Trust Me: Matty and Kayla, Book 1 of 3 (The McDaniels Brothers) (2 page)

A little.

T
hat 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 dist
ract 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 want 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 was
n’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.

You lay with
dogs, you’re going to come out smelling like dog shit. Or something like that. If she was an innocent party here, she wouldn’t be working for a mobster. If she actually “worked” for him at all. Maybe this was some bone he’d thrown her after some
other
bone he’d been throwing her.

The thought of that slimy fucker touching that beautiful girl made my gut clench and I shut it down quick.

That was enough thinking about Kayla James. After Tuesday, she’d be in my rear view mirror. Then I could concentrate on the next act in the shit show.

Figuring out a way to tell my brother Bash what I’d done.

Kayla

Sixteen hundred Market Street.

I glanced back down at my cell phone and read the address out loud one more time before looking back at the building in front of me. It sure as hell didn't look like any office to me. What it looked like was a bar.

I shoved open my car door and stepped onto the curb, stumbling a little as the heel of my shoe caught in a crack on the sidewalk. Son of a bitch. I'd put on a frigging business suit and high heels for this meeting. If Matthias was leading me on some wild goose chase and wasting my time, Mickey was going to be the least of his problems.

I slammed the door closed and clip-clopped toward the entrance of what a neon sign in bubble letters announced was called 1984. Judging by that and the smattering of patrons standing outside smoking electronic cigarettes, it was a retro bar that catered to hipsters who were fans of the eighties.

Scooting past the quarum of bearded guys with a wave, I stepped inside the bar and then let the door close behind me. As I scanned the room for Matthias, I still wasn’t sure whether to be pissed at him for sending me on a wild goose chase, or pissed at him for thinking we should have a meeting about our collective futures in the middle of some dive bar.

One way or another, though, I was pissed.

But the worst thing I could do was give him the upper hand and let him call the shots this early in the game. Whoever got control first was going to come out on top, and I was determined that would be me. Whether he showed up tonight didn't matter one way or the other, because I wasn’t about to play this game with him. Satisfied, I turned to walk out, only to find him standing right behind me.

I jerked back in surprise but managed to ignore the thundering of my heart to give him the dead eye.

"You're late," he said, leaning on the doorjamb, brows raised in challenge.

It had been
one minute after six when I’d put my car into park.

In front of the bar.

That was
supposed
to be his office.

“You can't even be serious right now."

His lips quirked into a crooked half smile and he shrugged. "Why not? I was punctual. Doesn't seem so much to ask that you do the same. We’re both professionals here."

He took a long slug from his glass, peering over the rim with slightly unfocused eyes and I wondered if maybe he’d gotten
there a little early. Drinking alone at six PM on a Tuesday was almost as concerning as him tricking me into coming here.

Even
after all his nonsense, though, I had to admit, he was easy on the eyes. His dirty blonde hair was short and messy in a way that took some guys half an hour in front of the mirror, but probably took him no more than a rake of his fingers. And his face was meant for billboards. Like a young Brad Pitt with an attitude.

And that train of thought needs to
be derailed, fast.

I stepped back, realizing we were a little too close for my liking, and hauled my purse higher onto my shoulder.

"Fuck you, McDaniels." How was that for professional? "You agreed to meet with me to talk business and make like we're meeting in an office and then you send me to this shithole."

"Ouch, easy!"
The plump guy behind the bar rocking a waxed handlebar mustache and horn-rimmed glasses winced at me. "That's a little harsh, no?"

"Sorry," I muttered and faced
Matty again, lowering my voice to a whisper. "Seriously, though. This isn't the way things are going to be. I'm managing you, and you need to let me do it. That doesn't mean either of us has to like it, but you're not going to screw this up for me. Now step out of the way so I can go. When you're ready to meet somewhere and talk about your career let me know. Until then, I'll assume I have carte blanche and I'll schedule the fights I think will work best."

I tipped my head back so I could stare him straight in the eyes and he could see exactly how serious I was.

"This is happening. Take a few days and get your head right, and then give me a call." I tried to shove past him but he was like a wall of muscle that didn’t want to be moved. I stepped back and glared at him. “Step aside.”

"You talk a big game, but I promise you this. I'm not taking fights I don't agree with," he said, his voice low and harsh as his suddenly clear green eyes flashed with anger. "Your boss can go
fuck himself if he wants to saddle me with a bad matchup."

"My boss doesn't have anything to do with it. He told me to get you ready and that's what I'm doing. He's still learning about MMA and trusts me to take care of this. It can be me and you, working together to forge a path for a bang up
career, or I can take point and you can come in and do the grunt work. I'd prefer a partner, but not if he's too stupid to get out of his own way."

I elbowed him in the side as I tried to squeeze past him again, but he still wasn’t budging and I wanted to scream.

"Fine," he snapped.

"What?" I stopped to peer up at him, wondering if I’d heard him right.

"Fine," he shrugged. "If you really plan on giving me a say, let's talk. But we're here now, so why don't you calm down, have a drink with me and we can talk until my wings are done. You can order too, we'll eat and then we can head back to my gym and have a fancier meeting if you want, okay?"

I let the idea roll around in my head for a few seconds, looking for loopholes. No matter how I turned it, it felt like a
“W” in my corner, so I nodded. “Sure, okay.”

He straightened and then led the way to the bar, jerking his head toward a row of empty stools. “Take your pick.”