“You weren’t.” I snagged my suit jacket off the coat tree. “We were done.”
He held the door open as we left the reception area. “Is he a friend of yours?”
“Former friend.”
“Maybe you should tell him that.”
I started to argue, but I suspected Marty was right.
I wasn’t expecting anyone to be around when I returned to McJock Central. My McKay cousins had a sweet setup, even if they had to drive several miles to get to the ASU campus.
They’d invited me to crash on their couch until my army buddy Raj got here from Fort Hood, so I’d stopped by to pick up my stuff before my meeting at the VA.
It surprised me to see Kyler sitting at the dining room table. When Ky wasn’t in class he was at football practice, or at team meetings, or watching game tapes, or working out. Everyone claimed I was an intense guy, but I was a candidate for ADHD meds compared to Kyler McKay. Even now he exhibited impressive multitasking skills, performing biceps curls with free weights as he flipped through a textbook. He glanced up and flashed me a sheepish smile. It was really fucking spooky how much he looked like his dad—but a super-sized version. “Hey. Didn’t think I’d see you again today.”
“Did you plan on IDing me in the morgue later?”
“Nah. I figured Sierra would just maim you—that’s more painful than a quick death.” After his methodical inspection, he said, “You don’t look worse for the wear.”
“You sure I don’t have icicles on my face?”
“Icicles in the desert? Dream on.” Kyler laughed. “But dude. You had to expect this from her.”
I ran my hand over the top of my head. “Yeah. I did. But that doesn’t mean I like it.”
“At least you’re not bleeding. So what happened?”
“I blew it. She was prickly as a damn cactus. She acted like I’d assumed we could just pick up where we left off seven years ago.”
The weight in Kyler’s left hand froze midair. “You didn’t tell her that?”
“No.” I scowled at him. “I’m not a complete idiot.”
“I didn’t think so. Did you act all ‘I’m in the army now, I’m a big, badass soldier and you will listen to me, woman.’”
“What the fuck? No, I didn’t do that.” Did I?
“The cold shoulder doesn’t sound like Sierra.” Ky frowned. “Wait, if you were at her office…I take that back. That is exactly how she’d react. She’s got the whole Stepford thing goin’ on at work.”
That description fit. “Why?”
“Since she’s the boss’s kid, she has some whacked-out idea she has to rise above the fray. One night she got a little drunk and told me her male colleagues treat her like a bimbo who’s just collecting a paycheck from Daddy until she gets married and pregnant.”
“Jesus.”
“Which is total bullshit. Sierra is so freakin’ smart and she knows business—especially her dad’s business that she’s been around her whole life. I wish she’d tell those assholes to fuck off and show them bein’ like everyone else and not rocking the boat won’t set you apart.”
“You speaking from experience?”
Kyler lowered the weight to the floor. He sighed before looking up at me. “Yep. And it’s ironic I learned that from her.”
“How?”
“Sierra helped me deal with family shit when it came to picking a college. Dad wanted me to go to University of Wyoming. Period. Then the football recruiters flew me’n Dad down here to talk about the program. After the meeting, while I was getting the tour of the ASU campus, Sierra took Dad aside for a ‘come to Jesus’ chat. Whatever she told him clicked because after that, Dad was completely onboard with me attending school here.”
Now I really wanted to know what she’d said to stubborn Cord McKay to get him to change his mind. “Did she have the same chat with Cam about Anton, and with Kane about Hayden attending ASU too?”
“Those two had it easy after I broke the first barrier. Our folks decided it’d be better, if we had to go away to college, that we were together.”
I wasn’t a social media guy so I knew nothing of McKay family gossip until those two weeks I’d been back in Sundance. But during my time in Wyoming, I remembered my cousin Chassie telling me that ASU athletics had aggressively courted Kyler for their football program. Since Hayden had been named a National Merit Scholar, he had his pick of colleges across the country but had chosen ASU. Anton had decided on the Phoenix branch of Cochise Valley College after he’d been offered a full-ride rodeo scholarship.
“But we weren’t together that much last year. Living in the dorms sucked since me’n Hayden were placed in separate buildings according to our activities and Anton lived like five miles away.”
“Had to be better than living in the barracks, dude.”
“Only slightly. Mase bought this place over the summer and said we could live here this year.”
I raised a brow. “Rent free?”
“Hell no. Even a big hockey star has a mortgage.”
Mason “Mase” Morrison, Kyler’s cousin from his mom’s side of the family, was a hockey phenom. He’d been signed to play professional hockey at age eighteen right after graduating from high school. I couldn’t imagine the pressure the kid was under. He wasn’t old enough to legally order a beer, but the future of an entire hockey franchise rested on his shoulders.
“Where is Mase, anyway?” I asked.
“Scorpions are on the road. He gets back after the game late Saturday night.”
“Do you have a tough travel schedule?”
Kyler shrugged. “It’s different for college teams. The profs cut us some slack for missing class, but most of us are on the five-year bachelor’s program because of athletics, so we’ve gotta keep up our academics or face suspension.”
“Does suspension happen often?”
“As of last week two freshman football players were sidelined. The idiots didn’t bother going to their classes because they assumed coach was bluffing.”
“I’ve been assigned to work with guys like that in the army. First they bend the rules, then they break them and they act surprised when they get busted for it.”
“I don’t understand how you’re here, acting like you have a choice where you’re assigned. Isn’t that the deal with the military? They can force you to relocate anyplace they want, any time they want?” Kyler asked.
“Yeah. But this is a two-year experimental program involving all branches of the armed forces and the Veterans Administration. It’s strictly voluntary.” I grinned. “Well, voluntary meaning my CO had to put my name in for consideration.”
“So you were hand-picked? Sweet. You must be a real hero with commendations and shit, huh?”
I rolled my eyes. “Hero. Right. I’m proud of my exemplary service record and all of the specialized medical training I’ve received. What I don’t have is a BS in nursing, which would advance my rank. That’s pretty much the only reason I signed on for this. The additional education.”
“How does it work? How do you get to choose where you end up?”
“Since the VA system has had issues in recent years, the preliminary program is focused on active-duty medical personnel working with civilian healthcare specialists in the places with the highest number of violations. So my choices are Cheyenne or Phoenix.”
Kyler’s gaze turned sharp. “That’s why you were in Wyoming.”
I nodded. “One of the requirements is working two weeks in a hospital or clinic with a preceptor associated with that VA.”
“You weren’t bullshitting me—or Sierra. You’d planned to be in Phoenix for at least two weeks.”
Before he could ask the question I saw in his eyes, I answered it. “I had no idea if Sierra still lived in Sundance when I showed up to work with Doc Monroe.”
“But you had to expect if Sierra wasn’t living in Wyoming she’d be living here,” Kyler tossed out.
With the way things had ended between us y
ears ago, I had zero expectations when it came to Sierra. But the instant I saw her…everything had changed. “When I left Wyoming, I left for good. I didn’t keep in contact with anyone.” It wasn’t like anyone had sought contact with me either. “Besides, my dad bailed out of state. My mom moved to Montana with my sister and brother. My uncles were busy doing their own shit. And the McKays…” I shrugged. “Anyway, approval for the program happened fast, which is odd for the government. Not a lot of information has been released to us individually about specifics, but I’ve heard that’ll change once I submit my final request.”
“You did that today, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.” Raj was gonna flip his shit when I told him.
“You don’t know where you’ll be going to school?”
“I doubt it’ll be a traditional campus setting like you’re in. Especially since the Phoenix VA is a teaching hospital and affiliated with over a hundred colleges. I just hope the hours I spend in the classroom every week count toward my required duty hours. It’d blow if I had eighteen credit hours of instruction, plus I had to work a full forty.” I shrugged. “But it’s a possibility.”
“Will you tell Sierra you’ll probably be here for longer than two weeks?”
I shook my head and walked to the fridge for a bottle of Gatorade. “Not until I figure out what to do next.”
Kyler snorted. “You know what you need to do, West.”
Kiss her stupid and beg her forgiveness? Like that’d work. “What?”
“Approach her on a professional level. Show up at her office tomorrow and pile on the guilt that she’d thrown you out before you could explain you were trying to hire her. Then tell her you’d like to look at rental properties since you’ll be around a while.”
Ideas raced through my head—a variation on Ky’s suggestion because I didn’t want to tip my hand too soon. I needed to get her to spend time with me. I’d deal with any backlash of what I had to do to make that happen after the primary goal had been achieved. Wasn’t it better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission anyway? “Quick thinking, Ky. Damn. You’re good.”
He grinned. “It’s what I do—learn to think on my feet and adapt fast.”
The doorbell rang.
Ky glanced at his phone and said, “Shit.” He stood, whipped off his sweat-stained wife-beater and tossed it aside. He yanked on a Sun Devils Football T-shirt and looked at me. “You have all your stuff?”
“Trying to get rid of me?”
“Hell yes. The teaching assistant—I mean my tutor—is here.”
I said, “Tutor? I thought I was the only one who needed extra help.”
Kyler blushed. Then he disappeared around the corner.
I scanned the living room to make sure I hadn’t left anything before I hoisted my duffel bag and entered the foyer.
A tall, gorgeous redhead dropped her hand from Ky’s crotch when she saw me and seemed nervous that Ky would introduce us.
He didn’t.
McKay, you dog. Nailing the teacher’s assistant. She could teach him all sorts of new tricks.
“If for some reason Raj gets delayed tonight, you’re welcome to stay here again,” Ky offered.
“I appreciate it.” I maintained a straight face when I said, “Study hard, but a word of advice. Staying in one position too long will cause back and neck problems. Change positions frequently.”
Late afternoon I paused in the lobby of the apartment building, looking for the buzzer marked Ramos. I pushed #220 and immediately heard a static-filled, “Yo.”
“It’s West.”
The door lock buzzed.
I took the stairs to the second floor.
Raj had left the door cracked open. The instant I stepped inside, I wished I’d left my sunglasses on. The walls and the ceiling were so goddamned pink it felt like swimming in a bottle of Kinky Pink.
“In here,” Raj called out.
I stepped through a doorway into the combination living room and kitchen.
Raj grinned at me. “Welcome to the pink palace.”
“How old is your sister? Don’t most girls grow out of the pink phase at like thirteen?”
“Not T’Quelle. I expected she’d repaint after I mentioned it was like being inside a vagina, but she just called me a pig.” Raj indicated the floral couch. “You’re crashing on the sofa bed.”
“Great.” I dropped my duffel on the floor. “Tell me you picked up beer.”
“In the fridge.”
“Thank you, Jesus.” I popped the top and snagged the chair across from him. The miniature dining table was covered in a frilly pink lace tablecloth. “How was the drive?”
“Long. I hate driving by myself.”
“You hate doing anything by yourself.”
“The result of having two older brothers and two younger sisters. I was always surrounded.” Raj swigged his beer. “Only things surrounding a white boy like you growing up in Wyoming were fences and tumbleweeds, amirite?”
“Pretty much.” I picked up a picture frame and peered at the two cute college-aged girls, one with dreadlocks and one with cornrows. “Which one of these bikini-wearing hotties is your sister?”
“They’re both my sisters, asshole. Quick genetics update; when a black woman marries a Mexican man—none of their offspring look like them or each other.”
Raj joked about his mixed heritage all the time. His genetics seemed evenly split. He had the height and hair from his African-American side, but he had lighter skin and hazel eyes from his Mexican side. We’d gone through basic training together. We’d attended every medical seminar, every college course, every advanced training class together. We even shared an apartment in Fort Hood. Some of our supervisors swore we shared a brain. So the army fuck-up affected us both.
“What’s up, West?”
I set the picture down. “Nothing. Why?”
“I know you, man. You’re brooding. What gives?”
“Woman troubles.”
He laughed. “Right.”
When I didn’t share in his amusement, he stared at me. Hard.
“You’re serious.”
“Yep.”
“Woman troubles,” he repeated. “First time you’ve ever said that in all the years I’ve known you.”
“There’s a reason for that. And she lives in Phoenix.”
His eyes went comically wide. Then he said, “Start talking.”
Raj knew more about me than anyone in my life. But he didn’t know about Sierra. “It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time and so do you.”
“It’s complicated.”
“You’re stalling. Now you know I ain’t gonna leave you alone until you tell me whatever it is that you should’ve told me a long damn time ago.”
I scrubbed my hands over my face. “You know about my fucked-up childhood. So by my senior year of high school I was biding my time until graduation and I could start a real life.” I swallowed a mouthful of beer. “Then she showed up.”
“Who?”
“Sierra. The instant I saw her all those freakin’ clichés bombarded me—a bolt of lightning, the earth moved, time stood still, my soul recognized hers, my heart stopped, I wanted to fuck her hot little body twice a day for the next hundred years…” I closed my eyes. “I’ve never told anyone any of that.”
“Not even her?”
“Especially not her.”
Raj sighed. “That’s fucked, man, but keep goin’.”
“We became friends. At first because I needed to prove my initial reaction to her was a fluke. I mean, she was beautiful, so in my experience that meant she was either a spoiled brat or a snotty bitch. But she wasn’t. I found out it was worse. Way, way worse.”
“What was she?”
“Perfect.”
Raj said nothing.
I finished my beer and grabbed another. “I needed to stay away from her but I couldn’t. So we were friends. Fuck, man. She was my only goddamned friend. And the
entire time we were friends I knew how she felt about me.”
“Please tell me you didn’t take advantage of that.”
I scowled at him. “I’m not that guy, asshole. I never touched her because it would’ve been all fucking over for me if I did. So I left Wyoming just as planned. I just didn’t tell her that was my plan.”
“Did you have any contact with her at all?”
“Not until two weeks ago.” I told him everything that had happened when I’d seen her in Sundance and how things ended up with her today.
We’d each drained another beer by the time I’d finished.
Finally Raj said, “Sounds to me like you’ve made up your mind. She’s here; this is where you need to be.”
I shrugged.
“Don’t give me that fake ‘whatever’ attitude, man. You believe it’s a sign.”
“Or a second chance.”
“But that’s up to her, isn’t it? And from what you’ve told me, maybe she’s not interested in giving you a shot. Then you’re stuck here.”
I glanced up at him sharply. “I’m stuck here. I thought you ruled out Cheyenne?”
“I’m tired after driving fifteen hours and my brain is sluggish.” Raj sighed and rubbed the top of his shaved head. “But I recall that you weren’t giving Cheyenne serious consideration.” Then Raj’s gaze pierced me. “Something else you wanna tell me?”
“I indicated Phoenix as my preference today after I left her office.”
Raj’s eyebrows went up.
“There’s one other thing.”
“Of course there is.”
“Tomorrow I’m going back to Sierra’s office and asking her to show me possible rentals.” I flashed my teeth at him. “But it’s not for me. It’s for a friend.”
“Ah, fuck, man. Seriously?”
“I need a place to live anyway.” My gaze rolled over pink, pink, and pinker. I wasn’t sure how long I could stand being here.
“Fine, do your thing with her. I don’t wanna do anything except sit by the pool and work on my tan.”
I choked on my beer.
Raj laughed. “Too easy.”
“Asshole.”
Unbreak My Heart (Rough Riders Legacy Book 1) Page 3
