Colorado 03 Lady Luck (65 page)

“My wife is passed out and she ain’t gonna
move for about ten hours,” Ty replied low and quiet. “Maybe twelve.
She doesn’t even know I’m gone.”

Ty watched Tate grin slowly as he accurately
deduced the meaning of Ty’s words.

Ty didn’t grin. He looked around his friend
to the town.

Reading the mood, Tate fell silent for some
time, shifting his body, turning his eyes to the town then he spoke
softly, “Asked Laurie to marry me, right here.”

“Good spot for that,” Ty said to the
view.

“Her last birthday, I brought her up here
last thing just like that night,” Tate went on then, “Asked her to
marry me on her birthday, decided last year this was where she’d
end every one of them from now on.”

Ty didn’t respond. Tate being a romantic was
surprising but not that surprising. He was married to a
good-looking, kind-hearted woman. You didn’t win that kind of woman
and keep her as happy as Laurie obviously was without treating her
right.

Tate fell silent for another length of time
and when he was done with silence, he turned back to face Ty and
started, “Ty –”

Ty cut him off by slicing his eyes to
him.

“Years ago, you weren’t ready to give up. I
was buried under shit, couldn’t see my way clear of it. So deep
under, couldn’t even hear you. Even if I could, I wouldn’t listen.
My power was stripped; I was pissed, in pain and both made me
stupid.” He held Tate’s eyes and whispered, “Shoulda listened.”

Tate shook his head. “Don’t go there,
brother, you’re free, look forward and rejoice, do not look back
and despair.”

“That isn’t what this is about, Tate. I feel
no pain. Not anymore. That doesn’t mean the journey wasn’t torture
but it led me to Lexie so I can live with that. What I need you to
get is that you were right, I was wrong and you deserve to know
that.”

“You don’t have to tell me this, Ty,” Tate
said softly.

“Yes, I do, Tate,” Ty replied softly.

“Okay, then, you do,” Tate returned. “But,
you will remember, I was in that pit of snakes and I shoulda done
something about that years ago. I didn’t and you went down.”

“You hold no responsibility for what
happened to me.”

“I don’t see it that way.”

“Brother, you had a son you needed to look
after and pain in the ass pussy who was making your life a misery,”
Ty reminded him. “You had things you needed to see to and they were
priorities. When you got out, they’d never done anything as bad as
they did to me. You couldn’t foresee how bad it would get. But you
tried to deal with it then and I pulled you back. That is what this
is about.”

Tate fell silent.

Ty didn’t.

“Since the day I was released, you knocked
yourself out. You had my back, you took care of Lexie when we had
our thing then you did what you could to help me sort that. It’s
important to me that you know I’m grateful. I’ve been tryin’ to
figure out how I can show how much but, keep thinkin’ on it,
nothin’ comes to mind and I know why. I get it. You’re a man who
has everything so there is no way to show that appreciation because
there is nothing I can hand you that you want or need. And I get
that because I am now that same man. So the only thing I can give
you are words and, my guess is, that’ll be enough. If it isn’t, you
name it and it’s yours.”

“Friends do what I did for friends,” Tate
returned.

“
No they don’t, Tate.
You
did what you did for me because you’re you. That’s
what I’m talkin’ about.”

Tate was silent a moment then he said, “Well
then, you guessed right. Words are enough.”

Ty nodded.

Tate tipped his head to the side and asked
jokingly, “We done with the near-midnight in the middle of fuckin’
nowhere heart-to-heart?”

Ty didn’t feel like joking and answered,
“No.”

“Then what –?”

“Love you, man,” Ty interrupted quietly.
“Learned the hard way not to delay in expressing that sentiment so
I’m not gonna delay. You call me brother and I got one who’s blood
who don’t mean shit to me and today, all this shit done, rejoicing
and reflecting, it hit me that I got two who aren’t blood but who
do mean something. And you’re one of those two.”

“Ty –” Tate murmured.

“I will never forget, until I die, what you
did for me and my wife and until that day I will never stop bein’
grateful.”

“Fuck, man,” Tate whispered.

“Now, do those words work so you get what
what you did means to me?”

Silence then, “Yeah, they work.”

“Good, then now we’re done with our
near-midnight, middle of fuckin’ nowhere heart-to-heart,” Ty
declared, turned, opened the door to the Viper and started folding
in.

He stopped with his ass nearly to the seat
and looked up over the door when Tate called his name.

“I don’t have a blood brother,” Tate said.
“But you should know there’s a reason I call you that.”

Ty nodded.

But Tate didn’t need to tell him that. He
already knew. His actions said it all.

Then he sat his ass in the car.

Then he got that ass home to his wife.

* * * * *

Lexie

Half an hour later…

I woke when I felt my man slide in behind
me, his arm curled around me and pulled me close.

I snuggled closer.

I wanted to ask where he went but I figured
he’d tell me if he wanted me to know.

Then I fell back asleep.

And I was so exhausted by a day of
celebration and an evening of more energetic celebration with my
husband and me alone, I didn’t notice the AC wasn’t jacked up.

* * * * *

The next day…

4:15 p.m.

I drove through our development with Ty
following me and my teeth clenched when I saw them hanging out,
some cars but mostly vans with big aerials and dishes on top parked
everywhere but in our drive. I hit the garage door opener with the
timing I’d perfected from experience, knowing right when the signal
caught so that I could roll up and not have to wait for the door to
open and glide right in.

I usually glided right in. My journey right
then was slowed by the reporters and cameramen converging on my
baby just outside our drive and if one of them put a scratch in
her, I was going to have to break my promise to Ty and lose my
mind.

I kept my eyes straight and my car moved at
a crawl, I hit driveway and they fell back but I couldn’t exactly
gun it and screech in as much as I wanted to.

Nina had warned that, regardless of the fact
that she had made a statement to reporters outside her office in
Gnaw Bone yesterday afternoon after the Governor of California
issued his apology and pardoned Ty, and she also made another one
late this morning after Ty and I woke up to a media maelstrom right
outside our house, they wouldn’t listen to her when she ended both
saying, first, “This will be the only statement made on behalf of
Mr. Tyrell Walker. Mr. Walker and his wife are relieved justice has
finally been served and would now like to put this revolting
episode behind them. They ask that you respect their wishes to move
forward with their life in peace,” and at the end of the second
statement, “As I said yesterday, Mr. Walker and his wife do not
wish to speak to the media. I ask again on their behalf that you
please allow them to put this grueling event behind so they can
carry on with their rightful but delayed freedom to enjoy their
future unimpeded by further upheaval.”

Obviously, they didn’t listen to her.

It was okay when we were at work and when I
say that, I mean it was okay for Ty. Wood, Pop and three mechanics
made it clear that the forecourt was private property and unless
they were getting work done on their cars, they were not to leave
the sidewalk. The garage was set back a whack from the street and
had some outbuildings in front of it. So Ty worked in peace.

I didn’t even though Dominic called Daniel
and Daniel, who had four inches and sixty pounds on his boyfriend
and was also a serious mountain man, just a gay one, informed the
reporters they were not invited in the Spa. Luckily, the clients
coming in that day found walking through a river of reporters
shouting questions very exciting.

I did not. The constant buzz from outside
and the shouted questions anytime a client came through the door
were nerve-wracking and a total let-down from the jubilation of the
day before. I was high on relief and belated justice and they were
cutting into my happy trip which was super uncool.

Nina assured us this would go away, it would
take awhile but it would and we just needed to stay quiet and be
patient.

Ty informed me that we were doing what Nina
said we were doing, exercising the freedom to enjoy our future
unimpeded by further upheaval and that included me not losing
control on my sass and throwing any at annoying reporters.

I was thinking that to do this, I needed to
evacuate the state of Colorado. I figured both Wood and Dominic
would not balk at Ty and I taking a vacation however I was only
back at work for a few weeks and I couldn’t do that to Dominic
after taking off on him once. Not even doing it to celebrate
something as miraculous (albeit deserved) as what had happened to
Ty or to escape the media onslaught.

So, it was put a clamp on my sass, something
I promised my husband I would do.

Which was hard normally but now it was
taking superhuman powers.

Ty glided the Snake in beside me and hit the
garage door opener before he’d switched her off. I waited in my car
and watched in the rearview mirror as the door fell, not getting
out in order that they wouldn’t get a shot of me coming out of my
car like they did when I walked into and out of the salon that day,
both times escorted by my husband who left work that morning in
order to drive up and trail me down then walk me into the salon and
then who showed at the salon when we were both off in order to
escort me out to the Charger and trail me home. We should have
taken one car but he wanted to go to the gym after work, a plan
thwarted when the news people didn’t go away all day.

As the door went down and settled, the
shouts and cries of questions and requests for statements were
drowned but not gone.

I got out, stood in my door and glared over
the roof of the Charger at Ty as he folded out. He caught the look
on my face, stopped dead and burst out laughing.

I didn’t find anything funny therefore I
slammed my door and stomped out of the garage, into the utility
room and up the steps.

I’d crashed my purse down on the side
counter and was listening to Ty coming up the stairs when something
caught my eye and I froze, staring out the backdoor.

“No fucking way!” I shouted.

“What?” Ty asked.

I lifted an arm, pointed at a wide but
flat-ish cardboard box leaning against the glass at the backdoor,
turned to my husband and proclaimed, “If that’s a box full of
sick-ass sex tapes, I don’t wanna know.”

Ty’s eyes were glued to the box, he moved
through the kitchen, opened the door, tagged it, closed the door,
locked it, swung the blinds closed, wound them shut and walked the
box to the island all the while I stood there and glared.

His head turned to me and he muttered,
“Peña.”

I blinked, not prepared for that word to
come out of his mouth. Then I asked, “What?”

The fingers of Ty’s big, strong hands were
already shoving through an opening at the side as he answered,
“Express from Peña.”

Great. This could mean anything and that
included more sick-ass sex tapes.

I stomped to Ty as he tore the box open with
his Mr. Humongo strength then he set it down, pulling out something
inside that was wrapped in layers of bubble wrap. He tore that free
and my breath stuck in my throat at what he unveiled.

It was a shining sun with wavy rays
expanding out made of chips of Mexican tile artfully arranged and
embedded in terracotta. It was unusual and extraordinary. I’d never
seen anything like it.

It was magnificent.

Ty set it back on the pile of bubble wrap
he’d shoved in the box and pulled out an envelope, slit it open
with a finger and yanked out a card.

Then he whispered, “Fuck.”

I got close and read the card held in his
fingers.

On it, it said simply, “Welcome to
sunshine,
esé.
”

What should have been a happy day destroyed
by annoying reporters melted instantly.

Just as instantly as I melted into
tears.

And an instant later, I was in my husband’s
arms.

* * * * *

The sunshine Angel sent us was made to
decorate the outside of a house.

Without me asking him to, Ty mounted it in
the kitchen so we were sure to see it every day.

* * * * *

One day later…

We came home to another box. This was a
bottle of champagne from Samuel Sterling. Nothing on the note
except a scrawled, black “SS” which was super cool.

I looked up the label on the internet and
found that bottle of champagne cost four hundred and fifty
dollars.

Samuel Sterling was hot, rich and had
class.

I got his number from Ty and phoned him to
ask him to dinner that weekend. Considering he was in Paris, he
couldn’t make it but said he’d take a rain check.

Paris.

Totally, the dude had class.

* * * * *

Ty

A week and a half later…

Ty’s phone rang, he stepped away from the
bike he was working on and pulled it out of his back pocket.

The number on the screen said it was
withheld, he hesitated, opened it and put it to his ear.

“Yo.”

“Is this Mr. Tyrell Walker?”

“You first,” Ty ordered.

“Angela Buttner, California Attorney
General’s office.”