I turned to Derek, trying my best to get control of my body. Derek wouldn’t like it if I killed his brother. Or Claire’s sister. “I’ll meet your brothers some other time. I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be around the man that Lucy just fucked right now.”
I stormed away from Irish’s house, pissed that I had been played by Lucy. I had already told her that we were more than just fuck buddies, but that didn’t stop her from going and screwing another guy. And not just any other guy, Irish’s brother. Goddamn that woman knew how to push my buttons.
I got to my truck and jumped inside, cranking the engine and ready to speed away, but then I saw the front door open and a very pissed off Lucy storming toward her own car. I shut off the truck and got out, slamming the door behind me.
“What the fuck was that?” I shouted.
“Don’t start with me, Hunter. I don’t need your shit right now.”
“My shit? My shit? You were just fucking my teammate’s brother and you don’t want to deal with my shit?” I yelled. “I can’t fucking believe you right now.”
She got in my face and pointed her finger in my face, her eyes blazing with rage. “Hey, we were only supposed to be fuck buddies, nothing more. I don’t care how many times you think you’ve claimed me. I told you we weren’t going to be more and you have to accept that.”
I spun her around and pushed her up against my truck, thrusting my leg between hers. She was short and curvy, the perfect body for taking what I needed. Her large breasts heaved with every breath she took and I had to remind myself to focus on what was really going on here. “I won’t accept that. You’re my fucking woman whether you want to admit it or not.”
She shoved her hands against my chest, but I didn’t move. “We tried the whole committed relationship thing. You didn’t even last one day!”
“You didn’t give me a fucking chance.”
“Because it was obvious that you didn’t actually want a relationship. You freaked out after one night.”
“How many times are you going to punish me for that? I told you to give me time to adjust.”
“So, I can come over whenever I want? Eat your food? Leave my tampons in your bathroom?”
I got the hives just thinking about someone walking into my house unannounced. Food was negotiable, but there was no way I wanted fucking tampons under my sink.
“That’s what I thought.”
“There have to be boundaries,” I said adamantly.
“Fine. I’ll call first, but I want a drawer and half the closet. If we’re really going to do this, then I want space at your place. I mean, it’s not like I’ll be staying there all the time, but when I do, I don’t want my clothes piled up in the corner.”
“Why is this such a big deal?” I asked in frustration. “We’re just starting out and you already want space at my place?”
“I don’t want space. It’s not about the fucking drawer!” she yelled at me. “It’s that you can’t handle the drawer and I don’t want to wait around and see if you can.”
I ran my hand through my hair and cursed. “Why? Why do you need me to be okay with that?”
“Why is it so hard for you to give me a drawer?” she countered.
“Because you’re acting like we’re moving in together and buying a fucking house. Why can’t you just take it one step at a time?”
“Do you even hear yourself? I’m fine with taking it one step at a time, but I don’t want to constantly question whether or not you’re going to freak out. That’s not what a relationship is supposed to be like.”
“And you know how it’s supposed to be? When was the last time you had one?”
“I know that you don’t just demand that someone is yours. I know that you take her out on a date first. I may not have had any relationships, but even I can see that you want me to be only yours, but you don’t want the whole commitment. It freaks you out to think of me being in your space, and that’s fine. We don’t have to be some happy couple that just ‘knows’ like my sister and Derek, but I at least deserve some fucking respect.”
“I do respect you,” I shouted. “I’m trying to show you how much I want you, but you won’t let me.”
“No, Hunter. You want to own me and that’s a totally different thing.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? I know you’re not a fucking pet.”
“But you only want me on your timeline, under your conditions. You don’t know the first thing about what it really means to be committed to someone and that’s why I’m not interested in what you have to offer. We’re done. I don’t want to see you again and our fuck buddy status is definitely off the table. Don’t call me!”
She stormed away from me and into her car, slamming the door. I felt like I had just been run over by a fucking mack truck. Was she right? Was I really walking all over her? Sighing, I got back in my truck and drove back to my place. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do about her, but I knew that I definitely didn’t want to let her go yet. I just didn’t know how to convince her that she should give us a shot.
✯✯✯✯✯
Derek walked into my house with Sinner, Cazzo, Cap, and Burg a few days later. I rolled my eyes when Derek held up the two cases of beer and shoved his way inside. “We’re here for an intervention.”
“An intervention for what?”
“To set you straight on how you deal with a woman,” Cap said.
“I don’t need to be set straight. I know exactly how to deal with Lucy.”
“Really?” Cazzo asked. “And how’s that?”
I took a beer from Derek and threw the cap on the counter. “A woman like Lucy needs to know that her man is in charge. She doesn’t want some pussy that takes shit from her.”
“That’s in bed, you jackass,” Derek said. “You obviously don’t understand Lucy very well if you think she wants to be bossed around.”
“I’m not bossing her around. I’m just showing her who wears the pants in the relationship. That’s me.”
“Nooooo. No, no, no,” Sinner said with a shake of his head. “You’ve got that all wrong. Men never wear the pants in the relationship and if you think you do, you’re going to end up alone.”
“He’s right,” Cazzo said. “You may think that you’re in charge, but in the end, your woman gets her way or you don’t get laid.”
“You guys have got it all fucking wrong,” I said. “That’s why you had to hand over your balls to your women like a bunch of pussies.”
“At least we’re getting pussy,” Burg said.
“She’ll come around. She just needs to understand how it’s going to be.”
“I totally hear you, man,” Cap said. “I thought the same exact thing with Freckles. You have to put her in her place and let her know who’s boss.”
“Right.”
“Wrong. That’s how you end up with your woman moving to another city and leaving you behind. I put a tracker on Maggie and didn’t see her for months.”
“I haven’t put a tracker on Lucy. I’m not quite that neurotic.”
“But she’s not staying with you anymore,” Derek said. “Claire said she got some shithole apartment above the laundromat.”
“Shithole is right. There’s no security. The door has a shitty lock and I’m not even sure the windows open. It’s a fucking mess.”
“And I bet you told her so,” Burg said.
“Of course I did. She doesn’t need to be living in a place like that.”
“The problem is, you couldn’t handle her living with you,” Derek said. “I had to sit and listen to Claire bitch for an hour about how Lucy went on and on about you not wanting to give Lucy a drawer. Seriously, an hour over a fucking drawer.”
“Look, it’s not like I asked her to move in with me.”
“But you did ask her to stay,” Derek pointed out.
“Well, yeah, but I wasn’t talking about forever.”
“And you couldn’t give her a drawer while she was staying
with you?” Sinner asked.
“Look, it starts off as a drawer and then it’s the closet. Then, pretty soon, she’s shoving tampons under the sink and washing her laundry at my place.”
“Does she have a washer and dryer at her place?” Burg asked.
“No.”
“So, you didn’t want to deal with tampons, sharing your closet, and letting her use your washer. So now she’s staying in a shitty apartment that’s not safe, she doesn’t have any money for furniture, and she has to go to the laundromat to wash her clothes,” Derek surmised.
“Well-”
“Yeah, sounds like you’re doing a great job taking care of your woman,” Cap snorted.
“I didn’t fucking tell her to move out.”
“Nope,” Sinner agreed. “You told her that she was your woman, demanded that she stay with you, but then refused to actually let her use your space. She moved out and now you’re fucking miserable. Are you catching on to why women wear the pants?”
“So, I just let her walk all over me?”
“She’s not fucking walking all over you. If she was, she would have taken that shit without asking and then taken over the rest of your house,” Burg said. “Take it from me. I’ve been with Meghan for almost a year and it’s been rough at times, but you have to know when to give in.”
“I think you guys are missing a major point here. Lucy and I barely had a chance to get started before she gave up. I’m not the one that walked away. I told her that she was my woman, but she’s so fucking stubborn. She says I went about it all the wrong way.”
“She right,” Burg said. “You normally ask a woman you like out on a date. You two have it all backwards. You’ve been fucking like rabbits and now you’re trying to change the rules in the middle of the game. It doesn’t work like that.”
“You’re supposed to have my fucking back.”
“I do. She’s also wrong. She can’t just expect you to change overnight. Basically, your problem is that you’re both too fucked up for a relationship. Neither of you know how it’s supposed to work.”
“And you do? Since when are you an expert?”
Burg grinned at me and took a swig of his beer. “Believe me, it’s not all sunshine and roses, but it’s definitely not the fucked up situation you have with Lucy.”
“So, what the hell am I supposed to do? Beg her to come back to me?”
“No,” they all said together as if that was the worst idea in the world.
“You never beg. No woman wants a man that falls on his knees for her. They think they do, but then they lose all respect for you,” Sinner said after taking a sip of his beer.
“I wait for her to come to me then,” I suggested.
“Nope,” Cap said. “You have to still be a part of her life or she’s going to think you don’t care.”
“Alright, so I ask her out on a date.”
“Wrong again,” Burg said. “She already told you that she doesn’t want to see you again. If you start asking her out, she’s going to think you don’t listen.”
“Well, then, I show up unannounced and don’t give her the chance to tell me no.”
Cazzo made a buzzing sound. “Still wrong. Showing up unannounced is basically saying that you don’t give a shit about what she thinks. It’s like going back to what you already had with her.”
“You guys really fucking suck at this advice thing. I already went through all my options and you shot them all down.”
“It’s actually secret option number five. You stalk her. Discreetly,” Sinner said with a grin.
“You’ve been hanging out with Knight too much.”
“Hey, it worked for the man, but you won’t take it to the same extremes that he did. He did the more forceful stalking thing and that won’t work for a woman like Lucy.”
This actually was sounding promising, so I pulled out a chair at my table and sat down. “Alright, how does this work exactly?”
They all pulled out chairs and sat down to strategize with me. “It’s just like when you randomly meet a chick. You run into her somewhere, like the grocery store,” Derek said. “It worked for me.”
“Right, but you weren’t stalking Claire.”
“No, but that’s just an example. If she goes to the diner in town, you show up there and sit down near her. You pretend to not see her until you’re eating your meal and then you casually say hi, like the whole thing was a happy coincidence.”
“And you can take it a step further than that,” Cap said. “You have to make circumstances work for you. Make sure she gets a flat tire and then drive past when she’s broken down on the side of the road. Boom. You’ve just come to the rescue and gotten in some time with her. You have to slowly break down her walls.”
“Okay, I can do the whole tire thing. How about this? I could stage a break-in at her apartment. She’ll need to call someone and that someone is me. I come in and put in a security system for her. Make her feel safe.”
“You want to hire someone to break into her apartment?” Cap asked.
“No,” I shook my head. “Her locks are shit. I could just break the lock and mess up her apartment a little. Make her think someone broke in.”
“How do you know she’d call you?” Burg asked.
“Because, I’m in security,” I said slowly. “Who else would she call?”
“Uh, me?” Derek raised his hand. “Her soon to be brother-in-law.”
“Right, hmmm,” I said in thought.
Sinner leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You want to break into Lucy’s apartment, mess it up, and then hope that she calls you, the man she broke up with, to come install security.” I nodded along with him. “Then, she’ll basically fall into your arms because you’ve saved her.”
“Exactly.”
Sinner rubbed his chin as he considered my plan. I thought it was pretty fucking brilliant. “It’s not a bad idea. You terrorize her,” I nodded. “get her to come crawling back to you,” I nodded again. “then you have her at your beck and call for the rest of your life because she’ll never feel safe in her apartment ever again.” I stopped nodding as I considered that last part. “She’ll be so terrified to go anywhere, thinking that people are always out to get her and then she’ll be seeing a psychiatrist to keep anxiety attacks at bay.” He leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest. “Fucking brilliant, man. You’ve taken her from a sane, fully functioning adult to the psych ward in just a few hours.”
I looked around the table and saw they were all glaring at me. “Okay, so we’ll put a pin in that grenade for now.”
“Wise decision,” Cap said.
✯✯✯✯✯
I walked out of my house the next day, determined to get my plan in place. First thing I had to do was make sure her tire was flat and then swing by when she was getting ready to leave. I left a little early so that I would have time to let the air out of her tire, but when I got there, she was already standing next to her car chatting up some guy that was changing her tire. Her tire that was flat. Fuck.
I pulled over to the side of the road and threw my truck in park behind her car. Stepping out, a rumble ripped through my chest at the sight of her laughing with the douchebag that was changing her tire. Yeah, he looked like he knew what he was doing, but what really bugged the shit out of my was the fact that he was in shape and she seemed to like it.
Her eyes flicked up to mine and then back down, and then back up when she realized who I was. “Hunter.”
“Lucy, why didn’t you call me?”
“I just came out here and I was about to call Derek, but Jack stopped to help me. He owns the garage in town.”
Jack stood up and held out his hand to me. I hesitantly held out my hand and shook his. “Hunter.”
“Jack, yeah, I met you at Sebastian’s wedding. You’re on Derek’s team, right?”
“Yeah. Good to see you again. I didn’t recognize you out of the
monkey suit.”
“Alright, I gotta get into work. I’ll be finished here in a minute.” He bent down and finished tightening the lug nuts, then picked up the flat. “I’ll take this to the garage and have it fixed. You can pick it up later today.”
“Thanks, Jack.”
“No problem, sweetheart.”
He walked away with Lucy’s tire, leaving me taking deep breaths to swallow my anger at her flirting with another man.
“Look, I can’t stay. I have to get over to the school. I’m allowed into my office today and I want to start getting it set up.”
“Why were you flirting with him?” I asked as she opened her car door.
“Excuse me? I wasn’t flirting with him.”
“I saw the way you were laughing at what he was saying. Were you hoping you could get a quick fuck in before you went to work?”
“Jealousy does not look good on you, Hunter.” She flung the door open and sat in her car, leaning out as she went to pull the door shut. “And by the way, I was laughing at a story he was telling me about his wife.”
She slammed the door and cranked the engine, tearing out of there, probably trying to get as far away from me as possible. That didn’t go at all as I had planned. I didn’t save the day and I ended up insulting her. Operation Get Lucy Back was taking hits all around.
✯✯✯✯✯
I waited a few days before deciding to run into her somewhere. I sat outside her apartment, parked a few spots down from her entrance, and waited for her to come out. When she got in her car, I followed her, hoping that I could run into her at the grocery store like Derek suggested. She pulled up to a building that I didn’t recognize and got out. I quickly parked and followed her inside, only to stop in the doorway when I smelled the fragrance.
Lucy turned and her eyes bored into me. Shit. I had followed her into the spa. Why the fuck hadn’t I been paying more attention? How the hell did I walk my way out of this one? The door chimed behind me and Maggie’s laughter filled my ears. Shit. Just what I needed. She would go back to Cap and tell him that I had been at the spa. I would never live this down.
Hunter: A Reed Security Romance Page 3