“Promise?”
“Yes Myla, I promise, but even that means nothing right now.” His cell rings and he pulls it from his pocket, glancing at the screen. “Per the hotel staffer I have on payroll,” he says, slipping his phone back into his pocket, “a couple of Juan’s goons are on their way up here,” Kyle tells me, slipping his phone back into his pocket.
“Is Juan with them?”
“No. Juan is not with them but I find it curious that the reason for their visit is less important to hear, than confirmation that Juan isn’t with them.”
I blanch but recover quickly. “He’s difficult. You’ve seen that. Sometimes, I wish I had a warning bell for that man.”
“You don’t need a bell. You have me. What did he do to you?”
Now I need space, and I take a step backwards, hitting the desk. His eyes narrow, understanding in their depths that tell me, I’ve shown my hand. “What about the last sixty seconds made you want to run?
“I wasn’t running. I just…he’s….” He arches a brow. “He makes me uncomfortable.”
“Did he touch you?”
“What?”
“Did he touch you?”
“Why are we talking about Juan?”
“That’s a fucking “yes”. Did you tell Alvarez?”
“I didn’t say he-”
“We both know he did. Did you tell Alvarez?”
“Juan said that if I did, he’d make it look like it was all me and he’s Michael’s half-brother and-”
“Wait. Juan’s his half-brother?”
“Yes and Michael trusts him like he trusts no one else, me included, obviously. Is this where you ask me-”
“No. I’m not going to ask. Juan wants your fear and that is exactly what I see it in your eyes. Alvarez sees it too, and he knows he’ll never truly own you, as long as it exists. Be glad I took out the cameras. It would have shown even more on the film.”
“It’s what doesn’t show that I fear right now. What’s left to his imagination.” There’s a knock on the door. “How do you know they aren’t coming to get rid of you?”
“I’m not easy to get rid of, sweetheart. Especially when I decide I have a reason to stay around. And I have.”
“And that reason is?”
“The same one that made me take the job. You.”
Chapter Five
Myla
“You took the job for me?” I ask, stunned by that declaration, and the many things I could read into that possibility dart through my mind.
“You asked me to take it.”
“I did, but you don’t know me, so why would anything I ask matter?”
“I choose my jobs based on who I’m protecting, not who’s paying the bill.”
“And you chose me,” I say, and it’s not a question. He did, and I want to be happy, but I am not in a position to accept what I don’t understand. “Why?”
“Because you aren’t one of them.”
“And yet you took a meeting thinking I might be one of them?”
“And you just answered that without denying that I’m right.”
I blanch at my mistake and then try to recover. “Different doesn’t mean I don’t belong.”
He arches a brow. “Doesn’t it?”
“Is this a test?”
“No,” he says. “It’s not a test. It’s simply my answer. You wanted to know why I took the job. I took it because you’re different than them, and if I had any doubt of that, I would have declined the job.”
“Then why even take the appointment?”
“A million dollars is always a reason to consider a job. It’s not, however, a reason to take one.”
A knock sounds on the door again, thundering louder this time, and I jolt, once again hugging myself, when I know better than to show a visible reaction. It says I’m on edge. It says I’m withdrawn, but I justify it because Kyle is new to me. Michael would, in fact, expect me to be nervous with any stranger, most especially one this close to me. And since my gaze somehow collided with Kyle’s green one, there is no question that he’s noticed, even before he says, “It’s okay. They won’t be here long.”
“We hope,” I say. “We don’t know why they’re here.”
“I told Juan if I saw anyone in my line of sight that hadn’t introduced themselves first, I’d shoot them.”
“I could have about a million fantasies of you actually doing that,” I confess.
“If that’s your best idea of a fantasy, we have a problem.”
“I didn’t say it was the best.”
“Is it?”
Me killing a few of them myself, Juan especially, would be better, I think, but I say, “Should we be talking about fantasies?”