Friends Like These

by Tymber Dalton

  “Exactly!” Leigh said, hugging Tilly again. “And you can even be as dominant over me as you want, work-wise. You’ll basically be running my life for me and handling things once you’re up to speed. See? It’s perfect!”

  Tilly didn’t look convinced. “What if I’m a horrible assistant?”

  Cris guffawed. Leigh had never heard someone actually make that sound before, but now she knew what it sounded like.

  “Babe,” Cris said, “again, all kidding aside, and talking as partner to partner, you will be a kick-ass personal assistant. You not only have the organizational skills, but I suspect Leigh needs her own loyal attack assistant on staff. You don’t take shit from anyone, you’re protective of your friends, and it sounds to me like the perfect challenge you need. Lan and I can take turns flying out to LA to spend time with you, if that’s the issue. We can work from the office out there.”

  “Please?” Leigh begged, desperate. “We’ll even pay their air fare!”

  Tilly looked to Landry.

  “Dearest, I can’t argue with Cris,” he said. “I think this is the perfect solution for both of you. You’ve been rather adrift these past several months, and Leigh needs someone of your…personality to assist her.”

  “Is that a way of saying I’m a bitch?”

  “Yes,” Landry and Cris both said. But Landry continued. “In the good ways. You have the perfect personality type to buffer Leigh and her men. I can’t think of anyone better than you to fill that role.”

  Tilly’s jaw gaped like a fish for a moment, open and shut, before she finally found the words. “What if I’m horrible at this?”

  “Just give me a year,” Leigh begged. “Hell, if you absolutely hate doing it after six months, help me find another assistant and stay with me and help me train them until they’re up to speed. Please?”

  The thought of her overprotective and tenacious friend fielding calls from the press or obnoxious agents or managers filled her with sadistic glee of her own.

  Tilly was no pushover, and she wouldn’t take shit from Hollywood types who thought they could schmooze their way into Leigh’s office for whatever reason.

  Turning to Lucas and Nick, Tilly said, “So I’d get to boss you two around, too?”

  Lucas smiled. “If it means you’ll take the job, hell yes, I’ll let you boss me around. When it comes to work stuff, obviously.” His smile faded. “She’s made all the points better than I could. Having someone we can trust working with us, not just for us, would be one huge worry off our plates. You’re like family in the good way. We need that kind of loyalty on our side.”

  Tilly threw her head back, staring through the screened pool cage and camouflage netting up at the clear, starry sky. Their little group fell silent as they watched Tilly puzzle it over in her brain.

  Finally, she returned her focus to them. “I’m probably going to regret this, but not as much as y’all will probably regret it. Three months,” she emphasized, wagging three fingers at Leigh. “Not six. I’ll give it three months. If I’m horrible, or if I’m miserable at it, I’ll help you find another assistant and stay on until you do.”

  Leigh tackle-hugged her again, but this time, the men weren’t fast enough to keep them from going into the pool.

  Fortunately for both the women, they were only clad in T-shirts.

  They broke the surface laughing, Leigh embracing her again. “Thank you thank you thank you! I love you!”

  “Yeah, you say that now,” Tilly snarked. “You just wait until I’m going all drill-sergeant Domme on your ass.”

  * * * *

  The four men helped their women out of the pool. Tilly and Leigh headed inside the house to dry off and change into dry clothes, leaving their men standing there.

  Lucas extended a hand to Landry. “Thank you,” he said. “You have no idea how much we appreciate this.”

  Landry smiled. “We should be the ones thanking you. Don’t thank us just yet. Our vicious little Redbird, as much as we love her, was starting to get on our nerves from a lack of focus. We were about to unleash her on Leah and Loren and one of their pet charities just to get her out of the house.”

  “We love her,” Cris said, “but she doesn’t do well in a vacuum. At all.” He smiled. “And I’ll warn you now, don’t be calling us whining that she’s running your lives. We all heard you agree to it.”

  “I think it’s the paparazzi who will be whining,” Nick said. “Wait’ll they get a load of her. Hollywood won’t be the same.”

  “I wish I’d thought of asking her weeks ago,” Lucas said. “I never thought of her not being employed. I figured she helped you guys out at the office.”

  Cris and Landry looked at each other before breaking out into laughter. “As much as I love my wife,” Landry said, “she and I could not work together. Not for long. She would constantly be trying to step into a controlling role with me, and that simply wouldn’t work. She is a take-charge kind of woman. The fastest way to ruin our delightful marriage would be for me to have brought her into my company as an employee.”

  “Besides,” Cris said, “she’s not trained in what we do. She’s not a programmer, and if all she was doing was answering phones, she’d get bored the first day. She needs a challenge. This sounds like it’s right up her alley.”

  “I’m sorry Leigh didn’t approach you two first,” Lucas said. “I accept responsibility for that.”

  Landry waved his apology off. “We’re friends first, Lucas. You don’t need to observe any protocols with us like that. Especially since we’re the ones now in your debt.”

  “Hell,” Cris said, “we’d let her work for you for free.”

  “Now, don’t be so quick to say that,” Landry teased. “The salary might come in handy for bailing her out of jail some night if she decks an overzealous photographer.”

  The men shared a laugh.

  They also knew it might be close to the truth.

  * * * *

  In Leigh’s bathroom, Tilly was dried off and changed, with a towel twisted in a turban on top of her head around her hair, and wringing her wet T-shirt out over the sink.

  Leigh did the same in the shower. “You have no idea how happy you’ve made me,” Leigh said. “None whatsoever.”

  Tilly turned. “What’s really going on here?”

  Leigh hung her T-shirt over the shower curtain rod. “I haven’t been able to admit to the guys how scared I am,” she said.

  “Of having a baby?”

  “Everything. I feel like the world’s biggest faker out there. Yeah, we’re doing well for ourselves, and things have fallen into place, but I keep waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and revoke my producer title and kick me out of California. I don’t really have any friends out there. Lots of business acquaintances, sure. But no one I can trust.”

  She leaned against the counter. “I have to watch every little word I say. I always have to check myself, make sure I’m not talking about Nick the wrong way around people. I feel like I have to put on this act while I’m out there. Even in the office I can’t really be myself.”

  Tilly pulled her in for a hug. “You sound like you’re miserable.”

  “In some ways, I am. I mean, yeah, am I enjoying what we do for a living? Of course. It’s great, it’s never boring, and I’ve learned so much. I wish I could move everything here full-time and get away from Hollywood.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “We’ve got an office here part-time. But right now, we need the LA office. A lot of stuff happens out there. While we’re still learning the business, for most of our projects, we need to have a regular presence out there. Nick and Lucas have a three-year plan to get it flipped around, to be working out of Florida most of the time and keep the LA office for stuff we need to handle out there.”

  “Three years, huh?”

  “Yeah. By then we’ll be getting close to time to finding a preschool for the little one, him or her.” She looked down at her still-flat belly as
she stroked it. “Nick’s going to be cherry-picking his next several roles. We’re banking a lot of it for retirement, only putting some of it back into the production company. In ten years, Nick wants to mostly be behind the camera as a director and producer for small and indie projects. Labors of love, documentaries, things like that.”

  “Well, then,” Tilly said with a grin. “I guess for the next three years—if I last past the first three months, that is—we’ll have to give those assholes in Hollywood holy hell and show them how us Florida girls can get shit done.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Nolan and Kenny were talking with Tilly when Leigh walked out with Tilly’s purse in her hand.

  “Sweetie, I love you,” Leigh said, “but I’m not going into your purse.” She set it on the counter in front of a confused-looking Tilly.

  “Um, why are you bringing this to me?”

  The answer was self-evident as maniacal laughter rolled from inside her purse. Nolan couldn’t help but snicker at the sound.

  “That,” Leigh said, pointing. “Nearly scared the piddle out of me when I went to go to the bathroom.”

  Tilly smiled as she dug into her purse and pulled her phone out. “That’s my unknown caller ringtone.” After looking at the display, she frowned before answering it. “Hello?”

  Nolan and Kenny both watched, Nolan suspecting Kenny had also caught the wary tone in their friend’s voice.

  “Whoa, honey, calm down,” Tilly said after listening for a moment. “Where are you exactly?” Tilly started frantically gesturing for something to write with. Lucas grabbed a notepad and pencil from a drawer and tossed them across the island at her. With her phone propped between her left shoulder and ear, Tilly still managed to deftly snag them out of mid-air and started scribbling. “Okay…Okay…Are you safe?”

  Nolan and Kenny both straightened. Now Gabe and Bill had also walked over, looking extremely concerned.

  “Bets, calm down, honey,” Tilly said. “Quit apologizing. You absolutely did the right thing calling me…No, it’s fine. We’re still at Lucas and Leigh’s but we’ll be there in about thirty minutes or so…No! Absolutely not. You stay right where you are inside and we’ll come in to get you. Stay out of sight. Are you sure you don’t want to call the police?…Okay, okay, shh. It’s all right. We’re on the way.”

  She hung up and headed toward Leigh’s bedroom.

  “What is it?” Gabe asked.

  “Betsy. That fucker she moved in with, Jack? He went off on her and hit her.” Tilly turned. “Non-consensually. We need to go get her. She’s hiding out at a convenience store up on Clark Road. Cris! Landry!” she yelled for her men, who were out on the lanai.

  “Whoa,” Bill said, catching up to her and putting out a staying hand to block her path. “Gabe and I will come, too.”

  She glanced at Gabe, who was wearing a sundress that barely covered her ass…and nothing else. “No offense, dude, but she’d better change quick.”

  “I’ve got my jeans with me,” Gabe said as she ran for the back bedroom where she’d left her bag.

  “We’ll come,” Nolan said. He looked at Kenny. “Right?”

  Kenny nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “In fact,” Bill said, “it might be better if we go, Tilly, and you stay here.”

  That pulled her up short. “What the hell? Why?”

  Leigh snickered. “Seriously?”

  Cris and Landry entered the kitchen and got the quick version of events from Bill.

  Landry immediately overruled his wife. “Tilly, love, you stay here and help Leigh and the others with the party and clean-up.”

  “Seriously? What the hell?”

  “Because,” Bill said, “I can only throw my weight around so far in this county. I have friends in the Sarasota County Sheriff’s office, but if you go in swinging and take a piece out of that guy, I might not be able to protect you. Leave this to the pros, please?”

  She slapped the counter. “This is sooo not fair.” She shook her finger at Nolan and Kenny. “I told you I didn’t like that fucker when she first hooked up with the dude. Didn’t I tell you two I didn’t like that fucker?”

  Tony and Ross, drawn by the cosmic force and volume of Tilly’s outrage, migrated into the kitchen. “What’s going on?” Tony asked.

  Gabe returned, hurriedly tucking a T-shirt into the waistband of her jeans as she did. “Ready.”

  By the time the Suncoast Society contingent rolled out, it was Landry and Cris, Kel, Nolan and Kenny, Gabe and Bill, Sully, Ted, and Tony and Ross.

  The feeling was if ten Doms—one of whom was an armed Charlotte County deputy, and another who was an armed and retired detective—and an active and armed FDLE agent couldn’t handle the situation, they were going to need a whole lot more backup than Tilly.

  Tony and Ross rode with Nolan and Kenny, while Sully rode with Gabe and Bill.

  “Well,” Ross said from the backseat, “I will give Tilly all due credit. She absolutely called it right. She never did like that fucker. Not from the first night he showed up at the club. The feeling was mutual, but I figured it was just a natural reaction to the prickliness some uber Doms have around her.”

  “She’s not the only one,” Nolan admitted. “I never liked him much, either. Smarmy bastard. Always talking like he’s trying to impress people. And what is he, like sixty?”

  “Close to it,” Tony darkly muttered. “And, unfortunately, I’ve heard through the grapevine that Betsy isn’t the fucker’s first casualty.”

  “Really?” Kenny asked, turning in his seat. “Like what?”

  As they drove, Tony detailed the digging he’d done, information he’d learned from people who knew people up in Michigan, where the guy was from.

  “So there were probably five or more in the past couple of years. No charges were ever filed against him, though. But he was pretty much run out of the kinky community there. He was denied entry to any public events, and the private event organizers banned him. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn most of this until a few weeks ago. I haven’t had an opportunity to sit down with Betsy alone to talk with her and see if she’s okay. He’s always been with her.”

  “So what are we going to do when we get there?” Nolan asked.

  Yes, it was nice to have one retired and two active members of law enforcement with their group, but, frankly, now that they were charging in like the kinky cavalry, he wasn’t sure what their next step was supposed to be.

  “She’s at a convenience store,” Ross said. “We’re going to make sure she’s safe, first of all. Then we’ll see what her injuries are and if she needs to go to the hospital.”

  “And then?” Kenny asked.

  “And then,” Tony said in a dark tone, “we go pay that fucker a visit, get her shit, and get out after leaving him with a brown smear in his tighty whities from the scare we’re going to put into him. Hopefully she’ll press charges against him and he’ll end up in jail. At the very least, he’ll be automatically banned from the club. I’ll make sure all the local event organizers know about him so they can keep him out of their groups, too.”

  * * * *

  Kenny had always liked Betsy. When she’d first started coming around the different coffee times and munches less than a year earlier, he’d thought about talking to Nolan about her, to see if he was into her, too. She was thirty-two and a cutie, one of those natural women who didn’t realize how cute they were. She was short, and probably close to one-forty in weight, giving her gorgeous plump curves he could fantasize about tying up and marking her before making her head explode with some forced orgasm torture. She had an infectious giggle, wild, long curly brown hair, and sparkling blue eyes he didn’t dare stare into for too long for fear of falling in love with her.

  But the last few times he’d seen her at the club with Jack, that giggle was silent, and the sparkle had been gone from her eyes. She’d spent most of the time staring at the floor while Jack hammed it up, talked and openly flirted with other women
, and generally made an ass out of himself.

  It left Kenny with a foul taste in his mouth.

  In retrospect, Kenny felt like an idiot for not raising questions with his other friends sooner. They tried to look after each other in their community, tried to weed out abusers and offer safety nets for anyone caught in a bad situation.

  This wouldn’t be the first time a group of them had gone out on a mission to help one of their own. Tilly had been the first to arrive on the scene when Mallory’s uncle had gone off on her one night.

  And Tilly had put the fear of god into the man before the rest of their friends, and Kel, had shown up to get Mal and move her to safety.

  Kel and Ted were both driving pickups. Cris and Landry had an SUV. Between all their vehicles, they would likely be able to get most of her stuff. At least the important stuff.

  If she would really leave. He was no idiot. Sometimes after a few melodramatic apologies and a buttload of crocodile tears, victims went back to their abusers.

  Just to have it happen again.

  That was a depressing thought he didn’t want to entertain. At least his mom wasn’t “abused.” Other than his step-father’s political leanings, he did appear to worship Kenny’s mom.

  For that, for making her smile, for loving her, he would try to get along with the man as best the man would allow.

  Which might not be much after the showdown that morning.

  Gabe jumped out of their car upon pulling into the convenience store parking lot, almost before Bill had got it stopped. With a hand on her hip that he knew probably meant she’d put on her sidearm at some point, she bolted inside the store as everyone else parked their vehicles and followed her.

  The store clerk had sat Betsy on a chair in the office behind the counter. He was just a kid, maybe twenty-one, if that, and looked scared.

  “I tried to get her to let me call the cops, man,” the kid said as he stayed out of the way, “but she wouldn’t let me. I gave her first aid and made her an icepack. Thought it might help her eye.”