Trust Me
Matty and Kayla, Book One
The McDaniels Brothers
Christine Bell
Other Books by Christine Bell
Fix You: Bash and Olivia, Book #1
Fix You: Bash and Olivia, Book #2
Fix You: Bash and Olivia, Book #3
Down on her Knees (book #4 in the Dare Me series)
Down the Aisle (book #3 in the Dare Me series)
Down and Dirty (book #2 in the Dare Me series)
Down for the Count (book #1 in the Dare Me series)
Dirty Trick (book #1 in the Perfectly Matched series)
Guardian for Hire (book #2 in the For Hire series)
Wife for Hire (book #1 in the For Hire series)
White Lie Christmas (with author Riley Murphy)
The Twisted Tale of Stormy Gale
YA Books by Christine Bell writing as Christine O’Neil
Chaos
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Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
The End
Chapter One
Kayla
"Got a job for you, sweetie."
I shoved back a lock of hair that had sprung loose from my ponytail and scowled at the phone, struggling to keep the irritation out of my voice. I was already at work on a Saturday. Seemed like twisting the knife to ask me for a favor on top of it. "Mick, I've already got a ton on my plate right now, and you said you wanted me to focus on getting the books straight-"
"I know what I said, and now I'm saying something else. This is important. This is the big one."
That he’d even said that much was a real improvement. Mickey Flynn wasn’t big on explaining himself. He expected to give the orders and have them carried out, no questions asked.
When we’d first met, I was thirteen. Enough had happened to me in my young life that I was done playing the victim and wasn’t about to follow anyone blindly. Needless to say, we’d locked horns more than once over the years, but the longer I knew him the more I trusted him. He might not be the most moral man in Boston, but to my knowledge he hadn’t murdered anyone, and he cared about me. That was more than I could say about anyone else in my life.
I huffed out a sigh and leaned back in my chair. “Okay, let’s hear it.” The tension was already building between my shoulder blades as I waited for the other shoe to drop. That was another thing about Mickey. He was always on the lookout for the next big idea. The one thing that would take him from thug in an expensive suit to a real mover and shaker.
“I’ll give you a hint,” he said, the grin on his face evident in his voice. “Three letters. M. M. And A.”
That piqued my interest and I set down the file I'd been reading onto the desk in front of me. I’d been bugging him for months to get out of the underground bare knuckle boxing game and try to go legit. Was it possible he was finally listening to me for once?
"Go on."
"I got you a guy. He’s an MMA fighter."
My heart kicked hard in protest and then quieted. I should've known better than to get my hopes up.
I snorted out a laugh and picked up the folder again. "I can't think of anything I need in my life less than a guy right now." Or ever, maybe. In my experience, men brought nothing but problems to my already complicated life.
"Not a guy to date,” Mick corrected with overly exaggerated patience. “I mean a guy to manage. He’s pretty damn good, too.”
I straightened in my chair and held the phone closer to my ear, sure I'd heard him wrong. "What are you talking about, Mick?"
"You said you wanted to get into MMA. Well, here's your chance. His name's Matthias McDaniels. They call him Matty. From what I hear, he's going to be the next big thing in MMA."
"Great, but what does that have to do with me? I never said anything about wanting to manage some hometown bozo. I told you I thought you should get into MMA and manage some fighters. Then I said I’d been working really hard at the gym and maybe you could start with me."
Funny how selective his memory could be.
He chuckled and I could almost see him rolling his eyes at whatever hunk of brainless muscle he had in the room with him, like "This kid, am I right?"
"You know that's a bad idea. I don't want you out there getting hurt. This is the perfect solution. You get all the excitement of the sport, without putting that pretty face at risk. Plus, it will take the business in a new direction like you wanted."
Leave it to Mick to think my own dream of fighting MMA would be realized by booking fights and watching a guy in the cage doing what I wanted more than anything else to be doing. Men could be so dumb sometimes. "I'm coming up to your office so we can talk more about this."
There was a long, tense silence before he spoke again. "There's nothing to talk about. It's a done deal. I can count on you for this, right Kayla?"
His tone —short, with that edge that made my insides curl up— told me everything I needed to know. His mind was made up and not even threat of death by shark could move him once his heels were dug in.
I squeezed my eyes closed and slumped forward to bang my head on the desk softly before answering. "Sure. Sure, you can count on me, Mick."
Because Mickey Flynn, mobster extraordinaire, was the only person in the entire world that gave a good shit about me. Right or wrong, stupid or not, that meant something.
I pushed away from my desk and stood, tossing the paperwork I'd been working on into a drawer. At least I could go upstairs and grill him about this guy he'd found. It might not be what I'd hoped for, but who knew? Maybe Mickey was right. Maybe this Matthias McDaniels really was the next big thing, and wouldn't it be awesome to be part of that?
And maybe once I showed Mick how knowledgeable I was about the sport and immersed myself in that community he would see what a good fit I was, and he’d give me a shot of my own. I strode from the room, a tiny nugget of hope lodged near my heart, still not sure whether I wanted to tear him a new one or hug him.
I rounded the corner and promptly ran smack into a wall of hard muscle and flesh, knocking my forehead on something bony.
I swore under my breath, wincing as I rubbed the injured spot. “What’s your jaw made of, adamantium?”
“Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Well, you nearly took my head off, so watch it next time.” I looked up to a guy around my age massaging his chin and flexing his jaw. He barely gave me a second glance as he muttered an apology and moved to push past me but I blocked his way as I took in his appearance.
Dirty blonde hair, almost surreal green eyes and a fighter’s build, he didn’t look like any of Mick’s grunts. None of them were that pretty.
“Look, I said I was sorry. You’re fine, I’m fine, let’s just move on with our day.”
Playing a hunch, I said, “You Matthias McDaniels?”
He closed his eyes and sighed like he definitely didn’t want to be. “I am.”
“Well, I guess we might as well get used to butting heads, then.” I stuck out my hand. "Kayla James. Apparently, I'm your new manager."
He stared down at me for a full ten seconds before he started to laugh. "The fuck you are," he said with a curt shake of his head. "First off, I don't know you, and secondly, I made an agreement with your boss. He didn’t say anything about bringing in someone else for the job."
My hope nugget disintegrated and irritation took
its place. "And third of all," I said, yanking my hand away from his and trying to quell the urge to use it to karate chop him in the balls, "I'm a girl, so clearly that makes the very idea of me being your manager positively comical, right?"
He blew out an exasperated breath and shrugged his broad shoulders. "Look, I don't know what you want me to say here, Red. That I'm a Neanderthal and think women are the weaker sex? Will that fit the stereotype you’re trying to pin on me? The macho, dumb jock who thinks a woman can't do a job traditionally done by a man?" He held up both hands like he didn't give a crap either way. "That's not my issue, but if it makes you feel better, then run with it. I've got to go. I have dinner plans. Tell Mick I’ll call him first thing tomorrow."
Okay, so maybe there was a slim chance I’d jumped to conclusions. If he was telling the truth, which I doubted, his reasons for not wanting me as his manager had nothing to do with me being a woman. That didn’t fix the problem, because the fact still remained, for one reason or another, he was dead set against it.
Probably I should’ve left it at that. Let him and Mick duke it out and hope that I would end up off the hook, but suddenly my initial ambivalence was gone. I wanted to be part of something I helped build. Something I could be proud of rather than feeling like Mickey had given me another hand out. It might not be as good as fighting, but I had a chance to dig in to something gritty and real. Something that would take me one step away from pushing paper all day and one step closer to a fight of my own.
Like it or not, Matthias was the lynchpin and I wasn't about to let him walk out.
"Okay, so if it’s not because I’m a girl, then why? Why do you have a problem with the idea of me managing you? You said it yourself, you don't even know me. I could have tons of experience and have three successful fighters under my belt for all you know."
I didn't, but that wasn't the point. The point was that he was trying to act like this wasn’t about my gender when it was. Better to face it head on and get it out of the way than pretending it didn't exist.
"You want the honest truth?" Matty stepped closer and eyed me from head to toe, his suddenly hot gaze trailing over my face, lingering on my lips before dropping lower to my breasts. My traitorous nipples peaked and I resisted the urge to cross my arms over my chest, because fuck him.
But honesty wasn't something that I had a whole lot of experience with in my twenty-one years on earth. If he was offering, I wouldn't turn it down. Nothing he could say would hurt my feelings, so what did I have to lose?
"Shoot." I cocked my head to the side in challenge, ready to let him know in no uncertain terms that, if he tried to bullshit me, I'd call him on it.
“Because you'd be a distraction."
My heart kicked up a notch in annoyance. Or at least that's what I told myself. "A distraction?"
"Yeah." He folded his muscled arms over his chest and stared at me defiantly. "I'm a healthy, twenty-two year old, red-blooded male with a sex drive running on all eight cylinders. Only an asshole like Mickey would send a sexy redhead with a chip on her shoulder at least as notable as her spectacular rack to stand over me for the next few months while I try to concentrate on training for a fight."
Did he seriously just say that?
I cleared my throat and swallowed hard to work up some moisture in my suddenly dry mouth. I should've been offended. If I was a different girl, I'd have clutched my proverbial pearls and gasped. Instead, I found myself biting back a smile. He'd promised honesty, and he'd given it. Hard to be mad about that. He was probably no better than any other guy on the regular, but today? Today, he'd impressed me.
A little.
That didn't mean I was going to let him get away with that excuse, though.
"So you're telling me you're such a novice fighter that you'd let a girl distract you from doing your job? Is that what you're telling me?"
He closed the distance between us until we were toe to toe and shook his head slowly.
"Nope. I’ve been around a lot of girls who’ve wanted to come watch me train. What I'm telling you is that you’re so ridiculously distracting with all that red hair and those curves, that even a seasoned fighter like me would be hard-pressed to stay unaffected with you in the room.” He shrugged, like take it or leave it. “I'm not going to lie, I'm extremely hard-pressed, and very affected right now."
Another honest answer, another statement that made my stomach do a flip.
When he stepped back a tense moment later, I could see the pulse pounding in his neck and I barely suppressed a shiver.
How long had it been? How long since I'd felt a guy's hands on me in an intimate way? Two years? Three? And even then, I'd been left with an empty feeling…a bone-deep knowledge that I was missing something. As I gazed at Matthias McDaniels, all I kept wondering was if I'd feel that way when he was done with me.
***
Matty
Well, that had been a major crash and burn. I should've just kept walking when she was still swearing at me after we'd bumped into each other. It would’ve given me a chance to let the adrenaline from having just been blackmailed by Mickey Flynn fade, and maybe I could've avoided acting like a giant bag of douche with too much testosterone.
Okay, maybe not that, but at least I could've gotten my filter back in place. Now Mickey's woman —Jesus, I hoped like fuck she wasn't actually Mickey's woman, because that would've made my guts churn— was staring at me like I was some sort of amoeba under a microscope. In my attempt to talk her out of wanting to manage me, all I'd done was catch her attention because I was different than the guys she was used to.
If I was keeping up the whole honesty tact, I had to admit that she was different than girls I was used to as well. Looks wise, she was an absolute dime. No question, but it was more than that. She wasn't trying to flirt or act coy or tease. She was straight up, balls out, letting me know exactly what she thought and why she thought it, and it was kind of nice. If I ever decided to settle down —and I wouldn't— that was the type of girl I'd want. No nonsense.
After twelve long years with my mother Sherri McDaniels as the only woman in my life, I was about done with liars. Women who pretended to be one thing and then, when you least expected it, whipped around like fucking vipers and turned out to be something else. The very idea that this girl was exactly what she seemed was compelling.
Kayla James gazed up at me through sherry colored eyes and I felt myself leaning into her again like an idiot fish on a hook.
Pulling back with a muffled curse, I ran a hand through my hair. "I gotta go. Look, no offense, maybe you're a great manager." Although I doubted it, after all, she looked even younger than me. "But it really would be better if you talked Mickey out of this. I'll talk to him too. If he hears from both of us and neither of us are happy, I’m sure he’ll see what a waste of time it would be to move forward."
I watched as her stance changed before my eyes— her little chin lifted, she cocked a hand on one hip— and I had the sneaking suspicion somehow, between the time we’d bashed skulls and now, something had changed her mind. Maybe she’d hit her head harder than I thought, because this was clearly the worst idea ever. A disaster in the making, and I’d already told her why.
I went to repeat myself and then add to the list of reasons this was a terrible idea, but she was already shaking her head and talking.
"You said yourself, you're not a Neanderthal. You'll get used to having a woman around. I guarantee it.” She gave me what I imagined was supposed to be an encouraging smile, but it only filled me with dread. “It's like working in an ice cream store. You think you'd be eating it left and right, but after the first week, you can't even look at it anymore.”
Wrong. The summer I turned fifteen, I'd gotten a second job at a place called Scoopz. I gained twenty pounds in less than two months. I finally had to quit when I realized it was costing me more in new pants than I was making.
Bottom line? Even if I was around Kayla James every day, I was still going to w
ant to eat her.
Every day.
She gazed at me through determined eyes and held up a single index finger. “Let’s have one meeting. One. We talk over what you want to achieve this year, who you’d like to fight, who you wouldn’t like to fight, and then go from there.”
What an absolute shit of a Saturday. It was bad enough that I had to tie myself up with Mickey for the next year. Now he had to go and twist the knife with this little stunt. Maybe it was some sort of PR move. Like, he thought if he could get Kayla James into some meeting and on the press’s radar, she would get people interested in me as a fighter. Hell, who knew what he’d been thinking, but what I did know is that I wanted no part of it.
I eyed her long and hard, running over my limited options and came back with only one that made sense. Mickey wasn’t going to listen to me alone, but if his protégé here wanted out too, maybe there was a chance. All I had to do was make her wish she’d never met me.
That was kind of a specialty of mine, and I perked up at the thought of the challenge.
"I'll tell you right now, it's not going to work. If you insist though, let's get it over with so I can get someone else in place ASAP. Meet me at my office on Tuesday evening. Sixteen hundred Market Street, six PM."
She nodded, full lips curving into a half-smile of victory. "Sounds perfect. And you'll see. I'll be like one of the guys to you in no time."
Sure she would. If someone snuck into my room in the middle of the night and cut off my man tackle.
"See you there.” I made my way around her and shoved open the door, sucking in a deep breath of springtime air.
If I stood any chance of having something positive come out of the next year, I had to find some good fights regardless of how I’d gotten here, and I needed a manager who had pull and connections to do that. Even if Kayla James wasn’t the hottest girl in Boston—and I was pretty sure she was— she wouldn’t be my pick for the job. I felt bad in a way, because I wasn’t even sure if she knew that I was an unwilling part of this whole “Mickey goes legit” scheme. What if she was just another victim of circumstance? Guilt nipped at me hard but I shook it off.
Trust Me: Matty and Kayla, Book 1 of 3 (The McDaniels Brothers) Page 1