pushed down the hallway, encountering the thorn in my side in question as I went. He towered in my path—an actual beast of a man looking like he should be flipping giant tires for a living—and stared at me through his dark eyes. His hair had grown out lately and he looked, well, now that I’d actually taken in his face, he looked remarkably disheveled.
Typically, I avoided looking in his direction because his massive form only sent me into a rage spiral, but when I’d glanced at him, he typically had buzzed hair, or at least cut very short. Now, it’d grown unruly over his ears and flopped into his eyes. His usual close-trimmed stubble had become a full-on beard.
Still, it didn’t hide the cruel twitch of his lips. Never a smile or anything civil like it. Just a little speck of movementholding back criticism or judgement or plans to eat babies—whatever to-dos misanthropic giants made in their spare time.
The fury that’d bloomed during the meeting and withered in the face of my bosses jumped right back to the front lines, burning a literal path from my chest right up my throat. “Are you seriously going to block me right now?”
Inevitably, he grunted—in response? In greeting? In protest of my existence?
Something sizzled in my gut, the low smolder turning to a flame of anger.Hewas the problem. All the bad feelings between us? They came from his choices and his way of handling things in the past.
